Celebrate Your Mamas!

Wallingford is bustling with mothers – young and old, hip or crunchy, working at home or in the office – all of whom deserve to be celebrated on Mother’s Day (and everyday). Mother’s Day is celebrated all around the world. Here, in the U.S., it’s the second Sunday in May.

In the late 1800’s, there were several attempts to establish the holiday, but momentum didn’t catch on until the efforts of Anna Jarvis. Wanting to honor her deceased mother’s dream of making a celebration for all mothers, she enlisted the assistance of wealthy Philadelphia merchant John Wanamaker and promoted the holiday until Congress and President Woodrow Wilson made it an official national holiday in 1914.

So whatever you have planned, hopefully you’ll have some time this Sunday to celebrate all the moms, mamas, mommies, and mothers in your life!

According to the U.S. Census Bureau

• There are an estimated 82.5 million mothers in the U.S. 10 million are single moms.
• 4 million women have babies each year. The average age of women when they give birth for the first time is at a record high at 25.1 years.
• 55% of mothers with infant children are working moms (63% among college educated women), down from 59% overall. This is the first decline since the Bureau began recording this metric in 1976.
• August is the most popular month in which to have a baby and Tuesday is the most common day of the week.
• More than 152 million Mother’s Day cards are expected to be given this year, making it the 3rd largest card-sending occasion.

• Me and Mom at the Zoo – Woodland Park Zoo, Saturday May 8th, 9:30-3:30. To mark the event’s 20^th year anniversary, Woodland Park Zoo is honoring the thousands of Mom & Me participants over the past two decades by offering free admission on May 8 to anyone – moms, kids, dads or grandparents – by wearing a Mom & Me at the Zoo t-shirt from the past. If the shirt no longer fits, just bring it with you!
• Babies (the movie) – Opening Friday of Mother’s Day weekend around Seattle. Directed by award-winning filmmaker Thomas Balmès, Babies simultaneously follows four babies around the world – from birth to first steps. The children are from Namibia, Mongolia, Toyko, and San Francisco. Re-defining the nonfiction art form, Babies joyfully captures on film the earliest stages of the journey of humanity that are at once unique and universal to us all.
• Rusty Pelican – Drink, meal and dessert specials all day Sunday.
• Selena’s Guadalajara – Specials all day Sunday
• Fainting Goat Gelato – Mom Day specials and new flavors like Wallyhood Honey Rose, Banana Cream Pie, and others
• Paper Delights – chic and artful cards and gifts
• Family Ecstatic Dance at OmCulture
• Tropical Tan – Free Tan

• “Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to ‘jump at de sun.’ We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground.” — Zora Neale Hurston
• “Though motherhood is the most important of all the professions — requiring more knowledge than any other department in human affairs — there was no attention given to preparation for this office.” — Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• “It kills you to see them grow up. But I guess it would kill you quicker if they didn’t.” –Barbara Kingsolver
• “My mother could make anyone feel guilty – she used to get letters of apology from people she didn’t even know.” –Joan Rivers