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As part of The Mommies Network, LakeNormanMommies.com is a free community for moms in Lake Norman Area, North Carolina. We realize that all moms need local support -- and who can't use another friend? LakeNormanMommies.com offers a simple way to connect with local moms for friendship, support and fun. Members meet on our private discussion forums to share information on everything from where to get the best haircut to tips on transitioning to a "big kid" bed. Each month, we also offer many face-to-face events for our members, their children and their families.
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Do you defend your Parenting? Last week I read a lot of forums and I replied to a few. After reading some of the responses by others I realized something; questions about our relationships with husbands, MIL, relatives and friends we all seem to give our point of view and try to be helpful. However, questions about our parenting get vicious. It seems that we all as mothers get very defensive with how we parent our children.
We don?t defend how we treat our husbands or family, but we defend how we treat out kids. I just think it was interesting as I was reflecting on this fact. Why are we more concerned about how we look as a parent and defending our actions but nothing else in life?
I think we defend out parenting because this, we think, is our goal in life, to raise good children. We seek advice but we want to do it our way and believe that our way is the right way. Every child is different and every parent is different so what works for one does not work for others; we need to understand this when we listen and speak of parenting. But we sometimes close up to any thoughts from others because we don?t want to believe we are wrong.
It isn?t so much the defense of our actions as parents which gets me; it is the attitude behind it. It just seems so burly and defensive. When I read some of the posts I almost get a sick feeling in my stomach, like the person is very mad. Why are people so defensive? Rather than just explaining our opinions we use words to be definite and almost hateful to others for suggesting that something we do is wrong.
I guess as mother?s maybe we feel that no matter what we accomplish in life, the only thing that matters is how our children are raised.
I think we also judge each other by our actions in raising our children. We don?t really listen to others thought process behind their decisions, but that is probably because they can get so burly.
I want to discuss different ways to raise my child but I know that NO OTHER SITUATION IS THE SAME AS MINE!!! Ha Ha, that is closed minded but that is how we think.
Food Adventure I love a good food adventure. Normally when I go to visit my family on Long Island, NY, the food we eat is head and shoulders better than most of the food available locally in Charlotte but rather predictable. On the weekend, we all meet for dim sum at the Northern Manor in Little Neck. If my dad feels like some Italian, we go to La Parma in Williston Park to eat family style. I'll go to H Mart a few times to buy fresh kim chi and seaweed salad. But this trip, I scoured Chowhound and stumbled across several raves for Hummus World, a tiny, hole-in-the-wall shop near the Roslyn train station that serves various stuffed pita sandwiches, among other things. We had the shawafel pita. Say it with me. Shawafel. That's a pita stuffed with chicken shawarma, falafel, Israeli salad, and hummus. It was even better than it sounds.
What kind of teacher do you want for your child? I want a strict teacher that keeps my child in line, expects them to act respectful and teaches them. Why this topic is on my mind is things that came up this past week.
My child?s school sent out the teacher assignments and I am shocked at the amount of parents that are having the teachers switched. Why you wonder? Because the teacher they got originally was ?mean?!! Really! I just don?t get it.
I understand that different teachers have different teaching techniques and personalities but to switch because they are mean. First of all, all parents had an opportunity to tell the school what teacher they wanted for their child, but many probably didn?t. So they got the assignment and then had it switched.
I think it is a good thing for students to experience different types of people, especially since when they get to middle school and high school they will deal with a different teacher for every subject and won?t have a lot of option.
I also think that the parent?s priorities are in the wrong place if they are concerned about the teacher being MEAN. Not because they are a bad teacher or they heard they didn?t teach well, but because they are MEAN.
But I guess I can only be concerned about my child and who she got. She got the one I requested based off of recommendations from other teachers and parents. She may be strict but I think that adds to a good learning environment for my child.
If you are, then I encourage you to do something about it.
First, ask yourself what LKNM means to you and what you have gotten out of your association with the organization. Then, ask yourself what that is worth to you.
I can?t speak for you, but I can give you a glimpse into what LKNM means to me, personally. When I moved to this area, I knew no one. I went through pregnancy and childbirth without any local mommy support. I was scared and facing one of the biggest life changes that a woman can encounter?alone. One night, as I sat on the floor of our apartment with my laptop in front of me, my wee bairn attached to my breast, and tears of frustration and anger and depression streaming down my face, I took a massive chance and googled ?mom support Cornelius NC.? This site popped up. I didn?t know what it was or what to expect, but I knew that I couldn?t go on alone any longer. What I got was more than I ever could have hoped for. I got the gift of community. Over the past 33 months, I have given and received an unbelievable amount of support and met some of the most amazing, strong, caring, intelligent women. Through the support and information on LKNM I have: nursed my child, found amazing birthday cakes, discussed the challenges of being the mom of a swirly, found amazing photographers to document our family?s path, gotten information about my child?s hypospadia/chordee, found a place to live, potty trained my child, shared recipes, griped about my underdeveloped domestic skills, found a pre-school, got support for fertility issues, discussed hot topics, attended playgroups and MNOs, found support for PPD, had my eyes opened, expanded my capacity to accept and understand differing points of view, laughed, cried, and made connections that will last a lifetime. This site has not just supported me, but also reached out to touch the lives of my child, my husband, and (most recently) my father. Father? Yes, father.
For those who do not know, my eighty-year-old father (PopPop) lives with us full time. On August 10, 2010, under the watchful eye of his part-time caregiver, PopPop took a nasty spill. It wasn?t anyone?s fault and it could not have been prevented. The caregiver did everything she was supposed to do, but she was unable to contact me as I was out and about with my two-year-old. Luckily, I had mentioned LKNM to her and she had seen any number of playgroups at my home over the months that she worked for us. Before following the ambulance to the hospital, she walked across our lawn and knocked on the neighbor?s door, remembering that this neighbor was part of this great mommy network. Having not been able to raise me on the phone, this neighbor took to the boards. She PM?d the Moderator for our area group and asked if she had any idea where I might be. Our Moderator didn?t have anything on the calendar for that day, so she checked all of the other listings and narrowed down the possibility to a Free Movie listing. She didn?t just give this information to my neighbor, but took it upon herself to get in her car, drive to the movies, and search through all of the darkened theaters until she found me. Had it not been for their ingenuity and tenacity, I would have returned home hours later to an empty house and no clue as to what had happened. Because of these two women, these two mommies, these two members, I was at the hospital within an hour of my father?s arrival.
Now, a skeptic might say, ?well, they know you, they are your friends, of course they would go out of their way for you. What about the rest of us?? Let me silence that Doubting Thomasina. Let me remind her that without LKNM, I wouldn?t know these women and without LKNM, they wouldn?t have been able to find me. My Moderator didn?t go out of her way because she thought she would get something out of it, she did it out of the goodness of her heart.
That brings us to an important point about TMN as a whole. This organization is operated by a group of volunteers. Let?s look at this structure from the bottom to the top. There are over 25 forum Moderators, approximately 10 Managers, and three Administrators that volunteer on the LKNM Leadership Team. These members of the Leadership Team are not compensated in any way, they work for the organization because they love it and they love its members. They give of themselves and they give of their time. On average, our Moderators give 5-10 hours, our Managers give 10-15, and our Admins give 20-30 hours per week of their time. A conservative estimate of all the time put in by members of the Leadership Team is 285 hours per week. This is just our site. Multiply that conservative number by the number of sites that make up TMN and you have a rough estimate of 32,000 volunteer hours put in each week by TMN site volunteers across the country! The giving doesn?t stop there, though. Over 80 volunteers who hold titles such as Board Member, Director, Admin, Sponsorship Executive, Graphics Team, Tech Support, Grant Writer, Fundraising Manager, etc operate TMN. These ladies work on a national level in addition to their work on individual sites. They give between 30-40 hours per week of their time. None of them are paid for this work and many of them clock these hours on top of their already full schedules at work and at home. So, now, our estimated number of volunteer hours per week is up around 34,400. That?s about 1.7 million hours per year! None of these hours are paid. These volunteers work these hours out of the goodness of their hearts because they believe in the organization?s mission and purpose.
Now, please take a moment to review the about LKNM section on the home page of the site. Pay close attention to the monies LKNM/TMN charges its members. Take that number and multiply it by the number of members on this site -- 1150. Take that number and multiply it by the number of sites just like ours that TMN supports -- 113. How much money does that come to? $0! Nada! Nil! Zero! Zilch! That is how much money LKNM and TMN charges for everything that you and I get out of the organization.
So what does all of this have to do with the site running slow? To answer that, I need to tell you about one of our national level volunteers. Her name is Kristin and her title is Chief Information Officer. She is responsible for all things technical and one of the biggest problems she is facing is the site slowness. Kristin has been working her tail off trying to find the money to pay for a new server and getting us switched over so that we can all enjoy the site at normal speed. The problem is that it is a huge undertaking both financially and time-wise. In her own words:
kristin wrote:
I would *love* to be able to fix these problems but I had to take a full-time job because I have to make some money and TMN cannot pay me....I work a 40+ hr a week job, I have 3 kids, and I pour every other hour I have in to TMN but it is more than a full-time job to run this organization on the technical side. I have been trying for 2 years to get *anyone* with programming or sys admin knowledge to volunteer to help.
Yes, if Kristin sounds upset, it is because she is. While she is absolutely happy to volunteer, she is discouraged by the server issues. And she, like all of the LKNM/TMN volunteers, is aware that our members are, too. However, Kristin (and all of our volunteers) desperately want you to understand that even though this is a not-for-profit organization, it is not free to operate. TMN does not require monies from its members. That goes directly back to the philosophy of TMN: "No one should have to pay a fee to make a friend, so we offer free membership to any mother within the community who wishes to join." But, we do ask for contributions from time to time. That's why you may have noticed our fundraising drives, such as May Is For Mothers and the GoodSearch toolbar. Even the new Business Level Memberships were created as a way to create a constant source of revenue for the network. However, these initiatives have, so far, been unsuccessful at generating the amount of revenue we had hoped. Because there is no money coming in, we are facing the harsh reality that our sites may continue to experience these lag times for quite a bit longer than they should. There simply is no money in the coffers to pay for the upgrades we so desperately need.
So. Again, I encourage you to take a moment to look at what the site means to you, think about all that goes in to keeping this site running, and compare it with how much the site asks of you. How can you make a difference? How can you support an organization that has supported you?
If you cannot give back financially, please consider giving back by donating some of your time and expertise.
If you can do neither of those things, please, please, please think about how you can give your fellow mommies a little bit of emotional support and try to understand that the entire TMN team is trying so very hard to keep the sites up and running. TMN welcomes ideas from anyone and everyone who is willing to be part of the solution. We are anxious to hear your ideas!
As part of this 'new leaf' I'm turning over, I'm making sure to drink plenty of water (around 100 ounces a day), eat small amounts of lean proteins, get in 2 servings of dairy a day, incorporate healthy oils, whole grains and eat my veggies. Having 2 young children and a husband that hates most green things can make the veggie part difficult. I really don't care for raw veggies unless they're drenched in fatty dressing, so I've been looking for ways to incorporate veggies into things that I'm eating.
Today for lunch, the children were having turkey kielbasa, brown rice and mango (left over from my salad last night). There wasn't much of the mango left, so I divided it between the kids. With the thought of plain brown rice making my mouth dry, I decided to see what I could whip up that incorporated what leftovers I had and anything else I had at my disposal.
This is what I ended up with:
It was delicious! I originally started out aiming for a soup, but didn't anticipate how much the already cooked brown rice would absorb.
Here's my ingredient list:
2/3 c. Cooked Brown Rice
2 c. Chicken Broth
2 oz Turkey Kielbasa (thinly sliced, then cut into quarters)
1 Large Broccoli Spear, Chopped
1 c. Baby Carrots, Chopped
1 c. Sliced Mushrooms
1/2 c. Diced Onion
1 T. Chopped Garlic
1 t. Tastefully Simple Onion Onion Seasoning
1 t. Tastefully Simple Red Bell Pepper Dip Mix
I put the stock in a pot and brought it to a boil. Once boiling, I added all of the raw veggies and cooked them (covered) until they started to soften. Once the veggies were nearly fork tender, I tossed in the remaining ingredient and gave everything a good stir. I let it hang out a bit over medium heat until I was happy with the tenderness of the veggies.
It made two decent sized bowls. I was impressed! In addition to tasting great, it had nearly 4 servings of veggies!
