VDog Blog

July 7th, 2009
Tags: Blogging, Conferences, Who Do I Think I Am?
Posted in Bloggy Stuff, Soap Box 13 Comments

Whaaaat is uuuhhp with all these Blogging (slash social media) conferences??

Since I talk about breast feeding and potty training, supposedly that makes me a “Mommy Blogger.” So I figure any conference with the word “mom” or “her” in it would be targeted towards me.

But I swear there’s like, at LEAST five new “MomCons” this year ALONE. Or it just seems that way. It’s like one of those late night infomercial get-rich-quick! schemes. “Throw a blogging conference and make it BIG!!” It’s like the in-crowd got sent complimentary “conference in a box” kits from ACME or some shit.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I pimp, too. Pimpin’ ain’t easy, as Jay-Z once said. I gots me my Room 704 Media, LLC n shit. I werk the PR and marketing for dat bitch. AND!! For the LOW, LOW price of only $18.95, you too can own your VERY OWN Room 704 t-shirt!!

From Mom 2.0 to BlissDom to SITScation to Type-A Mom to MomItForward/Evo’09 to GodKnowsWhat’sNext, I am OH-VER-WHELMED. Why not just conglomerate all these and make it a MOMapalooza? Women’s BlogConApalooza? (Let’s call the whole thing off?)

Of course, I would LOVE to attend all of these conferences, but it’s just not possible. And sure, one could say that, well, each serves a different demographic. Or at least a different geographical area (from Houston to Nashville to Vegas to Asheville to Park City and back down). But when the speakers for these conferences have so much overlap? It’s like The Real World Alumni going to speak at colleges around the US. Same content, different location.

What really makes all these conferences different? How do I know which conference is for me? With all the assumptions being made about who is throwing what and who is speaking at what — how do I find my people? I certainly can’t go to ALL of them. Admission price for the five conferences I just listed — Mom 2.0, BlissDom, SITScation, Type-A Mom and Evo’09 — would total *with early bird pricing* over one thousand dollars. (I’m not sure you heard me — ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!!) Add in plane tickets and hotel, and hot dayum, we’re talking mucho dinero.

Now, you’re thinking, “VDog, you just be a jealous beesh.” But you’d be wrong. Well, mostly wrong.

Envious that I can’t attend all of these events? Surely. Jealous that I’m not speaking at any of them? No, not really. Either my time will come or it won’t. That part doesn’t bother me. Despite appearances I’m a fairly patient person and I try to celebrate other people’s successes — especially other *women’s* successes.

Remember the Low-Carb Diet craze of, what, five, six years ago? Sure there are still people living a low-carb lifestyle and trying low-carb diets, but the explosion of products and magazines and the downright *fervor* over the topic has all but crashed and burned.

One can make the argument that this is not what we eat — BUT it IS what we consume — how we choose to spend our time and money. So, just about the same, yes? As the cliche goes, the cream rises to the top. But what happens when SO many amazing women are putting together SO many fabulous events? What happens when you know and love the women that are throwing these conferences, and you attend one but not another? BlissDom this year, but Mom2.0 next? It’s enough to cause heart palpitations.

My point here is that this is becoming a “fad” (a “trend?”). Sure, it’s an “emerging market” that companies and individuals are looking to capitalize on. I can’t blame them a bit for trying.

But let’s look ahead to next year, or the year after. Come 2011 how many of these conferences can really survive? What will the market hold up as valuable and effective time and money-wise?

It’s hard NOT to feel like you want to go. It is, as my husband astutely observed, a way for us moms to get away from our families and just enjoy ourselves. Perhaps there SHOULD be this many opportunities to get mom away from the family? Would we be on fewer crazy pills?

Here I stand, shouting, “STOP THE INSANITY!!” We already have SO many obligations in our lives; why add in blog conference overload stress? I *know* they’re fun. I *know* it’s a chance to get away. But as of now, I am committed to BlogHer and BlogHer only, for the rest of the year. Yes, I attended BlissDom and had a FANTASTIC time. But I don’t think I can handle any more.

ZOMG NO MORE MomCons!!!! We’re FULL UP! If I see ONE more MomCon, I SWEAR TO GOD WE *WILL* THROW A FlingHer!!! DON’T MAKE US HIT YOU BABY, ONE MORE TIME!!!!

Now go buy a t-shirt.

I am adding the disclaimer that *should* someone *want* to hire me to *speak* at one or more of these lovely conferences, I will go. I’m no fool.

I will also add ZOMG ENOUGH WITH THE BLOG(her) PARTIES!!! And yes, I am TOTES guilty. Let me have it.

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January 20th, 2009
Posted in Soap Box 5 Comments

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July 14th, 2008
Posted in Soap Box, VDog 8 Comments

Sarcastic Mom has been running a series on “going green” and helping our Earth for some time now called “Project Support Beauty In Nature.” I’ve been meaning to post on it, and well, you know VDog, I’m a procrastinator and not very good at getting blog writing done. Here goes…

All year we have been recycling our food scraps in a city-run composting program. It’s really easy to do and significantly decreases the amount of trash in our can each week. It’s great for our city, too, because all of the food scraps get turned into mulch for the city’s trees, plants and gardens.

Basically any scrap of food — banana peel, peach pit, chicken bones, gristle off a steak — that’s not liquid can be placed in our “little green bin” which we have on our kitchen counter. Any paper that’s been touched by food, such as pizza boxes, milk cartons and wax paper, can be included with the scraps as well. Now if you’re a home composter, you’ll probably have to leave those larger paper items out.

We line our can with a “food waste” sized BioBag to keep the stink out of the can itself. Once the can is full, we take it out to the curb and put it in our BIG green bin, which we also put yard and plant trimmings in for recycling. If your city doesn’t have a municipal composting program like ours, write the City Council and urge them to consider adding one! You could also get a simple at-home composting bin and reap the rewards for your own yard.

I have to say that it is very satisfying to know that all of our previous “waste” is now going to good use — going straight back to the earth, where it came from — and that’s definitely “going green.”

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June 28th, 2008
Posted in Crackers, Little Man, Prematurity, Soap Box 4 Comments

This has been a long time coming and I apologize for my complete and total lack of timely gratitude.

What seems like forever ago I told you about our March Of Dimes Walk for Babies. I put up a button in the sidebar and even got some of my friends to do the same.

These wonderful ladies donated their hard earned money to our team:

ImpostorMom (The first to donate to our team! w00t! Before our families even!)

LVGurl

Anglophile Football Fanatic

(Did I miss anyone? Please let me know and I’ll add you to the list.)

A wonderful woman named Shonda gave $280 to our team and we have *no* idea who she is. So thank you Shonda.

And thank you to all of you who gave money and supported our team by publicizing our team and cause.

It is still my hope that one day all babies can come home from the hospital, healthy, with their mamas. Until that day, we walk, and we support the March of Dimes.

By the way, the walk went very well. Our friends got to speak before the walk about their 27-week miracle, Aidan. Once on stage, Aidan (”The Big Guy”) saw the Little Man in the crowd and they both started squealing, and Aidan waved at the Little Man! It was so cute!

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February 13th, 2008
Posted in Prematurity, Soap Box 9 Comments

You may remember way back in November that I told you how prematurity was no joke. Well, here’s your chance to help do something about it:

We are joining Team BigGuy (aka Team Aidan), to March for Babies. We are all hoping to raise money for the March of Dimes’s fight against prematurity.

Here’s what Cracker #7, Karen, has to say:

Yes, it’s that time of year again and Team Aidan is back! I can’t believe it’s been a year already. This year, Aidan is the Bay Area 2008 Ambassador and Bryan and I will be probably speaking at this year’s walk.

For those of you who want to participate, you can go to our team page and sign up to be part of our team, donate or do both. There’s also a link to my personal page on the homepage. I’m very excited for the walk this year, as we are the Bay Area Ambassador Family, and I’m hoping to vamp it up a bit and surpass last year’s donations of $6,500. I’m hoping we can do it because we’re starting much sooner this year. If you have any ideas about some good fund raising activities, please share. You’ve all been so generous already and I want you to know that we appreciate it greatly.

We can’t imagine life without our big guy and without the research and commitment of the March of Dimes, he might not be with us today. Can you imagine that? Weird, right? It really is a great organization and is committed to stomping out prematurity and birth defects. Every baby deserves a healthy start, and if we can prevent even one family from having to go through what we did, our efforts are worth it.

If you can even do five or ten dollars, that would be wonderful. And of course, your donation is tax deductible.
If you don’t have a team of your own and would feel comfortable doing so, would you put up a banner in your sidebar for us (like the one I’ve got to the right)? Leave me a comment and I will send you the html.

Thanks so much everyone!

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December 21st, 2007
Posted in Bloggy Stuff, Soap Box 15 Comments

Really fixed? Really? Yup, looks like Blogger heard the peeps and has brought back the URL link for unregistered users. Awesome.

Guess they had to stop the bleeding, eh?

No more OpenID confusion, no more html links in the comments. A lot of frustrated users and readers, though. It may not be enough, however, to keep more people from switching to other platforms. Blogger may have done too little, too late.

What do YOU think? Is it STILL more difficult to leave comments here than on a WordPress or TypePad blog? Have you just lost all confidence in Blogger?

Previously: VDog and Little Man: Commenting Linky Love Back Up? Woot!
Suburban Oblivion: Blogger.com No Longer Allows Links to Non-Blogger Sites In Comments

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December 14th, 2007
Posted in Bloggy Stuff, Soap Box 6 Comments

There’s been some serious Blogger hating goin’ round the Internets lately (more than usual, HA!), and I was in on it, too. It was seriously annoying that my friends on WordPress and TypePad, among others, could no longer leave their direct link (to their blog) in the comments anymore.

Well, Blogger’s gone and fixed it. From the Blogger Blog:

The “Other” URL field

Right now, the only way to add a URL to your name when commenting is to sign your comment with OpenID. We apologize for removing the URL field from the comments form prematurely two weeks ago. That was a mistake on our part that came from launching OpenID support on Blogger in draft.

Ironically, our testing of OpenID, a feature that lets you use accounts from all over the web to comment on Blogger, made it appear that we were trying to force you into getting a Google Account. We regret this appearance, since we’re strong supporters of OpenID and open web standards in general.

If you haven’t set up OpenID, you can still link to your blog — or any webpage, for that matter — by using the standard < a > tag inside the comment form.

Now this doesn’t fix other problems with Blogger, but it’s one small victory (where there shouldn’t have been a fight at all).

I find the defense that they weren’t “trying to force you into getting a Google Account” a little weak (Google world domination is coming!!), because they could have just put off the change for the two weeks that it took to work the bugs out, and no one would have been all up in arms over this.

Anyway, I’m glad to see that ALL of my friends are welcome to comment here freely now.

What do YOU think of all this? World domination or minor oversight?? Hmm, hmm???

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November 12th, 2007
Posted in Little Man, NICU, Prematurity, Soap Box 23 Comments

This article made me cry big, globby tears yesterday. It is truly shocking and sad that in our rich, developed nation we have a major metropolitan area such as Memphis with an infant death rate of 15 per 1,000 births.

The majority of these deaths are due to prematurity and low birth weight.

This paragraph, at the beginning of the article, really hit home for me:

It takes a while for something much sadder to occur to you: In a room full of newborns, dozens of them, there is no crying. The sound of beeping heart monitors, the rustle and murmur of observing doctors, but no crying.

“They’re too small and too sick to cry,” explains a passing nurse.

When Little Man was in the NICU, he rarely ever cried. One nurse called him a “really mellow fellow.”

Preemies just don’t have the energy to cry. They need to save everything they’ve got to help build their bodies stronger, repair any damage that was caused by coming out of the oven under cooked, and gain weight.

We weren’t convinced that our son was just super mellow. We had heard from friends with preemie twins to enjoy the pre-40 weeks stage, since all they do is sleep. Once the preemies hit full term (their due date), all bets are off.

That was the case with our Little Man. Once we hit the end of February, it was all sirens blazing. Hungry? Tired? Wet diaper? How about we SCREAM to get our needs met? Sounds good, right?

It was still shocking to see such an immediate change in our son. We knew it was possible that he would become “more alive” but seeing is believing. It was great to know that he was getting stronger, and bigger by the day.

When Little Man left the hospital at four weeks old (just past 36 weeks adjusted age), he weighed six pounds six ounces. The next day at the pediatrician, after his first full day of on-demand feeding, he had gained three ounces. He would continue to gain over an ounce a day throughout his fourth month, despite having acid reflux.

You can imagine that there was a lot of nursing and a lot of spitting up going on.

Articles like this one make me feel so lucky that we came out of our premature birth and NICU stay relatively unscathed. It is a reminder of how much still needs to be done to ensure every baby gets a fighting chance at life.

I wish that no other families would have to learn to ignore the constant beeps of heart and oxygen monitors. I wish that more babies could go home from the hospital with their parents. I wish more babies would be born healthy, and sometime after 37 weeks.

Until my wishes can become reality, please support the March of Dimes continue their fight against prematurity.

November is March of Dimes Prematurity Awareness Month.

Congratulations to Crackers #6, 7 & 8, our NICU roommates, for becoming one of the March of Dimes’s Ambassador Families for 2008. #8 (the Big Guy) was born at 27 weeks gestation. He is truly an amazing baby, with truly amazing and wonderful parents.

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October 24th, 2007
Posted in Soap Box 6 Comments

Today, as part of the BlogHers Act movement, mothers and others across the country encouraged to call their U.S. Senators and urge their support of The MOTHERS Act, important, needed legislation to provide services to women suffering from postpartum depression (PPD). The MOTHERS Act stands for “The Mom’s Opportunity To Access Help, Education, Research, and Support” for Postpartum Depression Act.

The MOTHERS Act (S. 3529) is a Senate Bill sponsored by U.S. Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Richard Durbin (D-IL) and will ensure that new moms and their families are educated about PPD, screened for symptoms, and provided with essential services. It will also increase research into the causes, diagnoses and treatments for postpartum depression by a program of grants.

Postpartum depression is a serious and disabling condition that affects approximately 800,000 American women each year. However, only about 15 percent of these women receive any assessment or treatment for the condition. Postpartum depression can occur anytime during pregnancy or within the first year after childbirth. A woman may have a number of symptoms such as sadness, lack of energy, trouble concentrating, anxiety, and feelings of guilt and worthlessness. The difference between postpartum depression and the “baby blues” is that postpartum depression often affects a woman’s well-being and prevents her from functioning well for a longer period of time. Postpartum psychosis is a rare and more severe form of perinatal mood disorders, and is covered under The MOTHERS Act as well.

Today, bloggers around the nation ask you to call, write or e-mail your US Senators and encourage them to support The MOTHERS Act.

In California, contact:

SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER

For a directory of other state’s Senate Offices, go here.

If you are a mom suffering from a postpartum mood disorder, know that you are not alone. For help, contact Postpartum Support International. PSI is the world’s largest nonprofit organization offering support, referrals, education, training, and resources to health care providers, women, and families coping with perinatal mood disorders. Visit PSI’s website or call their warmline at 1-800-944-4773 for more information and assistance.

Thanks to Glennia from The Silent I for this post.

Even though 10.24.07 is almost over, please continue to support this Act and contact your senators. Depression and PPD are very real and need to be addressed and de-stigmatized. Please reach out to anyone you know who is having a hard time.

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October 16th, 2007
Posted in Soap Box 9 Comments

Did you see the World News Tonight report about us last night? Well not US us, but you know, our community — Mommy bloggers.

Dawn of Because I Said So was profiled for an awesome piece about how we mommies are now finding community and support through the Internet and our blogs, rather than through old fashioned, and terribly outdated and limiting, ways like our neighborhoods.

What was most shocking to me was that Dawn gets 20-30 THOUSAND viewers A DAY. And she makes FOUR THOUSAND dollars a month off of ads on her blog. And she’s only been blogging for FOUR MONTHS, PEOPLE!!! That is complete craziness to me. Dawn has really struck a chord with a varied audience to become that popular in such a short amount of time.

My blog is not very popular — yet (HA!) — but I love the community and support I have found through blogging. I think it is super awesome that Dawn and others can make a nice income from blogging while getting support and camaraderie at the same time.

One important piece of the newscast was about how mothers are being taken more seriously as consumers, and given more respect by advertisers. It’s about damn time! Whether we blog or not, women are key in influencing monetary decisions for households — often we are the only one making a decision on how our money gets spent. Why not cater to us? It is extremely silly not to.

Who is the one at Target in the middle of the day re-stocking the house with toilet paper and paper towels? Most often, that’s me and my female doppelgangers. (And Bradley Egel. And his doppelgangers.) Our spending authori-tay needs to be respected.

Jennifer wrote the other day about Sauve’s mom-centered advertising campaign and it’s awesomeness. Dove has been working on a female friendly advertising scheme for a while now. It is truly refreshing and completely stick figure free. We need these types of advertising if only to balance out the testosterone friendly beer and Axe commercials.

As thoughtful consumers, I would ask my brethren to carefully consider your purchases and provide feedback where appropriate. Letting manufacturers know where they went wrong — or where they went right — goes a long way toward advancing our product options and our treatment in the media.

Get out there and be proud, mommy bloggers! We deserve respect as women, and as valuable purchasers of consumer products. As they say, “Money Talks.”

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