WooHoo-- Back to Back 5 Star Reviews for The MoMmY-Go-RoUnD from Readers' Favorites today!! Second one follows!

Reviewed By Ray Simmons for Readers’ Favorite   

Completed on 4/25/2016

Review Rating: 5 stars!

I honestly loved The Mommy-Go-Round by Eleanor D. Alspaugh. I have already been through the child raising years, and it confirmed for me that it’s not easy to raise kids, and that the most important things you can bring to the process are love, patience, and perspective. Eleanor D. Alspaugh does a great job of drawing on the lessons and experiences of her own childhood, and those of her time as a mother, to create a wonderful picture of the American family as it should be. This is not a “How to” book or an instruction manual on raising kids, but I think it would make a great gift for young mothers. I think there are a lot of things a young mother or father can learn from this book and it is very entertaining.

The Mommy-Go-Round is well written, well organized, and very humorous. It covers almost every situation a parent will encounter on the long journey called parenthood. I enjoyed the essays on Christmas and other special days the most. These are the times that stick out in my mind when I think about my own childhood or my time as a young parent. I wish The Mommy-Go-Round had been available when my son was born. I would have had a little bit of a heads up on some of the joys and trials that would come, and I could have been a little better and more understanding helper to his mother. I applaud Eleanor D. Alspaugh for writing The Mommy-Go-Round and, looking at all the beautiful pictures of her happy family taken through the years, I can understand why she had to.

Thrilled to see TWO 5 Star Reviews from Readers' Favorites today!! First up...

 

Reviewed By Sarah Stuart for Readers’ Favorite   

 

Completed on 4/25/2016

Review Rating: 5 stars!

 

The Mommy-Go-Round by Eleanor D. Alspaugh opens with her bumpy road to conception and goes on to record the traumatic birth of her first baby, she and her husband taking their daughter home, and Holly’s early years. The tragedy of miscarriage, and the doubts tests suggested for a second developing new life caused an unplanned gap in the couple’s family and Julianne was born when Holly was four years old. A son, Nathan, pre-natal tests jettisoned with the doubts, completed the threesome. The Mommy-Go-Round follows Mrs Alspaugh’s joys and trials of being a mother until, unexpectedly, she finds herself preparing to be a grandmother. Throughout this beautifully illustrated book, she tells readers all the things nobody else will about the tumultuous journey of life when a woman, particularly if she is a Christian with high expectations of herself, embarks on motherhood.

Half-close your eyes and The Mommy-Go-Round reads as The Merry-Go-Round and I suspect that this is Eleanor D. Alspaugh’s intention. Full of facts, the reassurance that any reader who is a mother is not alone, and amazingly revealing honesty, this book can best be described as a carousel. If I needed a title for an Amazon reader’s review, it would be “Mommy’s Crazy Carousel, grab your copy NOW.” I laughed, I cried, and recognized familiar feelings of inadequacy. My favorite quote is in the title of chapter two, when Holly’s birth is imminent. “BTW, does this come with ANY instructions?” The Mommy-Go-Round is written in a style that lets you hear Mrs Alspaugh’s voice as if you were a friend drinking coffee at her kitchen table, assuming there is even time for a Mommy TO sit!

Excited to have SeriousReading.com give The MoMmY-Go-RoUnD a 5 star review and a 97% rating! There is also an interview with me sooo if you are open to understanding this CrAzY Mom and Author a little better, please click on links below to check out the review and the interview too! 

http://seriousreading.com/…/2989-the-mommy-go-round-book-re…

http://seriousreading.com/…/2869-interview-with-eleanor-d-a…

Copies of The MoMmY-Go-RoUnD can be ordered from independent bookstores and are available at our hometown store Whistlestop Bookshop and the shop near where I grew up, The Doylestown Bookshop! These are both charming stores that carry all kinds of wonderful books and gift items! Support your independents! Thanks again for your interest!!

"Thoroughly Honest, At Times Hilarious and Always Entertaining..."

After reading The Mommy-Go-Round, Jeff Wood of the Whistlestop Bookshop said, "Eleanor has written a thoroughly honest, at-times hilarious, and always entertaining account of coming to be a mother of three. You will learn about the Parental Curse, The Pet War, and the Trials & Tribulations of the Family Vacation." 

Jeff, like many others also admitted to laughing out loud and relating to the book in the raising of his own family. I was extremely honored  to hear that Jeff felt it was in the top books that he has been asked to read by the many authors that ask him to read their books, just as I did. And the icing on the top, The Whistlestop Bookshop agreed to carry The Mommy-Go-Round and hosted my first book signing. Very grateful and happy, that's me!

Ho Ho Ho! Give the Gift of Laughter for the Holidays with The MoMmY-Go-RoUnD!

Read it? Relate to it? Laugh & Love the Reality of Motherhood? Then you, your friends, family, coworkers, will all LoVe The MoMmY-Go-RoUnD! Men love it too!  It's available at bookshops, just ask and particularly at my hometown bookshops --  Whistlestop Bookshop in Carlisle, PA, online @ www.whistlestoppers.com and The Doylestown Bookshop in Doylestown, PA, online @ www.doylestownbookshop.com.  It's also available as a book or ebook on Amazon.com, Barnes & Nobel, and Ingram Spark.  Hope you'll pick up a copy for you or your loved ones! 5 star Reviews on Amazon and Barnes & Nobel!
Remember...

#Mommylife = KiDs = UpS & DoWnS but Never Ending Love ---
Enjoy The Ride on The #MoMmY Go RoUnD!!!

Excerpt from Chapter 18: Christmas in July

Being a parent has truly taught me the meaning of the expression, “Christmas in July.” It is the time of year that some children, especially mine, begin to write their Christmas lists…oh and one other thing…they begin to whine about how far off Christmas actually is!!
I’m fairly certain that when the summer gets a little boring, and a bit too hot, there’s summer reading out there that outlines the rules that children follow when making a COOL Christmas List. The first rule is to make the list I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-Y LONG! In fact, my daughter likes to make it long enough so that she can be truly despondent that she will NEVER EVER TRULY GET WHAT SHE WANTS (this year that is…) In fact, to hear it from them, they never do get what they REALLY want. (Forget the fact that a mere six months ago, they received the majority of another rather endless list of overpriced items, most of which are now cluttering up my living room, bedrooms, and playroom areas.)

Anyway, it was a hot July evening when my daughter decided to “Cool off” by writing this year’s Christmas list. She completed the list then proceeded to begin the sales pitch by gently “walking me” through her winter wonderland wish list. Not being of the Christmas giving spirit myself that Christmas List Eve, I did my best rendition of Scrooge. This response caused the list to be abandoned on my kitchen island with her modifying title, new and in my opinion, improved, as “The Never Christmas List.”

Christmas Confessions…
Now I ask you, where would my child get this rather annoying, yet comical habit from? There can be only one answer…. The Parental Curse…. Used only as a last resort, and I’m sure when my own parents reached their breaking point from what else but ….MY CHRISTMAS LIST!!!!
Yes, I confess. I did it. Mine was no ordinary Christmas list…. My brothers were witness to this. My list was in fact almost the entire Sears Wish book with basically everything under the sun circled as a “MUST HAVE!” In an “honest” effort to save my parents some money, I skipped a few boy items here and there. In retrospect, I should have crossed off the few things I didn’t want rather than waste all that time circling things!! Anyway, can I help it if my begging, pleading and dare I admit it?? My WHINING was much more “effective” than my brothers trying to kill each other throughout the rest of the year? Looking back, I’m now sure that my whining was the clincher that drove my poor parents to the ultimate punishment I’m still paying for….the dreaded Parental Curse cast upon their beloved daughter during a brief moment of parental insanity!! By the time I was done with poor Mom and Dad, they were probably in a state of (sticker) shock and asking that age old Jimmy Stewart question spoken in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “Why do we have to have all these kids anyway???”
And so it came to pass. I deserved and became a victim of Parental revenge. A simple curse that could escalate my children’s innocent act of making a “simple, little Christmas list” into a Whine Fest complete with written documentation… This incredibly powerful Parental Curse designed to punish me for years on end. And me asking the same question my parents most likely asked years before... Whatever became of those “visions of sugarplums” dancing ONLY in the heads of sleeping children!! What is it that then compels the darlings to put the visions down on paper, in list format no less? I think the answer will come out when my children write their rebuttal to this book due out in paperback in the year 2025…

Excerpt from Chapter 7: 8:00 p.m. "Mom, I have a test tomorrow."

Who knew that this would someday be a phrase that would strike terror in my heart? What's even more incredible is how making that statement somehow brings a sense of peace and tranquility to the child's heart....It’s like a transference of the responsibility for passing the test. Despite my many pleas over the years that we spread test preparation over at least two nights, my children seem to delight in an incredible sense of freedom (and forgetfulness) that first night and the prospect of jamming the studying of 25 pages of history, science, whatever into one teeny tiny evening....More interestingly is that somehow my children have gotten the crazy idea that if MOM memorizes the materials, they are guarantied an A+! No problem!! They must have this vision of me sitting in the desk beside them filling out the test and passing it over to them to put their name on. We’re a team, we’re family, she’s my Mom…Let me assure you, we’re close but NOT that close.

Did I torture my parents in this same way? I shudder to think. Of course, I can’t take full responsibility for this behavior. Having had the pleasure of reading my husband’s report cards when we first married (at which point his family must have believed it safe to bring them out of hiding….), my years of report cards reflecting the comment “too talkative” seem mild in comparison. As one teacher summed him up….if Steve required an effort to breathe, he would cease. Sounds to me like he enjoyed that same incredible sense of freedom which our kids now love, throughout the entire school year.

Now admittedly by having school age children, I have had the opportunity to re-learn all the things I blew off the first time around. And enjoy it too! Trust me, there is nothing more annoying to a child cramming for a test then to say things like….”Isn’t this interesting” or “I love history, don’t you?” All’s fair in love and tests. They come to me with open books and blank expressions on their faces. My feelings are that if they’re going to act like they never heard the test material before and put the burden on me to re-teach two weeks worth of lessons in one hour, then I reserve the right to be annoyingly cheerful and completely absorbed in the subject matter!