Things are hectic around these parts.  Between family, writing and teaching gigs, and micro-blogging on Twitter (from my personal account and for CoParenting101), I don’t post here very much.  But when I do, I try to share some good news and thoughts about my journey.  So I was especially appreciative when Cynthia who blogs at Knowledge Maven stopped by with birthday wishes and to let me know that she’d nominated this blog for a Liebster award.  “Liebster” means “beloved” in German, and the award is meant to bring more attention to blogs with fewer than 200 followers.  The award comes with a request to pay it forward, which I will gladly do in a sec.  First, many thanks to Cynthia, and I’m glad to point to this fellow mama-writer’s blog with its wonderful reflections on faith, family, and culture.

As I mentioned, this award comes with a few duties:

1. Show thanks to the blogger who gave you the Award by linking back to them. [CHECK]

2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment at their blog. [WILL DO]

3. Post the Award on your blog. [[CHECK]

4. Enjoy the love of some of the most supportive people on the Internet!  [WOOT!]

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I’m not exactly sure how many followers each of my 5 Lieber nominees has, but they are all blogs that I appreciate and that I hope will be read more widely than they currently are:

Second Chance: http://kizzypreston.blogspot.com/

My Polar Opposite: http://mypolaropposite.com/

Carolyn Edgar: http://carolynedgar.com/

Soulstainable Living http://www.soulstainableliving.com/

Bernadette Davis http://bernadettedavis.wordpress.com/

Happy reading!

Check out our groovy flyer at the link below for details. (I’ll wait.)

Like it? Then sign-up (and get even more details) here:

And don’t forget to tell a friend!

Space is limited.

Co-parenting is a multi-faceted journey. It involves our relationships with our children, our partnerships (ideally) with the other parent, and it involves our personal growth, introspection, and evolution (again, ideally). The latter is often overlooked or neglected; instead, we throw ourselves into parenting and/or become consumed by our efforts to co-parent. Self-care all too often finds itself at the bottom of our to-do lists–if it’s on the list at all. So we were particularly excited to hear about the efforts of a co-parenting mom and Friend of Co-Parenting 101, Alexandra (pictured above) who blogs at Mommy Glow and is on Twitter as @YoungFabMama. Alexandra writes:
I hope this all finds you well. I am writing to ask for your support.

I am 1 of 12 finalists for the next Mamavation Mom. Only 2 win the coveted title of Mamavation Mom chosen next Monday, January 17th! And I need your help to be 1 of the 2 chosen.

What is Mamavation? Mamavation is an online sistahood empowering and supporting moms to live a healthy lifestyle. The 2 chosen Mamavation Moms undergo a 70-week boot camp and are setup with a free treadmill from Sears, professional nutritional plan, weekly coaching, fitness program, and receive one pair of Earth Footwear, an EA SPORTS Active 2, Top Trainers DVD Set, a Gruve, and weekly Chefs Requested steaks for family meals.

The 2 moms put their fitness journey on a public stage as they share their struggles learning healthy living as a mom while the world watches via computer. The goal is to inspire and demonstrate how challenges can be overcome. And boy, don’t I know a thing or two about overcoming challenges! But ultimately, the goal is to save their family from unhealthy habits by passing on the values they learn.

As the youngest and only single mom out of the 12 finalists, I kind of feel like the underdog, but my focus is on winning and transforming my life. I juggle being a full-time student, employee, volunteer, and single mom, and now I choosing to add fitness into the mix. I know it will be hard, but the benefits are tremendous.

Alexandra is a single mom who wants to make a difference in both her and her 5-year-old daughter’s lives. As a full-time employee AND full-time student, Alexandra works hard to ensure the best for her daughter. Due to graduate from Northeastern University this September, Alexandra is determined to be the best that she can be, but she feels that her weight is an issue and is holding her back in life (see the video below). In fact, she is convinced that her weight is a major part of her struggle with sleep apnea. So she’s parenting, working, and going to school on only a couple hours of interrupted sleep a night.

Alexandra goes on to make this request:

I hope you support me along this journey, by taking the time to vote for me. There’s no login process and it takes 1 minute to vote for me here: I’m @YoungFabMama. Only 1 vote is allowed per person – per computer. But I am asking that you ask friends and loved ones to vote for me as well.

We are so proud of Alexandra and are rooting for her as a young single mom and as the next Mamavation Mom. So on her behalf, we’re asking YOU to vote and spread the word. As an incentive, we’re offering TWO complimentary 30-minute co-parenting coaching sessions with one of us (Deesha or Mike) to two winners. Entering to win is easy:

1. Vote for Alexandra (YoungFabMama) here by 6 PM PST, Monday, January 17th.

2. Leave a comment after you vote and mention Coparenting101.org.

3. We’ll announce the winners here, on Twitter, and at Mommy Glow next week, so be sure to check back.

On behalf of Alexandra, thanks in advance for your support!

Check out Alexandra’s Mamavation video in which she talks about why she should be the next Mamavation Mom:

If you’re a stepmom or if you love a stepmom, do check out  January ssue of Stepmom Magazine.  The good folks there are celebrating their 2nd anniversary, and like all issues, it’s a can’t-miss! I recently submitted an article to Stepmom about my experiences as a stepmom in a long-distance marriage.  Lately, I’ve been writing more and in different contexts about being a stepmom.  This is my newest tribe.

I’m so thankful for my tribes. My girlfriends, my crew, my lovelies.  I have several, and sometimes, they overlap.  My mama-writer tribe, my adoptive-mama-tribe, my artist-sister tribe, two Martini Moms tribes (one set for each of my daughters’ grades at school), my Twitter tribe, and my newest one…the stepmama tribe, a group of women who “get it” because they too are living it.  Whether “it” is struggles with stepkids, husbands, BMs (biomoms or babymamas, depending on the circumstances, also known as ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, ex-whatevers).   Stepmoms need spaces to vent, commiserate, share wisdom, and support each other.   We need publications like Stepmom mag, and we need public and private forums where our diverse experiences are validated.

I know of several stepmoms who have gone “underground” and are blogging anonymously (or not at all) because their husbands’ exes stalked their original blogs, left harassing comments, and/or angled to use the blog content as a weapon in court. Cyber-courage has folks acting a fool, for real.  Then there are the exes who stalk their children’s stepmoms’ blog daily, lurking, and never leave a comment, looking, hoping, for only God knows what. (Note: Thanks to analytics, no one is ever truly anonymous on these Interwebs. Ever.) Perhaps the article in the current issue of Stepmom, “Why the EX seems CRAZY and What YOU Need to Do” can shed some light.

So hat’s off to Stepmom mag and every outlet that celebrates and supports stepmoms, out loud.

I was young (bop)
And didn’t have no where to run
I needed to (wake up) and see (and see)
What’s in front of me (na-na-op)
There had to be, a better way say it again
To show I’m grateful (hum)
So I thought up this song
To show my appreciation for lovin’ me so long
You don’t know how much you mean to me

Chorus:
‘Cause even though when times get rough
You never turned away
You were right there
And I thank you (thank uooo)
When I felt I had enough
You never turned away
You were right there
And I thank you (thank you)

All through my life
I knew that you’d be my world
Knowing every where I go
Things you taught me they would show
So many times and changes
You’ve seen me through
I sure enough couldn’t have survived without you
And so I thought up this song
To show my appreciation for lovin’ me so long…
You don’t know how much you mean to me

Chorus

*I would have used Aaliyah’s cover of the Isley Brother’s classic “At Your Best”, but aside from this lyric, the song doesn’t really fit.  Alright…back to NaNoWriMo! (Pay no attention to my word count.  I haven’t updated in a while.  I’m behind, but not THAT far behind!)

Now that I’m fully recharged (Thank you, TechBooHusband!), I’m ready for NaNoWriMo! That’s right…I’ve signed up for National Novel Writing Month, and I’m taking the plunge and completing the first draft of my YA novel (based upon my short story “Bomani Jones”) within the next 30 days. Many thanks to my friend Carolyn Edgar for the motivation, and thanks to TechBooHusband for signing up to be my Cheerleader for Life.

So if posting is light around these parts for the next month, this is why.

Now this has nothing at all to do with NaNoWriMo, but just had to share: Tonight, BabyGirl called me from her dad’s house. She was missing me and wanted me to stay on the phone until she fell asleep. She settled in, then started telling me all the terrible things MiniMe had done to her over the course of the weekend. (On a scale of 1 to 10, they were all barely Level 1 terrible). After relaying her final complaint, she said, “I wanted her to do an apology of action [thank you, touchy-feely private school], but all she did was sarcast me.”

Love, love, love my baby and her way with words!

I appreciate and adore all the gifts, but there was one in particular that really moved me:

I love the white sapphires (sapphire is my birthstone), but most of all, I love what I was told they represented: my daughters and my bonus daughters. Wanna know the best part, though?  I had decided this already on my own the minute I opened it!  I’ve given each stone one of the girls’ names, and yesterday, I touched each one and said a little prayer for her.

TechBooHusband and I will be celebrating our birthdays (his was 2 weeks ago), by treating ourselves to a French language study course in preparation for Paris 2011 for our 40th bdays.  At exactly midnight, however, he gave me another gift: He serenaded me with a very…grown-up… rendition of “Happy Birthday.”  He’s so competitive, I did my best breathless Marilyn Monroe “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” for his birthday, and he had to try and top it!  But seriously…I know he remembers that my mother and grandmother serenaded me every birthday of my life, whether I was 1,000 miles away or in my bedroom right down the hall from them, until their deaths.  He knows how much I cherished this tradition, and he’s working to keep it alive.

I am thankful for all the gifts, material and aural.  I am thankful for friends’ and loved ones well-wishes via text, Twitter, and FB.  I thank God for all the love and positivity and joy and blessings that surround me, daily.  I am thankful for another year to experience it all, and to hopefully bless others as I have been blessed.

Check it out…

So what does summertime mean for us, married-with-kids, across 2 states?  For starters, it means great weather which means fewer flights and more road trips to get to each other.  It also means long, indulgent weeks booed up in the same place, sometimes with kids, sometimes without, though always with…

It means Grillmaster TechBoo getting me addicted to this:

…and then after dinner taking the fam out to do this:

or this:

…in preparation for a fall 5K.

It also means sweet moments like yesterday when my bonus daughter, L-Boogie, invited me to come to her school awards program.

Of course I gladly did, and bonus: on the way back to her seat, she stopped to give me hug–and L-Boogie is not a hugger, so this was extra special.

Summertime also means camps for the girls and an all-family get-together with El Ex and Sherry.  This summer, we continue our love affair with:

Fortunately, all the girls are daredevils so this image isn’t an accurate representation.

Ah, summer…