Meet The Mid-Century Modern Moms

Daisy

"Daisy"is married (20+ years) and mother of two lovely semi-adults known in the blog world as Amigo and La Petite. Amigo is 16 and therefore knows it all, despite the challenges of being blind and having Asperger's syndrome, a high-functioning disorder on the autism spectrum.  La Petite is in college studying to be a journalist or photographer or both, so she knows even more than her brother. La Petite graciously allows her mother to post a few of her photos now and then, as long as mom gives her credit.

"Daisy"also blogs at Compost Happens and It's A Mother's Garden of Verses, at least she posts when she can in between writing lesson plans and correcting papers for her day job as an elementary teacher.

Margalit

Margalit is the single mother of two of the wackiest teenagers in the world, fraternal boy/girl twins born in 1992. The Boy is bipolar/ADHD/profoundly gifted and the Girl has a non-verbal learning disability (NVLD). When Margalit is not sobbing over another IEP glitch by the high school, she blogs at Outta My Mind With Worry, New England Mamas, and What was I Reviewing?  In another life, Margalit worked in the scintillating world of high technology where she first wrote User Manuals bound to put any insomniac to sleep. Rising up the ranks, she ended her career in technology as a company director in 2002, and is now a stay-at-home-mom. In her copious spare time Margalit enjoys gardening, reading, watching way too much TV, blogging, and annoying officious people everywhere. Margalit is also an educational advocate that helps parents of special needs children navigate the various school departments in the Greater Boston area. The founder of Mid-Century Modern Moms, Margalit is proud of her gray hair, wrinkles and bags under her eyes. She sees them all as being a badge won from parenting teenagers. Unlike every other parenting blogger, Margalit has no intention of ever writing a novel. She only likes to read them.

You pronounce her name Mar-ga-leet.

Ora      

Ora is the mid-40-something mama of Abe, who is 17 and Rose (call me Rosie) who is 14. Abe is a special needs kid, who is already full-adult size.  He's really smart, but lazy.  He is diagnosed PDD (on the autism spectrum), so he has emotional control issues on top of some learning disabilities. Writing is really hard for him, but he loves math and science.  He's currently a high school junior but due to hospitalizations has missed so much work he'll be repeating this school year at a residential school. Rosie is also very smart, lazy and has a mouth on her like you've never heard.  She is currently in 8th grade at a parochial school but will attend a high ranked public school next year for high school.

   

Ora is married to J, who is definitely the 3rd child in her house.  J has stage 4 cancer. Ora works  full-time at a job with very few other women in a scientific position at a large military industrial complex where she is not a war-monger. She's just a chemist.  She stays extra busy juggling her "three" kids medical and social appointments, looking and working towards their various futures and trying to find a little time in all of this to maintain her sanity (not to mention her weight).  As a group, she is in the sandwich generation- caught between taking care of her father as he gets older and taking care of her kids.  Ora says she's in the hamantashen generation- squeezed on 3 sides and oozing out the middle.

You pronounce her name Ore-a.

Nina

Nina is a recovering suburbanite and the recently divorced mother of Jaws (21) and Grumble (15). In 2003 Nina and her family relocated from Long Island, where she lived most of her life, to intown Atlanta.  She left behind aging parents and pretty much her entire family and support system.  From the moment she set foot in Atlanta, life took on a bizarre "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" quality.  On her fifth day in Atlanta, Nina was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma. Then she got better and relaunched her career. Then Jaws went off to college. Then Mex, (her ex, who is a rabbi) turned 50, had a classic mid-life meltdown and checked out of the marriage right after Grumble's bar mitzvah. 

As she tries on the life of a single southern belle, Nina is also documenting a city-wide project called The Beltline, which will bring together disparate neighborhoods of Atlanta.  Her day job is PR/marketing guru for a large non-profit. Nina watches way too much HGTV, loves live music, yoga and her wonderful new Atlanta friends. The Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts is her "happy place."  Nina blogs at Voted Off the Island.

Ilona

Once upon a time, Ilona was a teacher. She had the big white wedding, married Mr. Right and had three lovely children, who she homeschooled for the first few years. (Rationale: why leave her kids with someone else so she could teach other peoples' children?) She eventually decided that teaching prenatal classes and attending labours as a support person fit in better with her goals and schedule. Sadly, Mr. Right slowly but unstoppably morphed into Mr. Mistake, and one day Ilona found herself delighted to be single once more.

Delighted, but also largely income-free. She turned to her parenting skills to make money, and now runs a successful home daycare. A couple of years into that venture, she met Mr. Really Right, who came complete with five children of his own. After spending nine or so years in unwedded bliss, she finally agreed to marry him in the spring of 2007.

Their eight joint children range from 23 down to 13 years old; three live independently, 2 live full-time with Ilona and husband, and three split their time between households.

Oh, and you pronounce it ih-low-nah.

Janice

Janice was born in New Jersey many moons ago.  She ended up SE of Seattle by way of Michigan, Orange County, Ca, LaJolla, CA, to The OC again, then north to Washington State where she has stayed for over 18 years.  It still doesn't feel quite like home.  Janice has been married to McHub for over 21 years and is the mother of two teenage boys, BPB (19) and BBB (17).  She was a SAHM for 17 years before she went back to school fulltime.  Janice has earned her AA degree and will be entering the LPN program in September.  Janice spent her years at home sitting on the couch eating bonbons........NAW!  Janice was the queen of volunteering in the PTA, Little League, Kent Youth Soccer, room volunteer in both boys classrooms during elementary school and chaperoned dances at the junior high.  She also did 7 years of Bible Study Fellowship.  In her spare time before college Janice read about most everything.  She has at least 2000 books waiting in boxes to be unpacked, sometime in this century.  Her special interests are Holocaust history, psychology and most medical topics as she's a complete medi-geek. Janice blogs at Chasing Myself, and formerly blogged at Twist & Skewer.

Rowan

Rowan met a cute boy a long, long time ago, and the rest was, and still is, history. They got married and had two children, a girl named Leah who is twelve and a boy named Zach who is ten. After moving around the USA, including a couple of years in Cleveland and Sacramento, they landed in Rhode Island, and after 8 years there, are finally starting to call it "home". Rowan became a stay-at-home mom when her daughter was born, leaving the world of direct mail copywriting she had inhabited since graduating college. Every September she thinks about going back to work in an office, but realizes she'd have to hire her own maid/chauffeur/laundress/cook/personal assistant, (in other words, wife), to take over all the tasks she (mostly happily) does everyday.

Leah is her first-born, her beautiful tween daughter, a seventh-grader who presents Rowan with typical tween challenges, such as how to motivate Leah to do her best work in school, how to guide her through the treacherous teenage social-life waters, and how to get her to keep her room off the EPA toxic site list.

Rowan tries to count her blessings everyday, and realizes how lucky in life she is. She is looking forward to exploring the relationships between her and her children, and writing for an audience again.

Janet

Janet is a working wife and mom with a houseful of kids.

No, wait. Janet is a working mom whose houseful of kids is quickly emptying out. She has five of them (yes, five): son Drummer Man, 27; son Drama King, 24; son Z-man, 19; stepdaughter J-bear, 18; and daughter the Roo-girl, 14.

It's that last child who may be the death of her. Honestly, whose idea was it to birth a girl after all those boys??? Sometimes she is not sure what the heck she was thinking.

Janet has been in newspapers for more than 30 years and is sadly watching as a proud industry dies a painful death. She discovered blogging in July 2007 and has been chronicling the madcap adventures of her family ever since at From the Planet of Janet.

Mariah

Eventually Mariah will write her little autobiographical blurb. Until then, this is her placeholder.

Ali

Ali is the mother of two teenagers who she really enjoys, but who describe her as insane - affectionately of course.  Having lived in Sydney, Brisbane, and many rural towns in New South Wales, Australia, Ali settled in a coastal NSW city in 1998 with her husband.  Having thought her husband was the best company possible and that she had this happy family thing all sewn up, Ali was very disappointed in her husband when he suddenly skipped off to heaven in 2005 when her eldest child, Em, was 12 years and 3 months and her youngest, Davey, was 9 years 355 days old.  If only he'd shown some signs of ill health she may have had the foresight to insure his life!  As he didn't, she didn't, so now she's juggling full time working with dual parenting and just getting on with it really.

Ali would rather laugh than cry, but sometimes it's a very fine line between the two.

Blog-Antagonist

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