Have you guys been reading the local Patch sites? They’re a great way to get hyper-local news, perspectives, events and more.

I’ve signed on to serve as a parenting columnist for Wheaton Patch and my column, Mom of a Million Mistakes, will appear each week. The column is a combination of my first-person parenting muddles, mistakes and musings and a topical round-up of local resources for families.

My first piece is up today, “Confession: I’m a Basketball Mom.“ Look at the end of the piece for a list of links to local sports program providers for kids in Montgomery County. I hope you’ll join me over on there and leave a comment on the piece!

And be sure to bookmark all the Patch sites for our area:

Wheaton Patch

Silver Spring Patch

Colesville Patch

Kensington Patch

Rockville Patch

Takoma Park Patch

Chevy Chase Patch

Bethesda Patch

Potomac Patch

North Potomac-Darnestown Patch

Georgetown Patch

Greenbelt Patch

College Park Patch

Riverdale Park – University Park Patch

Hyattsville Patch

Gaithersburg Patch

Germantown Patch

Montgomery Village Patch

Clarendon-Courthouse-Rosslyn Patch

Ballston-Virginia Square Patch

Falls Church Patch

McLean Patch

UPDATE: I’ve extended the commenting donation to Crickett’s Answer of $1 per daily comment until Friday January 21st.

I received an email last Thursday from a CNN producer, wondering if I would be willing to talk on-camera with my family about how we set digital limits for our children and make efforts to unplug as a family.

My husband Chris and I discussed it and thought it was a good idea. We agreed that we might be a good family to interview. The CNN team wanted to come to our home on Friday and we welcomed them.

We spoke to the reporter, producers and camera operator about how we don’t check our smartphone/Blackberry constantly, we limit the kids’ time in front of the television, thought long and hard before allowing our family to get a Wii this Christmas (our first foray into video games). We have made the conscious decision to only have one TV in the house, in an area away from where we eat meals and spend most of our family time, and we purposely chose a minivan that did not have a built-in DVD player.

I talked about how although I have this website, I make a very conscious effort not to work on it, my creative outlet and public hobby, or on worky-work assignments, around my children. When they are awake or at home from school, my focus is on them.  My husband likewise, when home from work, does everything in his power to not bring work home with him. And if he has to, then how it’s important that I as Mom am plugged in…to the kids.

Chris talked about growing up in Ireland with parents who limited television watching, and how he thought that was good for his upbringing. He talked about how he and I often would rather read or choose a movie to watch together at night, rather than staring at our individual screens.

We both waxed on about how essential it was for us as parents to set healthy limits on technology and media in our home. To turn off our mobile phones when with our kids and at Mass. How when our children get older, we understand that they will need to use computers often for their education, that is a given, but that they will not have computers in their own rooms. That we will establish a family computer in a communal space in our home, with software and firewalls to help keep Web research age-appropriate.

But all that stuff was too boring I guess.  Too preachy?  Too vanilla?  Because none of that discussion made the two-minute news story.

What was the focus? When I admitted that I knew firsthand how seductive technology and online media can be, how I had learned how tempting it would be for my children to go overboard. That when I started blogging for fun, there was a short while there that I now believe I spent too much time online. Specifically, the hours in the evening after Chris came home from work. And that after the brand new excitement of blogging wore off, back in 2008 when I started, I made a conscious decision to cut back my time online. That I now don’t spend much time on Twitter. That I don’t post as often to my blog as in the beginning. That I decided a while back that my time with my family is more important and so set limits for myself.

The reporter used the words “digital affair” and the phrase “there was a third person in your marriage”. I didn’t introduce those phrases and neither did Chris. And then I responded to her question, referencing her use of the word “affair”, trying to make light of that word introduction. And ohhhh, I guess it was just too juicy because those few sentences of  mine and one of Chris’s became the crux of the story.

Here’s the clip from CNN.

At least the children look great!

So with my self-deprecating and self-reflective admission of how I personally know how important it is to set limits on technology, I became for the CNN story a “technoholic” (that was the header beneath my name at first – they have since changed it to “online writer”) and a “digital addict”.

Five bucks says they didn’t call that doctor on digital addiction until the next day, when they had found the sexier slant for the story.

Hey, it’s a much better story. I get it. Everything I said was true. But the story they aired was not the one they pitched.

Talking about how 30 minutes a day playing Star Wars Lego for Wii is, in our opinion, more than enough video game time for first graders? All that other stuff on the importance of family time? BOOORRRRING.

(By the way, I would just like to say that in those very early days of blogging when Chris would go to bed ahead of me and I would stay up, I wasn’t surfing, um, gross websites or chatrooms. I was writing blog posts about how to find a nature center and an Easter egg hunt, pitching The Washington Post about articles I’d like to write for them on family activities. You probably know this if you know me or read this site, but it sure seemed seedier in the piece. And why was I staying up? Because even back then I didn’t want to be logged on while I was taking care of my children.)

(And the blogging event I went to on Friday night?  That was in support of the “Be Blogalicious: The Movie” screening and Blogalicious Conference for blogging women of color! A moms’ night out special event supporting my friends, and a movement I heartily support and care about. I wished CNN had left that part in!!)

Why am I smiling so much in the CNN piece? Because I can see exactly how it is going down. As a freelance reporter and writer, I am laughing at myself that I allowed this to happen. My husband’s wry look reflects the same sentiment.

I opened my front door. I put on the sparkly eye make up.

I even agreed to go on national television while massively pregnant and puffy. (So. Hot)

I should’ve known.

I actually did know.  Before the crew arrived, I told family and friends that I was well aware that it was very likely that somehow we would not look good. That there was another slant in there. I used the words “media whoredom” about myself. I knew.

I was seduced again…for exposure for my blog! “As seen on CNN!” Hubris! Pride! Ego! Media! My name in lights onscreen! See, I can be one of the “cool mom bloggers!”

Looks like now that I’m all “digitally detoxed”, my next rehab needs to be a big narcissism detox. Time to AGAIN re-focus on my family and mothering and what really matters. Like inviting family and friends over…rather than news crews.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts on the story, on the media, on how you unplug personally or in your family, whatever you like as long as it’s courteous. You do not have to share my viewpoints in the CNN piece or on this post, but courtesy counts.

For every non-spam comment I receive I will donate $1 to Crickett’s Answer, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization partnering with LympheDIVAs to help breast cancer survivors with lymphedema obtain the essential lymphedema sleeves that their health insurance companies may not provide.  Please read WhyMommy Susan of Toddler Planet’s post explaining the project in greater detail here.

You can leave one comment per day until Friday January 21 at midnight and I will donate up to $300, or 300 total comments. I got the idea from Kristen of Motherhood Uncensored.

Because if I KNEW on Friday that I was going to be on CNN talking about blogging?  THIS campaign and the community that has rallied around it as WhyMommy begins to fight cancer AGAIN? That is what I wish I had talked about!

My husband Chris works at Discovery in downtown Silver Spring. Yesterday afternoon he called my mobile to say that there was “some serious stuff going down at Discovery.”

I thought he meant that there were staff changes or layoffs or something.

Instead, he went on to explain that he was calling from within his locked office because there was a gunman in the building, the gunman had hostages and might also have a bomb.

You know, just another day at work for an IT guy.

I was out with my kids at a McDonald’s Playland, having taken them out for a special First Day of School lunch of forbidden fast food, a new plastic toy and a romp through a Hamburgler-decorated maze.  Away from my computer, with my phone in my purse, Chris’s call was the first I heard of the emergency.  He was very calm.  He didn’t want to talk much, didn’t say anything very dramatic, and told me he’d call me back when he had more information.

Later that evening he explained to me that he didn’t want to be chatting loudly in his office in case the guy was going around individual offices taking out people a la the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy (that I forced him to watch with me). He also said that he moved his chair from out from behind his desk and positioned it directly inside the door with his laptop on his lap, that way if someone walked past his office, it would not be apparent from glancing through the frosted glass on either side of the door that the office was occupied. Chris also explained that a key had been stuck in his office door for awhile, preventing the door from locking, normally not a big deal. But upon receiving the company-wide email to Discovery employees to retreat to locked offices, after 20 tries he finally got the key unstuck.

So after this phone call, I load the kids in the car and start driving home. For once, I am relieved that they are being super loud and squabbling and totally ignoring me on my phone. But after hanging up with Chris, who do I call? Chris’s parents or siblings, and totally freak them the heck out?  My own family, and do the same? Call Chris again and be all “I love you!” fatalistic and unhelpful? But since I’ve never learned to think before I speak, the act of just talking to someone seemed calming.

So I pull up my phone history and look at the people on it.  I call my friend K., whose husband also works in downtown Silver Spring, get a busy line message, and don’t leave a message because what do you say without scaring her for hopefully no reason (her husband does not work at Discovery, just nearby). Then I call WhyMommy Susan, for no other reason than that she is good with unexpected scary crap and a very good friend.

OK, I’ll admit it: The real reason I called Susan is that once she called me to pray for her when she was scared that something bad might be happening and I did and then I asked other people to pray too and then everything turned out totally fine. I wanted the same result and so it seemed logical at the time to call her and do the same thing. Apparently, the American chick’s incorrect interpretation of karma is totally Catholic. Or maybe it’s that sometimes when you are too in shock to pray yourself, and just have to work on driving your car at  the speed limit and buckling the kids’ seat belts and using your turn signal correctly, what you do is you ask your friends to pray because you cannot.

Susan was great and invited us to come hang out at her house. I stumbling told her yes, but I needed to go home first and get my laptop to see what was happening, and then no, I’d rather go home so I could be reached by two phones, put the kids in front of a kid DVD that could not be interrupted by a breaking newscast and then just read the news on my computer in another room. I had a few other stumbling calls with K. and my friend M. too until we arrived home.

Chris and I both kept up with the situation on our laptops as it unfolded via Twitter, using the hashtag #Discovery.  Normally I just use Twitter to very casually keep up with my friends, readers and fellow bloggers, but yesterday it was an ideal minute-by-minute aggregate of all the media and personal accounts available.  It was also a silent medium, as I did NOT want my children to see that building they know so well, “Daddy’s building”, on the television, or them to hear anything via news radio or streaming media to scare them.

More friends began calling us, and I was grateful for something to do. Even just taking a call, saying I didn’t know anything more and would keep them posted kept me busy.

And then I looked out the window and Susan was pulling into the driveway, bearing her kids (one still in his first-day-of-school outfit, the other asleep on her shoulder), homemade cookies and a kid DVD.  She cheerily settled down in the family room to watch TV and play with the kids, freeing me up to retreat to my computer and phones out of their earshot. Susan is awesome.

Chris then called and said that he and other employees were evacuated to another part of the building and that the gunman was on the first floor.  We both worried aloud about the daycare center, also located on the first floor.  And since the guy’s awful nutso manifesto was now being tweeted around, I also knew that this guy literally viewed children as filthy creatures. We wondered if his hostage was a child or if the guy really had explosives.  Just thinking of those “what ifs”, connected to children, was another scary moment, almost as scary as Chris saying that he was locked in his office.

And then Chris called to say he was out of the building, the hostage was a security guard (at this point everyone thought there was only one hostage) and that he saw that the daycare center kids were evacuated to the nearby McDonald’s because it was air-conditioned (yes, McDonald’s again).

And this is when I finally freaked out and told him to get his ass home NOW, leave the car in its spot under the building, don’t wait for an official dismissal, if the police let you leave, LEAVE.  And he did. While he Metroed home, I was able to update his family all at once that he was out and safe via Facebook and speak to his mother. And when he arrived at the Metro station, I left the kids with Susan. (AGAIN, THANK YOU SUSAN FOR BEING HERE – oh, Susan was keeping up with the situation via her iPhone, and she let me know that our blogging-social-media-maven friend Gayle who also works at Discovery happened to be in NY yesterday and was safe.)

Kid-less, I was able to zoom over the posted limit to the Metro station near our house to get Chris. The Metro station was packed with people with eyes glued to their phones and similarly waiting to be picked up.

We came home and took turns playing with the kids while the other one manned the phones and Twitter links from the media, as the authorities were now holding press briefings. I heard from the wonderful Patti that she was at her office in downtown Silver Spring, not far from Discovery, but waiting to be released.  Patti was very calm and focused on Chris’s safety. Today I am worried that I wasn’t concerned enough about how she was doing, in my relief to have Chris home.

Still via Twitter, we learned that there was a “small group of hostages,” all adults.  And then we learned that the hostages were out. And then that they were three in number and not physically injured. And then that Lee was shot.

One thing that REALLY bugged yesterday: the people clogging the #Discovery feed on Twitter with their jokes.  I understand the place for a joke about current events, but not while the horrible event is happening. Not on the information stream that families of the hostages or SWAT team or emergency personnel are using to keep updated about their loved ones’ safety. Some people were making jokes before the employees were released from the building, when the news story was just minutes old. And LOTS of people were making jokes before the three hostages were freed.  They made these jokes, again, using the #Discovery hashtag. Those people angered me greatly yesterday. And today. Their deadliestcatchsharkweekwheresbeargryllswhenyouneedhim jokes were ridiculously unhelpful. They could have made the jokes without the hashtag designated for breaking news.

The people who were concerned about my husband and his colleagues, whether they were the trained snipers risking their lives on site, the police negotiators who talked with Lee for hours yesterday, the SWAT teams searching for explosives, the police that safely evacuated the building, or the Discovery staff assisting the police in the building, those individuals impressed me beyond belief yesterday.  My heart goes out to the three hostages who kept their cool and were so brave as they were held for four hours at gunpoint. (See statement from hostage Jim McNulty, God bless him.) I am impressed with Discovery’s statements and post-incident work today, and the media’s coverage of the event as it happened yesterday.

Our friends (from the intimate to the virtual pals of Facebook and Twitter) and family who called and emailed and texted and Tweeted and Facebooked and just sent their love and concern and prayers and support and friendship were also amazing.  Thank you.

Our evening concluded last night with soccer practice – Charlie playing, Chris helping coach, Eve playing with the other soccer sibs on the playground, and me chilling and chatting with the other parents from our spectator chairs.  I learned that a family I adore is expecting a baby. Good stuff. Normal stuff. Our happy life as usual.

So, um, I don’t really have a recommendation of something fun and new and exciting to do with your family today. I think we’ve all had enough excitement in Silver Spring to last us a good long while.

This has been my first summer working a real, honest-to-goodness jobby-job since bringing home a baby in December 2003.  See photo above for a representation of how I’ve been handling it.

Last summer I began freelancing for Nickelodeon’s ParentsConnect, and this January I accepted an editor position with this premier, entertaining and REAL parenting site. I get to work for a major media company and write for a website that meshes with my “skills” from home (while still maintaining my blog)…a dream come true. 

Sidenote: I’m hosting a prize-filled online party over on Nickelodeon’s ParentsConnect TODAY, Tuesday August 24 from 11:59am-11:59pm ET. We’re giving away toys and back-to-school prizes! It will be fun. Join me, please, this is the link with details on how to party with me and win!

So the last three months have been all about balancing the taking care of the kids when they’re out of school with an almost full-time job. But stupidly, I thought I could handle this summer just like I have the others.

I signed the kids up for swimming lessons, planned weekly outings and playdates, organized my church’s vacation Bible school. I planned for family to visit us and to host them with fun meals and outings during their stays. I attended the BlogHer Conference as a speaker, attendee and ambassador for the Huggies Every Little Bottom program (I’ll be posting a run-down of that experience with lots of giveaways of cool products soon!). I accepted an assignment from The Washington Post on August activities for kids and families while camps are out and school’s not in.

I DID sign the kids up for some camps.

Another sidenote: Summer day camps I personally, highly recommend to you all for next year:

• Silver Stars in Silver Spring gymnastic camp with half- or full-day options and before- and after-care.
• St. Andrews Lutheran Preschool‘s three weeks of five-day preschool camp in June.

I also hired a teenage babysitter to watch the kids and take them to the pool and keep them entertained/away from the TV for 10-20 hours per week. She was great, drove and the kids adored her. (NO, you CAN’T have her number. Sorry. She’s MINE.) But the sitter had her own family vacations and summer activity commitments and was not full-time, so I still had a great deal of child care/career juggling.

And after all that juggling, now I’m jiggling. Because with a summer like this we ate a lot of take-out burritos and grabbed breakfast at Starbucks and evil donut establishments that end in an apostrophe. And although my rail-thin, leanly-muscled (thanks Daddy for the awesome gene pool) and hyperactive (um, that genetic trait was from Mom) kids look ripped after a summer of swimming and running around, I barely worked out. OK, I’ll just say it: I never worked out.  But did that keep me from wearing a swimsuit AND drinking beer AND eating popsicles like it was my job? Nope.

Yup, this is the post where I sound like one of those people trying to one-up everyone else on how busy I am, cut with a small amount of self-deprecating humor about the droopiness of my ass. And where I reveal myself as a pampered stay-at-home mom who now is whining that she gets paid to BLOG and write fun stuff FROM HOME who should just shush. But let’s just get this out of the way now: I am a total jerk. There, I said it for you. We are agreed.

But it’s mainly my annual post where I’m utterly worn out by the amount of work that falls to parents in the summer who are used to the child care routine of school.

And it’s my annual ode to all the working moms out there who have been multi-tasking like this FOR YEARS, and when I ask them

HOW HAVE YOU WORKING MOTHERS BEEN LIVING LIKE THIS????

How have you been taking care of your families, yourselves, your careers, your homes, your marriages/romantic relationships, your friendships, your familial relationships? Because I have SUCKED at all of mine. I was supposed to host the get-together of my book club. IN MAY. I call my mom back…after she leaves THREE messages. Barely hanging on as it is, I’m utterly FLOORED by natural disasters and any change in the routine. I have four inches of mousey-brown/gray showing at my roots. We haven’t even had a proper housewarming party for our friends since moving into our new home…one year ago. I’m being stalked by every health care professional in the county for our family to obtain their annual check-ups. The fridge is a wasteland and the cupboard only houses one stale box of cereal that no one likes and a sweet potato sporting a seven-inch growth.

This, from a chick who used to bake her own biscotti.  Plan a fancy-schmancy dinner every night.  Organize outings for my mom’s club. Wait on the front steps for Daddy to come home from work looking all pretty while the kids ran around catching fireflies in Mason jars like it’s freaking Mayberry.

So working parents, I worship you. I’m not even a full-fledged, 40-hour week member of your ranks, and I still suck at this.

And you know who else I worship? TEACHERS.

I cannot wait for school to start.

A Parent in Silver Spring will resume regular postings Monday – Friday after Labor Day. Until then, please expect the sporadic two-three times a week drivel you’ve been receiving all summer long.

“This is my mama. Her name is Jessica. She’s wearing that giant hat and sunglasses so she can be saved from being put in a ditch or a box.”

— How my daughter Eve introduced me today to another mother on the beach, misquoting my earlier joke to her daddy that my over-sized sunglasses and sunhat were a last-ditch effort to stave off Botox.

These photos were taken with the incredible Nikon D3000 with AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 VR lens that I randomly, luckily won at the #NikonNightOut party at BlogHer last week! I love hosting giveaways, but NEVER win anything myself. Now THAT’S what I call blog conference swag! Thanks to my bloggy BFF TechSavvyMama‘s generous taking of me to this party as her guest, I will now be able to provide even clearer pictures of activities for families in my posts for A Parent in Silver Spring. Thanks Nikon!