The Mom Crowd

I am pleased to introduce to you our newest featured author Dawn! She will have a regular spot here every Friday sharing her thoughts and views of moms in pop culture. In December she received great response to her guest blog post ‘Unsung Wonder-Moms in Film.’

I am so excited that she is going to be writing for us every week! I have been following her blog for quite some time and I know that she is genuine and honest. She loves t.v., movies, pop culture, and photography. She is an active participant of Best Shot Monday and Thursday’s Theme. Her two adorable children make you want to nibble on their ears. Seriously, too cute.

About Dawn:

I am the proud mom of Lucy (born February 2006) and Eli (born July 2007). They are just seventeen months apart! Both of my pregnancies were relatively easy and fun, and I had c-sections with both kiddos. I breastfed Lucy for 13 months (yes, this overlapped well into my second pregnancy!), and I’m still nursing Eli. I have found being a stay at home mom both joyful and challenging. My husband is a youth pastor, which means I am still learning how to be content with his odd hours and frequent weekend activities. Before kids, I was an English teacher for 7 years. I’m a huge fan of movies, I watch far too much t.v., and I enjoy photography, blogging, and participating in church activities in my free time.

Be sure to stop by every Friday and give Dawn a shout out!

***SPOILER WARNING*** If you plan on seeing the movie ‘Juno’ and don’t want any spoilers – Don’t read this blog post! Come back and read it after you have seen the movie.

I got a chance to go out and see the movie ‘Juno’ tonight with my friend Melia after I laid Annabelle to bed. The movie is about a precocious sixteen-year-old named Juno and her journey through pregnancy.

As far as pregnancies in the movies go, I thought it portrayed pregnancy pretty close to the real thing. Except that I noticed some of her symptoms were out of order in the movie, but I could overlook that detail. It is a movie. “And if it is any consolation I have heartburn that is radiating in my knee caps.” So true!

We see Juno attempt to get an abortion, but decide not to because “the baby has fingernails.” I thought the protest and abortion scene was interesting, because I like to see how conservative hot button topics are portrayed in television and film. I always thought that protesters in front of abortion clinics weren’t very effective, but in this movie it was. Thank God that Su-Chin was one brave girl giving her time and speaking truth and yelling “Babies want to get borned! Babies want to get borned!” Su-Chin was not portrayed with excessive mocking or in a heavy sarcastic tone. It was somewhat mocking, but not as bad as it could have been.

Juno is quite verbal throughout the movie that she is giving the child up for adoption, but we see her struggle with the decision. We see her grow attached to the child inside of her when the baby kicks and she is playing with a car on her belly. In the end, she gives the child away. The scene pans to her and Bleeker crying in the hospital bed. Of course, I was balling! I don’t know if I could ever do what she did. I am glad that she did have some emotion over her baby, after she was very casual in the beginning of the film about the baby.

At the end of the film Vanessa brings the baby home, because “she was born to be a mom.” During the film I kept waiting to see if Vanessa would turn out to be fake or a horrible person, but she never did. She genuinely wanted to be a mom. When you see her holding the baby, you are happy for her. In the back of my head, I was wondering how she is going to care for a newborn all by herself. I couldn’t imagine. I was upset about her husband. My friend said that Mark leaving Vanessa made the movie more realistic.

The ending is bittersweet, but I am somehow happy with the way things turned out. I enjoy funky indie films and the verbal banter in the movie. My most favorite character was “Dwight”, “That ain’t no etch-a-sketch. This is one doodle that can’t be un-did, homeskillet.”

Have you seen the movie? Did it remind you of ‘Saved!’ or ‘Little Miss Sunshine’? What are your thoughts on the portrayal of pregnancy in the movie?

This whole week at The Mom Crowd, we will be hearing from guest bloggers. Dawn is our first guest blogger. She is a friend of Amanda’s and has been a dedicated reader of The Mom Crowd. She wrote a great post! If you want to learn more about Dawn, check out her at Everything I’ve Ever Wondered*. Happy Reading! ~McKenna

Hey moms! I’m Dawn, mother of Lucy (22 mos) and Eli (5 mos). So Amanda asked me to write a post for The Mom Crowd. I spent several days thinking of ideas for my post (“I Hate My Closet: Why Getting Dressed Isn’t as Fun as It Used to Be”; “When My Body is Truly Mine Again: How I Spanned 3 Years and 2 Olympic Games Pregnant, Nursing, or Both”; “Guilt: How Much TV is Too Much TV When You Love to Watch TV?”), and I decided that I’d better leave the child-rearing wisdom to the experts. I am going to stick with one of my favorite topics-an area in which I have far too much knowledge: pop culture. So I present to you, dear mommies, my

Favorite Five Unsung Wonder-Moms in Film

Most folks would agree that Terms of Endearment is an iconic film about mothers & daughters. I like the movie a lot, sure, and I think the acting and story are top-notch. However, too much attention is paid to Shirley MacLaine’s character (Aurora Greenway), the doting and unusual mother of Debra Winger’s Emma. What about those other movie moms, the quiet ones, who are fantastic mom characters? They forego the quirky, kooky side and show us what lots of real moms act like. I decided to give them a shout-out, starting with

1. Lorri Morris, played by Rachel Griffiths in The Rookie. Not only does she have 3 young kids (including one baby), she’s a full time high school counselor. Plus, her husband decides to leave the family for months at a time to pursue a crazy pro-baseball dream! Their marriage is a perfect example of a wife who is supportive yet realistic (although I must confess I doubt I’d be as patient as she appeared to be). I love the scene when their baby wakes up in the middle of the night, and the couple lies in bed, discussing who should get up to comfort her. Ultimately, the mom ends up rocking the baby back to sleep, singing to her softly. She is strength and love personified.

2. “Mom”, played by Karen Allen, in The Sandlot. She shows the power of simple understanding when her young son struggles to fit in with the new crowd after a move. She gently encourages him to go outside, to get into trouble, to get dirty! In her own words: “Not a lot of moms would make an offer like that.” The most telling scene? Scotty finally makes a friend in Benny (who gives him a glove and hat so he can join the team), and Scotty excitedly runs into the house, shouting, “Hey Mom! Guess what!?” He knew his mom would be just as excited about it. Awww…

3. “Kate Reynolds”, played by Tea Leoni in The Family Man. Just your basic great-mom-who’s-also-a-hottie, taking care of the kids each day and loving her husband even though he’s sometimes a selfish lout. “…maybe I was being naive, but I believed that we would grow old together in this house. That we’d spend holidays here and have our grandchildren come visit us here. I had this image of us, all grey and wrinkly, and me working in the garden and you re-painting the deck. But things change. If you need this, Jack, if you really need this, I will take these kids from a life they love and I’ll take myself from the only home we’ve ever shared together and I’ll move wherever you need to go. I’ll do that because I love you. I love you, and that’s more important to me than our address. I choose us.”

4. “Annie Kinsella”, played by Amy Madigan in Field of Dreams. A former hippie who still loves a good demonstration every now & then, Annie is one spunky momma. She cracks jokes, gives her husband the benefit of the doubt, and cooks a mean tray of frozen french fries. She’s a hoot. Look for her getting her daughter’s lunch ready while wearing a Brownie beanie cap. (What is it with moms who are so supportive of their crazy-baseball-dream-driven husbands?)

5. “M’Lynn Eatenton“, played by Sally Field in Steel Magnolias. We’ve all seen it a thousand times: the gut-wrenching funeral scene where M’Lynn grieves loudly and at times, riotously. For me, though, the maternal love and strength of M’Lynn is shown in her reading to her comatose daughter at the hospital, in her crying and waving to her daughter as she leaves home for good, in her compassionate arms swung open wide as she picks up her precious grandson after Shelby dies. She’s one of the best movie moms ever.

C ome to think of it, a lot of these examples showcase what a strong marriage can look like, which has a definite effect on the children involved. What about you? What portrayals of movie motherhood have stood out to you? Share it in the comments section. And by the way, I love The Family Stone. I think Sybil Stone is a great mom (I love how she has a definite, adoring relationship with each of her grown children).