A Blog for Busy Moms – MOMania

Poor husbands! So beaten down! So henpecked! No choices in their lives!

Well at least according to many of the ads featured during the Super Bowl tonight. We noticed a theme about how men are so emasculated by women and how they have no choices in their sad little lives.

Here are the ones I noticed in the first half (I will update with second-half ads as the game goes on):

Dove skincare line for men

Starting with a Dove ad for skincare for men, we learned that men are destined to marry, have kids and be forced to do yard work. This ad was less  about women beating down their men and more about men just not having any choices in life.

Dodge Charger Ad

The next ad for the new Dodge Charger was downright depressing and is much more accusatory that women are sucking the life out of their men! Literally titled “A Man’s Last Stand,” it features men with dead eyes and sallow complexions reciting in monotone all the things they are forced to do in their lives. This isn’t …

Continue reading SUPER BOWL ADS: How EMASCULATED is your MAN? »

Michelle Obama has taken on childhood obesity as her cause from the White House.

With more than one-third of America’s kids falling into the category of obesity and as a mother of young children, it seems like the perfect issue for our First Lady.

However, she’s already being criticized for her efforts.  Here are the issues:

1. Michelle Obama referred to own her daughters when talking about obesity.

From Shine: “Two weeks after announcing the unnerving news that childhood obesity has tripled over the last 30 years, and unveiling her own initiative to combat it, Michelle Obama has offended critics by discussing her own “wake-up” moment—when the family pediatrician told her that daughters Sasha and Malia were becoming overweight.”

“ ‘In my eyes I thought my children were perfect,” Mrs. Obama said at the January launch of her initiative. “I didn’t see the changes.’ ”

As someone who writes about her children often, I can understand the natural …

Continue reading Michelle Obama criticized for obesity comments: Was she really out of line? »

I took a very discouraging shopping trip to Victoria’s Secret last week that made me wonder if the store and the line are actually meant for mothers.

I got my hair cut and colored and dropped into the store on my way home. I was actually alone, which rarely happens, and thought it be nice to buy a couple of new sexy items. Other than some fairly plain supportive bras and panties from Target (so sad!!), I haven’t bought any new sexy stuff in probably six years. (I keep trotting old the same numbers hoping Michael still likes them.)

I went in with high expectations all excited about the different colors and styles of the little nighties and sexy bras.  I felt like there were just hundreds of choices all around the store. But then the saleslady measured my chest.

She deemed me a 38-D and walked over and pulled out a drawer and said here are the bras in your size.

I was reduced from an entire store to a drawer!!

(In fairness I think there was one other drawer she could pull …

Continue reading Is Victoria’s Secret meant for Moms? »

Gwinnett County has its parent-teacher conferences this week so I’ve been thinking a lot about that experience.

I have a theory about parent-teacher conferences: I think they’re a lot like yearly job reviews for adults.  I don’t ever think what’s being said should be a surprise. I think employees and parents should be pretty much aware week-to-week of how they or their child is doing.

If there are surprises at a conference then clearly there’s been some break in communication with the teacher (fault could be on either side).

Even thought I pretty well know how my kids are doing grade wise and conduct wise from the Friday weekly folders and from looking through their work, I am often more interested to learn at conferences about how they are working and interacting with their peers and teachers. I want to know how they are doing socially, how they are developing. Are they excited to be there? Are they vocal in class? Are they shy in class? What are their work habits …

Continue reading What do you want from your Parent-Teacher Conference? »

A friend of mine on Facebook who I often swap parenting advice and check out baby photos (This is how I am justifying posting this on Momania) just posted a very funny parody of Alicia Keys and Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.” It’s called “Peach State of Mind.” It’s very funny and Coke will love all the free publicity. I like seeing all the shots from around Georgia, and enjoy the chorus about a humid town. The friend who posted this often posts very funny comments and photos about his kids. See Facebook is useful!

Continue reading Funny parody of “Empire State of Mind”: Ga. gives you ‘Peach State of Mind’ »

I have been anxiously anticipating a round of stomach virus to hit our house based on what my friends from our school and other schools in the metro area are reporting on Facebook.

Much like the local weatherman, the status reports on Facebook tell parents what viruses are in the area and which ones of their friends’ kids they should be currently avoiding.

My neighbor told me this morning at the bus stop that her son had been throwing up all night. She’s not on Facebook so she didn’t know it’s been all the buzz.

I told her all my friends on Facebook have been reporting that their kids have it.

How long does it last she asked? Does it have a fever?

I told her no one had written anything about a fever, just that it lasts for days and was passing from child to child. Also told her to be careful with dehydration. One of our friends reported a hospital visit for IVs because her child had become so dehydrated.

I posted yesterday that Theresa Walsh Giarrusso “is baby with …

Continue reading Parenting via Facebook: Vomit reports and baby advice »

I got a note from one of our regulars who just found out that weaved bracelets the teens in her ‘burb of Atlanta are wearing have another meaning other than friendship. Here’s what she wrote:

“Apparently the kids in middle and high school are into colored bracelets. Kind of like the friendship bracelets we used to wear…the intertwined ones. Well…who knew that they now have sexual meaning? I certainly didn’t. And neither did my daughter. She wears them because she simply LIKES them. So when a girl came up to her and asked if she knew what they meant….she had no clue!…”

“Apparently the colors of the bracelets correlate to what you have done sexually or are willing to do. My child had no clue…she just happens to be the necklace/bracelet freak. ”…

“As her mom….do I instruct her to tell these bozo kids to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine…or tell her to just take them off? Before you know it…twister beads and parachute pants will mean you are into beastiality and …

Continue reading Teen trend:Does her bracelet mean something sexual? »

Same-sex couples are just as good at raising well-adjusted, healthy kids as heterosexual couples according a new study published in the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

According to HealthDay on Yahoo:

” ‘There’s a deeply held and widespread view out there that children need both a mother and a father to do well,’ said study author Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology and of social and cultural analysis at New York University in New York City. ‘And it seems to be a bipartisan conviction — with a lot of public policy based on that premise — since literally both President Bush and President Obama have said exactly that.’ ”

“ ‘But the point is that this orthodoxy is supposedly supported not just by a belief, but by actual research,’ Stacey noted. ‘Yet we found that, in fact, there is no research that shows that children need both a mother and a father. And we looked everywhere.’ “

Stacey and study co-author Timothy J. Biblarz, chairman of …

Continue reading Are two Mommies as good as a Mom and a Dad? »

The big news yesterday was that the U.S. teen pregnancy rate rose in 2006 for the first time in more than a decade, reversing a long slide.

According to Reuters: “The overall teen pregnancy rate was up 3 percent in 2006, with a 4 percent rise in the rate of births and a 1 percent rise in the rate of abortions, according to the report by the Guttmacher Institute.”

But the questions for today are: Why is the rate up? And what can parents do to stop their daughter from becoming a statistic?

There are many interesting theories floating around as to why the increase in teen pregnancy. Here is a sampling:

Larry Finer, Guttmacher’s director for domestic research, said in a telephone interview with Reuters: “We’re not quite sure yet whether this is just a blip or whether it’s the beginning of a longer upward trend. It’s interesting to note that this flattening out of the rate and the increase in the rate is happening at the same time that we’ve seen substantial increases in …

Continue reading Teen pregnancies are up, but WHY? »

1. You can be your own contractor – If you are an organized person who can think though a plan and communicate well with workers, you can do this. My girlfriend Denise Dermody, who is an architect and interior designer at Simply Design in Washington, D.C., kept encouraging me that I could run the renovation myself. She gave me the basic timeline in which things needed to be ordered and scheduled. Our timeline did have some setbacks (appliances didn’t show up on time) but by keeping my sub-contractors informed we didn’t have any problems getting the work done when we were ready. (See side bar for order of the work.)
2. Only go with companies referred by friends or from other workers you trust. Several of our companies were recommended by the Realtor that sold our old house. They used the companies frequently and knew their work well. We also liked that several of the companies we used had been in business for more than 20 years in the area.  (New Mom on the blog recommended …

Continue reading Renovations: The Top 10 Things I Learned about Renovations (Pt. 3) »