Mom in the City’s Identity Crisis

In my May 1st members’ newsletter, I mentioned that “Mom in the City” will be celebrating its fourth birthday next month in June. The time has flown. Many of us only had our first kids. Now, most of us have two (or more).

The last couple of months, I have been going through an “identity crisis” with what to do with the group/site going forward. I think that I now have an idea, but (as always) I’d love your input. These are the areas that I needed to work through:

1. Events: Initially, we had more local family gym-style playdate activities. Those have decreased over the years as I/we have had multiple kids. At one of our last playdate outings, the majority of kids had fun, but I saw one (on the older spectrum) looking a bit bored. What’s the use of having an event if everyone’s not going to have a great time? So, I’ve decided that going forward, I’ll primarily host special moms-only outings and the occasional family outing that would entertain a wider age range.

2. Age range: Initially, the age range was pre-natal through 5. It’s funny – I remember years ago, someone asked me what I would do when it was time for Michael to go to school. Honestly, I didn’t really think that I would be doing this so long (I usually got bored with my corporate jobs every 2 years or so). Who knew that I would like this whole parenting world so much? Anyway, the time has come. Initially, I was considering doing a “Mom in the City II” site for school-aged kids. I re-considered. I’m just going to keep everything on this site (your kids are growing older just like mines!) upping the covered age limit by one each year. (FYI: The way I choose my “niche” age is based on the ages of kids that I have easy access to – so that I can have honest opinions from actual parents as well as their boy and girl kids.) Hopefully, I’ll keep Mom in the City going until both of my kids are school aged at which point Michael will be eight. That’s still considered a young kid (to me). After that, he’ll be hitting those pre-teen years and that will be a whole other ballgame/site!

3. Site: Initially “Mom in the City” was a website. Then, I learned about the blog format. I switched to it because my (then) computer programmer husband got tired of doing the html for the monthly site updates. I thought “This blog format is great. I can write, add pictures, etc. anytime that I like – freedom!” Little did I know that the “blog” format had a lot of baggage – primarily good – attached to it. The thing that I’m getting used to is that there are a lot of “issues” when it comes to being a part of the blogosphere. I’m not going to get all into it, because I can usually understand where each side is coming from. Anyway, I was considering changing the site to another (non-blog) format, but I decided that I won’t. It’s my blog and I can do what I want to with it – as long as I keep paying my hosting fees. Out of respect for the memoir-styled blogs though, I am going to change my tagline. (I don’t want people to think that they’ll be reading about my day to day life when visiting this site. As I always say, I share “sprinkles” of my life. My family and friends don’t really want me writing about all of their business – nor do I have the desire to do so.) So here’s where I need your help – what should my new tagline be rather than Raising Young Kids (With Help From Family, Friends and “Experts”)? I have a few ideas:

-Whatever I Want to Write About (probably not)
-A Hodgepodge Mom Review Blog
-Reviews By and For Moms
-A Mishmash Mom Review Blog

I never claimed to be creative. It’s hard for me to figure out a few words that describe what I cover each week – giveaways, a little about my life, reviews, “expert” features, weekly web roundups, etc. (If one of you can come up with a better tagline, leave me a “Comment” or email me my NYC email lovers. As an incentive, I’ll give the winning tagline creator a $100 HP gift card.) I’ll decide over the summer and make the changes by September 1st to kick off the fall season.