Blog Posts by Diane Mizota, Host of This Week in M.O.M.

THIS WEEK IN M.O.M…Lil kids, BIG MESSES! Oh dear, you only turned your back for a second…Moms, you know exactly what I mean. It's pretty funny when you're not the one who has to clean it up! Take a look at these cuties caught in the act…

Birthday Party Overload...

Kids' birthday parties are getting out of hand! In today's celebrity-obsessed, competitive hyper-parenting atmosphere, we are spending thousands and even tens of thousands of dollars on kids' parties. What happened to cake, ice cream and pin the tail on the donkey?

I just finished throwing my son a party for his 5 th birthday, and I'm wiped. I tried to keep it simple by having it at home, yet I still feel as if I threw a small wedding reception, and I've got the receipts to prove it. My first mistake? Inviting about 15 kids, which sounds manageable, until you remember that each of those kids brings one or two parents each and maybe a sibling. Add in family and neighbors, and 15 kids quickly multiplies into a party of 50. Now, you've got to feed, hydrate and entertain 50 people. Yikes!

Our party was not over the top. We had a bouncy house, pizza, fruit…and Jedi Training. But when you factor in party favors, rental chairs and tables, cake, plates, it all adds up. For this 2

THIS WEEK IN M.O.M…one of our very favorite bloggers, Rebecca Woolf of Girl's Gone Child, stops by! She's chatting "ChildStyle," her new HGTV.com series that showcases inspiring nurseries and spaces for kids, and she's dishing out some style advice of her own! Watch…

For more cool cribs, be sure to check out "ChildStyle with Rebecca Woolf" on HGTV.com

There she is America, Emily Maynard, the first single mom chosen as the Bachelorette. Each week she's glammed up and sipping cocktails with her array of camera-hungry, well-muscled suitors. Traveling the globe on fantasy dates with her man harem AND her six year-old daughter in tow. The men seem genuinely into her (as they always do) and she seems to be doing a good job of weeding out men who aren't "there for the right reasons".

But that's reality TV. In actual reality, single mom dating looks drastically different. Yes, there are cocktails, and there are suitors. But there also are babysitters. Exes. Rejections. And not a helicopter ride or cliff diving date in sight.

Throngs of eligible men, willing to step into a step-father role are not lining up to date single moms. In fact, in reading online dating profiles, you could venture a guess that 50% of the men on there won't even see a single mom's profile because of their preference to date women without kids. So what is it

THIS WEEK IN M.O.M…Chalene Johnson, author of PUSH: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, a Bangin' Body, and the Life You Deserve and creator of the popular TurboJam & TurboFire exercise programs shows how people can reset priorities, get their lives together, and lose weight in a healthy way for good! And now she's helping families get more active together with a summer plan.

What will your family do to get out of the house and get moving this summer?

Dear Mommy...

My four year old has pulled out the big guns. And oh boy, are we having a moment of motherhood! Not the soft, fuzzy, victorious kind, but the kind where you've got to dig deep and earn your mommy stripes. When your sweet little one, the apple of your eye, looks you dead in the eye, screeching, "I hate you Mommy!" Ah, motherhood.

Once abided by without question, established rules in our house are now met with HATRED. No video games at the dinner table. If you don't pick up your stuff you lose it. No dessert if you don't eat your dinner. Perfectly reasonable rules all now elicit the "H" bomb.

"I hate you mommy!"

Adults don't speak those powerful words to each other for a reason. I haven't been on the receiving end of them for years, AND I've been through a divorce. (ba-dum-bum!) For a moment, I forgot that they were coming from my irrational, developing son, and felt their raw impact in my gut, where I was transported back to the schoolyard. Where kids learn the power of

THIS WEEK IN M.O.M…Find out what happens when you mix kids with water! Check out these clips of some silly summertime tikes and just try not to crack a smile!

How do you & your family have fun in the sun?

When I was married, certain parenting responsibilities just fell into traditional gender circles. I cooked. I did laundry. I grocery shopped. He set the sprinklers. He cleaned the yard. He killed bugs.

Now a divorced single mom, I had to let a lot of that stuff go. I've learned (kind of) how the sprinklers work. I change the smoke alarm batteries. I kill bugs. I fix stuff…or call people to fix stuff. The buck stops with me around our house.There is no "waiting 'til your father gets home". If I don't do it, it ain't getting done.

Nonetheless, I always thought that teaching my son to ride a bike would be his father's job. Don't know why, but just assumed that it would fall into the sprinklers/yard work/bug killing realm. But seeing as how I bought K a bike, which is at my house, and that my dad just helped me take the training wheels off, someone's got to teach this kid to ride. It was time for me to step up.

I was afraid. My own gender assumptions had stifled me to think