The Babies of BlogHer: The Second Annual Round-Up
In the second of what I hope to be an annual series of posts, I pay tribute to the Babies of BlogHer. Last year, I attended my first Blogher conference, and I marveled about how I’d never attended a conference with babes-in-arms. I spent twenty years working in the tech industry, where women at conferences were definitely in the minority. Babies? Fuhgedaboutit!
How appropriate that the first pic I snapped was of a doula – @outtajo aka of JoGreepChildBirth
As I blogged then,
Much has been written about BlogHer. How over-the-top everything was. The big sponsors. The huge bags of swag. The blow-out parties. The larger-than-life amazing, inspirational speakers. The networking. It’s true – all of that was amazing.
But what really blew me away was something much smaller.
The babies. The babies of BlogHer.
They were everywhere you looked.
Though there were fewer than last year, the sight of all those gorgeous babies with their intrepid Mamas still blew me away.
One of the first Mommy-Baby duos I snapped, Jen from Baby Making Machine and her Lil’ J were gorgeous! Those flowers make Lil’ Baby J look like a tropical goddess! (She’s only a month old!)
This year, I tried to include name tags in photos so that I could link back to the Mamas’ sites, but I’ve still fallen short! If you can identify one of the anonymous Mamas, please leave a comment so we know who she is!
Beautiful red-headed Emily (of ??) with her little sleeping moppet.
When I asked why there seemed to be fewer babies than last year, I was told it was because of reports about a baby being bumped at Blogher ’09. What a shame. BlogHer is a great place for babies, and I hope to see even more of them at Blogher ’11 in San Diego! (Particularly BlogHer co-founder Jory des Jardins’ baby!)
Morra Aarons Mele, right, and The Mama Bee with her adorable baby
Did I spot your baby? What was it like to bring your baby to BlogHer? Would you recommend it to other Moms? Leave a comment and share!
And if I snapped your pic, and it’s not posted…check back. I’ll be adding more to the post (including my own tykes) but I want to get up some other posts too! Oh…and real work!
— Lynn
Copyright 2010 OrganicMania
Filed under Baby, Blog, Parenting | Wordpress Comments (5) |The Babies of BlogHer
Much has been written about BlogHer. How over-the-top everything was. The big sponsors. The huge bags of swag. The blow-out parties. The larger-than-life amazing, inspirational speakers. The networking. It’s true – all of that was amazing.
But what really blew me away was something much smaller.
The babies. The babies of BlogHer.
They were everywhere you looked.
I’m old enough to have graduated from college at a time when I thought I needed man-tailored suits, a leather briefcase, and short hair to make it in the Big Apple. My first byline was the androgenous “L.A. Miller,” lest I appeared like a “Southern Belle” for using my full name – Lynn Anne Miller.
I remember being one of the few women in the room at most of the 300 or so conferences I attended during my years in corporate marketing.
I’ve never, ever been to a conference with babies.
It was amazing.
Amazing to see women free to pursue their own interests, all while caring for their babies.
So now you know who I am. I was that woman running all over the place taking pictures of the babies of BlogHer. I wish I had captured them all. But here are eight of the wonderful babies of BlogHer, some pictured alongside their smiling mothers.
If you recognize the babies (or their mothers) please leave a comment so I can add a caption to each picture. (Or similarly, if you would like a picture to be removed, just let me know!)
This last picture is of my Big Boys and their Dad at the airport, soon after my return from Blogher. After looking at all those little babies, it made me realize that my boys truly are not babies any more. They’re growing up much too fast.
— Lynn
Copyright OrganicMania 2009
Filed under Blog, Parenting | Wordpress Comments (14) |Why I Hope the EWG is Wrong
No one makes a habit of displaying the inside of their medicine cabinet. But I’m doing it to make a point.
The other night I took my skeptical husband to watch the filming of what’s being billed as “ ‘Inconvenient Truth’ for environmental health.” The Environmental Working Group’s President, Ken Cook, has presented “10 Americans” to countless groups across the country, and it’s even available on the web. But at this filming at DC’s Source Theatre, the EWG captured the reaction of a group of Washingtonians who gathered to hear that:
• 82,000 chemicals were declared safe for use in household and personal care products with little or no data to support their safety;
• the US has the highest cancer rate in the industrialized world;
• industrial chemicals are showing up in the womb. In other words, embryos are being exposed to chemicals in the mother’s body before birth;
• chemical exposures in people are increasingly associated with a range of serious diseases and conditions from childhood cancer, to autism, ADHD, learning deficits, infertility, and birth defects.
So why am I showing you my medicine cabinet? I’m like most Moms – my heart is “deep green,” but my buying patterns are a lighter shade of green. The items I buy organic and green are those that my family consumes most often, particularly those items that are most often used by my children. But we still buy plenty of conventional products (although we try to use them sparingly).
When I first learned about the linkages between probable human carcinogens and everyday personal care and household products, I was shocked. That’s why I reached out to industry representatives to get some reassurances, as you can read here. And their reaction? While they spend hundreds of thousands to court Mom bloggers at BlogHer and other conferences and launch fancy viral advertising campaigns, they still haven’t answered these three simple questions I posed here.
– What is your stance on the Kid Safe Chemical Act?
– What do you think about the adverse affects of long term exposure to the thousands of chemicals used in personal care products?
– Is this issue even being discussed at the industry level, through groups like the Personal Products Council?
In fact, as I blogged here, the Industry reps did everything they could to discredit the Moms asking these questions.
So now you know why I hope the EWG is wrong. Because like so many of you, I still use a lot of these products.
And as for my skeptical husband?
As he put it after watching Ken Cook in action,
“DDT used to be called safe too.”
Watch the video yourself and tell me what you think.
If you want to do something now that you’ve seen this video, visit the EWG’s Action Page.
And please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts!
Lynn
Copyright OrganicMania 2009
Filed under Cancer, Green Charities, Green moms, Organic Personal Care Products | Wordpress Comments (15) |BlogHERs, Green Moms, and Film
People who know me “in the real world” know I’m not shy. You can still tell that I was the girl voted “most talkative” in my high school class! Yet when it comes to the blogosphere, I haven’t always been my normal gregarious self. I’ve been ribbed about not having a picture up on Twitter, and for trying to pass myself off as Catherine Zeta Jones here on OrganicMania.
There’s something special about connecting with other like-minded souls though the power of our words. When I read blogs, I think about the blogger’s sentiments. I don’t look at someone who may or may not share my race, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, or age.
Yet as I prepared for BlogHER DC and my first face-to-face meeting with some of my Green Mom’s Carnival friends, I reverted to the old stereotype that I poked fun of in this post, BlogHERs Worrying About What to Wear. Of course, I had more to worry about than just meeting a bunch of cybersisters for the first time – I was also self-conscious about appearing on camera for noted documentary film maker Min Sook Lee’s upcoming film.
I couldn’t avoid the camera this time. This was something different – something worth doing. Min Sook is trying to raise awareness of the toxic products marketed to the most innocent among us – our babies.
She first spoke to Sommer Poquette aka Green & Clean Mom about her film project, and Sommer suggested that Min fly to DC’s BlogHER conference to meet several of the other “Green Moms Carnival” Moms. Although we email each other on a near-daily basis, it was the first time we had all met each other – Jenn Savedge of The Green Parent, Jennifer Taggert, aka SmartMama, Diane MacEachern of Big Green Purse fame, Jess, formerly of SurelyYouNest and late of Green Phone Booth, and Sommer.
So I put aside my fears and put on my lead-free lipstick and marched out to the conference. We enjoyed BlogHER and met up for dinner afterwards, joined by C. Levine of FoodieTots.
It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in my journey as a mother. These women are so bright, and so committed to making a difference and to empowering other women to make the right decisions for the health of their children.
And as I looked around the BlogHER conference room at all the women I didn’t know, I smiled at a few of the BlogHERs. As I looked at their faces, I wondered about what was going on inside their heads. What words of wisdom would pour out of their blogs the next day as they reflected on BlogHER?
In some sense, I wish I hadn’t been so preoccupied with Min and the cameras – I missed much of the conference as Min filmed The Smart Mama testing Big Boy’s toys for lead. (Be sure to read Jess’s great post about what turned up in the lead testing). But next year, there will be another BlogHER. The opportunity to be a part of Min’s film and to connect with these very special “Green Moms” was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Just one more example of how blogging truly has changed my life.
— Lynn
Copyright 2008 OrganicMania
Filed under Green moms, Parenting | Wordpress Comments (10) |
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