Samantha, Dori, Andrea & Diane from Marketing & Special Programs

Sarah from Marketing

The Shorty Awards honour the most note-worthy Twitter feeds of 2009. Mabel’s Labels is striving for the #smallbusiness award! If you wish to help out @Mabelhood in gaining a spot in the top five, please follow these simple directions:

Vote by updating your Twitter account with a tweet like this:

“I nominate @Mabelhood for a Shorty Award in #smallbusiness because… (add your reason here).”

Thank you in advance for your ongoing love and support for Mabel’s Labels!

I was in Chicago last weekend, attending the BlogHer conference for the first time. In the world of mama blogging, this is the biggie. I was in the company of 1,500 amazing women bloggers — attending great seminars and fabulous parties. It was great fun to see online relationships transform into real life friendships. Really, it was like one big reunion of people who have never actually met before.

In the build up to BlogHer, all the talk was about fashion. This fashion chatter started early on and only got worse. In the final week before BlogHer, the topics flying around Facebook and Twitter focused on what we were wearing, or whether there was time for a French manicure or to lose that last pre-conference10 lbs. It felt like I was getting ready for a really long first date, but one with 1,500 women What was I getting myself into?

I got to thinking about all this fashion fuss. As it turns out, all the fashion hype was in good fun and no one seemed to take themselves too seriously. I did, however, consider a few theories as to why physical appearance was getting so much attention from a bunch of people who spend most of their time getting excited about words and the latest iphone applications.

1) Bloggers spend a lot of their time hiding behind computer screens. The conference provided an opportunity to come out of hiding and show our faces in the light of day. Breaking free from behind-the-screen justifiably warrants some highlights and a mani/pedi.

2) Many bloggers there were mamas. Any opportunity to shed the mama uniform should not be missed. All of our overworked yoga pants deserved a three-day holiday. What a great excuse to go shopping.

3) Our gorgeous profile pictures. No one puts a crappy picture of herself on her profile. That profile picture can be a tough standard to live up to, inspiring all of us to go for that last minute eyebrow wax and other grooming procedures before our in-real-life debuts.

I had the added complication of having to glam up my 12-week-old son. His baby uniform consists entirely of sleepers at this point, so I was hard pressed to turn him into a fashion statement. My solution was to put him in sleepers that had only gone through one or two of his five siblings and if they didn’t have stains on them, I considered it a decent enough effort.

A highlight for me was meeting some other “Mamas of Many”. Mom of quadruplet boys, Jen Murray, was there. I was chatting with Christine Young and Tara Kuczykowski. and discovered that between the three of us we have 17 children.

I returned on Sunday, excited and head spinning from the non-stop conference action. Although overwhelmed and exhausted I’m already counting the days to BlogHer in NYC next year — which leaves me about 12 months to figure out what I’m going to wear.

**Looking glam at one of the parties with my Mabel’s business partner, Mumby.

I’ve been doing a bit of complaining about having to find a car that suits our family. I was whining about this on my other blog (www.thebabymachine.com).

The biggest issue has been that it seemed like no one wanted to help us out. I e-mailed contacts in the car industry and didn’t hear back. We went to a car lot and looked at a bunch of vehicles and the guy said he would call if something suitable arrived and we never heard from him again. I actually wanted to be pitched by the stereotypical cheesy car sales guy and he was nowhere to be found.

In despair, I blogged about my car issues, threw it on Twitter and it got re-tweeted a few times. The next thing I knew I received an e-mail from GM Canada. Finally someone had heard my cries for help and responded.

The response was a shiny Buick Enclave on my doorstep for a two-week trial with no strings attached. Why? Well, basically they knew we were a tough family to suit up with a car and they wanted to help me out. Shocking, I know. Finally my customer service woes had turned around.

Obviously I was concerned by my family’s potential to either trash or crash the big fancy-schmancy car. I drive cars that get me from point A to point B without caring if there is food on the floor or ice cream smeared on the windows. This car was just too good for me and the likes of my offspring. To add more stress to the situation, I learned that the owner of the vehicle was the President of GM. Yep, my stinky, dirty kids were driving around in Mr. President’s vehicle.

Since we were finally able to travel as a family, we decided to head to the cottage last weekend. After 3.5 hours in the car and only two kilometers from our cottage when we got the call from the back of the fancy-schmancy car: “GET THE BUCKET!!” Not being in my regular van, I did not have my trusty vomit kit with me which meant there was no bucket to pass. Next thing we knew, the big almighty vomit had taken place all over Mr. President’s vehicle. We got the kid beside the puker out just as she started gagging in reaction. It was a bad situation, but at least we were able to limit the damage to only one puker.

The two weeks ended and my friends from GM arrived at the doorstep to collect the fancy-schmancy vehicle. I had a moral dilemma – do I fess up about the puke disaster? I figured if the car couldn’t come clean, then I had better. The reaction was fantastic – they didn’t expect anything less from my family. I’d never been so happy to have such low expectations set for my kids.

If you commented on the Name Game blog entry, keep watch on Caitlin’s “Mabel Files” (www.blog.mabel.ca) where she will soon be posting the winner of the Camp Pack. Caitlin takes care of all the official stuff and I get to have the blogging fun. Heck, I’m on maternity leave so it seems fair that I run the contest and someone else worries about monitoring entries, wouldn’t you say?

Although I’m on mat leave, I have not fallen off the face of the earth entirely – still blogging, checking facebook, on twitter, etc. To simply disappear from social networks and ignore good online discussion is not something this chatty mama is cut out for. Cocooning for an extended period of time off-line with my kiddos wouldn’t really work for me. And last I checked, my inbox didn’t get the memo that I’m on maternity leave.

In the last few days I’ve had both a radio and magazine interview. We like Mabel to get some airtime so an interview request is not the time to pull maternity leave rank – save that for when you want to guiltlessly forward annoying sales messages to your colleagues.

All things considered, my maternity leave rocks – I do what I like and ditch what I don’t. Not a bad gig really. But everyone has a different idea of what works for them.

I know one woman who was enjoying a long and successful legal and academic career when she gave birth for the first time at 43-years-old. When I was at Law School I would occasionally come across her articles which were nearly impossible to read – she spoke an entirely different language and it certainly didn’t involve words like “lactation” and “play date”. The transition from working world to mama world was too great a leap for her – she only lasted two weeks before heading back into the traditional workforce.

I know other mamas in similar situations who take great pleasure in retiring their blackberries for the full maternity leave then reluctantly blow the dust off them when it’s time to head back.

There is no right answer to what consitutes the perfect maternity leave. I’m officially heading back to Mabel life in September. After having six kids under foot all summer, the return to work will likely be a nice break from my maternity leave!

photo #1 – yes, checking my blackberry from my hospital bed

photo #2 – on the Enterprise Toronto panel last week. Finian at three weeks old was the youngest entrepreneur in attendance. Can you see the little guy on my lap?