Rookie Moms

First off, this is not the place to find out about counting pounds or calories… so, I can recommend the following tasty ways to get your calcium:

1. mint chocolate chip ice cream in front of the TV
2. cheese - fancy with red wine or the stick variety in the middle of the night
3. a tall glass of milk with cookies or cake
4. hot chocolate made with real milk
5. decaf (single shot, double tall) latte
6. real whipped cream on anything
7. vanilla flavored steamed milk
8. this enormous cream puff — heavy cream means heavy calcium, right?

Meagan, who is a rookie mom to Soren, wrote to us with this suggestion for how to be better about connecting with your friends. I love that is in the true spirit of a geeky girl’s approach to motherhood:

As my very understanding friends can attest, I have never been good at keeping in touch. I’m usually the ‘callee’ rather than the ‘caller.’ I had the requisite falling-off-the-face-of-the-earth period after my son’s birth in September, but recently began feeling guilty about my passive roll in various friendships. I resolved to be more proactive, but found myself overwhelmed as to where to begin.

Then I recalled my lovely, organized excel spreadsheet address list… Just for variety (& fun), I used the ‘= RAND ()’ function to assign a random number to everyone in the list and then sorted by those numbers. Then, I started at the top of the list! My goal has been to reach out to at least 3 of the people on the ordered list each week. Even if it’s just an email or a quick phone call, it’s a way of letting them know that I am, in fact, thinking of them!

Whether you do it on purpose (driving around town to induce a nap) or by accident (windows down, music blaring, begging baby to stay awake to no avail), sooner or later your baby will fall asleep in the car. Some people can get babies back to sleep after extracting them from the car seat, but that’s not the case with my kid. Sure, you’ll be delighted to see the blissed out look of baby sleep… but you might also wonder what the F*&k to do with yourself.

Here’s the tip: have a nap watching station all ready to go. With our house configuration, we can sit on the porch and keep an eye and ear on the car in the driveway. If you’re not so lucky, keep a lawn chair, cordless phone, and a stash of magazines (or your knitting), and a bottle of water handy. Instead of being frustrated, think of the blessed gift of time you’ve just been given!

Oh yeah, keep a close eye on the baby to make sure he’s safe and comfortably sleeping.

Attention Dilbert fans, did you know that Comeeko.com allows you to upload photos and add speech bubbles to make a comic strip? You can share with friends and family through the web site.

(via lifehacker.com)