Mamma Works

After reading the title of this post, you are probably NOT going to believe me, but my kids don't play soccer.  (Well, at least not currently, who knows what they will be up to next year...)  Nope, my kids don't play soccer:  I do.  I'm pushing 40, and I just started playing a game that is usually saved for the younger souls.  And you know what?  Soccer literally changed my life.  Here's why... Last year, I was stuck in a funk.  Long-story short, it has been a rough five years for my husband and I.  Between weathering unemployment during the recession, having a family, building a new business from the ground up, and trying to balance a career and home life through it all I was tired.  I felt worthless.  (Now, don't go trying to get me a prescription for an antidepressant or anything.)  Life has it ups and its downs.  This was just a down time for me.   I had  switched jobs to try to alleviate some of the stress we were under as a family, but it didn't chan

Mother's Day 2015 is just around the corner (Sunday, May 10).  This year you can be the star of your mother or grandmother's heart by purchasing her the most AMAZING gift, a Nixplay Cloud Digital Photo frame .  Your mom and grandmother literally need no technology expertise AT ALL!  We purchased this frame for my mom, my dad, and my husband's parents.  In fact, we love this product so much that my mom ended up getting one for our own home too! So, Why Is the Nixplay Cloud Digital Photo Frame So Cool? This frame allows you to upload photos to a "cloud" server via an app (Apple or Google Play) or their website, and you publish the photos you want your mom or grandmother to see directly to their frame.  As long as it's plugged in, and its connected to WiFi, it works.  The setup on this frame was super easy and I did it remotely with all of our parents.  Nixplay has step by step easy instructions.  It under ten minutes to set up each frame.  (The parents

This year, we decided to get some chickens for eggs.  Our household goes through four dozen eggs a week.  I live in the middle of nowhere, New York, so why not?  (I know; it's not normal, but neither are we!) So, a couple of weeks ago, we got six baby chickens.  Their names are:  Chirpy, Tweedy, Pecky, Stripes, Omega, and Baby Chicken.  Can you guess which on the two year old named?  :) So, we invested in these gold beauties and needed to find a place for them to reside.  I figured it would be easy, because this whole "backyard chicken" thing has been going on for quite some time now.  Everyone's got this figured out and it will be as easy as pie getting ready for "the girls" to come home.  Boy, was I wrong.  Maybe I'm wired the wrong way or something, but I found it incredibly difficult to sift through the information out there about finding a good affordable chicken coop for six hens.  I researched by looking through websites, forums, blogs, soci

Tell me if this sounds familiar.  No sooner do I get all of the groceries put away than my husband tells me that he needs razors.  ("Ugh!  Are you kidding me," I think.)  So, I have to remember to make a special stop at a Rite Aid this weekend, because there is NO way I am battling through Walmart again.  You get it, right?  Do you hate the random stops to RiteAid as much as I do?  It's not that I have it out for the organization its just one more time lugging the kids out of the car, herding them away from the candy/toys, and then carrying them screaming out of a store.  Please, I have better things to do. Truth be told, this kind of thing used to happen all the time in my house.  Even though we had a system to make sure we were getting the groceries we needed, we still missed things.  It was the things that hide in my house, the not so obvious stuff, that would get me each time.  And then I found a solution that has literally changed everything. Instead of the fre

Do you believe in women's rights?  Me too.  But, I feel like my generation has been duped.  "Work hard, sweetheart, and YOU can be anything you want," they said... I can remember it so vividly.  Standing up in my sixth grade classroom to fight for my right to play tag football with the boys during recess.  The teachers, all the while, muttered that it was no longer appropriate for the girls to play, because the girls who wanted to play with the boys were "developing."  No longer having boyish figures meant it was time for us to play more passive games or to cheer for the boys on the sidelines.  It made me so mad.  With gritted-teeth, I said,  "Girls can play!  Girls are just as good, if not better than boys at ALL sports."   "Settle down, Gretchen," they said.  "Boys play too rough for girls.  It is just a matter of nature, boys are stronger and faster than girls," they continued.  Each word that they muttered put a fire into

I feel your pain.  I know you haven't had any sleep for days, and you are worried about your little one.  You're thinking, "Will I have to resort to an enema again?"  Ugh! I get it. I have a two year old, who is perfect in every way, except one...he has an awful digestion system.  It seems like this has been going on for him since the moment he was born, poor guy.  I managed the first year and a half of life by nursing him.  He never had any trouble digesting my milk.  (And some days, I wish I could get my milk flowing again.)  After 18 months, his belly has been nothing but a problem for us all.  When the toddler is upset, even the neighbors can hear it...he screams bloody murder! So, for the past year, I have tried everything I could think of trying to get his system moving properly.   His doctor's orders, at first, were to add fiber and water to his diet.  Upon leaving the doctor's office, I felt confident.  I thought, "OK, I can do that!"