I’ve spent the last 4 days in D.C. at the Mom Congress conference and I’m inspired and exhausted.

Click here to read how I stayed close to Dan and the kids while hanging out on the opposite coast.

Here is a bit more about my impressions of the event.

I’ve been home with my kids from the time Laylee was born eight years ago. For the most part I’ve loved it. As with any occupation, it has its rough moments, but overall I couldn’t have asked for a better gig.

The thing about mothering is, it’s more of a calling than a job so being free to pursue it full time is kind of a joyful thing, even at the worst of times. Loving and nurturing another person is a pretty sweet way to spend your days, even if the person is sticky and periodically obnoxious. I’m sticky and obnoxious sometimes too.

But the Thompsons are slowing down (or stopping) in our child production and the kids are getting older. I’ve been taking on more writing work, most notably my new job writing the Mom Congress education blog over at Parenting.com. My novel’s actually still coming along too. I can’t wait for you to read it.

Today I was typing a post about technology in the classroom while sitting on my front porch while Wanda napped and Magoo rode his bike up and down our long driveway. I would periodically pause to chat with him about form or speed or his need for goggles or a light for when he’s riding on the street at night, which is SOOOOOO likely to happen in this lifetime. Then I’d go back to writing.

Sometimes I write with Wanda on my lap, inserting creative punctuation and closing windows while I’m reading them. I stop to drive a carpool, change laundry loads, pick up from the bus or snuggle on the couch and read a board book over and over and over again.

Right now I have so much to learn about education that I’m spending hours every day just reading articles. Hopefully when I’m a little more experienced, I’ll be able to cut that down.

Probably the hardest part about working from home is knowing when to cut myself off and just be at home. Since home and work are the same place, the line is blurry. There are times when I’m working on the novel and Dan goes to bed without me or I’m reading a particularly dense article and I snap when the kids need my help with something.

I’ll figure it out. Even with things as they are, I’m feeling pretty blessed. I’m doing what I love while being with the people I love and I’m getting paid to do some of it. This is a good situation.

Are any of you working from home? Tell me about it.

So I said I was lost in fiction, working on a novel I plan to finish by this summer. This is true. Then I started blogging more here because I have so many words inside me that I need to get out.

I still blog Wednesdays at the Parenting Post because it is for fun.

And starting today I’ll be blogging all education all the time over at Parenting.com’s Mom Congress blog. I love Mom Congress. It’s Parenting’s education advocacy initiative. Each year 51 moms from across the United States are selected to come to Washington, D.C., talk education policy and GET IT DONE. These are strong, powerful women who are passionate about making a difference in education.

I’m really excited to glom on to their hard work and initiative and learn and contribute what I can. If you have any great ideas for topics I can cover in education, I’d love to hear your thoughts. It would also be lovely to have some friendly faces come visit me over there on my first day.

Someone asked me recently if I’d gotten lost on Facebook because this blog has been a ghost town the past few months. Twitter and Facebook have changed things for me to some extent.

In some ways I think they bring me closer to the people I care about. In others I think they put a wrench in meaningful communication. I’ll see a tweet about today being the best day ever, accompanied by a picture, only to find out weeks later the blurb on Twitter was meant as a wedding announcement.

I’ll go a week without checking in on Facebook and find I don’t know what’s happening in my friends’ lives. Someone will say, “Oh, you know what’s going on, I put it on Facebook,” and I’ll think, “I’ve seen you three times in the past two weeks and you didn’t even tell me you’d changed jobs because you’d put it in a status update.” Weird.

In the past when I had an interesting little nugget to share, I’d sit down to write the one sentence and it would turn into a 400-word blog post. Now it remains an interesting little nugget, just a few characters long. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. It’s concise.

But no, I haven’t gotten lost on Facebook or Twitter. I’ve gotten lost in fiction. I’m working on a novel that I’m really excited about and I find that I pour all of my writing energy out into imaginary characters whom I love watching come to life on my computer screen.

I’ll keep you posted and I’ll keep blogging. I miss it.

For the past few months when I’ve gotten a bad case of writer’s block on the novel, I’ve just stopped writing and blogging altogether except for my posts over at Parenting.com. Then the longer I go without writing, the more I start to believe it’s because I’ve lost the ability to write at all. Like a castaway living in silence on an island with a volleyball named Wilson, I lose my words.

So my plan is to blog when the fiction world grows too thick to slog through. Whenever I’m not here, you’ll know I’m a step closer to delivering my project. Mom, I’m talking to you. You’re still reading, right?

And yes, this post will appear in my feed on Facebook.

I cannot figure out how to make a button to get readers of this blog to “Like” it on Facebook. If you “like” it with or without the quotes in real life, will you please go and “Like” it with quotes over on Facebook?

Thanks.

And if you know how to help me make a fancy button for people to click on and you feel fairly sure that doing so won’t steal the identities or souls of those who click on it, please let me know how.

Click here if you “Like” or like this website and then click on the “Like” button at the top of the page.

Little Wanda, AKA Belle Babe deBoe, AKA her real name is getting older and cuter and possibly just a teensy bit squishier. It’s time to update her profile picture on the sidebar and I’d love your input. Here are a few pictures my sister took when we were visiting last week. Which one should I crop to a head shot and use on the sidebar?

(Mouse over the picture you like and it should tell you the number.)

The notable feature of this one is the hair. It’s like a dip cone mohawk. I’ve actually started to crave DQ ice cream while holding her and staring at it:

And, sneer:

Don’t let this one fool you. She’s about 30 seconds away from being able to crawl and subsequently lay waste to everything in her known universe:

And those pursed lips say, “WHAT!?”

A nice feature to have in a baby dress. If she’s ever stranded somewhere far away from my mammaries, she can stuff this bad boy down her pie hole and have all the sustenance she needs:

No matter how tempting she may appear, this baby should not be eaten:

Not even her feets:

Ask me if I’m worried about failure to thrive:

When people say that someone looks “too innocent” they’re talking about this picture but she’s IV REAL yo:

And she carries the family genetic long-tongue disorder. We try not to hold it against her:

And one last piece of evidence that we really do need to feed her more:

What do you think?

The FTC is in the process of placing new standards on bloggers who review products for compensation. They do not distinguish between monetary compensation and compensation by way of product samples. I’m not sure if product samples that are then given away as prizes will be included in this forbidden zone of review topics. I have done this several times in the past , reviewed a product for my blog and then passed along the review copy to my readers in the form of a giveaway.

I’m all about full disclosure. If Laylee were providing me monetary compensation to blog about how cute she looked in her ballet recital, I’d for SURE let you know. It’s kind of the other way around though. I think I paid about 3 million dollars to see her in that green tutu for 5 minutes and it was worth every penny.

If a company is compensating me to write about their products, I sure as heck am not going to act like I just happened to discover this lovely $200 set of maternity clothes by happenstance. Your trust is more important to me than that. But if I gush about it, the gushing is sincere.

This blog is primarily the documented journey of my life as a mother, a woman and an attempted humorist. Within those roles, there are often products I use and love and want to tell you about. Sometimes I do. Nearly every day I am also offered free products to talk about on my blog. I say “no” to the VAST majority of these offers either because I don’t think I’ll like the product, I feel like my blog is turning into something too commercial (It was never meant to be a “product review” site.) or because I just don’t feel like doing it that day.

My policy is this —

I will never review a product for monetary compensation. I personally believe that being paid cash to endorse a product on a personal blog is not in line with my values or the intent of this writing outlet.

I will never accept free product with the understanding that I will write a positive review about the product. First of all, I try not to accept a product unless I think there is a good chance I will really like it and want to tell my readers about it. On the few occasions that I have received a product I did not particularly like, I have either offered to send it back to the company, given it away with no review attached hoping someone else would like it, or given a review that points out its failings.

Where book reviews are concerned, I do not talk about books I do not like unless I’m trying to offer a buyer-beware type of warning. I do not always point out that a particular book was sent to me by Harper Collins or some other publisher as a review copy, because of the low price of the items and the frequency with which they are sent to me, but I only review about 1 in 10 books sent to me. I don’t want to waste my time talking about a book that I wouldn’t recommend anyway. Now you know. Some of the books I review are sent to me by authors, book publishers or publicity firms. I will give honest reviews regardless of how I obtained the book.

The practice of receiving something, reviewing it and then giving it (or one of its clones) away has three benefits:

1. I can give an accurate review of a product only if I actually get my hands on it and try it out. Isn’t it nice to hear that I wore those maternity clothes and washed them a ton and they still didn’t ball or pill?

2. When my readers get free stuff, I usually get a boost in readership, which I like.

3. I love to get great free stuff and therefore love to give it away. Isn’t it so much more fun to plan and pick out the gifts you’ll give for Christmas than to see what you’re going to get. I, like Oprah before me, really enjoy finding something great and giving it away to someone who’ll love it. I believe my serotonin levels rise when someone who desperately needs a stroller gets one for free because I was able to give it away on my blog.

So there you have it. All reviews and giveaways on this blog express my actual and true opinions. If I say I really like something, I really really like it. I do not pretend to be an expert in consumer safety so if your little Jimmy wins a trike on this site and then the handlebars fall off, resulting in catastrophic facial injury, I am not liable for his sad demise. I am not Consumer Reports or an independent safety testing agency. I did not, for example, attempt to light my maternity clothes on fire to see if they would burst into flame.

I just periodically want to tell you about stuff I like.

And the blogging is slim. There’s just so much going on around here. Who can find the time to record it? Therefore I will offer you a photographic essay to explain my absence from the sphere of blogism.

The kids have started swimming lessons and they’re in a class together, although we’ve had to skip twice this week due to the near-death plague ravaging their bodies. This is probably for the best since at the last lesson Magoo’s face nearly exploded and it’s such a cute face, I’d like to keep it intact.

We’ve been cavorting with pirates.

Running all around.

Eating more than we should.

Bonding as a family.

And going on late night walks around our neighborhood in the perfect Puget Sound summer weather.

I’ll totally have more time for blogging when the school year starts and I’m teaching the youth at church, serving as the co-communications board member for the PTA, teaching at Magoo’s co-op preschool, running SeattleMomBlogs.com, and working on my other writing projects.

I have so much to tell you but honestly I’d rather just ask you for a band-aid. My feet are SHREDDED from all the cute shoes I’ve been wearing around the city. It seems that everything less than 5 miles away in New York is considered “close” and people just hoof it all over the city to save on cab fare. This would have been fine if I’d stuck with the white tennis shoes but I swapped them out for heels, heels, heels and I’m paying the price for my fabulousness. Mir hooked me up with several band-aids this morning but they’re failing miserably at this point. I’m not sure what kind of adhesive they use in Georgia but it doesn’t adhese as well as I’d like.

Still, I’d rather wear a non-sticky band-aid from Mir than a proper Northern band-aid any day. She is that rad. The first time I met her 2 years ago, I was providing her with a band-aid to help with what I believe was an unfortunate shaving incident.

Speaking of shaving, when I asked the lady at the deli next to our hotel if she had a razor for sale, she said, “Like for shaving?” and pantomimed running a razor across her chin and cheek. “Yes,” I replied. “Perhaps I didn’t pluck well enough,” I mused.

My blisteringly fabulous shoes were a topic of discussion at the closing keynote session today. Earlier in the day Elisa Camhort Page (who needs to stop adding names) commented on their cuteness and like any savvy shopping woman I smiled proudly and told her, “SIX BUCKS!” These little babies were on clearance at Fred Meyer and I liked them so much that I picked up an extra pair in a random size to give away to the first lucky size 10 Cinderella I came across.

So during Elisa’s closing session interview of The Budget Fashionista, she shared my story and I got to stand up and show off my bargain to a room full of bloggers and business people. Sweet. You’ve got to love a women’s conference. And I did. I loved the conference.

I was speaking on a panel with Method and A Squared Group about their Detox Seattle program, coming soon to a city near you, and I didn’t know quite what to expect from a blogging business conference. I blog but I’m not a business, although I do work with them from time to time in my blogging endeavors.

The conference was much more intimate than BlogHer’s main event and I felt like I really got to spend time building relationships that I had started with waves in passing at other conferences. The pace was good and there was a ton of information to absorb about good blogging practices, building buzz, working with marketing firms and businesses and what kind of wipes to use for your potty-training toddler.

My panel went really well, a case study on using social media as part of a successful marketing campaign. (Click here for the live blog. I’m case study #4) Method really did everything right in Seattle, a personal, sincere, respectful pitch, a great product, something valuable in exchange for my time, and excellent relationship building and follow up. Besides all that, every person we’ve met from Method and their marketing firm have been amazing people, people you want to hang out with, people you want to stay up all night giggling with and braiding each other’s hair while dancing to Milli Vanilli cassette tapes. (If they ever ask you to engage in those activities, accept their offer without delay.)

I had fun up there because I had a positive topic to speak on, my fellow panelists were rad, and the attendees were intelligent, positive, encouraging and engaging. (If they ever ask you to speak at BlogHer Business, accept their offer without delay.)

I got a brief chance to experience the city, crazy cab drivers, touring Times Square with Gabby’s too nice relatives, visiting the Empire State building with my cousin who lives in New York and didn’t act at all annoyed to be briefly tour around with me. She even humored me by taking one of those little bike trailers back to my hotel when we had a tough time hailing a cab. For 10 dollars, a very friendly and superhumanly strong man shuttled us for 10 blocks, being careful to swerve too close to moving vehicles and laugh at our reactions. I suppose near-death is part of the fun of the experience and he expects a bigger tip for taking you to the edge of safety without dropping you off the cliff.

In an attempt to increase the frequency with which I invite strange foreigners to my hotel room, I had a nice chat with Sarah, whom I see becoming a great friend and collaborator. She is really someone worth knowing and not just because of the accent or the fact that I’m hoping she’ll show me around next time I’m in London.

The main message I’d leave with marketers is that bloggers write about experiences. If you can give them a great experience with your product or service, chances are they will write about it because it’s part of their life and they want to talk about their life. By in large they do not want to talk about your potato chips or premium shoe laces. They want to talk about their life. If you can find a creative way to make your brand a part of their life in a mutually beneficial way with an experience attached, chances of getting your message out are greater. If a blog is a representation of me, then I’m not going to write about something unless it reflects who I am and what I want to be associated with. So choose carefully who you market to and find a way to partner with them, rather than expecting complimentary advertising.

Now I have one last thing. As I was walking through the airport this afternoon, I caught my reflection in a mirror and noticed that the back of my skirt was caught in my laptop bag and my back-ish half was hanging all kinds of out. I don’t know how long I’d been like that, but I’d been walking around for at least 10 minutes with my bags before I noticed it. For the love of human dignity, if you see someone walking around like that, let them know, I BESEECH YOU!

It’s time again for the most fun ever. Please take a few minutes to fill out this reader survey. It helps my advertising network sell ad space on the site if they can tell Tillamook that all my readers eat cheese 3 times a day and other such nonsense. When results come in, I’ll type them up so you can see who else is reading along with you.