Rookie Moms

I love this idea that Thrifty Toddler shared as her favorite rookie year outing during our recent blog blast: Start a weekly Breakfast Club. She and her girlfriends take turns at each other’s houses serving breakfast and drinks and allowing the babies to play (or just roll near each other as the case may be).

She’s enjoyed meeting women she might not otherwise have met and the babies get to grab and slurp on all new toys. They’ve been going strong for over a year now.

It’s cheap, it’s social, and it’s breakfast — what’s not to love?!!

Related links:
>> Full story on Thrifty Toddler
>> Favorite pancakes on 101 Cookbooks
>> My favorite cheap mocha at home

I’m not really so much of a treehugger myself. I’m all for the values associated with it, I just don’t like being cold or wet, so my hiking adventures are limited to sunny days. But not too sunny, because I don’t want us to get burned.

Hiking is such a great thing to do as a family, though. Going for a hike takes you away from the house, the chores, the tv and computer. Babies usually are soothed by the light and air. Preschoolers are intrigued by every stick and leaf on the ground. Compared to Heather’s family who is on a car fast this month, mine hardly remembered it was Earth Day. Something to improve on for next year, I suppose.

Another pair of Bay Area moms just let me know about their blog, Tree Huggers In Training, on which they review local trails (both paved and off-road) from a new mom perspective, paying close attention to trail conditions, weather conditions, and general “Goodness, how would I do this with a baby?” conditions. Dana and Beth hope that new (and expert) moms, as well as dads, use the site as a resource to get out and enjoy all walks and hikes that the area has to offer.

They encourage us to take the Treehuggers In Training Oath, centered around three “B”s: beverages, blankets and bumcover disposal methods:

1. I promise to pack beverages - Milk for me (in whatever form I prefer) and water for mom
2. I promise to never leave the house with out the blanket- on which to sit, with which to cover, and to share
3. I promise to be responsible with my bumcover- Tree Huggers always pack out what they packed in. A ziploc is your friend.

Help the TreeHuggers build their reviews of outdoor excursions by taking one yourself and then sending them a write up. Send them a note at reviews AT treehuggersintraining DOT com. Even if Dana or Beth have already reviewed a hike or a piece of gear, they welcome all other first-hand experiences.

We know there are those people whose infants start sleeping eleven or twelve hours a night around four months old. These so-called “babies” take three daily naps at 8, 12 and 4.30. And then there are the rest of us.

At one point my moms group’s weekly discussion was so dominated by sleep that we were starting to get sick of each other, even though we needed each other so very badly, because no one else would be willing to listen to us talk with such hysteria about our child’s sleep habits.

Because it was a sensitive issue, I emailed the group ahead of time suggesting that at our next gathering, we would censor the subject unless it was a serious mental health situation that someone needed to address. I proposed a list of alternative topics that would help rejuvenate us and make us laugh during our meeting. We did this twice and it was tons of fun.

Our format was to go around in a circle and each answer the proposed alternative-to-how-is-your-baby-sleeping question Here are some conversation starters for you:

• What brought you to live here?
• Where did you go to college and what did you study?
• What were you going to name the baby if it was the opposite gender?
• Tell us about the relationship you had before you were with your partner.

These may sound basic, but when you’ve spent all of your bonding time discussing strollers and nipples, you may have left out some basic facts. Try it and let us know how it goes.

Whitney and I had a great time the other week lugging our boys out to Marin County to visit the professional photographer for our free 8×10. Luckily, we turned the afternoon into a huge adventure and didn’t get too upset that the photos were not worth paying for. We learned what we already suspected: that sometimes Mommy is the best photographer because real photographers can be scary.

Hilary offers us some photo tips to take gorgeous, professional-looking pictures at home:

1. Know what you like. Look for baby photographers online. You can look at their sites and pick out photos that you like. We did this a bunch before we began photographing Kai as it helped us decide on what style of photos we liked best.
2. Take lots of photos. I easily take 100 photos a week of Kai doing most anything–sometimes in action, sometime just sleeping. It’s helped me narrow down which types of photos I like best.
3. Seize good lighting. Bright, cloudy days seem to have the best lighting. I try to avoid using a flash and just get good natural light.
4. Find a neutral background. Backgrounds that I have found to work great are nature (flowers, grass, bamboo) and blankets.
5. Get close. I enjoy close up photos of Kai’s face best. I try to take lots of these to capture his different expressions.
6. Support the baby. Kai is sitting infront of the bamboo. I am sitting in front of him holding him steady with my feet–the ground is concrete and I didn’t want to risk him falling down–and I’m leaning back a bit so I got more distance between us. You can actually see my reflection in his eyes in a few of the shots I took.
7. Crop. It’s amazing how much a photo can improve by cropping. Remove a parents hand or go for an interesting shape.

The photo of Kai with the bamboo worked out so well because Hilary knew exactly what photo she wanted before she went out to take it–a close-up of Kai’s face with bamboo in the background set up (to be cropped in a horizontal shape for her site’s banner). Also, the lighting was great that day.

Whitney has some other good ideas for artfully photographing a sleeping baby.