Tag Archives: Lifetime Moms

May 18 2014

A Big Bunch of Stuff for My Birthday

suttonbenchIt’s been a busy couple of weeks, so I wanted to make sure a few things didn’t get lost in the shuffle:

  • My eBook is now available! Kindle, iBooks, Nook, you name it. If you play Candy Crush on a device, you can also read “Mommy Man” on it. See if you can get 3 stars on Chapter 1!
  • The amazing Amy Wruble of Carriage Before Marriage conducted a really fun interview with me at Lifetime Moms. Check it out here and read what one of my proudest moments with my kids was.
  • I wrote a piece for Scary Mommy last week called “The B-Plus Parent: 5 Perfectly Acceptable Reasons to Shout at Your Kids“. It got over 22,000 shares (that’s not a typo — twenty-two THOUSAND!), and if you haven’t checked it out yet, I think it’s a fun read.
  • Another belated link, but this post from my friend Brent at Designer Daddy about gay dads and Mother’s Day is worth reading, even if you have 51 weeks before the next Mother’s Day.
  • This blog got a very nice review and a spot on the blogroll of NY Metro Parents.
  • Through A Glass, Darkly raved about my book: “I really did laugh and cry while I was reading it. I read this on Mother’s Day and it was a perfect reminder of the miracle of life.”
  • You may have noticed on the sidebar, but my DC event on May 23rd has been postponed until later notice. It should be rescheduled for later in the summer, and I’ll be posting here when I know the new date.
  • Apropos of nothing, that picture above is one of my current faves. I did not ask Sutton to pose for that picture, and I certainly did not tell her to wink at the camera. She just jumped up on that bench, struck the pose and asked me to snap it. So I did.
  • It’s my birthday! Yes, today! The best present you can give me would be to buy my book for yourself or someone you know who is as cool as you. And if you’ve already read it, maybe you could write me a nice review online somewhere. Aw, shucks, you shouldn’t have!
Jun 13 2013

Lifetime Moms Post – and Twitter Party!

 

Mens Room Sign

Mens Room Sign (Photo credit: mrkathika)

I’ve written a few posts for this blog that I just can’t bear to reread. I think I’ve pointed out before that #1 on that list is this one. Just remembering that hospital episode turns my insides to instant slush. But I think this post about a bathroom nightmare I went through with the kids may be a close second on the ones I’d rather not revisit.

 

I want to say that our public bathroom experiences have gotten better since then, but it’s more like the horrors have morphed and now manifest in slightly different ways. So, in thinking about what I wanted for Father’s Day, I tried to imagine what the dream dad-friendly public men’s room might look like. That became my new Lifetime Moms post, My Dream of the Ultimate Dad-Friendly Mens Room. Check it out… but I’ll warn you – it’s not pretty.

Also, it’s kind of last-minute but I’ll be taking part in a Father’s Day-themed Twitter Party with the Lifetime Moms crew, tonight (Thursday, June 13, 2013, that is) at 9pm Eastern Time. Make sure you follow my new Twitter account for this blog, located @MommyManBlog, because that’s where I’ll be partying. You’ll also want to follow Lifetime Moms, as well as my fellow partiers Melissa Chapman, John Kinnear and Doug Latham, as well as keeping an eye on the hashtag #lifetimemomsdads

Did I mention there will be fabulous prizes? I’m assuming I’m not eligible for these prizes, which makes them a little less fabulous, but just for me. They’ll still be fabulous for you.

 

May 8 2013

5 Ways My Kids Have It Better — and My New Twitter Account!

kidshaveitbetterMy new post at Lifetime Moms was inspired by the last time my kids got sick. It was awful, of course, because it’s always awful when kids are sick. But it wasn’t nearly as awful as it was supposed to be, because their medicine came in delicious candy flavors. (I guess someone at the drug companies finally took Mary Poppins to heart.)

It was a relief to me as a parent, because who wants to deal with giving their kids medicine? But as a former kid, I was kind of pissed off. Lucky little squirts don’t know how good they have it! So I came up with a few other ways my kids are living the sweet life, at the risk of being labeled a grumpy old man. Check the Lifetime Moms site to read the whole thing.

And as always, if you have any of your own to add, leave me a comment over there.

Also, I’ve started a second twitter account, @MommyManBlog. In theory, it’s going to be the place where I post anything specific to the blog, so it’ll be lighter on my personal “jokes” and observations. (I’ll still link my blog posts on both accounts, though. I’m no slacker when it comes to self-promotion.)

If you want to choose one to follow, stick with @WhyJerryWhy. That won’t be changing. The big difference is that I’m going to follow all the @MommyManBlog followers back. I’ve seen enough of these “I follow back!” people to wonder if I’m the douchebag who’s been twittering wrong all this time, because I’ve tried to keep my feed to a level I can actually keep up with.

So now I have one feed I’ll actually keep up with and one where I just follow whoever is nice enough to give me a follow. Hey, I get it. I like getting that “new follower” email notification, too.

I started writing a whole blog post about my impressions of Twitter etiquette, but I decided to scrap it, because trust me, that one really made me sound like a grumpy old man.

Feb 24 2013

Past Posts Revisited: How to Talk to Your Children About Gay Parents, by a Gay Parent

therealthingnews-com-au

I’m always happy when someone reposts my piece How to Talk to Your Children About Gay Parents, by a Gay Parent. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve posted here, and I tend to hear back some really amazing things as well as gain some super cool new followers every time it gets spread to some other corner of the internet.

Previously, the piece was featured on sites like the Today Show, Lifetime Moms and the Good Men Project. Just this week, two more very popular sites reblogged it, garnering it a bunch of fresh traffic. First, it ran on one of my favorite parenting blogs, Scary Mommy. If you don’t already know Scary Mommy, you should go there right now. It’s full of hilarity, top-notch writing and all kinds of wonderful things.

Scary Mommy has amazing readers, who’ve so far shared my post almost 10,000 times on Facebook(!) One person who read it over there works for the popular Australian news site News.com.au, and she asked if she could rerun it on that site as well.

They apparently put it on the front page, which brought it a lot of attention. If you read the comments on that site, you’ll see the response was not quite as positive as it’s been on other sites. I have no idea if News.com.au’s readership leans conservative or if this is representative of how most people Down Under view families like mine. Either way, I’m really grateful they ran my post because I’d rather this topic be discussed than ignored, and at least I put the subject in a few people’s minds.

My original piece wasn’t intended to defend my family or to convert homophobes. (For that, try this post instead.) It was aimed at sympathetic straight parents. However, to the detractors on news.com.au and elsewhere, I’ll say this:

Families with gay parents aren’t going away. You can say “Every child needs a mother and a father” all you want, but at some point, you’ll need to accept that you live in a world where not every child is going to have one. They might have none — or two. The only family you get to assemble is your own. Do with it what you will. You can either try to live peacefully with those who make different choices or remain cranky and increasingly isolated. You can tsk, tsk and say “Those poor kids,” but your pity and bigotry does more to harm my children than having two dads who think they’re the greatest kids in the world ever could.

I’ve read plenty of comments, on the other hand, that made valid criticisms. In the hopes that my piece will continue to be shared, I’ve decided to do a few minor revisions to take those into account.

The first is my mockery of the word “queer” in this line from the original piece:

You could also use the word “queer”, I guess, but then your kids and I will just think you’re a pretentious dweeb.

Most people, even those who self-identify as “queer” seem to have taken it as the harmless joke it was meant to be. Others took serious offense, and that’s something I never intended. The theme of the piece is tolerance and inclusiveness, and if anyone felt slighted by that line, I apologize. I admit my impression of the word “queer” as being pretentious dweebery is probably 20 years out of date. People self-identify as “queer” for a variety of very valid personal reasons, and I don’t want to make light of that.

I’ve removed that joke from the post. The Brainy Smurf joke is a better closer anyway.

Second, a few people have taken issue with me saying, “Every child ends up with the right parents for them” when we know how many kids in this world are abused, neglected or otherwise mistreated by their parents. It’s a fair point, so I’ve changed that statement to “It’s love that makes a family”. That way you can help explain nontraditional families without also validating abusive ones.

Lastly, I made a few minor tweaks just to make the piece more evergreen and universal. I never expected people on other continents would read my blog, and not all of them know what Grand Central Station is.

If you want to reblog the post from this point on, I ask that you use the newer version. Just to restate my reblogging policy:

Anyone is welcome to repost anything on this site anywhere, provided they credit me and link back to the original post on my domain. (Something along the lines of this would be great: “This piece, by Jerry Mahoney, originally appeared on his blog “Mommy Man: Adventures of a Gay Superdad“. I request that you use the “Contact Me” page to let me know when you’re going to reblog something. I love to check out my work on other people’s sites, however big or small their audience, and I may even be able to send some traffic your way by sharing your link.

To share any of my posts on your social networks, just click the corresponding button (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) at the bottom of the post and it does everything necessary for you.

If you quote excerpts, please link back to the full piece.

If you link me without reposting the entire piece and say, “Hey, go read this guy’s site! It’s great!”, then you’re awesome and I like you.

Aw, shucks. I like all of you! And I still can’t wait to visit Australia someday.

Nov 13 2012

More Mommy Man!

It’s official.  I’m a mommy blogger!

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be doing occasional posts for Lifetime Moms, a really great site with a fantastically funny group of contributors — and starting today, me!  I’m the first dad to blog for them.  Take that, glass ceiling!

They’ll be rerunning some of my favorite posts from the past, plus I’ll be contributing some new stuff exclusively for them, so I hope you’ll click over and check it out.

This will still be my primary blog, and I’m planning to keep posting here just as frequently as I always have.  So stick around here, too.

But until my next post goes up on this site, I hope you’ll go over there and read my first post for them.  It’s called 5 Ways My Kid Have Improved My Adult Conversations.  Hope you like it!