by Maman Aya (USA) | Nov 15, 2011 | Family, Family Travel, Holiday, Husband, Motherhood, Travel, USA, Working Mother
So here I am, on vacation with my family (down at the Jersey Shore for those of you familiar with the awful TV show with the same name), enjoying, or supposed to be enjoying, the beach.
We were lucky enough to be able to find an apartment for rent, which is right next to the beach. This is so convenient, since we don’t have to worry about eating out every single meal while on vacation (which as you moms know, is not as healthy as preparing the food at home). It’s also convenient for when the little ones are tired, and we can just call it a day and walk up to our apartment.
The problem is, I find that I am spending more time in this apartment than on the beach, usually with one, if not both, of my children. In fact the only “alone time” I have had since we arrived, is a two-block walk to buy some bread for lunch the other day. (more…)
Maman Aya is a full-time working mother of 2 beautiful children, a son who is 6 and a daughter who is two. She is raising her children in the high-pressure city of New York within a bilingual and multi-religious home.
Aya was born in Canada to a French mother who then swiftly whisked her away to NYC, where she grew up and spent most of her life. She was raised following Jewish traditions and married an Irish Catholic American who doesn’t speak any other language (which did not go over too well with her mother), but who is learning French through his children. Aya enjoys her job but feels “mommy guilt” while at work. She is lucky to have the flexibility to work from home on Thursdays and recently decided to change her schedule to have “mommy Fridays”, but still feels torn about her time away from her babies. Maman Aya is not a writer by any stretch of the imagination, but has been drawn in by the mothers who write for World Moms Blog. She looks forward to joining the team and trying her hand at writing!
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by Kirsten Doyle (Canada) | Nov 11, 2011 | Canada, Childhood, Education, Family, Holiday, Motherhood, Tragedy, World Events
The sounds of my son’s footsteps echo as he runs from one end of the enormous space to the other. From time to time he stops, distracted by the sight of yet another wondrous artifact of history.
After a pause, he’s off again, barely able to contain his excitement at seeing everything in this place. And then, finally, a magical moment arrives. He is taken up a stairway, and at the top, his father lifts him up and lowers him into the cockpit of one of the planes.
This isn’t just any place, and it isn’t just any plane. We are at the Canadian Air & Space Museum looking at the World War II planes that were built in this very space back in its day as an aircraft manufacturing plant. The plane that my son is now seated in is a full-sized replica of the Avro Arrow, a plane that revolutionized Canadian aviation history before the government of the day abruptly pulled the plug on the project and ordered the entire beautiful fleet destroyed.
This museum—which pays tribute to Canada’s part in the war, thanks the veterans who came back, and honours those who didn’t—is about to go the same way as the Avro Arrow. It is being evicted, and the building which is itself an artifact of (more…)
Kirsten Doyle was born in South Africa. After completing university, she drifted for a while and finally washed up in Canada in 2000. She is Mom to two boys who have reached the stage of eating everything in sight (but still remaining skinny).
Kirsten was a computer programmer for a while before migrating into I.T. project management. Eventually she tossed in the corporate life entirely in order to be a self-employed writer and editor. She is now living her best life writing about mental health and addictions, and posting videos to two YouTube channels.
When Kirsten is not wrestling with her kids or writing up a storm, she can be seen on Toronto's streets putting many miles onto her running shoes. Every year, she runs a half-marathon to benefit children with autism, inspired by her older son who lives life on the autism spectrum.
Final piece of information: Kirsten is lucky enough to be married to the funniest guy in the world.
Connect with her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Be sure to check out her YouTube channels at My Gen X Life and Word Salad With Coffee!
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by Sophie Walker (UK) | Oct 31, 2011 | Holiday, Motherhood, Special Needs, UK
There’s one day every year to which Grace counts down with unparalleled shiny-eyed fervour. It’s not Christmas, or her birthday, or the start of the summer holidays, though of course all of these are also proceeded by repeated questioning, date-checking and suppressed thrills.
Her anticipation of this year’s event started precisely one day after last year’s event. On that day Grace drifted dreamily past me, trailing her fingers along the furniture, her mind turning on internal images of the night before. I asked her if she was alright: she barely heard me.
When I went upstairs later to monitor her progress towards bed, I found her at the sink in the bathroom, gazing into the mirror at herself, her tortoiseshell eyes lit with the amber light of her imaginings. As I entered the room she turned to me and said, as though continuing a conversation started much earlier: “… so then, Mummy, next year I can be – .” (more…)
Writer, mother, runner: Sophie works for an international news agency and has written about economics, politics, trade, war, diplomacy and finance from datelines as diverse as Paris, Washington, Hong Kong, Kabul, Baghdad and Islamabad. She now lives in London with her husband, two daughters and two step-sons.
Sophie's elder daughter Grace was diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome several years ago. Grace is a bright, artistic girl who nonetheless struggles to fit into a world she often finds hard to understand. Sophie and Grace have come across great kindness but more often been shocked by how little people know and understand about autism and by how difficult it is to get Grace the help she needs.
Sophie writes about Grace’s daily challenges, and those of the grueling training regimes she sets herself to run long-distance events in order to raise awareness and funds for Britain’s National Autistic Society so that Grace and children like her can blossom. Her book "Grace Under Pressure: Going The Distance as an Asperger's Mum" was published by Little, Brown (Piatkus) in 2012. Her blog is called Grace Under Pressure.
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by Lady Jennie (France) | Oct 27, 2011 | Culture, France, International, Language, Motherhood, Parenting, Relocating, Travel, World Interviews, World Moms Blog Writer Interview, Writing
Where in the world do you live? And, are you from there?
I live just outside of Paris, France.
I am American and grew up in upstate New York, where I attended a small state school. On a whim, I decided to study abroad in Avignon, where I contracted “the travel bug.” From college, I moved to Taiwan for a year, then Manhattan for a year, to Paris for a year, back to Taiwan for another year, and finally back to Manhattan where I traveled to Asia regularly on business and then met my husband. We took a year’s sabbatical in East Africa before having our daughter and moving home. (His home, that is, now mine).
So I feel like I’m from a bit of everywhere.
What language(s) do you speak?
I speak English, of course. I speak French fluently with a slight accent and lots of charming grammatical errors that endear me to my French listeners; or at least that’s what I like to tell myself. I speak enough Mandarin to translate for the woman whose granddaughter attends the same music theory and classical dance classes as my daughter at the Conservatory. This is accomplished with (more…)
Jennie has lived in Taiwan, New York City and East Africa, and currently lives just outside of Paris with her French husband. She speaks rudimentary Mandarin, passable French and has had a varied career in Human Resources, Asian financial sales and humanitarian work. She is currently a mother to three young children, with writing and teaching gigs on the side, and blogs at A Lady in France.
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by World Moms Blog | Oct 15, 2011 | Cooking, Eva Fannon, Exercise, Family, Family Travel, Gardening, Hobby, Husband, International, Kids, Language, Living Abroad, Motherhood, Multicultural, Parenting, Relocating, Saturday Sidebar, Social Good, The Alchemist, Travel, Working Mother, World Voice
This week’s Saturday Sidebar Question comes from World Moms Blog writer Maggie Ellison. She wanted our writers to look ahead and asked them to finish this sentence,
“In five years, I want to …..”
Read on to see how some of our World Moms responded.
Dr. Lanham of Arizona, USA writes:
“In five years I will be impacting lives by being a syndicated columnist managing my family’s careers all while owning and running my teen nonprofit Hodge Podge the Teen Cafe™.” (more…)
World Moms Blog is an award winning website which writes from over 30 countries on the topics of motherhood, culture, human rights and social good. Over 70 international contributors share their stories from around the globe, bonded by the common thread of motherhood and wanting a better world for their children.
World Moms Blog was listed by Forbes Woman as one of the "Best 100 Websites for Women 2012 & 2013" and also called a "must read" by the NY Times Motherlode in 2013. Our Senior Editor in India, Purnima Ramakrishnan, was awarded the BlogHer International Activist Award in 2013.
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by Dee Harlow (Laos) | Oct 4, 2011 | Culture, Education, Family Travel, International, Motherhood, Parenting, Relocating, Travel, Twins, USA, World Interviews, World Moms Blog Writer Interview, Writing
Where in the world do you live? And, are you from there?
I was born in Thailand and have lived in so many places that there is not one place that I can genuinely say I am “from.”
At this moment, I live in northern Virginia but it is really only a pit stop until next July when my husband and I, and our two kids, will go live in Vientiane, Laos for two years. And this is after having just lived in Mexico for two years…thus is life in the US Foreign Service.
What language(s) do you speak?
I speak Thai like a six year old, English like a native speaker, can recall some Uzbek, trying to retain Spanish, and now learning Lao.
When did you first become a mother?
I gave birth to my twin son and daughter the day before I turned 42 in 2009.
Are you a stay-at-home mom or do you work?
I have been a stay-at-home mom since my children were born up until three weeks ago when I started Lao language training at the Foreign Service Institute. (more…)
One of Dee’s earliest memories was flying on a trans-Pacific flight from her birthplace in Bangkok, Thailand, to the United States when she was six years old. Ever since then, it has always felt natural for her to criss-cross the globe. So after growing up in the northeast of the US, her life, her work and her curiosity have taken her to over 32 countries. And it was in the 30th country while serving in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan that she met her husband. Together they embarked on a career in international humanitarian aid working in refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan, and the tsunami torn coast of Aceh, Indonesia.
Dee is now a full-time mother of three-year old twins and continues to criss-cross the globe every two years with her husband who is in the US Foreign Service. They currently live in Vientiane, Laos, and are loving it! You can read about their adventures at Wanderlustress.
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So here I am, on vacation with my family (down at the Jersey Shore for those of you familiar with the awful TV show with the same name), enjoying, or supposed to be enjoying, the beach.
