Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

I have been very, very unhappy blogging here. I’m not going to lie, this blog has helped our finances tremendously, but I am tired, oh so tired of sticking around just for the opportunities. I’m am very sorry for letting this blog flatline. I have just been very disgusted with this blog. Why?

1. Our blog title is very parenting flavored. When you see the name you know what to expect, right? Parenting related posts written by a mom and dad. Well, most of the time I don’t feel like giving my two cents on parenting. I have lots of opinions, but I am just not ready to turn them into posts. Without that content, all I have are cutesy pictures of Jayden. The guy dubbed Daddy has moved on. I think things were more enjoyable with him around and since he’s lost his mojo, I’ve lost mine too. We have so many ideas for this blog. With this blog, we wanted to share our experiences as parents, young parents, African-American parents. We wanted to set an example. But with life’s bumps, we cannot execute those ideas at this time. We just need some time to focus on US.

2. This blog is tightly niched as a parenting blog and as a personal blogger I don’t want to clash the two. Before joining the online parenting community, I was a personal blogger for 6 years. I loved blogging about my life, as boring as it was at times. Knowing that I still have a personal blog, there’s absolutely no way I can blog personal here. This is a parenting blog. How weird would it be if I started talking about my love for video games, nail polish, plants and gadgets? Some people can do it. I cannot. Some people don’t like their greens to touch their cornbread. I don’t like to let my niches touch.

I invite you all to join me in the next chapter of my blogging career. There, I’ve written about the trouble I’ve had with “mommy blogging” and now I’m committed to keeping it real from now on. There, I will still write about Jayden and life as a mommy, but the blog will be more focused around me, the person I’ve put to the side for far too long. I have a few things to wrap up here. Any remaining reviews will be candidly posted at my new spot. We will not be shutting Mommy Daddy Blog down, but we will no longer be posting here. Maybe in a year, we will be able to make a come back together. We thank our readers and sponsors who have been with us since day one. Remember those days? When we return, that’s how it will be.

By moving on, I am gaining more than what I’m losing. I have established relationships with great people. Traffic can be easily obtained organically at Sophistishe. I renamed my @mommydaddyblog Twitter handle to @sheenatatum to prepare for our upcoming nuptials. I still have my followers. If you were following me at @mommydaddyblog, you should automatically be following my new handle. I renamed another account of mine to @mommydaddyblog to reserve the handle and direct any new comers to the new handle. I can continue to be reached at any email addresses of mine that you have. If you don’t have my email address, you can fill out my contact form.

I hope that bloggers and pr marketers get the big picture here. It’s not about the stats of the blog, it’s about the blogger behind the blog! If the blogger is not happy or in complete control of their blog, their blog will not shine. I don’t say this to bash pr marketers because bloggers including myself have responsibility over their actions.

I am definitely not saying goodbye, I am saying HELLO. Moving on will help me better reach my goals. You’ll see.

Comments are closed on this post, instead I’d love for you to read this post as well, then comment.

Thank you Gina for the award .

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Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

I just wanted to pop in to say

Merry Christmas!

and

Remember to

I’ll throw in some pictures of our holiday decor too.

See ya when I see ya .

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Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

2008

2009

• The Last Two Brunches & A Birthday
• Are you kidding me?
• Yes!
• The Boogie & Popeye Pattern
• Their togetherness makes my heart melt.

Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

Sleeping.

Cherubs.

{more on flickr}

Thank you Ms. Michelle for the surprise books .

{only put these two on flickr}

The balls are constantly being disinfected.

He just sits and thinks, just like his mama.

Happy Birthday Capri & Selah.

{more on flickr}

Sidenote: I’m still sick. Before getting sick, I was in need of some deep restoring. Sometimes I feel like my brain has gone to mush. I still have to pick some giveaway winners. I apologize, but home life is very high on my priority list right now. If this were a year ago, I’d be totally stressing out, dragging Greg in to help me. My, how things change.

• Two Christmases Already
• Are you kidding me?
• Yes!
• The Boogie & Popeye Pattern
• Their togetherness makes my heart melt.

Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

We got some great snow today, so we decided to take Boogie out to play in it for the first.time.ever.

{more on flickr} {where’d you buy his hat?}

• I Heart Faces: Balloons
• Batman and Bones
• Camera Dump 10/21/09: And 1 In The Yard
• Camera Dump 10/13/09: Just Hanging Out
• My Pursuit of Happiness

Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

The folks over at RocketXL coordinated a Marshalls and T.J. Maxx Secret Santa for Bloggers. I absolutely love both stores, so I couldn’t resist participating. They gave us all a gift card to spend on ourselves as well as a gift card to spend on our Blogging Secret Santa’s. They even handled shipping costs.

Here’s what my Secret Santa got me. I still don’t know who she is! When I sent off my gift, I signed the card with my name. Was I not supposed to do that? Oops! I woke up with flu like symptoms yesterday morning, so it was such a treat to receive this package. Thanks so much dear Blogging Secret Santa!

From left to right: set of two photo albums, Godiva chocolates, 2010 date book, holiday card, and a Melissa & Doug puzzle for Boogie. How sweet! I wish I was as creative with the gift that I chose for my Secret Santa. When you’re in the store with a screaming toddler, whiny hubby, and an induced Kate Gosselin attitude, you have to grab and get out!

• *blink* Where’d the year go?
• Happy Holidays!
• Jafaru, The Pet Giraffe You Never Had!
• Three Gs For The Holidays Update #2
• Win An HP Photosmart A826 Photo Printer! *OVER*

Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

One of two devoured chicken legs.

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Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

With Christmas fast approaching, it’s time for us to finalize our plans. Will we spend Christmas at home together? Will we visit our parents or will they come to us? Thank goodness they are only 45 minutes away. I don’t even want to think about having to take a long road trip or even a plane ride. *gets woozy*

Snacks play an important role in traveling near or far. As long as we have enough to eat, we are good to go. If we haven’t eaten beforehand, it’s essential that we pick up something quick. I absolutely cannot function hungry. I can get rather listless and grumpy. Boogie? Quite tantrumatic*. Greg’s a tad stronger than us. He can hold out a little longer before singing the hungry headache song. Snacks for myself may include chips or pretzels, grapes, and iced tea. Greg’s not much of a traditional snacker. His snacks are entire meals. For Boogie, we pack graham or cheese crackers, freeze dried apples, and water, nothing too messy! I do so much cleaning at home, it’s immeasurable. The only mess that I expect to encounter in the car will be a mess that can be wiped up with a wet paper towel.

This holiday season, what snacks are you packing for family travels? How do you avoid or clean up (hopefully small) messes?

This post was sponsored by Viva Towels. For fun, fork-free recipes – including videos – and snappy entertaining ideas, get over to the VIVA® Diva Café!

* It’s my blog, I’ll make up words if I want .

Related Resources:
Road Trip Snacks – All Recipes
Snackin’ Better on the Road

• Getting Closer To Our Food: Loose Meat Turkey Burgers
• Viva Diva Girls’ Night Out

Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

I am excited to join The Savvy Source community by moderating a group of my own. I’d like to cordially invite you all to join the Mommy Daddy Blog community. I think this is something that I need. This is a way for me to have a more open discussion with you guys without having to write an entire post leading up to the topic. That’s why I love Twitter and Facebook so much because I can just blurt out things without having a back story. To me it’s just weird to ask a question in a blog post and then run. There’s gotta be some “body” leading up to it. Body that I’m too darn lazy to write these days.

So lets get it poppin’. Start off by taking Roll Call. Share your blog and Twitter URLS. If you’ve had a home birth, please share you experience. Have any holiday traditions? Share them. What about your favorite inexpensive activities to do with your family? Let’s discuss parenting, give advice, and love one another.

Totally random, but I couldn’t help but share this picture. After snacking on a Zone Perfect bar, he wanted to cuddle. I wanted to take pictures.

Our tree looks a little jacked from what you can see in the picture. Hey, be nice. It’s fabulous when lit.

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Mommy Daddy Blog is on an indefinite hiatus. Please visit Sheena at sophistishe.com and update your feed subscriptions to her new feed! Thanks!

Boogie got so many compliments on his rugby sweater and beanie, I thought I’d share where I got them. Remember this post from February? I dug up the order confirmation from The Children’s Place. I only paid $4.24 for that sweater! There are a few listed on Ebay in those colors as well as other combinations, just search for “tcp sweater” or “the children’s place sweater” in boy’s clothing. I was able to find two more in different color schemes for $21.98*. That shows how much I love that line of sweaters! $10.99 per sweater is pretty normal. I try to shoot for lower, but I had to have these.

When shopping for Boogie, I do a lot of end of season clearance shopping. I buy in bulk/lots and in larger sizes so that they’d fit once the appropriate time for him to wear them arrives. I also do a lot of shopping on Ebay. On Ebay, I can find items that I may have missed out on at the retail stores. I buy used or new and my goal is always to find a bargain. I was able to score all of this for only $106.42*.

At TJMaxx, I was able to find a Rocawear jogging suit for $12 and a pair of glow in the dark Halloween PJs for $7.

I know, I know. I got to rambling and completely skipped over the beanie! Well, Etsy is another one of my addictions. I purchased Boogie’s rasta beanie for $11* from Art Created by the Hands. She’s super nice and smokin’ fast! Another great seller on Etsy is CynsationalTreasure. I recently purchased two super soft winter hats for Boogie at $9.50* a piece. She uses worsted weight yarn, so they are really warm and they aren’t itchy.

There’s no doubt, I absolutely love shopping for my little man, but I don’t go broke doing it! And once he’s outgrown all of his gear, I can trade with friends or sell them to another savvy shoppin’ parent!

* Price includes shipping.

For a chance to win a $25 Marshalls gift card, tell me about your favorites spots to shop for the kiddos. A winner will be chosen December 12, 2009 at 7PM CST.

P.S. This giveaway hasn’t been listed anywhere (that I know of), so this gives our regular readers a very good chance at winning.

TJX Companies, Inc. provided me with T.J. Maxx and Marshalls gift cards to go shopping with. I only used the T.J. Maxx gift card. As crazy as I am about Marshalls, I’ve decided to offer it to one of you. Yes, I have completely lost my mind.

• What I didn’t buy on Black Friday.
• Exploring gDiapers: $30 Off everyday g’s six-pack!
• How to Budget for a Family Vacation with Julie Casserly
• Save 75-80% On Fall & Winter Apparel At Sears!
• SALE ALERT: The Children’s Place Come Up!