Blog

Are Mini-Muffins Sexy? by Corbin Lewars About eight years ago I walked into one of my favorite bookstores with my toddler boy and baby girl strapped to my chest. After choosing a couple of books about bugs, we stood in line to pay. On display near the cash register was a little novelty book called something along the lines of “mommy porn.” I squealed with delight! Finally, someone is talking about moms and sex. I was quickly dismayed to see what constituted as mommy porn was a man vacuuming a rug and a man folding laundry. My heart sank and my labia shriveled. Damn, that’s not sexy, I thought. And I’m insulted that someone assumes I would think it is. My husband at the time was probably home folding laundry at that moment and although I appreciated our equality (or somewhat equal, let’s be honest, does anyone really have an equal division of labor in their home?), it didn’t make me want to do a strip tease for him. I started thinking about our fear of combining the words “sexy” and “mother” and blogged and ranted about it for a few months. Need I remind you this was eight years [...]

In 2014, I wrote a controversial viral article for HuffPost Parents called 3-Year-Olds Are A**holes. The piece was satirical in nature. It allowed me the chance to voice my frustrations as the parent of a rambunctious three-year-old. I was having a challenging parenting day, where my daughter was not listening to anything I said. She refused to wear clothes, and had spilled at least five cups of water on the floor on purpose. I was at my wits end as a parents. We've all been there. That's what I wanted to communicate in writing 3-Year-Olds Are A**holes; the thoughts that go through your mind when you are having trouble getting your spirited 3-Year-Old to go along with your plan of putting clothes on and going outside. Naturally, with a controversial title, I have been attacked many times by people on the Internet. What the Internet failed to conceptualize is that this article was meant to be humorous in nature. It was meant to poke fun at the challenges of parenting. Parenting is the hardest thing I've ever done. When I began writing a parenting blog, I noticed the amount of blogs out there where moms felt the need brag about how [...]

I've Had A Headache My Whole Life by Sabrina Jonkhoff Eight years.  The longest relationship I have been in has lasted for eight years.  My headache has lasted longer than most things: braces, boyfriends, bad taste in music—they've never lasted this long.  But here I am, 23 years old and in the longest relationship of my life. My entire adult life has been influenced by the constancy that is my head pain.  I don't like to say that my pain has defined my entire adult life (because I have fought so hard to be better than my pain and push myself even when the pain wants me to stop, to rest), but in many ways, it has defined my adult life.  I simply do not know what being a pain-free adult feels like…but I would really like to know.  When I see a new doctor, I tell them that I just want a day.  Give me one, pain-free day and I’ll do this for another eight years. I managed to get through high school and college with my pain.  It was fucking d i f f i c u l t most of the time, but I knew I would regret not pushing myself to [...]

My Monkey, My Circus She is my daughter. My charge and my responsibility. I get to make the calls, decide the treatment, and set the course of action. She is my monkey. This my my circus. And I haven't the slightest clue how to conduct the show. There are a lot of things that they don’t tell you about being a parent. That there is just about the most common thing you hear, ironically. So common as to be a cliché. I mean, with all of the parenting books, websites, blogs, random strangers giving you advice, friends and family imparting parenting wisdom -- how could there possibly remain something that they don’t tell you? I think I know the answer: they don’t tell you because they don’t want it to be true. The truth of the matter being that parenting comes with a big, heaping dose of shame. Shame for different reasons, though. Maybe because you didn’t breastfeed, or because you use those awful, eco-disaster disposable diapers. Shame because you do (or don’t) ascribe to a parenting philosophy, like “the gentle parenting method” or “the Montessori approach”. People will give you stink-eye for just about anything: how you make your [...]

There was a trend of creating and posting open letters to people. But we don't play by the rules, right Allie? Fuck rules. So I am writing you a fucking letter and just calling it a letter, because I love you and it's on the Internet. Dear Allie, I wanted to write you this letter to show you what you mean to me. It is hard to encapsulate how grateful I am for you in my life, but I will try. Let's start there with the word try. You are someone who takes action. You don't "try" you DO. You get it done. When I came to you with the Stigma Fighters Anthology, a series of essays about real people living with mental illness, you had a plan and you made that book happen. You knew what to do and you did it. That is one of the many things that I love about you. Here's more... You are fiercely loyal to your friends and would do anything to protect them. I admire that about you. You are a strong ass woman and nobody fucks with you. Something that amuses me is that we can't remember how we decided to work [...]

Once upon a time I wrote a post called 3-Year-Olds are Assholes. It went viral on Huff Post Parents with over 380,000 shares on Facebook. Then I wrote a book under the same title, which Booktrope agreed to publish. It has illustrations by the amazing talented Shari Ryan. After 3-Year-Olds are Assholes went viral, the award-winning author of Broken Pieces, Rachel Thompson, whom I adore, reached out to me with an idea. "Sarah, I want to write an article called Authors are Assholes. What do you think?" She said she would link back to 3-Year-Olds Are Assholes in the post. What I thought was, that is a fucking genius idea! "Go for it!' I said. So she went for it and it was hilarious! The Huffington Post published Authors Are Assholes and it went on to win a social media award. Gabe Howard, my good friend and mental health advocate, asked me if he could write an article called "Mental Illness is An Asshole." Again, I thought: genius idea. Do it, Gabe. And he did it. It was amazing and Mental Illness is An Asshole got published by Elephant Journal. Mia Fox, a friend of Rachel's reached out to me [...]

I'm not a mom blogger, mommy blogger, mom of blogs, blog of moms or anything with blog and mom in the title. Initially, when I began writing Old School/New School Mom, I identified (by default) with the category of people who also wrote online about their children. But, in the end, I started writing my thoughts and feelings about topics other than parenting on here. The truth is I hate labels, unless they say "chocolate." I don't do amazing crafting activities with my kids. We paint with watercolors sometimes. My daughter is hilarious and plays dress up with my Brooklyn Industries and Mod Cloth clothes. Sometimes we stand on our heads for fun. I'm not a traditional parent. I'm fun and weird and eccentric. I make cookies at 9 o'clock at night for no reason other than the fact that the kids want cookies and I'm okay with that. Sometimes, my kids eat pizza for breakfast on Saturdays. They are loved. I'm not a parenting expert, I'm just a person. More than that, I'm a writer, a lover of words, a humanitarian, eater of sea salt caramel gelato with dark chocolate chunks and a mother who loves her children more [...]

I grew up in the late 80's/early 90's in New York City. In my entire NYC public school career I had a total of one snow day. It was in 1996 and I was a sophomore at F.H. Laguardia High School. We took the opportunity to go sledding in Riverside Park on the lids of garbage cans. The truth was no matter what the weather conditions were outside, the New York City public school system did not care. We had to go to school no matter what. So this impromptu snow day in 1996 was quite a shock. Fast forward to 2015. My son is in the first grade at a New York City public school. Rumor was going around that schools were going to close on Tuesday. Whenever this came up I laughed my ass off. "There's no way in hell they're closing New York City public schools. That shit is not happening." When I got a text from Wil with a screenshot of the announcement that New York City public schools were closed for a snow day I almost fainted. Frankly, I think we've gone soft. No matter what the weather conditions were, when I was a child [...]

Four Four years of life. Four years of laughs. Four years of tantrums. Four years of being a small human. Four years of learning. Four years of exploring. Four years of thought. Four years of challenges. Four years of joy. Four years of being... Samara. Happy Birthday! I love you!

My friend Allie's cat, Ella, loves Oreos. Original, Double Stuff, whatever the variety of cookie, this cat is into Oreos. It's her thing, okay? Don't judge her. We all have a favorite pastry. Wait, I'm not even sure Oreos are considered a pastry. But I digress. I came up with a brilliant idea today. I decided that I would buy some Oreos and send them to Ella as a care package. She's exhausted because she hasn't had Oreos in days. This feline is in need of a fix. I am ready to provide cookies for her. I am going to take a box of Oreos to the post office...I was about to write hospital for some reason, I have no idea why, anyway...I am taking the Oreos to the post office and sending them to this cat. She is hungry...I think. I just know she's dreaming about Oreos. Ella, don't worry! I am here for you girl. Check the mailbox soon.

Many of you know that I experienced an Internet debacle involving my name on Facebook. As a joke, I changed my name from Sarah Fader to Phayder Fader on Facebook, not knowing that I wouldn't be allowed to change it back for 60 days. You can read the entire story here. I don't want you to have to experience the same level of bureaucracy that I experienced. Instead of the 60 days they quoted me, after I made several YouTube videos and a blog post, Facebook listened and changed my name back. Here is where YOU have to go to get your name changed on Facebook if you run into this problem: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/245617802141709 Thank you to Adam Roberts for that link! And now a video Bonus! More videos

I was on Facebook on day perusing the names of my blogging friends. It occurred to me that many of them use aliases online. I am not one to use a pen name. My name is Sarah Fader and that's that...until it wasn't. One day, I thought, it would be amusing to change my name on Facebook to an alias. I posted this status:   So I went under settings and I changed my name to "Phayder Fader." It was just for fun. I thought I could change it back in a couple of days. Little did I know that I would be stuck with this moniker for 60 days. Wow, okay...that seems a bit extreme. I mean, 60 days? Come on, Facebook. Had I known your policy, I wouldn't have bothered changing my name as a joke. This is overkill. So I decided, like the ambitious Jewish single mother that I am, I would go directly to the Facebook corporate office and take care of this matter in person. That might sound a bit extremist, however, when I attempted to email Facebook about this name change situation, there was no point of contact. So I did what I felt [...]

I got on the train this morning ready to go to work. As soon as I stepped onto the subway car, a little girl looked at me straight in the eyes. She was wearing pink flower earrings. "Your earrings are really pretty!" I said "Where did you get them?" "They're stick ons, " said her mom with a smile. "Do you have any earrings?" The girl asked me. She couldn't have been more than eight. "I do!" I said showing her my ears. Girl: What color are your toenails? Me: Blue. Girl: Can I see? Me: I can't take my shoes off on the train. Plus, you don't want to see my toes. They are pretty gross. Girl: Do you know who Molly is? Me: No. Who is Molly? Girl: You don't know who Molly is? Me: No, who is she? Girl: She's on Bubble Guppies. Me: Oh! I've never seen that show. But my son probably knows who she is. Girl: So you don't know who Molly is? Me: I don't. But now I do! Girl: But do you know who Molly is now? Me: Well, you told me who she is. She's on Bubble Guppies, right? Girl: So [...]