Merci beaucoup, Mom

For this weekend's Mother's Day blog blast, Parent Bloggers Network asked for posts about what our moms have handed down to us. I have an old post that sums that up perfectly, from back when my blog was very new. Here it is, if you're so inclined.

(Photo from my mother's retirement party in 2006 ... two years before she unretired and went back to work.)

Chair by the window, please

Isn't that the sweetest face you've ever seen! That's my girl. Ninety-five percent of the time, she is a lovely member of the family. She doesn't shed much (just twice a year, and then it's rather exciting to take her outside and brush her and be astonished at all of the fluff we send into the breeze, you're welcome little birds for the ultrasoft nests). She tolerates kid antics, or walks away from them without a grudge. She makes me feel safe when I am home alone at night and keeps me company when I am home alone during the day.

Yes, she does steal food from the children, but she also cleans up all crumbs and spills for me, so it's kind of a wash. I am still working on forgiving her for one particular incident, though. Our first Christmas in Mayberry, we decided to have a party for our new friends and neighbors. I was 6 months pregnant with Opie at the time. My husband (aka the hermit) had no interest in helping host this shindig so I had most of the food catered. But the one thing I made myself was a freaking TON of cookies. Now, not only am I not a very good cook, I am s-l-o-w. It takes me forever to do the simplest thing. I spent an entire week of post-bedtime evenings baking. Did I mention I was 6 months pregnant at the time? By the end of the week I could barely stand.

The day of the party, I put all of my precious cookies on serving trays. To keep them cool and out of reach of toddlers, I stashed them on our screened porch, which was closed up for the winter. Just before the party began we started bringing the trays into the dining room.

And then someone left the door to the porch open. Allowing canine access. Said canine polished off an entire tray of my baked goods. You can imagine my hormonally enhanced reaction.

Oh, you better believe I served all the other trays, even though there was no guarantee they hadn't been contaminated with doggie spit.

Tell your own messy, naughty pet story--it's a Parent Bloggers Network blog blast. I don't think you're going to beat the Great Baby Oil Caper, though.

P.S. You know that chair in the picture is covered by a sheet, right? That's not really what my living room chair looks like? OK, just so we are clear.

Sibling shuttle diplomacy

Of the many things that surprise and please me about my children, their relationship with each other tops the list. They truly enjoy each other's company, play together nicely, show mutual affection, and have each other's backs.

Sure, they squabble, but Jo is remarkably patient with Opie's 3-ish-ness, and Opie happily allows himself to be bossed around by his big sister most of the time. If he's having a tantrum, she creeps up next to him and tries to calm him down. Then she runs back and forth between him and the adult on duty, negotiating a truce. Several nights a week, they sleep side by side in the two trundle beds in Opie's room.

Jo recently brought home a worksheet from school called "My Special Feelings." It's a series of sentences that she had to complete: "I am happy when," "I am good at,"I am afraid of." My favorite: "I feel safe when ... my brother hugs me."

See, now this is why I wanted (still want? not sure yet) another one.

Extremely adorable photo filched from my brother and sister-in-law. Topic inspired by this week's Parent Bloggers Network blog blast for the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education.

Scrabble-icious

Hands down, the game my family is most obsessed with plays most often is Scrabble. I'm not even sure when this habit got started, but anytime my brother, sister, and I are together it is ALL ABOUT the Scrab. Being the Word Girl in the family, I assumed I would have a natural advantage, but that is not the case. My brother, the visual artist (and in recent years, his wife--another artist) is the undisputed champ. I talked him up so much that two years ago, one of our neighbors came over on Christmas Eve for a game just to see Steve in action (and got his butt kicked for his trouble).

Steve and his wife:

• have memorized all the 2-letter words legal in Scrabble
• brought a travel Scrabble set on their month-long camping honeymoon and played nightly
• keep track of all the games they play on a spreadsheet. Data gathered includes total points scored, who played the Q and Z, any bingos, and probably more obscure information too.

I still play against them. But I go into it knowing that if I come within 50 points of their scores, I've done really well.

We also do have an alternate game in case we are all tired of getting clobbered. Syzygy is a fast-paced, board-free version of Scrabble. Each player creates her own grid of interlocking words using letter tiles. You start with 9 tiles, and when you've used them all you call "Draw!" and all players must grab another. You then continue to incorporate these new letters into your crossword; you are free to change anything you've already put down. The game is over when all the tiles are gone and one player has a complete crossword with no leftover tiles. (And then, half the fun is checking everyone's work and arguing about the liberties they've taken with the English language.)

(Gift tip: If you're shopping for someone Scrabble-obsessed, they must read Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis. Both a fascinating character study and a how-to manual for Scrabble nerds.)

If you smelled blog blast on this one, bingo! (50 points to you.) Post yours by midnight tonight and you could win a fat pile of fun video games from EA.

Slacker mom goes back to school

In eight days I'll have a first grader in da house, and: a) I have done next to nothing to prepare and b) I'm pretty darn fine with that. It's like having that second baby. For the first one, you spend 47 hours trying to pick out a stroller and another 47 washing all the newborn clothes (the ones my jumbo-size infant didn't even fit in anyway) in that silly baby detergent. When the second one comes along, he gets the hand-me-down stroller and his clothes get washed next to the socks your husband wore the last time he mowed the lawn. And you know it's okay.

Really, there are just a few basics that a new baby really needs, and the same goes for first-graders. Backpack? Last year's is fine, and so is the lunchbox (actually, I think we ended up with about four of those last year). School supplies? Ordered through the PTA last May. Clothes? Her closet is overstuffed as it is. In a few months, if I realize she's short on jeans or tights or long-sleeved tees, I'll fill in the gaps. Underwear? Covered. The only thing left to do is replace the gym shoes we bought a year ago.

Occasionally I have a fleeting moment of "shouldn't I take her shopping, make a big deal out of it?" Then I decide: Nah. There are plenty of other ways to celebrate the occasion, and most of them don't cost a cent.

... today's confession brought to you by PBN and Hanes Kids.

Dating myself for your benefit

And when I say dating myself: I mean in the "omg how old am I" sense, not the "dinner and a movie" sense.

Moving on. Waaaaay back in the day, when I still used floppy disks and a cassette-tape answering machine, I used to go to Kate Spade sample sales. This must have been in about 1993 or 1994, because the Kate Spade brand was just taking off. It was only bags, not all this other stuff they sell now. (And with each successive sale I went to over the course of a couple of years, the crowds got crazier and the prices got higher.)

Anyway, that first sale was the best one ever. I walked out with 7 or 8 bags (some for me, some bought on behalf of friends, some for gifts) and I don't think I even spent $100. I got at least three of the classic, short-handled, rectangular purses--a black nylon, a brown suede, and a cotton plaid. I got a small, drawstring evening bag. I got a larger black bag with longer handles. I could have died happy that night.

These days, I am a lousy bargain shopper. I am all about convenience and I am usually happy to pay for it. I wish I could be a good thrifter like these amazing women. Instead, I keep my old, out-of-style Kate Spades in my closet, remembering the thrill of that first sample sale and waiting for those boxy shapes to come back into fashion.

Thanks, PBN, for inspring me to take this little walk down memory lane!

Tzedakah for little Catholic girls

When I saw the Learning Cents bank on Cool Mom Picks, I wanted it for my daughter immediately. The bank has three compartments, so kids can earmark their money for spending, saving, or giving (tzedakah in Hebrew). And at only $20, I thought it was a very good use of my own spending money.

Now, on those rare occasions when we remember to give Jo an allowance--and on the much more frequent occasions when she receives a gift of money--she cheerfully deposits it into all three parts of her bank. It's such a simple, clear way to show her that we need to prioritize saving and giving just as highly as spending.

(Opie gets an E for effort for his suggestion, during a recent discussion about giving away gently used toys: "I don't really like my piggy bank anymore. We can give that to children who don't have one.")

Typically Jo uses her giveaway stash for the fundraisers that she participates in at school and child care (and we match whatever she contributes). But after her recent hospital stay(s), I'm going to suggest that we make a donation to one of the charities that helped her, or a similar one that benefits sick kids. On her first night at our local children's hospital, her bed was made up with a quilt from Project Linus and a teddy bear from the Starlight Children's Foundation. These small touches really helped an institutional room feel more friendly, and she snuggled up with that quilt every single night.

You know I had to participate in this Blog Blast from Parent Bloggers Network: It benefits Generation Cures, an online community for tweens designed to teach them about altruism and about medicine and science. The site was created by Children's Hospital Boston.

Just suck it up and go to the pool

Yesterday afternoon my kids really wanted to go to the pool. Since I was already feeling peevish and whiny I refused. We actually have a really nice community pool here. It has an enormous shallow end with lots of fountains and sprayers and other fun stuff; it has two water slides, a huge grassy area, a big sand play area, a snack bar, and halfway decent locker rooms. It's a five-minute walk from our house. Of course, the kids love it (anyway I think that's a Little Kid Law, to love any and all swimming pools).

But yesterday I just wasn't up for changing the clothes and slathering the sunscreen and packing the stuff and blah blah. And I especially wasn't up for the post-pool herding of two children into the showers and back home (where I'd immediately have to move right into Dinner-Books-Bed mode).

So I brought out all my home-based water ammo: Let's play with the volcano sprinkler! How about you guys can spray each other with hoses! I'll blow up the little pool! They grudgingly agreed to the little pool. Which I then spent TWO HOURS trying to inflate with a bicycle pump. (Two hours, because I had to keep stopping to a] prevent myself from keeling over and b] check what mischief Opie was up to wandering around the house/yard by himself. Apparently, according to my husband we do have some kind of electric pump but all I could find was its tormentingly empty box.)

Of course the kids lost interest way before the pool was ever inflated. And my arms fell off and now I really don't look good in a bathing suit even if you do overlook my stretchmarks and smushy belly.

And so the moral of the story is I should have just taken them to the pool that didn't require inflating, mommy suit and all. Especially after last weekend's visit to The Waterpark Capital of the WORLD (where people wander all over wearing next to nothing and believe me, some of them need just a little more something), I have come to terms with my tankinis and swim skirts. When I go to the pool, I accessorize my post-kid body with a couple of cute kids and that means a lot.

This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by BOCA.

Iceberg summer

And no I'm not referring to these upper midwestern climes we now enjoy. Actually, summers here are beautiful, with sunshine and temperatures in the 80s for much of July and August. After winters that go on, and on, and on and on, we enjoy and appreciate our summers and spend as much time outside as we can. Mayberry has a totally kid-pleasing community pool, with a huge shallow end, two water slides, a sandbox, a lawn, and the all-important concession stand. We're also not above ruining our new grass with a blow-up kiddie pool of our own and even one of these monstrosities (purchased on end-of-season clearance thx). Yep -- we are big consumers of the Little Swimmers 'round these parts.

We have fun. But it's nothing compared to the adventures my husband had when he was a kid. His aunt and uncle had a lake house (a 20-minute drive from their ... non-lake house) and he and his brother and cousins would spend every day of every summer there, just generally goofing off and having a good time.

My favorite lake story is this, and it's totally of the moment because we are currently obsessed with all things Star Wars in this house. (Tip, BTW: Pool noodles make excellent, cheap light sabers.)

Anyway (get to the point young Jedi) one day Jeff and his brother and his brother's friend Marc found this big piece of styrofoam. They immediately decided that it would make an excellent iceberg and it should go on the lake. The next time they came to the lake they brought every single Star Wars figure they owned -- i.e., hundreds -- plus a bunch of spacecraft and airplanes. Then they spent an hour painstakingly setting up a huge battle scene on the styrofoam iceberg.

Their masterpiece complete, they floated it onto the water.

You know what happens next, right?

It floated too far out, and Jeff's mom wouldn't let them go after it. They threw rocks at it, trying to shift the current to send it back toward their dock. Instead, they ended up breaking it and sending all their guys to an even swifter watery death. Some clung to the edge for awhile, but with no rescue crew in sight eventually they succumbed to the inevitable drowning.

For the rest of that summer and all the next, Jeff and Mike and Marc hoped against hope that Luke or Han or Lando would wash up on shore and be returned to them. It never happened, but the story lives on.

Tell your summer story for this weekend's blog blast. May the Force be with you.

Never too young for happy hour

I first took Opie with me to New York when he was 6 months old. In the week we were there he mastered sitting up, practicing on the one small rug found on the sealed concrete floor of my cousin's loft.

He also visited his first Lower East Side bar. Whenever I come to town it's always an excuse for a happy hour outing with my friends at work. My cousin/nanny had some other commitment that night so she delivered the baby to me at work (plus, duh, always have to find a reason to parade a cute baby through the workplace) and he accompanied us all to the bar.

At six months, he was a fairly cheerful guy but only if he could maintain contact with one of a few trusted caregivers. I was, of course, at the top of that list. So after a long day of being forced to hang out with my cousin instead of me, he was not interested in any further separations. But after a few drinks (most of them of the "tap water" variety) I did need to use the restroom.

I had, at that point, mastered peeing with a baby on my lap (because desperation is the mother of ... more desperation). But I didn't think my skillz would carry over into the dingy stall in a bar. So I handed Opie over to a coworker, a very lovely and capable woman, and headed downstairs.

Bars are loud, right? Even when it's only 5:30 and there aren't that many people there. The music is pumping and people are talking and there's huge ventilators whirring out white noise and traffic flying by just beyond the front door.

Do you think that was any match for one six-month-old baby? No. I could hear him screaming all the way down in the basement, from inside the ladies' room. Little man was not having a very happy hour.

Dude, the LES is so over. Next time take me to Greenpoint.

The thing is, I really tried, with both my babies, not to not do things because I had a kid. I took Jo to a friend's child's birthday party that was a two-hour drive away, by myself, when she was two months old. Everyone there was astonished but I really, really wanted to see my friends, and my husband couldn't go for some reason, so I packed up the baby and got on the road. She slept all the way there and back.

Maybe I was overconfident or lucky or stupid or all of the above as a rookie mom but it all worked out. As it did with Opie at the bar, once I'd quickly washed my hands and hotfooted it out of the restroom. And as I hope your new-mom outings did too.

Crackberry portrait of a mother

Now that my mother is retired, she and my dad are traveling like crazy. A great deal of it is business (for her; she still does consulting and sits on corporate and nonprofit boards) and gigs (for him). My dad is 71 and incredibly fit and healthy but he seems to be very conscious of his advancing age. He is driven to travel a lot now because he is afraid that soon he will be unable to do so. Being recently diagnosed with prostate cancer didn't help, even though it is in a very early stage and is slow-growing.

So right now they are on a nearly two-week cruise around the Canary Islands, Gibraltar, southern Spain, and Portugal. Because of the cancer thing, and because my brother was in the process of making a big career decision (Mr. Vegan is moving to the land of chicken & cheese!), and just because she's an addict like the rest of us, Mom ponied up for some kind of international plan for her BlackBerry so she could stay in touch while she's gone.

This morning I got this (I added the link):

I'm occupying my mind by doing this message because if I look out the window of the bus, I experience sheer terror. We are coming down a significant mountain on a tiny road full of scary switchbacks--what is a big tour bus doing on a road like this?! Madeira is gorgeous.

I really think Mom needs a blog. Or maybe she should skip right to Twitter.

For serious, though (and I've said this before), I feel blessed to have a mom with a Life. Selfishly, I'd love it if she lived close by and could babysit at the drop of a hat because she never had any other plans. But she's given me (and my sister and my daughter) the gift of knowing that there are a lot of ways to be there for your children. Including ones that come with a keyboard the size of a credit card.

Thanks, Portraits of Mom photo contest and Parent Bloggers Network, for the opportunity to brag on my mom today! It's a Blog Blast, so you can post your own for the chance to win a gift certificate to a local photography studio.

Also, free stuff alert: FOUR Earth Day giveaways at the Full Mommy!

Going stag (beetle)

For better or worse (usually worse), my sister-in-law is a very ... direct person. You might even say "blunt" or "tactless."

She is, however, a very good gift-giver, especially for the kids. She consistently picks spot-on presents, toys they enjoy right away and continue to play with often. Even this year, when she flat-out told us that she'd forgotten their birthdays up until three days before (see line 2 above). The gifts were obviously the product of a sweep through the Chinese discount store--random, inexpensive, and labeled entirely in Mandarin--and still the kids loved them. Fake bronze, fire truck-shaped pencil sharpener? Opie thinks it is awesome. Glue-backed, 99-cent Hello Kitty wall hooks? Jo oohed and aahed.

Oh, and that's also how I came to live with 20 totally realistic looking plastic stag beetles (link NSF the weak-stomached).

And even though it is hard to top those creepy crawlers, they are not the best gift the SIL has ever given. Nope, that was when she went ahead and pointed out (I told you, she will say anything) that it was dumb for us to give gifts to each other, when we were pretty much just swapping one gift card for another. She gave me the gift of cutting her off my gift list and that, my friends, is a pretty present indeed.

I am quite sure I don't want to get in my SIL's head, but the idea of a site to help men give good gifts to the women in their lives is a cause I can certainly support. Thanks to Parent Bloggers Network for this week's Blog Blast.

Blast me back to the pioneer days

Recently my mom mentioned that she still has my boxed set of Little House on the Prairie books, and noted that soon I'd be able to begin reading them to Jo.

I can't wait! When I was 8 or 9 (and probably 10 or 12 too) I'd start with Little House in the Big Woods and continue right through to The First Four Years without stopping. Then I'd go back to the Big Woods and start all over again. My set came in a yellow cardboard box and all the spines of the books were yellow too, with cover art and interior illustrations by Garth Williams. The set looked so impressive there on my bookshelf.

I remember watching the TV show, too, but it was the books that really enthralled me. I even got to visit the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home & Museum. I still remember I had a souvenir mug that I took to school for show and tell. I wrapped it carefully in a dishtowel for the walk, but I still dropped and broke it--a terrible loss.

There are legitimate concerns about the depictions of Native Americans in the books. I hope that I can use them to start discussions about racism and the way people feel about those who are different. I still believe that the books are an incredible window into American history. And they are a pleasure to read, which is more than I can say for many of the other books I slog through for the sake of my kids (Magic Tree House, anyone? For the love of god, Mary Pope Osborne ... you are writing for beginning readers. Why must you litter the page with sentence fragments?). I know I'll smile when I see that big yellow box on my daughter's bookshelf.

Inspired by today's blog blast on behalf of Highlights High Five (which I reviewed yesterday). Write your own post by midnight PST--that still gives you four hours!--for a chance to win a subscription to the magazine.

She actually WANTS to do math?

Even before they’re born we try to find similarities between ourselves and our children. He’s a night owl, like his daddy. She never stops kicking; she’s going to be athletic just like me. We peer at their scrunchy newborn faces and look for family resemblances in noses, chins, eyes.

And then—lookalikes or not—they go ahead and prove how different they are every day. Still I’m amazed when my children display talents I never had. Where I was a skinny, weak klutz, my daughter is strong and athletic. My academic strengths were in reading, writing, foreign language; she finds Spanish class “boring.” She can read, but she prefers not to (although, thank goodness, she still likes to listen to read-aloud books).

But give her a page of math problems or tell her to count to 100 and she’s off to the races. Where did this child come from? I don’t know, but I’m pretty excited to find out where she’s going.

(Want to brag about your child? Blog blast today … or just tell me in the comments, because I am almost as proud of your little monkeys as I am of my own.)

Merry Christmas! Have a rock and some sticks!

I confess to being overly laidback about the toy recalls up to this point. So far, the only recalled products we have are several of the Thomas trains and accessories. We opted not to return them, out of laziness since our kids don't put anything (except thumbs and pacifiers, sigh) in their mouths anymore.

But this week's news that the CPSC only has one person testing toys (link via WhyMommy), and that a hugely popular toy may be laced with a date-rape drug? OK, that got my attention. So I'm participating in today's blog blast on toy safety, a joint effort of the Parent Bloggers Network and the Consumers Union.

As it is, I am constantly looking for ways to discourage relatives from giving my kids so much stuff (I know, cry me a river). I rarely buy my children anything (for special occasions or just because) because their grandparents and other family members are so generous. I mean, one sent a big box full of stuff for Halloween! Wasn't the door-to-door begging enough?

I hope I can use this toy disaster as a way to encourage the family to buy fewer, but more meaningful (and, hello, safer) gifts for us all. We already have far, far more than we need. At the same time, I know that giving is just as much about the giver as the receiver. I don't want to deny the grandmas the great pleasure they get from shopping for the kids.

Do you face this issue? What do you do about it?

It's a tur-ku kind of day

Snack duty this week
Daughter insists on lunchmeat
Just like Grace's mom brought

But wait there is more
We must use cookie cutters
To style our turkey

Guess what? Turkey's thin
Rips, shreds, grease on my fingers
Kid, never again

True story! Our turn to bring snack and we have to live up to the Platonic ideal set by Grace's mom, who brought some unspecified "meat" and cheese slices cut into acorn and leaf shapes. I at least talked Jo into storebought, pre-cut cheese but no such luck in the meat category. Trying to be healthful, I bought thickly sliced turkey. Word to the wise: It totally fell apart. Next time you need to cut lunchmeat into cute shapes, I recommend salami or bologna. Just FYI.

What are your kids learning in school?

Salvation Army, lock your doors 'cause here I come

God only knows why
This shapeless sack of rayon
Wastes good closet space

I'm only showing it to you because I'm participating in today's Parent Bloggers Network Blog Blast for the new book The Little Black Book of Style, by Nina Garcia of ELLE and Project Runway fame.

I decided it would be too easy to bring out the forest green velvet bridesmaid dress from 1993 or anything maternity. Anyway this particular example is pretty bad on its own. Nina would roll her eyes all the way back into her head if she saw this gem, which I've been toting around since before the first (and I don't mean Bill vs. Hillary) Clinton administration. I wore it for my college graduation party and somewhere there is a picture of me and about 5 of my friends at that occasion. Each one of us is wearing a print dress of this ilk and let me tell you, it's a pretty scary sight.

So. What've you got? It's worth a $250 gift certificate to Coach, so bring it on (anytime before midnight PST). And just for fun, caption it with a haiku!

Will you ever forgive me, poor dented station wagon?

An open letter to my car, and a fervent effort to turn a moment of stupidity into a cool prize from CarBlabber via today's Blog Blast.

I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. Please don't hold a grudge. I need you to take me and the kids to day care, play dates, the flippin' orthodontist, and the grocery store. I know you don't want to go back there, and I wish we didn't have to, but it is inevitable. The bike trailer can only hold so much.

I promise I won't be as dumb as I was that day. It's just that the cart was sitting up on the sidewalk by the store when I pulled up. I took it inside and filled it with liquid crack Honest Tea, diapers, and a few other essentials. It was only natural that when I finished my shopping, I put the cart back where I'd found it. I mean I knew it wasn't properly corraled in one of those iron chutes. I hate it when people leave carts randomly strewn in the parking lot. But I thought I was safe. I thought you were safe.

I promise you I cringed when, just as we were backing out, I saw that cart roll ever-so-slowly, but unavoidably, unstoppably, across the sidewalk and off the curb, slamming right into your rear passenger door. I never meant to hurt you. You were the car we bought because we had a baby. You've served us well for over five years and 70,000 miles. I'm just sorry that karma bit you on the ass side instead of me.

How can I make it up to you?

Grovelingly yours,

Mayberry Mom

What makes me a mom

Ever since Parent Bloggers and Light Iris posed the question "What makes you a mother?" I've been thinking about how I'd answer. I knew right away it had very little to do with carrying and birthing my babies. Though I love to trade pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding war stories as much as the next mom, I believe that adoptive, foster, and stepmothers, along with other mother figures (like the grandmother and three childless aunts who helped raise my husband alongside his "birth" mom) are every bit as motherly as I am.

What really makes me a mom, I thought, are two things: sacrifice and bodily fluids. I'm a mother because I've given up hours--weeks--of sleep to my children. I've slowed my career, changed my name and my financial priorities, moved to Mayberry. My body has been permanently scarred and temporarily bruised. Every meal I eat is interrupted, and eligible for sharing whether I want to give it away or not. There's no one else I'd do all that for.

And I know you know what I mean about the fluids. Sure I picked up dog poop before I had kids. I changed diapers often when I babysat. But before I had kids I never had the pleasure of hearing a poop blowout happen from the front seat of the car, then extricating a craptastic little baby out of a car seat, carrying her inside face down and at arms' length, peeling off her clothes without befouling her hair, and spending a half-hour bleaching everything in sight. I never knew how it felt to stuff my bra with nursing pads (and still wake up with soaked pajamas every morning). I never leaped across the back seat of a speeding car to catch another person's vomit.

Yeah. Motherhood. It's pretty gross. But these two make me a mother, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

Now you go: Put up a post about what makes you a mom and you could win a $100 GC to Spafinders.com. You could use it for a glute massage! Get all the details at Parent Bloggers Network.