Quite The Circle

While creating 5 Minutes For Parenting, I had the vision to showcase the best of the best writers we know and love. To have them as a part of our family here has given it all such a sense of completeness.

To some of these amazing bloggers that will be featured every Sunday, I give credit for their strong influence and encouragement for me to dive deeper into this blog world. And to take parenting more lightly. Or seriously. And above all, to be myself, a genuine representation from my life to the words upon your screen.

These writers certainly need no introduction, and I am so very excited to share with you each week a piece from their repertoire- sometimes new and sometimes an old favorite- but always an inspiration to behold.

Gretchen

Gretchen White grew up dreaming of being a jet-setting orthodontist/fashion designer/Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Instead, a better life unfolded. She’s the mother of six young children (and one on the way) living in beautiful Colorado and is married to her best friend and chess coach.

Gretchen owns a blog called Lifenut and writes for The Denver Post’s Mile High Mamas blog.

Melodee

Melodee had no idea that motherhood would involve so much noise and laundry. Her three sons and one daughter wear their socks outside (without shoes), leave empty milk cartons in the fridge and bicker while playing Nintendo games. The days are sometimes long, but the years are short. Her blog, Actual Unretouched Photo, attempts to capture the fleeting moments.

Melodee and her husband of twenty-one years live in the Pacific Northwest with their four children and three mutant cats. Melodee cannot live without Diet Coke with Lime, a feather pillow or high-speed Internet. She loathes raw tomatoes, humidity and stepping into mysterious puddles in her stocking-feet.

Mary

Mary is the mom to ten rambunctious kids, at least a couple of whom are trying to drive her crazy on any given day. Despite the distraction– or maybe because of it– she’s managed to streamline her parenting, frugal living, and household organization strategies.

Most evenings Mary stays up ridiculously late blogging all about it at Owlhaven.

DeeDee

DeeDee is the bedraggled mother of three. She balks at the word “older” and opts for the friendlier term, “well seasoned.” Her friends call her “a late bloomer.”

For sport, she homeschools her children, ages 8,6, and 3. That will continue as long as she can stay one day smarter than they are. And keep visits to the therapist to a minimum. So far, so good.

As a freelance writer, she embraces the blogging world with all ten typing fingers. Her blog, Fiddledeedee (formerly known as “It Coulda’ Been Worse”) has enabled her to find a large supportive group of blogging mommies. And it gives her great comfort to know that she is not sailing on a sinking ship all alone.

Tina

Tina is a post mid-40’s mom to her only child, four-year-old Sean, who she says can easily outwit, outsmart and outplay her on any given day. Three years after being dismissed from a prestigious infertility program as beyond hopeless she enrolled in graduate school and scheduled a hysterectomy in an effort to get on with a child-free life. Shortly thereafter, she discovered she was seven weeks pregnant. She was nearly 44-years-old.

Tina started blogging three years ago when her son was a year old as a way to record the sweet and funny and exasperating moments of motherhood that seemed to evaporate and disappear by days end. Since then she has written for Christian Women On Line, DotMoms and Good Housekeeping.

She has a B.A. in studio arts and theater, but currently enjoys a career as a laundress, chef, chauffeur and sex goddess. “I find life to be an intoxicating combination of funny and scary,” she says, “and I just try to write it all down.” You can read about her adventures as an antique mommy at www.antiquemommy.com.

Stephanie Precourt
Managing Editor