Win a Gift Card to Halloween Mart!

Halloween is the most magical part of the fall season. I think it’s safe to say that most moms enjoy it as much as the kids do! The only damper on Halloween 2009? The cost.

Well mom’s, this is our time to shine. All of us have come up with creative ways to make Halloween totally spooktacular on a budget. Homemade decorations, homemade costumes, what’s your idea for saving money this Halloween?

How you can win!
Just share your “money-saving” Halloween tip with the MomConnect community on the following thread, How Much Do you Typically Spend on Halloween?
1.  Answer the Poll
2. Leave a comment (on that thread) with your idea for saving money this Halloween by October 16th.

Winning
MomConnect will help ease the burden of YOUR family’s Halloween costume shopping by giving away TWO $25 gift cards to Halloween Mart!. We’ll choose the most creative idea and then we’ll choose one random entry to receive the second gift certificate.

In order to participate you must follow these simple rules.

1. You must be a mom.
2. You must be a member of MomConnect (takes just a minute to become a member and reap the rewards of a great community of helpful moms at your finger tips…)
3. You must leave your comment by midnight October 16th.
4. Only one entry per person please!

Winners will be announced October 18th directly and via MomConnect’s weekly newsletter! Good luck!

Follow Halloween Mart on Twitter, @halloweenmart

Tips on Getting Your Kids to Read

One of the hot topics I’ve noticed lately among the moms I know at school, the moms I know online and the mom’s here on MomConnect is not a new one. In fact it’s no surprise as we enter the second month of the school year to hear moms asking the question, how do I get my child to read everyday? And even more importantly how do I get him or her to love reading?

Most schools ask that your child read 20 minutes a day as part of the daily homework routine. But when you’ve got a little one fighting the need to read that 20 minutes can begin to feel like an hour. And you may even start asking yourself the question, “What am I doing wrong?” Or even worse “Why does he hate to read?”

Well first of all, you’re not alone. As I mentioned, it’s been a pretty hot topic among the moms I know and threads keeping showing up on MomConnect with different variations of that same question. Both discussions, lovemylife0‘s,  how do I help my son learn to love reading and Lars‘s “Reading” had some really great advice!

Here are a few tips on getting your little one to read.

• Forget the 20 minutes: If he or she is really giving you a hard and reading time becomes about as fun as a trip to the dentist nix the 20 minutes! Though our school wants the kids to be reading to us for 20 minutes, I usually keep it between 10 to 15 minutes. This is just about what my reader can take.
• In the Beginning Forget What They’re Reading: I found that while trying to get my son in the habit of reading he did better with books he felt more comfortable with reading. While trying to establish a routine I found it easier to let him read what he wants. Once your child is in the habit then you can be a little pickier about what he or she is reading. But in the beginning just getting your child to sit down and read is the main goal.
• Hit the Library: Make regular trips to your local library. There is no other place on earth that demonstrates just how great reading can be than the library.
• Read to your Reader: Find some chapter books your child likes and make time for you to read to him or her each day. Try different series until you find some that gets your child fired up. And don’t be afraid to go old school! The Boxcar Children, The Littles, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys have all turned out to be just as loved by my kids as I loved them. The excitement of these books has really had an impact on my son and I can see the wheels turning & that love of reading finally beginning to grow.

Let Him Read What He Loves: Lunavox said, If he loves sports, have him read about sports, start off small give him a variety of different books about sports, magazines, and articles on the internet once he gets started and realizes how much he can learn from reading he might start wanting to do it all the time. Use the sports reading as a reward, if he reads the other one he can read this after.

Show Him How Much YOU Love it: JennferDavidGA said, Make sure he sees you and other important people in his life reading regularly. If people he looks up to love reading and he can see that he might want to enjoy it more.

Use a Reward System: Cgarcia737 suggested, Try a reward of some type for when he reads on his own, not because he “has” to. Something he really likes or wants, like maybe out to get an ice cream, or maybe a new comic book or something. I know that many times the comic books aren’t always overly appropriate, but some of them are rather sophisticated these days. Perhaps you could find one that has a topic or behaviors that aren’t too objectionable but that he might like.

If you try all these things and find that reading is still unbearable talk to your child’s teacher and see what she suggests and find out how your child is doing with reading in the classroom.

Stay positive and remember we’re all going through it!

“Me Time” For Mom

There are so many reasons why “me time” is important for us moms. And I am a true believer in the necessity of it for moms everywhere. That’s easy enough for me to say, but I’ll wholeheartedly admit that in the six and a half years I’ve been a mom I have not followed that advice very much at all. But now, since my kids are a little older, I am finally feeling a small shift in our household that is granting me a little more freedom.

My kids are six and four so though I still hear a lot of “mommy, mommy, mommy” much of the time, they aren’t as dependant on me as they were when they were a little younger. This is slowly granting me more freedom and more opportunities to take a little time for myself. While it’s still not much, but it’s getting there.

And it’s certainly a far cry from the early years of motherhood. You know, where you begin to feel like trips to the bathroom are your only chance for a little time to yourself. And even then it’s usually interrupted by the inevitable cry of a hungry infant or a toddler who MUST find their favorite hot wheel “RIGHT NOW.” A thread on MomConnect touched on just that this week, “Hate staying at Home.”  Goog really hit it home about how we all feel sometimes.

Last night I had the chance to go out with some fellow moms and lifelong friends. It’s not often we get to see each other, and when we do it’s usually one of the kids birthday parties and as any mom knows, you hardly get much time for visiting with old friends during a child’s birthday party.

It was good to see them and oh so important for my mommy soul. Who we were before we became moms is still who we are today. But sometimes a sink full of dirty dishes, a husband stressing over bills, and the never-ending tasks of mommyhood can shadow that person.

And that’s a shame because I truly believe that the more in tune we are to that “inner person” the better a mom we’ll be.

I spent my teen years very close with my girlfriends. We were loud, strong, outgoing and laughed all the time. We made each other feel strong and we were always there for each other. So now as a 30-something when I get the chance to spend time with them, it refreshes me and reminds me of the person I was when I was younger.

More importantly, it reminds that I’m still that person today. So after a carefree girls night out I always find myself laughing more with my kids. My patience increases and my tolerance for household chores and the other quirks of being a mom suddenly rises.

Moms tend to run out of gas. “Me time” or “girl time” with friends is a mom’s way of refilling the gas tank (so to speak).

So make sure you take a little time each month to refill your tank ladies. If you can get together with some friends, great. But it doesn’t matter what it is. A trip to Starbucks, a walk or run, whatever.  That may seem like a tall order for some of you newer moms out there or moms who still have babies attached at the hip who are feeling like you’ll never have me time again. Just ask mythreegirls who posed the question, How Do I Find Time For Myself? on the MomConnect site recently. The truth is it’s just not that easy to make time for yourself with a baby, but hang in there. It gets easier. It really truly does.

Hello MomConnect!

Happy October! This is my first official blog post for MomConnect and my first week as MomConnect’s Community Manager. So I figured I’d take the opportunity to tell you, the MomConnect community, a little bit about myself. My name is Meghan and I am living life in the beautiful suburbs of the Easy Bay Area in sunny California with my husband and family.

I am a mom of two wonderful kids (and when I say wonderful, I mean when the mood suits them to be wonderful). My son is six and in the first grade and my daughter is four and will start Kindergarten next year.

My path to motherhood was a difficult one but after a few years of trying we finally had our son in 2003. After he was born I went back to work as an administrative assistant and spent a year pumping and breastfeeding while leaving my son in daycare. It was not always easy but I made it through. A few months after he was weaned we found out that I was pregnant with our daughter.

Once I was on maternity leave the second time, I decided that I did not want to go back to work after she was born. Financially we couldn’t afford to live off one income so I became a licensed family childcare provider and started my own daycare in my home. During that time I also went back to school to obtain an Associate Teacher Certificate in Early Childhood Education.

Even though I was home with my kids I still had a hard time doing many of the things I wanted to do with them. Volunteer at school, go on field trips, and give them my undivided attention when they were home sick. So I put my energy into freelance writing and working within online communities (You can also find me wearing my other hat at WomenCount.org). Writing, connecting and helping people, and being a mom were what I wanted to do.

And then the wonderful opportunity at MomConnect came along and I managed to find work that gave me the opportunity to do all three! I am so happy to be a part of the wonderful MomConnect team and a part of the wonderful community that I see growing and connecting more each day.

Be sure and follow MomConnect on twitter at @momconnect and me at @meghan1018 or just friend me on MomConnect.com.  I look forward to being a part of this wonderful community!

-Meghan

Meghan@momconnect.com

Does a Zebra in the wild make a sound?

Today we are checking out a great read of a blog called Zebra Sounds at www.zebrasounds.net.

I’ve been loosely related to this author for just a hair over forty years but we’ve only just really talked this past one. Judy Clement-Wall, the writer of Zebra Sounds, was my best buddies older sister back in 1968. Being a girl and having girl things to do, my buddy and I left Judy to her own business and except for an occasional head butting or howdy, we spoke little but were probably used to each other being near by. That ended in 1981 when she graduated and was gone from my life. Facebook comes along and I am amazed at how many people are finding me and each other. Heck, my kindergarten room formed a group. I had forgotten that probably thirty of us went through all 13 years of school together and it was fun talking to them again. One day, Facebook suggested that I may know Judy. We friended up and exchanged pleasantries. I noticed she had a blog. I start reading said blog and find that this girl I felt was almost a sister in law was so amazingly funny and insightful. She was not posting every day back then and I was not brave enough to comment often as I think I am probably no less a nuisance today than I was back in the 60′s and 70′s. Judy has a great system of theme days. I’ve seen many bloggers do this so that their readers have a few chances of one or two days a week that they will be interested in the material. My problem is that all of Judy’s stuff is worth reading and very rarely is something not funny. I’m sure it may come up, but I just dont’ remember those as much as the funny stuff. For instance, on Friday’s, Judy does a caption game. Last Fridays was:

Hello, cutest “Caption This” photo EVER!

I found this picture on Twitter. Someone tweeted it. They’re chicks… Get it? (That is super funny when you’re on cold medicine.)

Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Happy Friday, y’all! Caption this!
→   26 Comments

Each Friday she does this and I happily participate. Other days like Saturday are things that make Judy smile. The subjects sound easy but what Judy finds and writes about is thoughtful, cheerful and light hearted.  Her very last one I read was about the joys of playing hooky for a day.  Who wouldn’t mind a hooky day?

Judy is a mom to three humans, one pooch and wife to a very cool gentleman that comments from time to time in the threads. Judy has a finished novel and is currently working on the publishing part of being a writer. Follow her on twitter at @jdistractionand engage with her blog.

Game on!

After talking with Lovina and Erich, I have been given the honor of writing our first post. I’d like to welcome you to our social project in the works and I’d like to thank you for reading this far. I’ll go over who I am, what we will do here and then we’ll see what’s left to say.

I’m John Pruitt. I’ve lived in the San Jose area of California since 1968. Due to a freak accident with a radio active mouse, I found that I had the power to understand social networks and computers. Starting with bulletin board systems (my handle was HAL9000) and then moving to AppleLink and on to AOL. I was quoted in the 2nd version of the Using AOL guide. My parents were very proud. The web expanded and I joined the society of online gamers. At this point, the other types of socializing started to crop up. Instant messengers were all the rage. Then came the larger social networks. Plaxo, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, twitter and one of my own personal loves Yelp. I read a lot of blogs and now read even more. I’ve played a back seat roll in helping clients with blogging and search engine optimization for the last five years. Now I work with a cohesive (word of the day) group of people with the goal of helping moms. When I first said this to my mom friends, the funniest return guess as to how I helped moms was “Are you a Valium distributor?”. No, I’m not.

My twins were born when I was 23. Hammer and Anvil, as I called them, were two for the price of one in every respect. Happiness, chores, diapers but most of all humor. As my children grew up and I found myself becoming my father, their humor kept me laughing. My children are not children anymore. They just turned 22 and both are into their graduate studies in College. I am a proud father and I love my sons.

I’ll be changing what we do here over the next couple of weeks while I am getting in the groove of this blog. I’m excited about the challenges of our plans for it. For the start, I am going to be reviewing mom bloggers of interest from across the net. You don’t have to be a blogger about moms. Just be a mom and have a blog. I will also be blogging about articles and news tidbits I come across that I feel will be of interest to moms.

If you have comments, feedback or just want to say howdy, I’d love to hear from you. All my contact information is in the About section.

Thanks for reading!

John

MomConnect, Inc. Blog – Dedicated to news that is of interest to moms everywhere

More posts shortly.  Just setting things up today.