After 2 years of blogging, today is McKenna’s last official post on The Mom Crowd. We have 5 writers for this blog and McKenna is my first co-writer. She is also a co-founder of The Mom Crowd. I remember having an “official” meeting in her kitchen back in the summer of 2007 to discuss post ideas, logo themes, and vision casting for this site. We also created the short-lived “The Mom Crowd Show!” together. Like official reporters we ran around the San Antonio Baby Expo together with a camera and microphone interviewing the representatives at each booth. It was so much fun!
I am certainly going to miss McKenna’s insight into the world of special needs and her positive outlook on life. I am grateful that we got to walk through her journey to adopt Baby Reese from the Ukraine together. McKenna will be spending this semester caring for her 3 little ones, taking a full schedule of college courses, and helping with ReecesRainbow.org. We will still see her around here as a faithful reader and possibly with a guest post from time to time. Best wishes to you and your family.
In honor of McKenna’s last post, I asked to pick her favorite 5 posts.
McKenna here. 
I am really going to miss writing for The Mom Crowd. I have loved posting on this blog and have enjoyed the companionship, support, insight from all the other moms who participate in the discussions at The Mom Crowd. Reading through my old posts over the last two years brought up so many memories! It’s been amazing to watch a blog develop from discussions with Amanda at my kitchen table and at her neighborhood park to such an active, insightful, encouraging blog for moms.
Alrighty, my most favorite posts:
- The Mom Crowd Shows - Shooting these episodes was so much fun! I would do this again in a heart beat! I loved our one-man camera crew, making my living room and later Amanda’s living room into a studio, and the funny out-takes. Oh, and remember not having a charged battery downtown and running and trolleying all over downtown San Antonio, Amanda? Good t imes! Man, my hair is longer!! Oh, on the third episode, there’s a great discussion about using a mirror to watch your child’s delivery…too many puns to count! These shows were way too fun!
- When You Find Out Your Baby Has Down Syndrome - One of my favorite things about writing for The Mom Crowd was documenting some of my life experiences as a mommy. I have also been so happy that my life experience parenting children with health issues and special needs has encouraged other mommies in similar situations with their children. I love the comments that pop up on this post years after I’ve written from people doing google searches. And I love that I have these emotions docuemented for myself.
- Ready Set Sign - As a speech pathology student, I have a passion for helping children learn to communicate. I am a strong believer that every parent should use the valuable resource of signing with their children when they are young! Signing with my girls has been one of the most valuable resources for us as parents.
- Teaching Your Children and Yourselves How to Live Within Your Means - I have many posts that I’ve written for The Mom Crowd with advice and suggestions I struggle to take. Writing posts like this one have been helpful for myself as I try to become a better mom, wife, and child of God.
- Censoring Disney? – Sometimes, writing for The Mom Crowd was difficult because I did not feel as though I knew the right answer to issues I struggled with as a mom. This post was one of those posts where I learned so much from the discussion following the post. So many readers of The Mom Crowd have more good ideas than anything I could find online as I researched some of my posts.
I’m sad to not be a regular contributing author of The Mom Crowd, but excited about all the things I have going on in my busy life! I’ll be around…it’s not that easy to get rid of me!
Please welcome our newest contributing author, Christy, to The Mom Crowd! I am super excited to hear her stories and insights into parenting. I have not seen Christy in person in 11 years. We became friends on Facebook and quickly became Facebook BFFs while commiserating about our kiddos. She did a guest post in March titled, “7 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Type 1 (Juvenile) Diabetes.”
Here is Christy’s story:
I am a mom to two “medical marvels”, Andrew (4) and Catherine (18 months). Told as a teenager that I would probably never have children, I never gave up the desire to be a mom. Even after miscarriages and infertility issues, I was blessed with my beautiful babies! My pregnancy with Andrew was incredibly difficult due to hyperemesis (excessive… and I do mean excessive vomiting) during my entire pregnancy and he was born by emergency c-section. Crazy thing, I loved every minute of that pregnancy! I was blessed to breastfed Andrew for 15 months and fell in love with that part of motherhood. My pregnancy with Catherine was relatively normal compared to Andrew’s and she too was born by c-section and I breastfed her for 18 blissful months. My favorite thing about being a mom has to be the reward of hugs and kisses! I live for them!
In my free time, I enjoy reading, writing, going on play dates and most recently getting involved in my new church. My days are full of refereeing, playing and managing Andrew’s diabetes. I am truly blessed to have the life I have and love to share my experiences with others.
A big wide-open-arms welcome to you Christy! You can read her articles here on TMC every Wednesday.
In Other News…
Did you know that Dawn and I have started a fan blog for the show, So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD)? If you watch SYTYCD, please come share your thoughts over at SYTYCD The Blog. If you are a fan of the show, then there was a surprise this week and we’d love to hear what you thought of this week’s eliminations.
Finally…
Have a wonderful Father’s Day weekend honoring all the dads in our lives!
I have a confession – I am addicted to the internet. My new iPhone isn’t helping my addiction either. I can tweet, update my Facebook status, and find a recipe on my All Recipes iPhone App all while breastfeeding my new son. I secretly think that my husband sabotaged my old phone so it would break and we would have a real reason to upgrade. If he did sabotage my phone, then I am glad because The Mom Crowd is all over the web now!
You can follow my updates on Twitter at @TheMomCrowd. I love it, because I feel like I can tweet about being a mom and other moms are listening with a sympathetic ear. Also, I can keep up with the latest mom news a lot more quickly by reading everyone else’s tweets. If you have a Twitter account feel free to put it in the comments so I can follow you!
Become a fan of The Mom Crowd on Facebook! You can keep up with our latest updates and support our blog. I would really appreciate it!
Have you noticed in our new design how some people have photos next to their comments in the comment section? If you have a wordpress.com or Gravatar account then your avatar associated with your email address will appear. It is easy to get a Gravatar account. All you need to need to do is go to Gravatar.com, tell them your email address, and upload any photo that you want. It’s that easy! Then your avatar will follow you to any other site that uses Gravatar.
If you haven’t joined The Mom Bloggers Club (MBC) yet, then you need to go by and see what is happening over there. All the cool kids are doing it. I have been a member for a year and have watched it grow into a popular place where moms ask questions and get to know each other. It has never felt like a clique and other moms are happy to help. It is really easy to make friends. (You can see my previous review of the Mom Bloggers Club here.) Tomorrow Founder Jennifer James is announcing that I will be one of the new Ambassadors for the MBC over the next 3 months. I am excited about it and hope to see you there!
As you can see The Mom Crowd has a new design! We are still in the process of tweaking it a bit.
I am super thankful for Cicily at August Afternoon Designs! She did a FANTASTIC job incorporating everything I wanted in the design. My husband and I put together the old blue design ourselves and it is great to have a professional to clean up our amateur work and make something gorgeous.
I would also like to thank, Daniel, my wonderful husband who is the genius behind Grow Development. He took Cicily’s design and made it reality. Not to mention he also upgraded my prehistoric version of WordPress.
Thank you Cicily and Daniel!!
I hope you all like our new layout!
I will hopefully have my second baby anytime in the next 4 weeks. As most of you moms know, having a baby takes time away from your normal daily activities. So I may not be able to post as much as I normally would. I am incredibly thankful for my friends McKenna, Dawn, and Amelia who will be posting as usual and stepping up their posts to cover a few extra days for me. We would also love to hear from you! Are you interested in guest posting on The Mom Crowd?
If you are a regular reader of our blog you know that our posts are helpful, encouraging, informative, and inspiring. In the very least we try to be entertaining. We don’t cuss here or bad mouth other folks. We write a lot about pregnancy, being green, labor and delivery, moms in pop culture, and anything related to current state of our children. Almost anything parenting related is on the table to be discussed.
If you are interested in guest posting you can email me (Amanda) what topic you would like to write about or the full text of your post at Amanda [at] themomcrowd.com. To keep the integrity of our site we will have to approve your post before it can be published. We are looking to fill in a few days in March. Please let me know by Feb. 28th and we will get back with you about guest posting.
Like all guest posts we will write a little intro about you and your blog (if you have one.) You can include a head shot or logo if you would like.
I can’t wait to hear what kind of topics are on your minds and hear from your perspective. I think getting my blog in order is part of my “nesting” in getting ready for the baby. I need to go wash some onesies now.
