On Sunday, I had the great pleasure of meeting and hanging out with some great local mommies.

To be honest, this was really the first time I got together with a group of moms since I had my daughter. Most of my friends don’t yet have kids and those who do, don’t live close-by.

Since I’m a working mami, I don’t often get to share in the “typical” mommy outings that a lot of stay at home moms attend, such as play dates, mommy & me time, and other mommy meetups.

And, since my daughter doesn’t attend day-care, but is instead taken care of by her abuela, I don’t even get to meet other moms with kids her age.

So when I heard that Ted Murphy of Izea and Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging.com got together with the folks at Seaworld to offer some local moms a chance to hang out for the day, I jumped!

Want to hear the best part about it all?

They were all bloggers too! Ok, that’s probably the second-best part about it.

The BEST part of it was that it was FREE!

Who did I hang out with?

• @missbritt – Miss Britt
• @morningsidemom – Morningside Mom
• @Military_Mom – Blog 4 Mom
• @eggmarketing – The Marketing Eggspert

All great women, with great families.

The kids were well behaved and the husbands did a pretty good job too. I have to give a special thank you to my husband who was very supportive and took one for the team when he climbed up into the nets & tunnels in Shamu’s Happy Harbor so that the other mommies and I could have a chance to chat.

It was a very fun day and I had a great time sharing with other mommies who had very similar interests, complaints, and celebrations.

Thanks again @tedmurphy and @emom!

Miss Britt and I
image via @eggmarketing

SAHM – Stay at home mom.

WAHM – Work at home mom.

WOHM – Work outside the home mom.

There are many labels out there to classify just what type of mami you are.

I am what you would consider a WOHM, since I work full-time outside the home. I’m also commonly referred to as a working mother.

However, Miss Britt (co-author of the Full Time, All the Time blog at Work It, Mom!) raises a good point in her post “Where are all the working dads?”

She writes:

Why is it that Working Mom is an identity all its own, with support groups and message boards and blogs and research – and Working Dad is little more than an after thought?

I have to admit that I’ve never really heard the term working dad and have not heard any dads classify themselves as one.

But…my husband…he’s a working dad. He struggles with many of the same issues I do in trying to find a balance between the work and home lives.

But, why is it different for men?

Read Miss Britt’s post and then come back to chime in with your thoughts in the comments below.

Image credit: Fathers, Work-Family Research

I am not your Modern Mami. And this is not my blog.

I am, in fact, Miss Britt and this is my blog. Which begs the question, what am I doing here?

As part of The Guest Post Challenge going on at my blog, Modern Mami has allowed me to post over here on the condition that I answer one question for her.

She asks, “Is raising a boy different from raising a girl?”

I am uniquely qualified to handle this question because I am a girl and know several boys. Also, I have a son and a daughter. One could say that I am raising them, or at the very least trying my best not to screw them up too badly.

The answer, dear Melanie, is:

Yes.

Most definitely, yes.

In fact, raising a girl is so different from raising a boy that it can leave you wondering if you have ever actually done this before because you quite clearly have no freaking CLUE what is going on even though you could have SWORN you have already been through this parenting stage not so long ago.

And the differences have absolutely nothing to do with what you had prepared yourself for. You came home and painted the nursery pink, only to find that your young daughter would tell you as soon as she could form the words how TOTALLY STUPID PINK IS!. You packed away the action figures and stocked up on Little Ponies and Polly Pockets, and were completely surprised to learn that I WANNA PLAY WITH A GUYZZZZ! WHERE IS MY GUYZZZZ???

And the only child whose been caught anywhere near that dollhouse set is your 8 year old son.

Oh yes, raising boys and girls is very different.

And not just because your expectations are different.

Well, maybe MOSTLY because your expectations are different.

But also because you suddenly become acutely aware of what the world will expect of your kids – and how THOSE are so vastly different for each of them. One will be pushed to grow up big and strong, while the other will be praised for being beautiful and charming. One will be allowed to well up with tears over dang near anything, while the other one will be told to suck it up if their emotions ever overwhelm them.

Suddenly you find yourself preparing two people, with entirely separate personalities for two starkly different worlds – all under the same roof under the constraints of one set of rules.

Raising boys is a challenge. Raising girls is also a challenge.

But raising boys AND girls together is a completely different challenge all its own.