Taking the Sippy Cup Route to Hollywood

When St. Louis mom Melissa Mitchell first started the blog Sippy Cup Mom in 2010, her goal was simple: she wanted to keep her family updated about her 2-year-old son, Hayden, as he grew. Fast forward three years, and Sippy Cup Mom is now a full-fledged business, with readers across the country flocking to Mitchell’s blog for recipes, reviews, craft ideas, travel recommendations and more.

“There are a lot of great things I love about being a blogger,” says Mitchell, who enjoys travel and technology and is an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan. “One of my favorite things is the connections I’ve made with both bloggers and brands. Some of my best friends are bloggers that I have met in the past few years. I also love connecting with brands that I love and knowing my family’s feedback helps them.”

With almost 60,000 monthly visitors to her site, over 10,000 Facebook fans and more than 13,000 Twitter followers, Sippy Cup Mom has become a go-to source for parents (mostly moms) searching for tips and information related to raising kids. Mitchell works hard to network with national brands and businesses so she can provide the details those parents are looking for.

You'll frequently find her promoting family-friendly movies (new studio releases or even for Netflix), househould products (recently Serta mattresses), the newest technology for moms, and all things Disney. Just recently, she headed to Hollywood to walk the blue (yes, blue) carpet at the premiere of Monsters University – and of course she documented all the excitement of her trip, as well as her review of the film, on her blog.

The success of Sippy Cup Mom is not all that has changed in Mitchell’s life in the past few years. In February, her family of three instantly grew to a family of five with the birth of twin daughters, Olivia and Evelyn.

“For nine months, I was constantly torn between being excited and worried,” says Mitchell, adding that “I spent most of my pregnancy being worried times two over the smallest things!” Preparing for the arrival of twins is no small task, especially with a busy preschooler and a thriving blog to manage. But Mitchell turned to message boards, local moms of twins, and other bloggers raising multiples, and received lots of fantastic advice.

She and her husband built an extra room in their house to accommodate the new arrivals, and – like so many parents – found themselves buying a van. And even though twin pregnancies are automatically considered high risk and pre-term labor is not uncommon, Mitchell is proud to have delivered two healthy baby girls (via c-section since one of the girls was breech) at 38 weeks and 2 days.

“I wish I had some good secrets,” she says when asked how she managed to successfully carry her twins to term. “I honestly rested as much as I could, especially during those last few weeks ... I ate a lot of protein and drank over 120 ounces of water a day to make sure I didn’t get dehydrated – some days it seemed like I lived in the bathroom.”

These days, life is definitely busier for Mitchell. In addition to caring for the 4 month-old twins, she also makes an effort to spend plenty of one-on-one time with big brother Hayden, now 5.

And of course, there’s Sippy Cup Mom, where she was back to posting just a few weeks after giving birth. “It’s definitely been a hard transition,” she says of learning to juggle it all. “I’ve learned to do a lot of multi-tasking. I’ll do laundry and dishes while on conference calls and I’ve grown accustomed to getting up before my kids so I can get stuff done around the house.”

She has also learned to ask for help when she needs it, and advises other work-at-home moms to do the same. Overall, though, Mitchell has adjusted remarkably well to life as a successful blogger and mother of three.

“I have to say that having twins isn’t as hard as I thought it would be,” she says. “I imagined our house would be chaos all the time and it’s not.” “Now, when they are toddlers,” she adds, “I imagine it will be a lot different!”

Photos courtesy of Melissa Mitchell. Top Photo: Melissa and husband, Heath Mitchell, son Hayden, 5, and the twins Olivia and Evelyn during a recent trip to the beach. Middle photo: Twins Olivia, left, and Evelyn, born in February. Bottom photo, Evelyn, (left), Hayden and Olivia have some snuggle time.