The big news in Christmas lists this year is small. Every kid wants an Apple. Each year, the Nielsen survey of what kids want for Christmas moves more and more way from traditional toys and more and more toward electronics and gadgets. This year it's unanimous: kid's want Apple products -- iPads, iPod touches and iPhones.

In honor of this month of giving thanks, let us give thanks to those brands who are paying attention to what moms really want and are giving us campaigns, products and strategies that connect with Mom in new and innovative ways. This November we are thankful for brands who...

It's barely mid-November but moms already have much of their holiday shopping done. Even for marketers who understand this audience, that may seem hard to believe - especially given how time-pressed moms' lives are today. But according to our 2012 Holiday Survey, due to rapid increases in digital media usage and mobile solutions, moms are planning further in advance than ever before. As a result, 53% of them are doing their holiday shopping before Thanksgiving - only 16% cited Black Friday as the official start of their seasonal shopping.

This is a blog post I've wanted to write for some time and now I do so with a bit of lingering hesitation. I've delayed putting my observations into writing because I didn't want to seem like I was generalizing or calling out any one blogger's personal situation. However, enough time and events have gone by that it will reflect a picture of a sliver of the mom blogosphere. There is an evolution going on within the homes of mom bloggers. As an observer of human behavior, I have watched it with interest for the past 12 months.

Currently, there is a whole wave of digitally savvy moms who are also grandmothers or will likely become grandmothers over the next decade. Right now there are about 32 million moms online using social media for regular communications. Our children are growing up digital. And those very same moms will bring in a new era of grandparenting -- and we certainly won't be anything like our grandmothers. Even my own 82-year-old mother uses an iPad. We will have the ability to redefine what being a grandparent means.

Moms love Facebook -- but they trust blogs. And 92% of moms active in social media are buying products as a result of a social media recommendation.

Once upon a time we lived in a world of village parenting where matriarchal knowledge was limited to immediate family and neighbors. We now live in a world of community parenting where the matriarchal knowledge base is limitless and moms are part of multiple online and offline groups. From parenting books and magazines to community forums, TV Shows, celebrities, doctors and Facebook you might say that modern mom has truly inherited the "momopedia..."

While interest in cooking shows is at all-time highs, and magazines splash the latest from celebrity chefs, the real news in the kitchen starts with a click.

Most of us know that today's moms have become big business, wielding $2.1 trillion in U.S. spending power each year. We also know how far moms have distanced themselves from stereotypes of home maker, soccer mom, tech neophyte. But there's an even more dramatic evolution in modern motherhood underway right now, and it's causing marketers to reconsider how they communicate with this key audience. Witness the fast-changing face of the American family, the new roles moms have taken on in a battered economy, and the explosion of mobile technology solutions.

While October rushes us into Halloween and other fall fun festivities, on the Mom calendar, October also marks another annual milestone: report cards and parent/teacher conferences. Education is the one area where parents feel strongly they can make a big difference in the lives of their children and is also the one area that causes great parental stress-especially when the first round of report cards isn't showing stellar grades or the parent/teacher conference is uncovering some major learning issues.