RookieMoms Blog

So we had a “blog blast” last week. How fun is that? We wrangled some prize bags and asked a bunch of parent bloggers to blog about their rookie year as a mom.

Here are the results:

Secret Mom Thoughts: Adventures

Rockin’ Mama: A Rookie at Heart

Flibbs.com: Battling Yoda and Diaper Flaps at the Same Time

Susie J: Dining in a Wine-List Restaurant with Kids

PhotoChick: Flashback Fridays Featuring Awesome Outings

Cheese Party: Flying With Baby Times Ten

Midwestern MommyFrom Target to Take Out: My Rookie Mom Year

Havoc and Mayhem: How Not to Take Your Newborn to Florida

Get a Grip Mom: Hug-a-By Baby

Temporarily Me: Integrating Into a New World: Rookie Style

Thrifty Toddler: It’s the Breakfast Club, Baby!

MotherGooseMouse: Leaving on a Jet Plane

How Much Is a Duck Worth: Mommy Needs Out Field Trip, and a Fun Site Shout Out!

My Family Loves It: My First Year as a MOM: Restaurants, Playgroup & Hockey!

Mayberry Mom: Never Too Young for Happy Hour

WhitneyandRyan.comThe One Where Julian was a Frat Boy

MamaDrama: Outings with your kids ~ OR ~ IfWeDon’tGetOutaThisHouseRightNowI’mGoingToGoCrazy!!

After The Bubbly: Pumps to Pampers: My First Year of Motherhood

Baby PhD: Rug Shopping with a 2 Month Old

One in 36 million: Sand in His Butt-Crack

Frankly Frivolous: Strawberries and Greeks for Baby

The Dana Files: Take Me Out to the Mall Game

Zrob: This Time Last Year - First Time Eating Out

The Kiddie Clique: The Torturing of Charlotte

Motherhood Uncensored: What to Wear at BlogHer 2008: A Sleeping Baby

And a Baby: Who Doesn’t Love a Montage?

I’m not the very crafty rookie mom. I’m the wannabe. I love it when Whitney and I can set aside time and have the goods to make an adorable thing. Last time we tried to do that — it was even my idea — I still came away with a half-finished pair of pants because I never bought elastic.

That said, Alec and I made our own wedding invitations because we’re super cheap (or is it because invitations are crazy expensive?) We invested in special adhesive, a paper cutter, and all the paper bits. The invitations looked pretty good and we had fun making them. Of course, we didn’t have a kid then so we could leave our precious little piles of half-finished paper all over the apartment and not worry about that mammoth paper cutter falling into the wrong hands.

We made Holden’s birth announcements too by piecing together a template in Word and finding a template at an office supply store. They looked not nearly as nice, but we finished the project before he turned one with the time and materials we could deal with.

I tell you these things because I would love it if I were creative and patient enough to design (and make) such beautiful invitations and birth announcements as you can get in a few minutes on TinyPrints.com. It’s really all I can handle to come up with the addresses and stamp the envelopes before price of postage changes again. I wish I were kidding.

First birthday: evite. Second birthday: no party. We had some making up to do and went with tiny*prints for the Big 0-3.

The selection of birthday party invitations is fantastic. I almost ordered the screaming boy (without photo) before remembering my original goal was to create a unique photo-personalized birthday invitation. Oops!

The process to create and order my invitations and matching thank you cards was quite simple. The hard part was choosing the photo and picking which design matched Holden’s outfit the best. Maybe I’ll also use tiny*prints for my upcoming 40th birthday or some other super special occasion, but I don’t think I would shell out the money for the average kid’s birthday party (almost $100 for 25 invites and too-cute-to-pass-up matching Thank You cards).

I highly recommend tiny*prints for Baby Announcements — adorable designs, easy to create and personalize (during the span of one nap), and printed on sturdy card stock. The finished product really makes you look put together. And thin and well-rested.

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I was given the chance to order and review tiny*prints birthday invitations by the Parent Bloggers Network. Thanks guys! Find out what other parents think of the t*p product line from birth announcements to moving and communion.

The age-old issue of ugly baby clothes (well perhaps this issue was just born from our generation who wants our babies to look COOL more than CUTE) has been addressed by the mom who designed Jackopotamus baby tees. They’re for sale on Etsy and I love that there’s something for my baby girl with a guitar on it! Rock on, Jackopotamus!

and no whining, and a slightly used ergo, and maybe some chocolate truffles from charles chocolates with peanut butter inside, but otherwise no gifts for me this Mother’s Day.

A year ago, when Milo was fresh, our family went to Brushstrokes (paint-your-own) Pottery and made a mug of Holden’s relatively big footprints and Milo’s teeny tiny footprints. I declared that — forever going forward — Alec and the boys need only fill the mug with something special for Mother’s Day. And that something could always be (good) chocolate. Done and done.

I want to be recognized, appreciated, loved but I don’t need more clutter in my home.

So, that covers the gift portion of the day, but what do I really want? I want to sleep a full night and wake up to happy children. I want the happy children to cooperate as we get ready for a delicious brunch out some place fabulous. I want there to be a very short wait (even though it is Mother’s Day and brunch is not unheard of for such fabulous places). I would also like to avoid all poopy diapers, whining, discipline, and household chores for one day. Basically, I want the fun parts of motherhood without the unpleasant parts.

And world peace.

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How do you want to be recognized this Mother’s Day? Share your hopes and dreams as part of a Blog Blast, sponsored by Johnson’s Baby Cause - a new charitable giving site that I don’t really understand and the Parent Bloggers Network. You’ve got until tonight to write your post.

This weekend we attended a babycentric-event in Mill Valley where we sold a whopping three copies of our book. It was nice to come home and learn that Amazon had sold A LOT more than that. Note to self: face-to-face sales are not such a great use of time. The nice part of the event was meeting a few other people who have produced some lovely contributions to the world of stylish babies.

Allow me to highlight three of them.

1) Oishii Knits. Fellow, (or shall I say fella?) Berkeley mom Erika makes her knit hats and dolls stand out from the rest of the layette with her delicious palettes. Take note because your gorgeous baby is about to look double the gorgeous with these unusual color combos.

2) OYikes!. These are not diaper bags, but rather multi-function bags that come with a changing pad, wipes case, AND a LAPTOP SLEEVE, because if you are part if this century, you probably need that. And, they are gender neutral. So smart.

3) Rattle Me. Totally cute organic cotton apparel with hip graphic designs. Yeah, you’ve seen something like it before, but these are a notch above the rest. They gave me a coupon code: SPRING23 for 10%, so check that out.

We don’t announce many sales here. But Britax carseats almost never go on sale and they’re one of those things that I believe you really ought to buy new. And if you have more than one car and/or more than one kid and/or really involved grandparents, you may need more than one!

Ok, so go to Amazon before the end of May with a buddy and save 20% on 2 carseats or other products. Like if you’re potty training, maybe you need some covers. Or else you’ll end up biking your kids around for days while the cover dries.

I have two Britax Marathon Car Seats, one for each of my boys. And we drag those suckers all across country.

Thanks for the tip, Sunny!

My friend Sara was just telling a few of us about Playborhood.com, started by a Bay Area dad she met while attending a cool workshop down south. He has a strong belief that kids need unstructured, spontaneous, and (for older kids) unsupervised play–and safe places for doing so.

The website is a collection of stories about kids and adults who exemplify these ideas as well as communities that are working by intention and design to create such places. Additionally, the website provides good parenting resources, many specifically relevant to the benefits of play.

Sounds awesome to me. I can hardly wait until we (as a family) are mature enough for some unsupervised play. And I hope we live in a community that supports this goal. Right now, I can usually walk a couple rooms away for as many minutes with my two alone together.

Berkeley has its own site at berkeley.playborhood.com. One section of the website allows people to let potential home buyers know how kid friendly the neighborhood is. Brilliant.

Please take a minute to check it out and leave comments on what you think of it. Maybe you have ideas to make it better? Or a story that you think would be perfect to share with other like-minded, play focused people in the area?

As Sara says, “Thanks for checking it out. Keep playing!!!”

I live in California where most of my friends don’t smoke.

When I was in college, my boyfriend smoked though, and I remember what it’s like to walk up to a cool smoker who’s waiting some place for you. He’s leaning and he’s smoking and he’s oh-so-relaxed.

Nowadays, when I’m waiting for you, I’m likely to be heads-down furtively thumb-clicking (or side-stroking) my iPhone looking at my photos, reading my emails, double-checking a map, or listening to my voicemail. If only I could move away from my handy purse-size whomi, I’d be updating my calendar too. It’s not exactly relaxing but it takes the edge off of a late-arriving friend (or even if someone ducks into the restroom during a dinner date).

And that’s why I said to Alec, “iPhone is the new smoking.” It’s what all those cool waiting-around geeks are playing with as they lean against walls waiting for their buses. I wonder what my ex would say if he could see me now.

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I got an iPhone as a gift from my job. I like it way more than I thought I would. New moms, if you can indulge in such a luxury, it will radically change your nursing behavior.

There’s something so refreshing about reading Mama Rock’s Rules.

And I read a lot of parenting books.

The thing that’s different (and great!) is that it’s all common sense. Nobody is trying to get me to remember to act like a grunting caveman when I talk to my toddler or shush and swaddle and jiggle (sorry Harvey, I still love you!) — there’s nothing here to memorize. Instead, Rose has a knack for distilling the essence of responsible parenting into easy-to-remember and time-tested rules (honed while mothering 27 kids).

These were the ones that stuck with me:

1. I’m your mama not your friend. When I said this to my almost-three-year old, he said, “mommy you’re my friend too” so I just let it go because he was so cute. But I think it’s worth remembering that the parent’s job is not to be the most popular, but raise self-sufficient kids who know right from wrong.
2. Have a family dinner every night. I somehow got this one in my head already, so I like reading reinforcement that this is not just my crazy idea but rather a proven method for building a close relationship with your children. Mama Rock thinks our kids are over scheduled anyway.
3. Institute the Rock Justice System. The RJS is based on the older children being in charge of the younger ones in an effort to teach them greater responsibility and resourcefulness. If you’ve ever watched Everybody Hates Chris, you’ll already know what this looks like (Chris gets in trouble when his brother ditches school or if his little sister catches a the flu). It’s almost enough to make me want to have more kids just to test this out. But not quite.

Bottom line is that this is a great book if you want to open up a can of whoop-ass on some of the other parenting experts on your shelf. Kinda funny and extremely pragmatic, with attitude. Worth a read.

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I was given a review copy of this book via ParentBloggers — see what other folks think. I slurped it right up.

In honor of Earth Day/Weekend/Month, we’ve been trying to ride our bikes more as transportation. Since Milo’s birthday, we use the bike trailer to take the boys to school most days already, so we’re just amping it up and riding more for errands and what not.

For example, on Saturday, we took Milo and Holden to the Berkeley Earth Day festival via bike trailer… we were not the only ones. It was a very earthy thing to do.

On Sunday, for my own naptime siesta, I biked to my pedicure appointment and then to the mall. I was laughing all the way on my cruiser because the whole thing seemed so funny (look world! I’m on a bike instead of a car! check me out!).

Yesterday, during my lunchtime, I biked my errands to Target rather than driving.

So, while I feel so proud and green and think, “What a good girl am I,” I also gotta ask, “Can I drive again yet?!” My quads are tired and I have helmet head.