**Update**
Big congrats to Holly of Not a Perfect Mom Blog for winning Scary Mommy's brand new book, Confessions Of A Scary Mommy!
At the top of that search was the hilariously snarky blog of Jill Smokler, Maryland's own Scary Mommy.
When I read her blog I felt like I had finally found a mom who wasn't afraid to tell it like it is. She didn't apologize for admitting that her first baby "was a bit of an asshole" and that her "kids go to school, goddammit, unless they are running a fever, puking their guts out, or bleeding profusely".
Clearly, Jill was my kind of mom and honestly I felt like most of what she wrote I could have easily written myself given enough alcohol and absolutely no fear of offending someone.
I saw Jill for the first time at Bloggy Boot Camp in Baltimore in 2010. I remember she dropped the F-bomb in her presentation and I looked around anticipating gasps of outrage from someone in the audience. Instead everyone was laughing and clapping and nodding their heads agreeing that sometimes a mom just has to throw caution to the wind and say "Fuck" on Twitter. At that point I was relatively sure given the opportunity to introduce myself to Jill I would either throw up on her shoes and/ or pass out.
Not that I had expected her to be truly scary.
I expected a woman exuding confidence and even a bit haughty. After all, this was a blogger with an international following in the hundreds of thousands. Instead, I realized Jill was just like the rest of us. She second guesses the way her hair or clothes look. She worries about what others think of her and at the end of the day she really just wants her kids to sleep in their own bed and stay there.
She wasn't scary at all.
She was lovely and fun and she made me laugh.
Since then Jill and I have hung out a few times at blogging events and each time I see her I go home with a face that hurts from smiling and laughing and thankful that I didn't throw up on her shoes that first time I met her because who wants to be friends with the girl who pukes on you?
When we spent some time together last September I was excited when Jill told me the news that she had signed a contract for a book deal based on her blog and her hilarious stories of motherhood and marriage. After reading an advanced copy I can proudly say that her book, Confessions of a Scary Mommy, does not disappoint. Each chapter reads much like a blog post and features a number of motherhood confessions from her wildly popular and completely anonymous Scary Mommy Confessional. Heck, I'd want to buy the book just to find out if she included one of mine in its pages (sadly, none of mine made the cut but with over153,600 confessions to date the likelihood was pretty slim).With chapters titled "Yes, you'll shit on the delivery table", "I hate other people's kids (not yours, of course)", and "The Xanax approach to parenting" the book should come with a warning label proclaiming the likelihood of possibly cracking a rib from laughter.
The best part of all is that Jill has graciously agreed to give one hard-bound copy of her new book, Confessions of a Scary Mommy, to one of my readers. To win you need to leave me a comment below telling me a funny (and true) story about your life as a wife and/or mother. Just for shit and giggles I will give you an extra entry if you tweet this review and giveaway and come back here and leave me a separate comment telling me you did so.
Here, I'll even make it easy for you:
Win a free copy of @ScaryMommy's book from @xtremeparnthood by sharing your funniest mommy moment http://www.extremeparenthood.com/2012/03/not-so-scary-mommy-and-giveaway.html
I will pick one winner at random (using the handy-dandy random.org) at 5:00 pm (EST) on Monday, March 12th, 2012.
Good luck and remember that motherhood can be scary but it doesn't seem so bad when you can laugh about it!
DISCLOSURE: I was provided with a free copy of Jill's book in return for this review. All opinions are my own and totally awesome so you should hurry up and pre-order it.
