Choose Your Meeting

MOPS- Choose Your Meeting 3/13/19

Written By Joanna Metheny & Ciara Fielder

This week at MOPS instead of having one main speaker followed by discussion time, we had the opportunity to attend our choice of different breakout sessions. Our session topics were self-defense / safety, sleep training, and how to apply makeup. Since my 14 month old still isn’t fond of the idea of sleeping through the night, and I am, I chose to attend the sleep training session, as well as the makeup one, in hopes that I can stop looking like I haven’t slept through the night.

In the sleep training session, our own Erin Hill shared some of her best tips to help our kids get better sleep. She started off her talk by having each of us in the room share a bit about our kids, their ages, and the challenges we face in regards to sleep. I learned pretty quickly that for one, I don’t have it nearly as badly as some of you mommas, and two, wow, we are one seriously sleep deprived bunch. Some of us have littles that refuse to go to bed until 3 or 4 in the morning, while other kids can’t sleep unless they are all piled into bed with mom and dad, which can also occasionally include the family dog, leaving no more room in the bed for poor momma. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

Erin’s core advice consisted of three main points:

•  Put Baby to bed in a dark room, ideally by themselves
• Use a sleep sack
• Dress them in footie pajamas

She also suggested making use of continuous white noise to mask other household sounds to help Baby sleep better. Erin warned against the use of “sleep associations”, or those crutches many of us use (binkies, driving around, rocking) to get our babies to sleep. She said the earlier we can break them of needing these, the better sleep we will all be getting. Erin also said it is essential to put our kids to bed when they are awake, so that they will learn to self-soothe, and not rely on artificial aids to fall asleep.

In the next session I attended, Melissa Campos did a demo of a basic daytime look on a live model. Melissa is a professional makeup artist, and worked for MAC for years before branching out on her own. While I already have a drawer full (okay, maybe it’s more like 2) of makeup, I’m always looking for ideas on how to use it more effectively.

Melissa emphasized the importance of skin care as essential to a good makeup application. She said the two most important things we can do to create the proper surface for our foundation, are exfoliating and moisturizing. She said moisturizer acts as adhesive for our foundation, and if our skin is too dry, the foundation will soak right into our pores and lines, and highlight those, rather than creating a smooth surface. She also offered us some hot tips on things that are worth the investment: foundation and lip color, and things that are better to save on: mascara, because most formulations are pretty equal.

Another thing she repeatedly recommended was to blend, blend, blend, when applying just about any color on your face. This is something I never paid much attention to, but she really, really put a lot of emphasis on this, when doing everything from eyeshadow to bronzer. She packed so much in to such a short amount of time, I wish I could have spent an hour picking her brain. I can’t wait to apply what I learned from both sessions!

And to add….Nick Obligacion, Manteca’s very own retired Police chief, came to lead a few sessions on Safety. We were given some great tips. Here a few of them:

• Don’t post on social media when you are gone on vacation. It is an invitation for unwanted guests at your house.
• Park in parking spots closest to your destination so you are not walking in the parking lot for long period of time by yourself.
•  Don’t leave your purse in the car or shopping cart. Perfect time for theft. He suggests wearing a cross body bag or taking your cash/cards and putting it in your pocket.
• Protect your children when it comes to the internet. It is important that you have all their passwords and monitor all their activity.

MOMSnext Breakout Session:

In our MOMSnext breakout session we had the honor of hearing our very own MOMSnext mentor mom, Patti Benbrook’s testimony.  I had asked Patti to speak to us about a month ago and she said it’s funny that I had called because she has felt God asking her to share her story.  Patti said yes out of obedience to God but said she was out of her comfort zone for sure.  During Patti’s testimony we laughed and we cried. She did amazing and gave God All the glory for being able to stand up in front of us and speak.  Patti started off by saying “God has been with us through all of it”. She gave us some background on her mother and how she was raised before she started in on her own story.  Patti’s testimony is not “picture perfect” even though that was how she was taught to act in front of people even as a child but “God has been with us through all of it” from Pennsylvania to Hayward to Manteca “God has been with us through all of it”. Her 30’s were some tough times and she was saved at 35.  She is now married to her husband Don and they have a blended family of 10 kids plus over 26 grandchildren and even some great grandchildren “God has been with us through all of it”.

Patti left us with a verse Matthew 11:28 “Come unto me all those who are weak and weary so you may find rest.”  I hope Patti will one day share her testimony to all of our MOPS group so that you all can hear how God was with her through all of it and how she became the woman she is today.