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For more about my mommy life head over to OC Family and read my blog there.
Today: Getting Schooled by Homework.
Meh...Otter, Gopher, Beaver...all my knowledge of animal life comes from cartoons.
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For more about my mommy life head over to OC Family and read my blog there.
Today: Getting Schooled by Homework.
Meh...Otter, Gopher, Beaver...all my knowledge of animal life comes from cartoons.
Posted at 09:33 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)
This is a photo of my daughter and me. We both love our Converse.
I wrote a story to go along with the script over on my blog at OC Family.
Posted at 02:49 PM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)
I love this photo of Ben...er, um, I mean Batman. Look at those eyelashes! I know, it's hard to act tough when you have hordes of women swooning and envious of your lashes, but he tries.
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On another note about boys, I don't care if the book says Max came home because he was hungry, I know he really comes home because he misses his mom. But, I'm letting Max stick to his story. I get it. It's important to be tough.
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Today I'm listening to The Smiths "There is a light that never goes out."
Posted at 10:31 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)
More women have gotten naked to the sound of Julie’s voice than to the sound of Barry White, Marvin Gaye and Steve Perry’s voice combined. Why? That's how every Baby Einstein video begins and it has been the cue for a lot of moms that it's now time to take a shower. I would pop in Baby Mozart or Baby Beethoven just to get a break from my little bundle of joy and get squeaky clean, not because I really believed my kid would grow up to be genius because she watched it.
Last week Disney, who bought the Baby Einstein brand from Julie Clark in 2001, is offering a refund to consumers of the video series because—surprise—it won’t make your baby smarter. The FTC says this in their statement, “There’s no credible evidence that screen media can educate infants.”
Yeah, we kinda knew that already FTC, but have you ever gone four weeks without shaving your legs or eight hours without talking to another adult? I thought not…I liked Baby Einstein and used it strictly for the thrill of being clean. It was a benefit to me to not look like a swamp monster when my husband came home from work. That was the value. Give us moms a little credit here FTC, “educating infants” wasn’t the goal here, Sillies.
I suppose the alternative to Baby Einstein would have been letting my baby stare out the window for 20 minutes or play with my hair dryer and bobby pins until I was done freshening up, but, to be honest, I kinda liked those little puppets and the music of Baby Einstein served as the soundtrack to my little respite from momminess.
It’s not like I plopped my baby in front of the tube for hours on end (well, there was that one day…) and thought I was doing her a solid by giving her a jump start on her education: Moving her well ahead of her diaper-clad friends. I always knew it was just a distraction, a little amusement for her while mommy "got ready."
Compared to the other “screen media” like Barney and The Wiggles, Baby Einstein was bearable to watch and the music was…well, classical. The only thing that annoyed me about the video series was the fact that I didn’t think of it myself, market it, and sell it to Disney for millions.
So, you might have clued in, I won’t be cashing in on Disney’s offer to refund my money. In fact, I want to give a BIG shout out to Disney and especially Julie Clark for keeping me clean and (occasionally) coifed during the baby years—Thanks! Oh, and Julie, if you ever put out your own CD, please do a duet with Steve Perry, women around the nation will go wild for it!
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This was written for my blog at OC Family. Head on over there to see what you're missing.
Posted at 11:43 PM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack (0)
I've got my first couple of posts up and running at OC Family. My column is also out in the print issue. If you can't get your hands on an OC Family Magazine, here it is: "You're Soooo Orange County."
You can click over and read my "Post Halloween Ritual" on my blog there as well. If you're still grousing about a bad deal you got from a Nov 1st candy trade with an older sibling years ago, you'll be happy to know, you're not the only one. Go read...
Posted at 12:44 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)
(Photos by the lovely Dana Sipper)
So, what am I going to do now?
I've accepted a position at Churm Media as lead blogger for OC Family. That means four times a week you can find me there talking about mom stuff, non-mom stuff, and of course, the occasional post about roller skating, Lip Smackers, and Ducks hockey. Irresistible, no?
The very idea of representing O.C. Moms at OC Family made me swoon, but the best part about the job was choosing 14 other O.C. Mom Bloggers to join me there on the web site. The thought of all of us there ranting, opinionizing (it's not a word, don't bother looking it up), and giving our suggestions for the best things to do in O.C. makes my toes tingle (but that might just be the mini-margarita kicking in).
Go ahead and bookmark ocfamily.com now, I'll wait.............or become a friend on Facebook....... and look for all of us to go live there on Nov. 1st. Also, keep an eye out for my column, Alive in Wonderland, in the November issue. I just turned it in today and if you think I didn't mention OC Family's Mom Bloggers' ambitions of World Domination, you're sadly mistaken. Don't we look fierce?
Photos by the lovely Dana Sipper.
Posted at 08:46 PM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBack (0)

It was a day almost a year in the making--the day my eight-year-old daughter, Emily, was going to get her hair chopped off for Locks of Love. She orginally got the idea when she saw George Parros, of the Anaheim Ducks, cut off his long black hair for charity. Though she wanted to do it with him this winter (read that story here), the morning drama and the heat of the season got to be too much for her. She got it cut off and donated her hair this summer to Locks of Love.
I think it was harder on me than her. I was surprised I was so nervous about it. As we drove to the "salon" I felt nostalgic looking at her long locks and worried a little about what lay ahead. I remember too clearly the hair fiascos in my own past--frizzy perms,misguided asymmetrical bobs, and hair made orange by Sun-in. I worried for about half the drive, then I started to think about the moms whose daughters have cancer. How their worries and fears leap far past my frivolous concerns. And once again, I was surprised by my own pettiness. (When does that stop happening?) I snapped out of it and pulled out my camera.
Emily was unwavering and chatty through the entire thing. She proudly held up her ponytail to the camera and eagerly shoved it into the baggy. I have to admit, that ponytail was a little creepy, like carrying one of her limbs around in a ziplock. You don't realize how much your hair is a part of you until you see it severed and lonely through plastic. I guess that's all the more reason to support Locks of Love. Kids with cancer have already lost so much, this was a minor sacrifice in comparison.
Now Emily is asking all her friends to join her to grow their hair out for next year. She already has two friends on board and is hoping that this post will get more friends to participate. Email me at suzbroughton@yahoo.com if your daughter is inspired. Maybe we can do a Locks of Love party when it's time to get it lopped off...
Posted at 07:51 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack (0)
Art work available on Etsy.
Chalk this one up to "one of those things you can laugh about with your kids later." Like WAAAY later. My husband, Larry, and I were just thinking of a creative way to get our kids to brush their teeth for two minutes. We had tried it all; toothbrushes that play "High School Musical" songs, cute little timers, threats, and, the old standard, blatant bribes.
Then we thought, "What about scaring the living daylights out of them?" Kidding. We didn't plan on doing that, but that's what happened. One night last week after the usual hassle / battle at the basin, Larry decided to show the kids what will happen if they don't brush their teeth twice a day for two minutes -- implementing the scare 'em straight method. Where did he go for this kind of propaganda? Why YouTube, of course.
He found this lovely video of the foulest teeth you'll ever see, ever. So we plopped them down in front of my computer and let them watch this video (right before bed, mind you). I am warning you, this is D.isgusting with a capital "D."
I know! It's like the dental version of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Gross, right? Yea, our kids thought so too. Mission accomplished. They scurried to the bathroom practically tripping over each other to get to their toothbrushes. But when we went to put them to bed, Emily, our eight-year-old, was crying, obviously traumatized by the whole thing.
We both took turns sitting up and talking with her until she fell asleep. Larry and I both kept shooting each other the "Oops" look as we passed each other in the hallway, switching shifts. The next morning Emily asked that we never speak of "that video" again. Done. It's in the vault...but, she has brushed her teeth for two minutes ever since.
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This is the video I remember from the '70s Saturday morning cartoon era.
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This was something I wrote for MomCrush, but never posted here. I'm home with a sick kid today, so thought it would be a good day for repost. But, just as a follow-up, Emily saw I was coping this post and said, "Mommy! You promised! Never again!"
Posted at 09:34 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBack (0)
The first morning my mom had already prepared the breakfast table with every sweet delight that was banned from my house growing up -- Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes, enough sugar cereal to fuel a 5- and 8-year-old through more than a morning's worth of tantrums and meltdowns.
I know the topics of "Grandparents spoil their grandkids" and "Why do my kids get the foods I never got as a kid?" have been done to death, but this is a little different, because, frankly, it's happening to me.
In my family growing up, my mom filled the kitchen with the healthiest food the '70s had to offer: Roman Meal bread (instead of Wonder Bread), grape juice from concentrate (instead of soda), Red "Delicious" Apples (instead of fruit cups), Triskets (instead of chips), and, the worst travesty of all, Laura Scudder's Peanut Butter (instead of, you know, peanut butter). Laura Scudder's is the kind that has the oil sitting on the top that you have to stir in like some kind of cruel science experiment. It's thick and pasty and there is zero chance of not ripping your bread to pieces when spreading it. My mom has even admitted that she used to put wheat germ in our brownies as a "fiber booster." What kind of twisted ...
All this was done in the name of eating healthy, and to this day I think I have pretty good eating habits because of it (my man-food habit aside). I'm grateful to her for her efforts, and even though as a kid it seemed like my friends were eating Pop Tarts, Pop Rocks and Sugar Pops for breakfast, I knew she did it because she loved us.
So, I just want to know, who is this woman pushing the Pringles on my kids and what has she done with my mom?
My mom has taken on legendary spoiling status among our friends. We get requests to tell the same stories over and over again. Like once, after seeing Disney on Ice at The Honda Center, my mom bought Emily, my daughter, cotton candy on the way out the door after a whole parade of special treats during the show. When I protested, my mom shrugged it off and justified it saying cotton candy was "mostly air." Mostly Air! She's a legend. This is the sort of thing only a grandmother who is completely head over heels in love with her grandchild would say.
Which leads me to my husband and my stance on the whole subject -- my own personal feeling of injustice aside -- we think it's wonderful. Our kids are lucky to have a grandma and gramps who love them and spoil them rotten. So many of my friends have lost one or both of their parents already, or their kids' grandparents can't be bothered with them, or they live too far away to see them.
It's not like they have no control at all. My parents require our kids treat them and each other with respect. They make them say "please" and "thank you" and they look after them like hawks, but they just can't help but be spoiled by them -- and that's OK.
That our kids have grandparents that fill them with sugar, let them jump up and down on the couch, and even encourage them to bring frogs into the bathtub is all counted as a blessing in our minds. It also helps if they're the ones who are watching them when all this is happening, not us ... oh, it's an advantage if we have at least one day of "Grandma-detox" before school, piano lessons, or basically having to bring our kids out in public.
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Random Posts from MomCrush, my blog at The OC Register:
✺ We just meant to scare them a little, not scar them for life.
✺ ...and then, I felt like a cougar.
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Posted at 11:54 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)
My son has an older sister, so it's the natural order of things that he would get some hand-me-downs: helmets, videos, and sometimes, sadly, girlie things. Not princess outfits or Angelina Ballarina backpacks, nothing like that, but he did get stuck with his sister's nickname. It was the endearment that was tip-top on my mind.
The name had just become a habit, "Please come here, BABYDOLL." It would easily flow from my lips when I would drop him off at preschool, "Have a good day, BABYDOLL." I used it all the time -- everyday.
Then, one day on the way to school he said, "Mom, could you not call me BABYDOLL? Not with my friends there." How could I have done this to him? Duh! Yes, don't call a boy BABYDOLL. This should be obvious. It's like a double insult, "baby," only like the worse thing you could call a preschooler and "doll." Do I really need to point out the travesty of calling a young boy "doll?" I mean, it's not like I dressed him in heels and a tiara, but, BABYDOLL! Boy image suicide.
I knew I had to make things right for him.
So I let him choose his new name. After going through our options -- Little Man, Dude, Blue Power Ranger -- he came up with Dinosaur. He wanted me to call him Dinosaur instead of Babydoll. It was a little bulky for a nickname, but Dinosaur it was.
Everywhere we went, he was my Dinosaur, and it made people smile in line at Trader Joe's and strangers join in at the park, "Hey Dinosaur, you're going to fall off there if you're not careful." It was fun, but I missed calling him Babydoll, just a little.
Then one day, as I was driving him home, I accidentally let it slip -- Babydoll. "Oh, gosh, Dinosaur, I'm so sorry." He was understanding and said, "It's okay, you can call me Babydoll sometimes, I miss that." (Yea!) He then quickly made sure to put in one stipulation, "... just not in front of my friends." Deal.
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Posted at 07:48 PM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
My kids have been out of school for one week now. It has been a random, unorganized, fun, and exhausting week.
I will use this photo collage as a visual aid to demonstrate what happens when you have no plan in place when summer hits. So far, this is what our summer has consisted of:
1.) Cherry on Top, have you been here yet? Just don't, because once you do, your desire for this special treat will become a driving force in your life, all other things will revolve around how you can end up there. We even had it for lunch one day.
2.) Spending time with friends.
3.) Staying out until the street lights come on.
4.) Educating my daughter about the awesomeness of Lip Smackers--Watermelon.
5.) Searching the perfect Lemon Drop Martini
6.) Reba. My kids are obsessed with watching the reruns on Lifetime. I have zero idea what the appeal is to a five and eight-year old, but it's a welcome change from Sponge Bob.
7.) Previewing the new summer shows at Disneyland and participating in the press junket (including interviewing Alice in Wonderland). Staying up to the wee hours of the morning editing and writing about all the fun.
8.) Roller Skating. Roller Skating. Roller Skating.
Yea, it's been a pretty good week. But, I still feel like I should have some kind of action plan. Do you have a plan for the summer? Can we wing the entire summer? Watch me try...
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Posted at 07:32 PM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I tried.
My family and I like to go to dinner at The Old Spaghetti Factory in Newport Beach. On Saturday night, after we polished off our spumoni ice cream, my daughter and I stopped by the bathroom before we headed out to go roller skating and watch the sunset on the boardwalk.
When we walked in to the tiny bathroom, we were met with satin dresses, heavily hairsprayed up-dos with crunchy curls, and sequins heels--they were Prom Night revelers. The four girls weren't in the bathroom to take care of business, just to primp and grouse.
"OMG! I look like a giant, a monster!" said the red-dressed girl looking into the oversized gilded mirror.
"No you don't!" snapped the purple-dressed girl, "GWAWL! This dress is stabbing me in the ribs! I hate it!" she whined, as she shoved her hand all the way down the front of her dress for relief.
"I wish my boyfriend would say ONE thing to me. I mean, I like totally bought his ticket and everything, at LEAST he could say I look pretty! OMG! Look how fat and awful I look!" howled the green-dressed girl.
"Shut up! Look at my hair! I should have never trusted the chick who did my hair. She said 'do you trust me?' and I should have had her 'do it like the picture I brought in,'" reflected the purple-dressed girl as she reapplied her lip gloss.
"Oh you NEVER trust them! Did you see there wasn't anything but bottled water in the limo?! OMG! I mean, seriously, not even a Coke or anything!" complained the green-dressed one, who held the bottom of her dress under her chin as she pulled up her pantyhose.
It went on and on like this for the whole time we were in there. Like a really bad, after-school special version of "Sex and the City." (Sponsored by Wet Seal and Kotex.)
Emily, my eight-year-old was mesmerized by them. She just stood there staring. I had to prod her along at each step--wash your hands, turn on the water, rub them together, use soap, dry them on a towel--she couldn't take her eyes off them.
When we got outside and started lacing up, I began to give her my analysis of the girls, trying to pick out the life lesson in the experience, "It's sad that those girls were out on their very special night and all they did was complain," I said, as I searched for Em's knee pads in her bag.
"I think some girls think it's part of being a girl--being a grown-up girl-- to pick apart everything, to gripe. They think it's cute or sophisticated, or something, like on TV. But you know it's not, right?" I said, really reaching for that deeper lesson.
"Yeah, I know," she agreed.
Oh, yeah, she's obviously getting it I think.
"It's so unattractive to be negative. You really look your best when you're positive and polite," I laid it on, thinking now I'm really teaching her some good stuff.
"Um, hmm," Emily agreed strapping on her helmet.
"All they did was put themselves down, moan about the limo, and complain about their boyfriends. How do you think their boyfriends felt?" I said to her, as she stood up, trying to steady herself on her skates. "You see how they didn't appreciate anything, they weren't very grateful," I continued, driving the point home.
"I get it, I mean, they should be grateful they even HAVE a boyfriend!" She said, then she skated off down the boardwalk.
Wait...Here's to hoping some of it got through.
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This was written for my blog at the OC Register, MomCrush.
And, if you live in Orange County, the post I wrote about the Butterfly Release is in print today in The OC Register.
Posted at 01:22 PM in Momminess, Orange County Stories | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)
Ben: I was running so fast at school!
Me: Really?
Ben: Yeah, you know when you run so fast and smoke comes out the back of your shoes?
Me: Yes, that IS fast.
Ben: All my friends behind me were coughing and coughing because of all the smoke.
Me: Oh, my. You are a fast runner.
Ben: Yeah, really, really fast.
Posted at 10:44 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
I just can't control myself -- helping my second grader with her homework makes me feel like a genius. Well, maybe not a genius, but at bit like Alex Trebek at a Spelling Bee. "I'm sorry [cue pity face], the correct answer is t-r-o-U-b-l-e." Then I like to show off a little by using it in a sentence, "You're really having TROUBLE with that word, aren't you?"
I realize this feeling will only last as long as her times tables are under "10" and her spelling words are two syllables or less. I'm already struggling with finding the Theme Sentence in a paragraph -- suspect this is a moving target created by spiteful English teacher -- and also the Jurassic period is turning into a buzzkill for me.
Sadly, there were even a couple of times in first grade when she's had to correct me, "Mommy, I don't think that is the right hat for the fireman. I think it's the red pointy one." Just testing her. I knew that. (Yellow hat= constructions worker. Yellow hat= construction worker ...)
So, when I feel I'm losing my intellectual edge, I breakout the "telling time" worksheets and I'm brilliant again: even I know when it's 5:45 p.m. So for right now, I'm taking advantage of the little I.Q. stroke I'm getting by helping my daughter with her homework ... so pathetic, I know.
Posted at 10:23 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

I started to panic a little when I walked into Target this morning to get things for my kids' baskets and there weren't any Peeps in the $1 section. "Must be back in the seasonal section," I tried to reassure myself. But, no! Target was completely out by 10 am, Saturday morning. They had legions of them two days ago--all lined up like an army in some weird, psychedelic PBS kids' show. But today, not one little solider was there.
Posted at 10:36 AM in Momminess, Orange County Stories | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Posted at 11:12 PM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBack (0)
My seven-year-old daughter, Emily, started to grow her hair out about a year ago to donate to Locks of Love . But, once she saw "nice tough guy" George Parros of the Anaheim Ducks hockey team getting annual hair cut for Childhood Leukemia Foundation's (CLF) Hugs -U- Wear Program she changed her mind and wants to get it chopped off with him-- "with a Duck."
Sometimes, when we've had a particularly brutal hair brushing session we go to CLF's website and look at THIS and we're good until the next shower.
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Posted at 01:13 AM in Disney Love, Momminess, So-So | Permalink | Comments (29) | TrackBack (0)
Attention Mom Bloggers:
This picture is of Em and I in Palm Springs. You have to get creative when you're a Mom Blogger who doesn't post pictures of her kids. We agreed this one was just obscured enough to share.
Posted at 10:30 PM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)
I think the hardest lessons to teach our kids are the ones we haven't quite learned ourselves.
This became plain to me when I pitched a fit over all the THINGS my kids had and announced that after Christmas we were going to give a painful amount of their things away. They cried at the thought and started to frantically list all the items they didn't want included on the give away list.
Their rooms, closets, drawers, and even pockets are filled with stuff.
Posted at 10:28 AM in Momminess | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)












