Maintaining friendships when you are a mama can be a tricky business. Often already juggling a hectic home life, work and children, while also trying to carve out a bit of time with Daddy-o, can leave little room for your girlfriends.

The way I see it, there are a few friendship fizzling high risk situations:

1) You become a mama: Many report that their friendships with single/childless girlfriends suffer. Mama feels they don’t understand why she doesn’t want to ditch the kid to go dancing every weekend. This has not actually been my experience. My single friends have shown extreme interest and understanding when it comes to my kids. And I am equally keen to hear their Sex in the City lifestyle stories.

2) You have a child with a disability: Hate to say it, but mamas of kids with disabilities get ditched. I’ll explain why it happens in the autism world: you have a friend who brings her 3-year-old over for weekly playdates. Her kid can’t talk, has meltdowns for “no reason”, maybe he’s a bit aggressive, doesn’t relate to the other kids there and his behaviour is disruptive. The mama host thinks “Hmmm…this playdate would go much more smoothly if that kid with the problems doesn’t come”. The playdate invitations stop.

3) You constantly bail on plans: When you regularly drop out of social plans at the last minute, eventually your friends will stop inviting you. I generally don’t accept invitations in the first place because of my bailing stats. But, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate receiving a low pressure “turn up if you can swing it” invitation. It makes me feel that I have not been forgotten, and also that there is some understanding about my situation.

4) You become a Mama of Many: Right around the birth of your fourth child, families you normally socialize with suddenly stop inviting you over. Who can blame them – your family takes up their whole house.

How have your friendships survived? What are the biggest friendship hurdles you’ve encountered in your mama life? Are you still close with the friends you had pre-kids, or did you shake it up socially when you hit the mama scene?

As you can see, we Mabel gals take our blogging conferences VERY seriously!

Just back from BlogHer ’10 in New York City and quite frankly am feeling like I need a bit of a holiday. So much squealing and excitement on the first night left me with a nasty case of laryngitis. I spent the rest of the conference struggling to speak. But, you can imagine the energy of a conference with 2400 women bloggers all in one place. Having the opportunity to spend time with so many online friends and supporters of Mabel’s Labels was just awesome.

As a blogger, I’ve had several non-bloggers ask me many questions – from how to get started to why I like to blog. The answers are long and wordy, but a few quick points include:

1) If you’re going to blog, blog about something you love. If you are not passionate about what you do, it’s going to, well…suck.
2) Don’t go into it for the money. While bloggers often receive products to review, free diapers and diaper cream won’t pay the mortgage. The money *may* follow if you have enough readers that advertisers will pay to be on your site – but counting on that happening is probably not the best plan.
3) Know your limits. If you’re going to talk about your kids, have a big think about privacy before you get started. It’s one thing to talk about toilet training but if your tween catches wind that you’ve been blogging about her training bra, you’ll be in the doghouse faster than you can say “Justin Bieber”.
4) Blogging creates one heck of an awesome journal. I feel like my kids will have great fun in a few years looking back at their childhood through my eyes.
5) Blogging gives you a spectacular feeling of being heard. It is powerful.

So if you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, what is stopping you? I’m hoping to see you at BlogHer in San Diego next year, because there are many lessons to be learned at BlogHer. The biggest for me this time around was that even with a shocking case of laryngitis, I still have a voice.

I usually blog around this time of the week, but some of us have been chillin’ at the cottage. I’ve had no time to write – far too busy shoving smores in my gob, pulling leaches off little feet and enjoying an icy beverage from the campfire cooler.

So, all is well in dreamy cottage country. All will be shattered when I have to face the hard reality of cottage laundry – but we won’t think about that now.

Oh, and as for the title of this post – probably more accurate to say that at this point in time you can smell us from distances far and wide!

Two years ago, our family sponsored a child in Costa Rica named Oscar Mario. He was the chosen one for very specific reasons – at the time, our family was a bit light in the boy department so we thought a male would even things out nicely. My eldest son was obsessed with Super Mario, so when we saw a child who had the name Mario, it was clearly a good fit.

The kiddos feel very connected with Oscar Mario – they send him letters and art work, and anxiously await his response. When they are all behaving like spoiled brats, I remind them of Oscar Mario and his life, and they humbly retreat back into humans I am proud to have birthed.

Last year for Oscar Mario’s birthday, our family sent off a package with stickers, cards and Mabel’s Labels. Some months later, it was returned unopened. I did what every good mother does – hid it from the kids and forged a letter of thanks from Oscar Mario.

I had been meaning to reach out to the agency to investigate the returned package. But our monthly donation continued to be withdrawn so I assumed everything was fine. Of course, following up on the package ended up at the bottom of my “to-do” list – tied in last place with about 20 other items.

Last month I got a letter saying we have a new sponsored child because Oscar Mario cannot be located. Not be located?! I started flipping out wondering how he just fell off the radar. Upon investigation, it seems that families commonly relocate without notifying the agency. So my next question was about where my money was ending up if my kid had gone MIA. I was told it went to his community. I do remember signing on and reading something briefly about how the money is distributed locally – I think the sponsored kid thing is more of a sales tactic.

It’s a sales tactic that worked very well on us. I’m pretty sad about losing Oscar Mario. For two years, we’ve been looking at his adorable picture on our fridge. He’s been my “go-to guy” when the kiddos need to be reminded about how privileged they are.

I have actually been putting off telling the kids about our now long lost friend. I’m torn between the truth (that he’s gone!) and telling them that his family won the lottery and Oscar Mario is busy managing his house staff in between private school tutorials and cello lessons. Suggestions welcomed.

When you’ve been changing diapers for almost 11 years straight and you have been pregnant for about 250 weeks, it is fair to make claim to a bit of brain mush now and again. Sleep deprivation can make a mama foggy at times. Going to the grocery store and leaving without the item I went for is a common occurrence. Once, I was driving down the street with a van load of kids and had to pull over for a minute to think. You see, I had forgotten which child was being driven to what activity. When I looked in the rear-view mirror, I noticed one in a soccer uniform so I was able to carry on without actually having to admit anything to the kids.

But there are bigger things that I don’t remember – the things that I did before I had kids.

What did I do in the evenings? What did I start questioning at 4:00pm every day if not “What am I going to feed them?” To remove that daily dilemma from my brain space would leave quite a gap. Along with “feeding time at the zoo”, my evenings consist of organizing homework, packing school lunches and shuttling people to sports and dance classes. If not doing that, what would I be doing? I just can’t remember. Maybe I watched the 6:00pm news. Maybe I had a hobby. Whatever it was, it’s long gone from my immediate memory.

Waking up naturally because my body has had enough sleep.
Actually, I can’t even remember what it’s like to wake up to the sound of an alarm clock. I vaguely remember that sensation of a Saturday morning sleep- in, dozing in and out of lazy slumber, eventually crawling out of bed when it suited me. Yeah, vaguely.

Eating in a civilized fashion.
I can’t remember what it’s like to sit down and eat an entire plate of food without having to get up half a dozen times. What is it like to sit around a table enjoying food and chatter without springing up regularly to fetch things and cut up food on other people’s plates? I’ve been to dinner parties and left without actually having had dinner myself. And I’m told food is normally served hot. Imagine that – it’s actually HOT when served! By the time I get to my food, “hot” would not be a suitable description.

But from what all the weathered mamas tell me, these busy mama days go too quickly and before you know it, they too will become vague memories. So I think for the moment I’ll just clutch onto my cold dinners and hectic evenings for as long as I possibly can.