RookieMoms Blog

Angie, from BabyCheapskate and Freepeats is now Angie of BlogCoach. And when she does something, she really does it! Just looking at the home page of BlogCoach.org (let alone all the invariable clicking and reading), I feel like I really learned some good stuff. I tell you this because its a great new resource for bloggers, young and old new and experienced.

At BlogCoach, you’ll find helpful, informative articles about blogging, blogging resources, and a friendly community full of plain-talking bloggers and web publishers eager to help you grow your blog.

I was honored that Angie wanted to interview me for this new project. We “talked” about the ins and outs of working with a blog partner and turning blog topics into a book (among other things). Stop over and check out the interview with me about rookie moms. Tell her I said hi.

And I dare you not to learn something new.

Cool topics:
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> Other Cool Interviews
> Feedburner essentials

If you have preschoolers or pre-preschoolers, you probably already know about SavvySource as the best place to do some research and find preschool reviews. Well, now it’s also one of the best places to find out what to do with your 2-6 year old when they’re not in school.

SavvySource just launched the Being Savvy City Sites as an amazing reference for parents in 20 different metro areas. We have been furtively and feverishly writing for Being Savvy: East Bay at eastbay.savvysource.com. Please have a read or just stop by when you need fresh ideas for fun stuff to do.

Here are some of our favorite recent posts, but there’s already more than a dozen to list, so go see for yourself. Have a click, get comfortable, and make an action plan:

99 things you must do in the East Bay before your child grows up
Discovering the wilderness of the urban jungle
How to cultivate the tiniest green thumb in Berkeley

… and many many (many!) more. If you don’t live in the East Bay, there are 19 other blogger city experts covering other areas around the country.

That’s what I think it every time I change a poopy diaper. My friend Laurie told me that while I was changing a diaper at her house and it’s revolutionized my thinking (if not my actual habits).

I think we’ve tried nearly every kind of disposable diaper disposal system and I hate them all. My preferred method is now to wrap the offending Huggie in a plastic bag then whisk the fecal diaper right outside and into the big bin to wait for it’s Thursday pick-up.

But you need to have buy in from other adults in the household for that method to work. Otherwise, you just have poopy diapers laying around — not going into the champ — waiting for their bag or their escort to the street.

Can anyone please help me?!
What works best for those offensive toddler diapers?

Our current disposal model goes like this:

• Pee diapers go right into the diaper champ.
• Poopy diapers go right outside or wait around festering.

In the boys’ bedroom, we have a diaper champ. It stinks for toddler diapers. Even with a trucker air freshener. It worked just great for those sweet(er)-smelling newborn diapers.

At my mom’s house, there’s a diaper genie. Too confusing. And those plastic sausages strike me as super un-environmentally-friendly. I already have disposable diaper guilt.

In the bathroom, we have a flip top garbage pail. It stinks like a revolving door onto a sewage processing plant.

Also in the bathroom, we have a small garbage can that we use for other bathroom garbage, but I find that if I just keep diapers in there until they bug me, it’s a pretty workable system.

Related links:
> Cloth vs. Disposable, the great debate with information on both sides of the aisle. Maybe we should all meet in the middle on g-diapers?
> Baby Cheapskate; let Angie do all the legwork for you to track down the best deals on Diapers (and other stuff!)
> Promo Code for Diapers.com: save $10 off your first order of $49 when you enter code DAISY. Free shipping over $49 is extremely fast (like next day fast).

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The good folks at diapers.com offered me a $75 gift certificate to try their service upon reading about my diaper woes. I bought some Huggies at an excellent deal and 4 tubes of Desitin for an okay price. Free and fast shipping really blew my mind. The diapers came the next day! Amazing!! Now if they could only find a way to stop the stink!!

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?

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!!!”

They are the best and worst presents my husband ever got me.

For my birthday, while we were still new at the dating thing, Alec remembered an off-handed comment I made about a cool art piece in a cafe and chased down the artist on his own time to surprise me with it. I was so surprised and touched that it hardly matters that I also love it and think it’s hilarious. He scored big points for that birthday.

It proudly hangs on the wall near our front door. I smile inside whenever I see it.

And that yellow shirt? Well, my husband tends to hate shopping and gift-giving so much that I pretended to like it. Oh sure, it’s cute on the hanger or the drawer, but it’s yellow and looks really gross next to my skin. It also didn’t help matters that I had to be super duper pregnant to even fit in it, so I wasn’t exactly looking my best. Did I mention its sleeveless? And how my triceps could be in the best shape of my life from hefting myself in and out of bed while my upper arms managed to still look so doughy is one of life’s great mysteries.

So, when I read about GetInHerHead [via the ParentBloggers], I thought we could give it a try. It’s a handy website for people whose husbands, like mine, hate giving gifts (but still love their wives and are wonderful people). I forwarded the link to him yesterday morning and before lunch, he had already set us both up with accounts and filled in his own vital statistics (shoe size, trousers, shirt, etc.). If he likes it, I like it. I’ll report back after our anniversary or Christmas to see if it made any difference at all in his level of anguish for gift-giving.

Alec, if you’re still reading. I love the gps map toy and the mailboxtees you got me this year — you’re the best!

If you’re one of the two readers of this site who stops here before finding out that Yahoo has a new women’s website / experience / magazine — let me tell you what to think about it.

Shine collects their favorite stories and posts from the internets PLUS some original writing in an attempt to be a one-stop-content shop for busy busy women. I don’t know if this help or hurt fledgling sites like ours but I don’t think we’re necessarily frenemies.

Let’s start with the good stuff:

• The Parenting editor is Crazedparent — she’s funny and has two sons. The overall editor is from Jane Magazine and about to become a rookie mom herself. Cool.
• Shine invited us to a little sneak preview and we enjoyed some excellent food and some small trinkets as well as a full afternoon with only grown-ups. Not to mention that the pink purse that came with my magazines made a nice makeshift easter basket for Holden’s egg hunt and also carries up to 17 little trucks and balls with ease.
• They’re one day old and already featured us twice; I could get used to this!
1. Push Play Date (AKA Elmo Sex)
2. Ready for date night? Put your babysitter on retainer.

Sorry, did that just get too “meta” quoting them quoting me? I’m pretty excited if my little words could reach their 45 quadrillion readers. But I digress.

Isn’t there maybe a dark side to all this link love and content aggregation? Jason Calanacis certainly thinks so. While I was busy emailing a friend the articles above, my husband sent me this blog post about why content providers should drop Yahoo in favor of writer-friendly Google. He says:

If Yahoo wants to go “winner take all” that’s their right, but the niche content sites should stand up for themselves and vote with their partnership dollars for a true partner who doesn’t run off with your business in the night.

Yikes. But they were so nice to me. They fed me and gave me a makeover (sure, Alec teased me about looking like a hooker - but that’s a story for another day), how can they be bad?

Time will tell whether this shiny new online magazine succeeds by partnering with us or by smooshing us out. I wonder if I’ll be able to tell the difference.

What do you think, Whitney? World?

As much as I love the Totland t-shirt I ordered from Neighborhoodies, the price was over the top. I would do it again as a gift for an adult. But $21, plus $7 shipping for a kid is a bit much. I did order a size 4 and hope that we’ll get a full year out of this shirt, and possibly a second wearing for Milo, or maybe Scarlett. Now I see Simply Colors, a web site that has similar personalization capabilities. I can’t vouch for the quality, but they do sell great-looking colors, and the ability to personalize the front, back or both with cute fonts. And, they sell onesies for sizes up to 3/4. Wow!

This long sleeved shirt with a personalized front is $17.90. Short-sleeved is $15.90.

If you already know the answer to this analogy, then pardon my ignorance, but for the rest of you, the answer is: Crazy 8. I just learned this.

Yes, Gymboree has launched a cheaper, hipper brand and my husband just told me about it as he unpacked some clothing for our kids he had bought online from Crazy 8. Hello? How does he know about a new kids brand before I do? Oh, because he is the master of e-commerce?

Anyhow, shipping is currently free and they have some 2-for deals like 2 tshirts for $12.

Note to Heather whose daycare does not allow onesies on babies: Many long-sleeved t shirts for Milo like the one pictured here which is $4.99.

And, for the fancy pants moms among you, did you know that Janie and Jack is the Banana Republic of the Gymboree family? Well, I didn’t until just now. Call me slow.

To compensate for my pro-carryout post, I want to admit that I cook at home a fair bit. I have a few links, tips and tricks to share:

• I really like the The Best 30-minute Recipe (even though it’s more like best 90 minute recipe with a toddler and a baby around) so we try to work those in as often as practical. Once every week or two.
• I’m also a huge fan of the scramble, but how many times can I write about that? Besides, that really works best if you commit to it one week (5 dinners) at a time.
• Eggs!!! I confess I wish I could cook scrambled eggs every night so I’m working on perfecting my frittata so I can do just that and have it be a little fancier. Throw in some bagged spinach and a chopped vegetable (tomato, mushroom, peas?!), and add panko breadcrumbs before cooking in the oven for a few minutes. Mine are Ugly, but they taste fine and Holden doesn’t care.
• 101 meals ready in 10 minutes or less from the NY Times shared by our friend Sunny. Some of these look super simple and some kind of weird so let me know what you think.
• Creamy garlic shrimp fettucine in under 20 minutes from Karen’s aunt Julie — Get the frozen big ones and keep them on-hand for a fast dinner but do not peel your own; it’s icky and time consuming. I’m trying this recipe next week.

And these tips are not fast fast, but help you get dinner on the table quick if you plan ahead a bit:

• Crock Pot night — especially good when all you have to do is chuck stuff in the pot and come home to a meal. I made some shlock last week requiring about 16 hours of prep plus two overnights. I took some logical (to me) short cuts and the resultant chili was inedible. Oops.
• Double your recipe. Freeze half then serve your family. Schedule (and label) the leftover so you don’t forget about it.