The Best 80’s Music
Some of you may be thinking… There was no ‘best’ 80’s music, but give the decade a little love… Oversized blazers and stirrup pants weren’t the worst fashion faux pa in history… maybe. Anyway, we all got through it.
My husband and I recently watched the countdown of best songs of the 80’s on VH1… This should not be confused with other VH1 countdowns like:
‘Top Hair Bands’
‘Top Metal Bands’
‘Top Hair Bands that really are Metal Bands’, etc.
Some notes on 80’s music that I jotted down while watching…
Journey- lead singer Steve Perry, to put it nicely, is not attractive, but has such a great voice- it’s nuts…
Don’t you remember: ‘Don’t stop believing’… Just a small time girl…;
A-Ha- one hit wonder ‘Take on me’- I loved that song- and thought that gap-toothed lead singer was so cute- it a unique sort of way.
CYNDI LAUPER– ‘Girls just wanna have fun’
Are you kidding me-
I love this woman!
Erasure!
Madonna- ‘Like a virgin’, as a freshman in an all girls catholic high school, I was almost scared of Madonna, yet intrigued. I remember seeing one of my friends wearing lace tights and thinking,
‘Oh my gosh, she’s pulling this off! It looks good!’
Prince- ‘When doves cry-
Why is this man attractive when he’s 5 feet tall- BECAUSE he can sing sooo well and arrange all the instruments ,etc.
Def Leppard came in at #2 with ‘Pour some sugar on me’
and Bon Jovi came in at #1 with ‘Living on a Prayer’…
Are you kidding me??? These should be flip-flopped! Come on! I love Def Leppard (yes, I’m a closet Def Leppard fan).
And Jon Bon Jovi looks like he spends way too much time on his hair. Done.
What Blogging means to me…
The great people at Mabel’s Labels are going to give away a free trip to BlogHer 09 in Chicago this summer!
Here is some more information about it.
But back to the contest…
Basically ‘Mabel’s Labels’ is asking
‘What have been the rewards and benefits of participating in the blogging community?
I didn’t know what a blog was when I started mine (long story), but in a year I have learned how special it is to share online, to laugh out loud and how supportive women can be. The laughing out loud is usually when reading a parenting story that I have experienced myself- I love the ‘OhMyGosh… I’ve done the same thing’ moment and it’s on a mom blog from across the country. And I love that women bloggers and mom bloggers are awesome, and cool, and funny, and come together to form communities, and that there is no way we can be stereotyped as backbiting divas, like the media likes to do. To share a story, a parenting stumble, and then have someone comment, ‘It’s okay, I’ve been there too,’ is priceless.
And I love that this online community is always here. It takes my friends about 2 months to settle on a date and place for us all to meet up for dinner, and we all live within 10 miles of each other…
The only address you have to worry about on the internet is the one you type in or click on in your feedreader.
On bad days, blogs help as a way to share in humanity.
On good days, blogs make us laugh, and cry, and smile, and nod our heads, and that’s what I love about about this community.
I’m a ‘DC Metro Mommy’ Now
A Happy ‘The-Snow-is-Melting’ Day to everyone!
Just want to let DC area people know about a new website for moms in this area… DC Metro Mommy!
This website is a great resource- with a calendar and events, a book club and… a Blog Village, to which I am now a contributor.
This is not to be confused with DC Metro Moms, that great blog that I’m proud to say I’m a founding member of 
Invaluable Speech Therapy Book and Help
I recently overheard some moms at my son’s preschool talking about Speech Therapy, and I realize I’ve never blogged about Speech Therapy and some wonderful things that I can pass on about it here in the blogosphere. My son speaks very well now, and we were done with Speech Therapy long before I started blogging…
BUT, someone is always dealing with a child’s ‘speech delay’ as they call it. So I’m sharing what I learned.
My son was not speaking more than a few words when he turned 2. We started to be concerned, so looked into Speech Therapy. First of all, if you are in Montgomery County, MD, you are lucky to have a fantastic speech therapy team and services that will test your child, provide a speech therapist to come to your home, as well as speech therapy classes for parents- ALL FREE.
The last bit of information is the most important: classes for parents; and the most important part of the speech therapy class that I took was the book- It Takes Two To Talk. This book is invaluable. It teaches simple ways to motivate you child to speak and great ways to encourage speech. One suggestion was so simple that I overlooked it: Squat down and talk to your child face-to-face. I remember thinking, “What help is that? I already do that.” But then I started to be conscious of taking the 3 extra seconds that it takes to squat down, look at my son, and then speak. I started to see a difference right away…
This book and class are done by The Hanen Centre, a charitable organization dedicated to the development of speech.
This stuff works! My son went from barely speaking to talking articulately in complete sentences within a year.
This really is a success story and I want to pass on that it is vital for your child’s speech development to take steps yourself in how you interact with your child, helpful things you can do to illicit speech. Just another mistake that I made example that this book pointed out to me: I’d answer my own questions for him,
“Do you want juice?” And I’d just let him nod and reach for the sippy cup that I was already bringing to him, instead of asking, “What would you like to drink with lunch?”
Speech delays are worrisome, but taking action sooner rather than later, will help you and your child. The good news is that speech delays are most times, easy to fix, with repetition and continued effort.
My Unexpected Shopping Afternoon!
I just found myself in a situation I haven’t been in for 5 years, since my son was born. I had an afternoon to myself, and was basically told, in a nice way by my sick husband- not to come home.
Our Little Man had just left for my parents for a ‘Pajama Party’; yep, we have both sets of grandparents in-town: so we get sleepovers! Yey… fun for our Little Guy and fun for us!
My Big Guy had to go into work for a little while and I had my list of ‘things-to-do’ done (don’t freak out, we have 1 child, I’m organized, but not SuperMommy), so I grabbed gift cards that I got for Christmas and set out for the mall…
Continue reading this at DC Metro Moms…
The Area’s Best Bakery – Woodmoor Pastry Shop
If you are driving through the intersection of University Blvd. and Colesville Road, you might miss the sign for the little bakery in Four Corners; if you do, turn around and go in.
The Woodmoor Pastry Shop is in the little strip mall at the intersection. There is parking in the front and a BIG parking lot in the rear. This place has been a family-owned and run business for over 50 years.
They have cookies, cakes, cup cakes, muffins, scones and GORGEOUS bread. But the best part: the taste. You just can’t find a better bakery and the prices are reasonable too!
My blogger buddy, A Parent In Silver Spring is a fan of this place… I first met her about a year ago and checked out her site
AND one of her first posts I ever read was extolling the virtues and tastes of this place. When I commented to her that The Woodmoor Pastry Shop is who made my wedding cake, I knew we would be fast friends.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, we were over at my sister-in-law’s for dinner. They live way-out in Potomac. After dinner my brother-in-law brought out the most beautiful cupcakes and cookies I’ve ever seen…
I asked him where he got them;
“I always make a special trip down to The Woodmoor Pasty Shop in Four Corners for desserts; They’re the best.”
I told him they made our wedding cake and we laughed that we didn’t know that this place is both of our favorites for sweets and bread!
Joanna Gray, the owner, is usually there. Our family stopped by on Saturday for cookies and said hi…
The Woodmoor Pastry shop is an old-fashioned bakery, and they specialize in custom orders…
they can make you anything you want! Stop in and indulge yourself! They have out awesome Valentine’s Day treats right now!
The Woodmoor Pastry Shop, 10127 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. 301-593-7667
I love the First Lady’s gloves and shoes
Yesterday History was made. And even though I could have braved the cold and ventured downtown to the Capital Buiding on Metro, I did not. I chose to have the best seat in the house: I watched the Inauguration on TV.
There is enough written and there will be plenty more written about wonderful moments and the meaning of The Inauguration, like the moment I welled up with tears when I saw 2 old African-American men in the crowd wearing Tuskegee Airmen caps.
So let’s concentrate on something important here *wink*.
I LOVED Michelle Obama’s choice of green J.Crew gloves and green Jimmy Choo shoes to wear with her outfit yesterday. It was kind of a bold choice… and it worked! And not only do I love that it worked, I love that she went with J. Crew- fashionable, yet practical, and Jimmy Choo- designer… and that they were not a set.
She’s workin’ it, but not ‘above-it-all’.
And J. Crew is loving life right now: not only did they design the girls’ jackets and outfits, I just went to their site and I could not click through to their gloves section… I got an apology that you can’t access it right now; I’m guessing their gloves, which on all on sale right now too, section has temporarily crashed due to gazillions of hits to buy leather gloves… preferably green
In Honor of The Inauguration: Presidential Quotes- Part 2
“No one in the world can take the place of your mother.
Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right.
She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones.”
~Harry Truman
In Honor of the Inauguration: Presidents Talk about their Moms: Part 1
In Honor of the Inauguration and this wonderful city that I call home, here is a reminder of the importance of your jobs, moms…
And that even Presidents need their mothers…
“I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.”
~Abraham Lincoln
Some Search Engine Help
I have stumbled upon,
no pun intended, a couple of sites that may increase your traffic!
Disclosure: I have yet to do Stumble It, Digg, or del.icio.us, but I am working behind the scenes on my site and working on increasing web traffic.
I found out about these sites over at The Big Piece of Cake, a great mom blog about motherhood, fashion and everything else. I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting Kate in person and she’s great! We sat next to each other at a luncheon sponsored by Giant Food and joked that we must have been invited because they thought that we were both food bloggers… get it: Big Piece of Cake, BananaBlueberry.
Yes, we’re hysterically funny… anyway, the sites that I referred to up above are Condron and Alpha Inventions. Condron is a rolling list of blogs, hey- it’s a blogroll! And Alpha Inventions puts up your blog when you are updating it in order to connect bloggers and commenters in real time… at least that is what I took from their About Page (which is a pretty entertaining rambling, I might add).
Check them out and if you know of similar sites (I spelled ‘similar’ right that time), let me know! And please share your thoughts on Stumble It, Digg, or del.icio.us!
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I Was In The 2012 Show !
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Nicole’s Book
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