Back in high school, presentation days were usually skip days, but when it was Lyranda Martin Evans and Fiona Stevenson’s turn to take the “stage,” it was a must-see event. Their projects were like no other — they were musical comedy shows. They wrote songs, drew programs and choreographed dance numbers, all in the pursuit of the A+.
The best friends shared a passion for comedy, so after graduating from North Toronto Secondary School and getting day jobs (Martin Evans is a creative director at an ad agency and Stevenson works in marketing), they took classes at Second City. In 2006, they launched the comedy troupe Math is Hard, performing with them for three years.
When they found themselves pregnant and on maternity leave at the same time, they needed something else to do. “So we brainstormed, and we landed on this really winning idea of [a blog about] the reasons why mommy drinks,” says Martin Evans.
Martin Evans, a bartender in college, comes up with the drink recipes (such as “day care defence,” a cognac and rum concoction) that accompany each post, and the stories themselves stem from real life: “The simplest things, like trying to make a frozen pizza with a baby in your arms, can just be so hard, frustrating and upsetting, and then the comedic mind says ‘Wow, there’s some comedy here,’ ” says Stevenson. “I think these real insights, these true moments of parenthood, were what inspired the blog, and then each post becomes almost a release where you can write about this moment that you’ve had.”
The response to the blog has been enormous. The duo receives comments from as far away as Australia. “When someone across the world says, ‘I thought I was the only person in the universe who has had this experience and thank you so much for validating what I’ve been feeling,’ it’s so cool,” says Stevenson.
Reasons Mommy Drinks was named best Mommy Blog 2012 by Toronto Mom Now and has been picked up by Metronews.ca. In August, the bloggers signed a book deal with Crown, a division of Random House, and are already busy working on the content.
With a successful blog and a book deal already in the bag, who knows, there may soon be a Reasons Mommy Drinks stage show coming to a theatre near you.
