Of all the years to pick for a school portrait, 13 is a tough one. I wore no makeup. I wore a school uniform. I wore wire framed glasses. My hair? Not stylish.

Thankfully my parents had the foresight to have a professional portrait done when I was about 15.

The photo session took place at a local studio. I had been to the studio as a young child, but did not remember it well. The photographer sensing my apprehension immediately put me at ease. Throughout the session he gave me advice on how to pose. He took many shots to get the perfect one. The portrait hangs at my parent’s house today.

When children are young, taking photos is relatively easy. Most children will smile naturally when asked to by the photographer. Once the tween/teen years hit, many children become self-conscious about having their photos taken. A good photographer can put your child at ease. Mary Gardella is that photographer…the one who can take the photo that will be the one you treasure.

Mary Gardella is the creative force behind Love Life Images, a portrait studio located in historic Savage Mill, MD. Love Life Images is offering a photo session for the tween or teen in your life – “fun and stylized portrait sessions that will bring out the real you.” Mary will put your tween/teen at ease so that you will have a lasting memory of those tumultuous, challenging, but oh so rewarding years when your tween/teen give glimpses of the adult to come.

Here’s what Mary Gardella will offer you…

• a fun portrait session for tweens and teens
• stylized portrait sessions that are all about your tween or teen
• all sessions will take place august 18 & 20 all day
• your tween/teen will be photographed in and around the historic Savage Mill, MD, where Love Life Images studio is located

The cost for the tween and teen session is $175 per child. Each session will last 45 minute and include one outfit change and 50 rep cards. Rep cards are 2″ x 3.5″ cards with cool information on them. Think of the rep card as the coolest baseball card ever!

For more information on scheduling a tween/teen session, contact info@lovelifeimages.com. For examples of Mary Gardella’s work, visit Love Life Images.

But, I am struggling with my weight. I lose some. I gain some, but I never get anywhere near my goal weight. My goal weight is largely unattainable to me. Did I ever weigh my goal weight??

You see I love food. Gastric bypass surgery would not be an option for me. I cannot spend the rest of my life eating a portion the size of an egg for each meal How sad! So, I need to find ways to eat less, eat sensibly, and eat healthy all within the structure of my family and crazy/busy/insane kiddie activity schedule.

Healthy eating on-the-go and exercising suffer when schedules become busier, and sorting through the plethora of products and services on the market proves an overwhelming, time-consuming effort in itself.  A new line of products may help me to achieve my elusive weight-loss goals.

I was sent a sample shipment of innovative products from underWAY and Smart for Life to review. We had a family taste testing over a period of days.

Note: Since my children are growing and a healthy weight, I monitor what dietary products they ingest. I didn’t let the kids try to underWay supplement drink as it is a meal replacer. I want the children to eat the healthy meals that I prepare rather than “drinking their meal.” Since I need to lose weight, I find a meal-replacing drink to be acceptable to me. I did let them try the Smart for Life cookies and cupcakes.

The Musings from Me family thoughts on Smart for Life and underWay products:

• underWay supplement drinks — I am not a huge water drinker. If the water is flavored I will drink more. The underWay drink I tried was Acai Pomegranate. underWay is an appetite suppressing drink that curbs hunger. I drank one for breakfast on a day I was on-the-go. Here’s what I found on the underWay website: underWAY™ Curbs Your Hunger Two Ways: (1) its special formulation not only takes longer to be absorbed by the stomach, but it also slows the absorption of what’s already there–making you feel fuller, longer, and (2) its unique ingredients stimulate your stomach, telling your brain you’ve consumed more calories than you really have – which, with underWAY™, is almost zero!
• Smart for Life cookies and cupcakes were pronounced good by the kids and husband. Not an abundance of flavor, but as far as diet products go the flavors are better than most. I like that the ingredients are all natural, 60% organic products. We liked that the products were packaged in small packs. The size of the package was small enough for me to eat in 2 days or the whole family to eat in one sitting.
• Ready-to-Go Vanilla Shakes and Chicken Soup — we have not tried yet. Update to come!
• Smart Crunch, Cupcakes–Chocolate and Carrot, and Chocolate Chip Cupcakes were a hit with all of us!

I’m not sure if I could adopt the new 7-meals-per-day schedule featuring 6 cookies or products plus a balanced dinner that underWay and Smart for Life advocates. But, I found the drinks, cupcakes, and cookies to be tasty and a useful snack in my harried and rushed day.

The new 7-meals-per-day schedule allows your body to maintain steady blood sugar and glucose levels, and to burn more fat for a longer portion of the day.

For more information, from the Smart for Life and underWAY products, developed by physician Dr. Sasson Moulavi, a board certified bariatric weight loss doctor, go to www.smartforlife.com and www.under-way.com.

Special Discount Offer for Musings from Me Readers:

My readers can get a special 10% discount code for underWAY and Smart for Life products.

Please use MCUS10OFFUW for underWAY products at www.underWAY.com.

Please use MCUS10OFFSFL at www.smartforlife.com.

Codes good through August 30.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of underWAY and Smart for Life and received samples of the products to review.

I have spent my life hitching up my pants. Wearing capris in the winter months as I don’t sew. Looking at the hems on pants and thinking “I should sew these pants” and then drifting off to the 1 million things that I would rather do than hem pants. Buying boots with a highish heel to wear with pants that really need to be hemmed. Getting frustrated in the summer months that I cannot wear said pants and said boots in the heat of the summer. In short, being short is a problem.

My teen has never been tall. She was in the 50 percentile from toddler hood through elementary school. At 14 she is almost as tall as I am. She has not had her growth spurt yet. There is hope for her yet. She’s a skinny thing so perhaps she won’t have the problems her nonskinny mother has had all her life trying to find pants that fit.

On Saturday my teen reached a milestone. What was the milestone? For the first time in over 4 summers of having the swim team photo taken she was not placed next to her tween sister.  For the swim team photo, the kids are placed in height order from tiniest to biggest. As a comparison, my son was one of the youngest kindergarteners on the team last year, but was placed with the 2nd graders based on his height.

My girls were separated by about 10 or so other kids. I was proud of my teen. It is hard to be the same height as your younger-by-two-and-a-half-years sister. I know!

I’m motivated at times. At times I would rather sit on the couch and do nothing.

The summer is approaching. Will I get to the health club and exercise? Will I binge on snacks at the pool? Will I give cooking the cold shoulder and get dinner from Pizza Hut?

I want to exercise. I want to find time to exercise. I want to stop making excuses. I want to learn how to budget my time so that I have time to exercise.

Stay tuned…

That man is my good friend, Michael Walsh. Michael Walsh was a young soldier during the Vietnam War. For many years he was unable to share his feelings and thoughts about Vietnam. He, like other soldiers, was shocked at the way the military were treated upon returning from the war.

Mike recently retired from his teaching position with Montgomery County Public Schools. He has spent the last two years visiting Vietnam War Memorials in various parts of the country. His travels to the Vietnam Veterans Memorials are chronicled and photographed on his blog

Stop by and look at the photos. Awe-inspiring.

BABW furry friends make the perfect toy for all ages. My little guy clutched his Elmo by the ear when he was not quite 2. My tween favors any of the glam and glitzy BABWs. My teen has various creatures in her bed — shhhh don’t tell her I said this!

BABWs make a great gift for special occasions. My daughters were 7 and 4 when our son was born. I knew both girls would immediately fall in love with their baby brother. I never worried about jealousy. I wanted to buy each of my daughters a gift before the baby arrived. I wanted to make the arrival of a new baby in our family a special one.

I liked the idea of all four of us going to BABW on our last outing as a “family-of-four-soon-to-be-five.” I knew that I did not need to buy toys as the baby boy was unlikely to want their Barbie/Disney Princess/girlie toys. I just wanted to give the girls something to commemorate the arrival of their brother to our family.

We have a milestone coming up in our family. Our teen “graduates” from 8th grade. Technically, she will have a transition ceremony. Graduation. Transition. Even graduation from preschool! Whatever you call it. Family milestones are a reason to celebrate.

My friends at BABW told me about a line of furry friends specially designed for spring and summer happenings:

• Graduation — BABW has a selection of cuddly stuffed animals dressed  in items including: a black or white graduation gown, mortar board with tassel, dress clothes, a Class of 2010 sash, and a “Pomp & Circumstance” Sound. The graduation sash or robe can be embroidered with your child’s name for an additional charge of $10.
  
• Father’s Day
• Armed Forces Day — Choose from camo sailor bear, Marine Hero Champ, Air Force curly teddy, Army office teddy, to name a few.
• Wedding and Bridal Shower

I have a special giveaway for Musings from Me readers! I have one $25 BABW Gift Card to giveaway. One comment = one entry. Enter now!

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I was given a bear as part of my review. The views expressed in the article are my own. The giveaway is open to U.S. residents only. The giveaway ends May 31, 2010, at 11:59 p.m.

The National Tween Summit was for tween girls between 9 and 14. The age range is wider than the range of preteen — 9 t0 12 years of age — over at  TypeAMom. There were some 8-year-olds at the Tween Summit as well.

As part of the conference program for moms, and a few brave dads(!), there were speakers on nutrition, health and fitness, bullying, and gynecological issues. One of the people I had the pleasure to interview was Dr. Jennifer Ashton. Dr. Ashton is not your mother’s gyno. She specializes in treating all her patients, some of who are tweens and teens, as individuals. Dr. Ashton is the CBS Medical Correspondent.

Dr. Ashton recently published The Body Scoop for Girls: A Straight-Talk Guide to a Healthy, Beautiful You. The Body Scoop for Girls is this month’s Silicon Valley Moms Book Club selection. At the time I interviewed Dr. Ashton her book — The Body Scoop for Girls: A Straight-Talk Guide to a Healthy, Beautiful You — was still in production.

She explained to me that her book is set up in a series of blog posts on topics ranging from periods to genital piercing to sex. The target audience of her book is teenagers, with a secondary audience of moms. She decided to write this book as most books dealing with puberty are aimed at girls are skewed too young. The American Girls book — The Care & Keeping of You: The Body Book for Girls — is too juvenile for teens.

Dr. Ashton described how tweens have evolved over the last 30 years. For many of us, we seamlessly transitioned from “kids” to “teens.” There was no tween stage. Tween or preteen is a relatively new term and age definition. Tweens are exposed to information on TV and on the internet, which is often not age appropriate. Girls are getting their periods younger, sometimes as early as 9 years old. Dr. Ashton sees that many tween and teen girls need guidance to handle their lives and the world around them.

One of the moms asked Dr, Ashton when a tween/teen should see a gynecologist. Dr. Ashton responded that girls between the age of 13 to 15 should see a gynecologist. She asserted that when a teen sees the gynecologist for the first time that the visit should be a consultation without a pelvic exam. The gynecologist should establish an open dialogue with the teen — a “periods and pimples” discussion.

My tween and teen’s conference passes and our transportation to the National Tween Summit was covered by EA Play.

What question perplexes me most on forms and questionnaires? The question I find most difficult to answer is what major city do I live closest to?

As a child through my pre-children years, I would have had several answers:

• 0-4 years — Manchester, England
• 5-8 — New York City
• 9-10 — Manchester, England
• 11 — New York City
• 12-15 — Manchester, England
• 16-18 — Milan, Italy
• 19-22 — Philadelphia
• 23-29 — Washington, D.C.

Yes, my childhood was madness personified!

In 1994, my husband and I realized that our tiny townhouse in Montgomery Village was not big enough to accommodate all our stuff let alone a child! I was happily working in Gaithersburg while my husband commuted to Damascus. We were a stone’s throw from the Shady Grove Metro. I had commuted to DC for work each day before finding a job closer to home. I still took the Metro once or twice a week to George Washington University for graduate classes. Occasionally we would visit an art gallery or museum in D.C. In short, we were D.C. people.

In late 1993, we began our search for a new place to grow roots and hopefully start a family. We quickly realized that Montgomery County, MD, was out of the question. House prices were through the roof. We wanted to build our own home. My husband had this crazy notion that he wanted to buy land. He grew up on 3/4 of an acre, which meant he found our townhouse neighbors too close for comfort.

The quest for land took us to Frederick and Carroll counties. The drive out to both was daunting. We drove in nonrush hour times and on weekends. House after house failed to appeal to us. Some were too small…too expensive…too weird (we stumbled in to a community of senior citizen bungalow townhomes with roll-in showers and extra wide doorways)…too near to massive power lines (seriously, the powerline was where I envisioned having a play structure).

Our search was stalled. We were about to give up when my FIL showed us a listing for a new development in Howard county. The drive out to Howard sold us before we even go to the house. We saw not one car as we drove over the Montgomery county line. It was a ghost town — in a good way — that Sunday afternoon.

The neighborhood — a former farm that my FIL recalled playing at — was almost completely developed with only 5 or 6 lots left. Most of the lots had steep, treacherous driveways that would be nightmarish to mow. The last lot we looked at was perfect. Too close to the road for some, but flat enough for us to visualize our “kids” riding bikes down the completely flat driveway. Welcome to Baltimore, hon!

Through some finagling of finances we were able to swing the much higher home price and lot price. In June 1994 we were the proud owners of 3 acres and 1 new home…thankfully no mule…in Woodbine, MD!

Woodbine has changed over the years, but remains a safe place to live. Thanks to some draconian county laws, many of the farms are in historic preservation. I can’t tell you how relieved we were to find that the farm we can see through our kitchen window would remain a farm. Our neighborhood is bordered on 3 sides by county parkland and 1 side by a semi-working farm.

Which brings me back to the question of what city I live closest to. Howard County is in a no-man’s land. Not a part of the DC Metro Area and not a suburb of Baltimore City and County. I have done what anyone would do — I call both cities my own.

When I am in a DC frame of mind I recall visits to the International Spy Museum, reading the Washington Post, and almost meeting Guy Fieri. As a DC Mommy I go here to find out about events, things to do, and places to shop.

But, let’s not forget my Baltimore side. As a pseudo-Baltimorean, I recall fun times at Port Discovery, flying out of BWI, and inflating our Christmas decorations.

Sometimes I think about what it is like to live in Woodbine with my clutter woes and new-to-us holiday traditions.

Woodbine is not famous for anything. It is a cluster of homes and farms with parkland thrown in for good measure. Woodbine is split between two counties. We’re south of the railroad tracks in Howard County, while those north of the tracks are Carroll County.

Searching the brief entry on Wikipedia I know that…

• Woodbine is named after a plant that grows in fields and on riverbanks.
• Lisbon our neighboring town is home to the first traffic circle in Maryland. Lisbon now has two, woohoo!
• During the Civil War, Rebel cavalry crossed the Patapsco River at Woodbine scouting the Union Army that was on its way to the Battle of Gettysburg.

If you are passing through Woodbine, you might want to stop at Larriland Farms to pick some of the best fruit out there or go on a fall hayride, visit the horses that are nursed back to health at the Days End Horse Rescue Farm, or check out the Woodbine Facebook page.

I wrote this post as part of Blogtrotting. For more information about Blogtrotting, go here.

TypeAMom Conference is a small — 200 plus gathering of new bloggers, experienced bloggers, brands, and PR people At the time I attended TypeAMom last year I had never attended a blogging conference.

I was not entirely sure what attending a conference would mean to me. I write for TypeAMom, so I was excited to meet fellow writers. That was one plus, but what else? I had done a few product reviews at that point, so had a vague idea that I should talk to the brands that were exhibiting. But, what was there besides meeting brands and bloggers?

The sessions! I pored over the conference website to see what was of interest to me. Everything was of interest! The main sessions were for everyone, but the breakout sessions were the ones I had to make a decision about. If you know me in person or even online, you will know that I find it difficult to make decisions. I stood between two sessions at TypeAMom conference and willed myself to make a choice.

All of the sessions, I attended were so worthwhile and important to my growth as a blogger/writer/product promoter/social media marketer/whatever.

This year’s TypeAMom conference is sure to be a hit…with me. Yes! After much deliberation, I now have a ticket to the conference. Don’t have a hotel room or a transportation plan, but by golly I have a ticket for TypeAMom Conference — September 24-September 26, 2010!

If you are a new blogger or even if you have been blogging for a year or two or more, TypeAMom Conference has something for everyone. Interested in purchasing a ticket? Here’s my affiliate link for getting your own ticket.

What you need to know about TypeAMom conference:

• General information…TypeAMom Conference ‘10, September 24-26, Asheville, North Carolina.
• Purchasing a ticket.
• Conference schedule.
• Who is speaking?

Brands? I am looking for a sponsor for my trip to Asheville, NC, September 24-26 to the TypeAMom Conference ‘10. Interested in finding out what I can do for your brand? Contact me at JillAnneBerry @ msn . com.