Rookie Moms

What better way to get folks attention with your beliefs than to plaster catchy slogans on your precious baby? Name your cause and I’ll bet we can find you some baby apparel.

We’ll start with an easy one and move on from there. Find yourself in the list below:

• Breastfeeding. The Lactivist Store has many amusing bibs and tee-shirts. Nip/Suck cracks me up, but I never had the nerve.
• Conservative. Wee-publican onesies are the way to go.
• Liberal. Perhaps “President Poopyhead” or “My parents are big gay liberals” on BabyWit.com may be your speed.
• Us Weekly addict. Team Aniston or Team Jolie shirts are so 2006… Find a new cause for your new babe.
• Against everything. Pleasedontfeedmykidsugar.com sells shirts that say “dairy free baby”, “sugar free baby”, “mercury free baby”, and more.

If you’re cheap (like me), you can always improvise with some iron-ons or a sharpie. And Happy Halloween!

If you are like I was, by the time my baby was 10 weeks old, I had not exercised for about 6 months. Baby Bootcamp was my re-introduction to sweating and I loved it. I am not a gym-goer in my normal life, and Baby Bootcamp was perfect for me. Here’s why:

1. Exercising in the company of other sleep-deprived, temporarily overweight, leaky-breasted women is more fun.
2. It was no problem that I walked the course rather than ran it much of the time. I had many excuses lined up for not running (all of which are somewhat valid and mostly shared by other participants).
3. Stopping to deal with my fussy baby was par for the course.
4. It got me out of the house to do something good for me and enjoy the outdoors.

Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can invite your partner and show him or her how awesome and athletic you are. The other parent and grandparents can tag along for free.

Check babybootcamp.com and a similar organization strollerstrides.com for locations and schedules. For those who live in cold climates, I believe there are some indoor classes.

When I saw this picture of Caley’s belly on her blog, I laughed and asked her to describe what she’d done.

After visiting the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago and having a stranger comment that I’d “better PAY for that pumpkin being smuggled under [my] shirt! Ha, ha!” I decided, Why not? I’ve seen TLC’s A Baby Story a gajillion times and they’re always doing things like belly casts or painting their bellies, and I didn’t do anything like that with my first pregnancy. I figured it’d make a cute picture, and be something fun to do with my toddler.

The safest paint to use is an FDA approved, water-based paint. Any paint labeled as “face paint” should work, and you can get them at Target or Walmart or such. Or you can go with some kind of “professional” paint, like this one. (However, I’m not an expert on paints, so don’t quote me on this. This site has some good tips; like it says, just because a paint says “non-toxic” does not mean it is safe for skin!) Or you could just purchase a kit.

My husband put the orange paint all over my belly with a sponge, and since we only bought the one color (I wasn’t going to buy a separate container of brown just for a little part like the stem), I gave him permission to do the stem and the lines with washable Crayola markers. My toddler, on the other hand, wanted absolutely nothing to do with our little project and busied himself by getting into things while both his parents were occupied. So much for bonding over Family Craft Time, right?

I washed the paint off shortly after taking a picture, but faint Crayola lines remained for a day or so, just to remind me of how pumpkin-esque my belly really is.

Thank you, Caley! And congratulations on becoming a foursome!

Our friend Auntie Karen emailed us this morning to say, “I’m sure you’re busily planning elaborate Halloween costumes for your wee ones, but what about YOU? Well, this is one of the best ideas I’ve seen in a long time. You can download these sweet trompe l’oeil mask templates from Kodak, print them out on a color printer, cut them out, and tie them around your head with a bit o’ yarn, and voila! A hilarious, kid-friendly mask. Maybe I’ll scrap my plans to go as the blonde guy from Blades of Glory and just be a pug.”

Think about it and the possibilities are endless. Print any photo you find on the web/flickr and use it as a mask. Be Joey Fatone. Be a sock monkey. Be an inanimate object like a chair or a chocolate eclair. I’m thinking I could print out a picture of Heather’s head, wear it as a mask, and frighten her husband and children. (”Mommy, you got shorter and your arms got darker!”)

Links:
Kodak site with the pdf downloads
The full step-by-step