As Swedish as I and the Mum­my­Mug™ are, we also have another root, namely the region of Twente in the East of the Netherlands.

Why there, you would think? Well, you are look­ing at yet another lovepat; as I fol­lowed my Dutch hus­band Han back to live in his home town Haaks­ber­gen in 2007. Haaks­ber­gen and Twente  is thus where I started devel­op­ing my idea for the Mum­my­Mug™. As a new arrival in a new coun­try, I lit­er­ally had to start from the begin­ning: learn­ing the lan­guage, build­ing my net­work and try to work out how on earth to start the adven­ture of trans­lat­ing the idea for the prod­uct con­cept Mum­my­Mug™ to a real product.

Today, the regional news­pa­per Tuban­tia has pub­lished a fan­tas­tic fea­ture arti­cle on Mum­my­Mug™. It is unfor­tu­nately not avail­able online, as it has been placed in their spe­cial peri­od­i­cal De Onderne­mer (‘The Entre­pre­neur’). I take it as a great honor: not only is it great pub­lic­ity, it is — know­ing the Twents cul­ture — a real token of recog­ni­tion. And in Twente, it takes time and effort for a new­comer to earn his or her place.

You see: liv­ing in Twente is not just liv­ing in yet another part of the King­dom of the Nether­lands.  It is liv­ing in Twente.  This region and its proud inhab­i­tants, call­ing them­selves Tukkers, really have a sense of spe­cial com­mu­nity and many have lived here for gen­er­a­tions. There is even such a thing as a move­ment for the Free Repub­lic of Twente (in Dutch) — that  even hands out Twentse pass­ports to peo­ple who swear alle­giance to the Twentse flag. Yep, this is pos­si­ble in a coun­try like the Nether­lands, built on the prin­ci­ples of accep­tance and lib­erty. The Tukkers speak a spe­cial dialect — Twents — that really is so dif­fer­ent in vocab­u­lary and pro­noun­ci­a­tion from  reg­u­lar Dutch, that it is dif­fi­cult for some­one who has learned reg­u­lar Dutch to  under­stand it. And no won­der: an online dic­tio­nary of Twents count almost 1,700 spe­cific Twentse words!

So in today’s blog, I want to return the favour: I am also very proud of Twente!

The first per­son I came in con­tact with was Mar­tin Gre­vers, who designed the con­cept of the Mum­my­Mug™. Read more about this cre­ative inven­tor and our coop­er­a­tion here. Dur­ing an inten­sive first year of prod­uct devel­op­ment, I also got to know a range of other cre­ative part­ners, such as the design bureau Indes in Enschede, teach­ers at the Indus­trial Design Depart­ment at Sax­ion Hogeschool and at Tech­nis­che Uni­ver­siteit Twente , and sup­port and advice from the Indus­trial design Cen­tre that have helped me come in con­tact with the right peo­ple at the right moment. I even got per­sonal advice more than once from the Mayor of Enschede, Mr Peter Den Oud­sten.

Wher­ever I have come, I have felt the cre­ative and entre­pre­neur­ial spirit of Twente and am very grate­ful for the con­tri­bu­tions of all part­ners that have helped and encour­aged me along the way. With­out the warm wel­come that Twente offered to a newly arrived Swedish woman with not much more than a good idea in her pocket, the Mum­my­Mug™ would prob­a­bly never have got­ten off the ground. And although I am based in The Hague nowa­days, I go to Twente often and still work reg­u­larly with my Twentse partners.

Thus — I’m proud to say, on behalf of Mum­my­Mug™: Wij Zijn Tukkers — and proud of it!

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Spot­ted on Spring­wise: Readeo; an online com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool to allow chil­dren and their fam­i­lies to read together in real time over the Inter­net. It com­bines a video chat with online vir­tual children’s books to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive expe­ri­ence that the team behind Readeo calls BookChatTM. If you sub­scribe to the ser­vice ($9,95 per month) and both you and your kid have access to a com­puter and a web­cam, you can share a bed­time story even if you hap­pen to be at the other side of the world.

I must admit that I’m not a big fan of expe­ri­enc­ing a book through a dig­i­tal read­ing device. I have no urge what­so­ever to jump on the iPad train and will never — ever — exchange my wall of books I have dragged around for a mem­ory stick hold­ing 5,000 vol­umes. I pre­fer a good ol’ book, prefer­ably a heavy one, rest­ing on my lap. Also when read­ing to my daughter.

But — my mother also refused for years to instal a microwave oven in our kitchen in the early 80’s.… Turns out she was only a slow adopter, because now she could not imag­ine a kitchen with­out it. And I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all — so who knows, per­haps I’ll be read­ing sto­ries from a screen soon enough.

And for some­thing like Readeo, I would be will­ing to give it a go. I really see the use  in  pro­vid­ing an oppor­tu­nity for fam­i­lies who are apart to simul­ta­ne­ously share a story moment together. That read­ing moment is in our fam­ily — as I believe also in so many oth­ers — one of the cosiest parts of the day.  An oppor­tu­nity for inter­ac­tion, for teach­ing, lis­ten­ing to each other. And re-living those child­hood mem­o­ries through pass­ing on the sto­ries we our­selves loved when we were kids.

When I travel, this is one of the moments I miss the most. And I dare to bet my daugh­ter feels the same way.

And it was pre­cisely the need to con­nect and share, and the lack of a good solu­tion for meet­ing that need, that lead to the cre­ation of Readeo, which is devel­oped and launched by a Chicago-based startup com­pany. Founder and inven­tor Coby wanted to facil­i­tate the inter­ac­tion between his son and the grand­par­ents, who lived live 1500 miles away.

In other words — another exam­ple of some­thing inven­tive, by par­ents for par­ents, solv­ing a real and hands-on chal­lenge we face in our daily lives. Way to go!

Readeo is cur­rently only avail­able to users in the US, but per­haps some­one will pick up a license for Europe soon enough?? Who­ever gets going: drop me a line, so I can pro­mote my favourite titles for the vir­tual library selection ;-)!

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Yes­ter­day, Susan Fox of 24/7 Moms sug­gested in an inspi­ra­tional post that as Mums, we should start with the end in mind and define a “Mom Mis­sion State­ment”.

Defin­ing a Mis­sion State­ment might sound as some­thing for­mal­is­tic that only orga­ni­za­tions do.

But I agree that it is a good idea. A good mis­sion state­ment indi­cates what the pur­pose of the orga­ni­za­tion is. Par­ent­ing and fam­ily life eas­ily slips into an end­less, daily rou­tine full of end­less activ­i­ties, where we eas­ily lose direc­tion and keep push­ing really impor­tant things out, as we focus on fire­fight­ing the urgen­cies that keep com­ing our way. Mak­ing a Mis­sion State­ment is of course noth­ing more com­pli­cated than stop­ping and think­ing about what the long term goals are  our pur­pose as Mums, and as a fam­ily. The mere process of doing so gives per­spec­tive and valu­able point­ers at every cross-roads for which direc­tion we should take.

A Mis­sion State­ment for Moth­er­hood requires that we ask our­selves what the goal of par­ent­ing and of hav­ing a fam­ily really is.

Susan con­cludes that her Mom Mis­sion is that she wants her chil­dren to suc­ceed in school, to learn to read and study. She wants them to learn to han­dle their finances when they are older, learn to con­sider oth­ers before them­selves and to have a sense of grat­i­tude. To make friends, eat healthy and play sports; to learn that say­ing “sorry” leads to last­ing rela­tion­ships. To cook for them­selves, to do laun­dry and clean a bath­room. She won­ders if her goals for her son should be the same as for her daugh­ter.  She breaks down her ques­tions into cat­e­gories: Aca­d­e­mic, spir­i­tual goals, life skills, friend­ship  and fam­ily fun goals.

I think Susan is off to a great start. What my child should take with her into adult­hood is of course an essen­tial part of what I like to achieve as a Mum and I can sub­scribe to most goals on Susan’s list. And if I had a son, I would cer­tainly not leave out the cook­ing and the laun­dry skills!

But when I keep on think­ing, I con­clude that I am more on a Fam­ily Mis­sion than a Mum Mis­sion.

My Mis­sion State­ment would be about all the peo­ple in the fam­ily — thus also about the goals for Mum and Dad as a per­sons in their own right, and these can­not be seen sep­a­rately from what the kids should learn or do.

The dynam­ics and inter­ac­tion between all fam­ily mem­bers would also stand cen­tral in my Mis­sion State­ment — how we share respon­si­bil­i­ties, share ben­e­fits and how we com­mu­ni­cate with each other. How we bal­ance the time, energy and money we spend on activ­i­ties inside and out­side the family.

I would also not leave out how we, as a fam­ily, relate to the world around us. How ‘green’ we should aim to be, and how we should view our respon­si­bil­i­ties vis-a-vis peo­ple around us.

And finally — I would like to empha­sise the value of liv­ing together in the moment — not only get­ting some­where.

Seems I have to have a good chat to my hus­band and my daugh­ter before I dig any deeper into this!

Thus — to be continued.

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