If you’re reading this between the hours of 7:45 a.m. and 9 a.m., turn on your radio and join our radio chat on Magic 107.9 with hosts Guy Westmoland and Jennifer Irwin. Click on the graphic at right to listen to the radio live on your computer.

Today’s topic is all about Labor Day, which always reminds us of the other kind of “labor day” — you know the one when your feet were up in stirrups and another human being was passing through your body? Yep, that day. You never forget it. And even if your baby entered your life through adoption and not a labor and delivery room, those first moments together are forever burned into memory. So call in and tell us about your birth or adoption stories! We’ll share a few details from our own as well.

When we first launched nwaMotherlode.com more than two years ago, we asked moms to share their birth stories with us. We received some great stories and we published the winning essays (1 winner and three runners-up!) on the website. Click on each title below to read some great birth and adoption stories.

(Our thanks to baby and child photographer extraordinaire Melinda Worthington of MJW Photography for letting us use the beautiful baby photo shown at the top of this post. Click here or on the photo if you’d like to see more of her amazing baby photos.)

• Two Kids and a Happy Meal (the winning essay!)
• Raising Drew’s Baby
• The Story of Emily: “Our Very Own Miracle”
• Diary of a Birth: Just Like Any Other Day

If you’ve never seen the video of the amazing Bill Cosby talking about his wife’s natural childbirth, you MUST click on the play arrow below and watch this clip from YouTube. You will laugh until you cry. Hilarious.

It’s ALIVE! We’re happy to announce that nwaMotherlode.com has spun off a new little sister website, and we’re calling her “Mom’s Choice Directory.com”. You can check it out by clicking HERE.

We want to thank you guys for giving us the idea for this new site. Many of the moms who read nwaMotherlode have sent us questions via e-mail over the past two years, and lots of those questions read like this: “I just moved here two months ago and now I need to find a bakery in Springdale that can make a birthday cake in the shape of a Transformer for my son’s 4th birthday party. HELP! Where do I go for that?”

We got so many different inquiries that we decided it might be helpful to build a directory that has a true mom-slant to it. We moms always ask other moms for recommendations, and that’s the foundation for this directory.

You may remember that last fall we asked for your recommendations on favorite businesses in various categories. (Click here to see that post.) Many of you commented or e-mailed us to let us know which businesses in Northwest Arkansas you frequent most often. We used a lot of that information to begin building a list of businesses throughout the area, and now it has become this new online directory. The cool thing about it is that it will let you search for a business by category (like appliances, music lessons, women’s clothing, etc.) and it will also let you search by individual city or you can choose “all cities” if you’re not sure.

If you remember part of a business’ name but not all of it, you can also search by partial name, too. For example, you might remember that a store has the word “Purple” in the name. So you type the word “purple” into the search bar, and then the website will give you a list of businesses that have that word in the name (like “Purple Armadillo”, which is a fun furniture/accessories store to visit in Bentonville.)

We wanted to make the directory as useful as possible to our fellow mamas, so we’ve included as many businesses as we could find in a given category. All the listings include business name, phone number and address. Some of them appear with a “Mom’s Choice” blue ribbon beside the name, and those are the ones that Shannon and I personally recommend because we’ve shopped there ourselves or have used that particular service.

If you see a pink purse icon beside the business’ name, click on it and it will give you a quote from a local  mom who has used that business before. If you see the word “info” beside the business’ name, that means that the business has chosen to expand their listing in the directory and provide more detail to local moms about what they do and sell.

If you see the “go” button beside the business name, that means you can click it and go directly to the company’s website.

PLEASE NOTE! If you see any error in the search results of this new directory, we’d really appreciate it if you’d shoot us a quick e-mail to let us know so we can correct it asap. As you can imagine, the amount of data in a directory like this is HUGE, so it will be an ongoing process to make sure all the info is absolutely correct and up to date.

If you happen to own or work at one of the businesses listed and want more info on the directory or how to expand your company’s listing, just send us an e-mail at mamas@nwaMotherlode.com and we’ll send you the details.

We hope you love and use the new Mom’s Choice Business Directory. We will keep adding new categories to the database, so let us know if there’s a particular area you’re interested in.

Stay tuned because next Monday we’re going to have an awesome giveaway tied to the new directory. More to come on that next week!

It’s Thursday, which means we’re stopping by KEZA Magic 107.9 for our weekly Thursday morning chat with radio hosts Jennifer Irwin and Guy Westmoland. We’ll be on the air around 7:45 a.m. until around 9 a.m. (Click here or on the graphic at right to listen to the radio live on your computer.)

We’ll be talking about parenting issues that have been “in the news” during the past several weeks and months. We’d love it if you’d call in and join the conversation and give your thoughts on some of these stories that have made national headlines.

Below are links to some of the news stories we’ll be discussing. Click on each title below to read story in full:

• Father places newspaper ad offering daughter’s babysitting services for free.

• Three Florida tweens/teens who bought airline tickets and flew the coop without parents knowing.

• Kindergarten walks 8 miles to find his mother after school bus drop off in wrong place.

• Supermodel Giselle says breastfeeding for six months should be a law.

• Flight attendant takes baby after seeing mother slap the child during flight.

When we heard about the “Bloomingsales” fundraiser being organized by Saving Grace, we thought it was pretty genius. The concept is simple: Get teams of women together and tell them to go shop at several different stores in the Pinnacle Hills Promenade in Rogers. The participating stores give the teams points for each purchase they make, similar to the points you might get if you were playing 18 holes of golf. Those shopping points turn into dollars donated to the charity. The more strategic shopping your team does, the more you help out a great charity. This event actually turns shopping into a generous thing to do. Brilliant idea.

And the money couldn’t be going to a better place. Saving Grace is a Northwest Arkansas non-profit created by a local mom, Becky Shaffer. (Click here to read more about Becky, who spent part of her youth in foster care.) This organization helps young women who are aging out of foster care and need help in making the transition into self-sufficient life on their own. Keep in mind these are teenage girls who don’t have a mom or dad to call for help and often have nowhere to go. Becky and her team at Saving Grace have created a beautiful home for these young women and are teaching them the life skills they need plus providing emotional support that’s critical in this stage of life.

If you have three girlfriends who also like to shop, you can create your own team for the Bloomingsales event which will be held Saturday, September 18th at the Pinnacle Hills Promenade in Rogers. Shoppers will get special discounts, an entry for door prizes, and access to the party on the 19th hole!

If you’re interested in this event, click HERE to get more info on signing up a team of four shoppers. If you sign up by September 1st, your name goes into a drawing for FOUR $100 GIFT CARDS from the Pinnacle Hills Promenade. So get on the phone or e-mail and round up your team members by next Wednesday. If you have any questions about registration, call the Saving Grace office at 636-1133 or e-mail them at info@savinggracenwa.org.

Happy shopping!