Follow the hashtag #babeinamug on Instagram and you’ll quickly see that this is a Thing.

Thanks to the clever blogger MommyShorts, who composed the collage above, babies and mugs are being photographed with this perspective trickery — and shared on social media.

If you are able to capture such a shot and participate in this #babeinamug meme, please tag us, too, so we can see your cute babe in a mug! (@rookiemoms or #rookiemoms). Post your photos on twitter, Instagram, or on the Facebook page of MommyShorts.

Our friend Kelly posted this one today.

Since my kids are already at school (and much older) I had to use this paper doll of Scarlett, which means that my cleverness is hardly worth noting as she was already cup-sized!

Head over to Instagram and follow @MommyShorts or explore the tag #babeinamug!

How cute is this DIY softie? Our new bloggy and RL (that’s, real life people!) friend Wendy made this adorable “taggie monster” for her baby son, Auggie, and it was too flipping adorable not to share.

Apparently the design came to her in a dream. Cool. Milo is in a very loving phase right now and I know he’d like to pat one of these bad boys to sleep or have it watch him (not) eat his dinner.

Gather materials during an outing with your baby and crank out the sewing during nap. For a full tutorial, check out the instructions on Wendelonia.com

Related activities:

Activity #225: Make baby stuff or ask someone else to do it
Activity #425: Craft a stuffed toy ball

==== scouring the interwebs to bring you cool crafts since 2005.

We all know what jogging strollers were invented for, but that doesn’t mean we feel inspired to use one. Even if it’s outfitted with an insane attachment that promises to increase the efficiency of the workout.

(Love Handles run $99.)

Maybe it’s -2 degrees outside; maybe your toddler is sleeping; or maybe you simply cannot get motivated to pack your child up to go exercise. I don’t have any of these excuses myself, yet I still have a hard time getting myself out there.

My go-to indoor exercise method is low-tech. I pick a TV show that my husband doesn’t care about and I place a child’s step stool in front of the TV. I hold 5-lb weights in my hands and step up and down on the stool for the duration of the show. During commercials I do something more intense to get my heart-rate up, such as jumping jacks or push-ups.

But technology has brought us more options. Here are some of the ways I’ve experimented exercising indoors.

1. On-Demand Exercise TV. I have Comcast cable, and in the On Demand menus, there is a section called Fitness Workouts, which is found in the Sports & Fitness category. There are at least one hundred workouts to choose from, from 8-minute Cardio Dance sessions to 30-minute power workouts let by Kristi Yamaguchi.

2. Free You Tube workouts. No cable? That’s alright. Cafe Mom, among others, have posted complete exercise classes online. Just prop your laptop or tablet up and press play. Here’s one I did recently. Search YouTube for “30-minute workout” to find some choices.

3. Not-free stuff on iTunes. If you want a certain program, you’ll probably find it on iTunes. I have Apple TV, which means I can watch any iTunes content on my big screen, but even without that, watching on a mobile device works too. (Just note that there’s no need to buy the popular Jillian Michaels’ 30-Day Shred on iTunes because you can find it free on YouTube.) Most podcasts are free, actually, and there are some that coach you through a yoga session and other indoor activities. So search in both the TV Shows section and the podcast section of iTunes.

4. Virtual, but real, trainers. Navafit is a website where you can sign up and get four free classes to try out before paying a monthly subscription fee. The exercise classes are live online, and a Skype-like interface makes it so that you are literally in a class with other people and the trainer can see you. Register for the classes in advance and then log into the room when it starts. I had a couple of sessions with one of the trainers, Byron, where we talked about my fitness level and set goals. I loved the accountability it forced on me, but ultimately, I fell off the wagon.

I like having all these options at my fingertips because trying something new keeps me coming back. As many times as I have set the intention to do the 30-Day Shred for 30 days, I have never made it past four or five days. I always end up back in front of Beverly Hills 90210, stepping up and down with my hand weights.

We originally ran this guest post SEVEN YEARS AGO thus the babies in this story are now in 2nd grade.

Even if this isn’t an activity you’ll do today, you might find yourself on an airplane sometime this year. Before turning one year old, Holden had flown cross-country at 3 weeks, 3 months, 6 months, and 7.5 months. Each time, Alec and I worked as a team to cover the travel-parenting duties, so I didn’t get to fly solo until my second son was born.

The hero of this story, therefore, is my friend Beth, who flew to Chicago from Sydney, Australia alone with her 6-month old, Alice. She is the master. She shared some of her best tips with us:

• How to plan ahead
• When to consider drugging your baby
• What to do with your free hands

Make 2 lists. Start a week in advance so you can jot down those brilliant things you remember at random times. One list is “For the plane” and the other list is “At destination”. I still have my list (for future reference) .

For the plane/airport, this is what I needed:
stroller, diapers (3 times as many as you think you need – they don’t sell them in airports), wipes (travel pack or 2), disposable changing pads (Target sells ‘em – very handy for the “ewwwww factor of changing baby in a public restroom), few favorite toys & books (does mean that you have to be vigilant about not dropping/losing them), changes of clothes (I took 2 for baby, 1 clean shirt for myself), favorite blanket, a burp cloth, baby Benadryl*, and pacifier (even though baby didn’t regularly use one, we had one on hand!).

If baby was older I would consider a portable DVD player for Baby Einstein videos.

* Note about Benadryl: I talked to the doctor about the appropriate Benadryl dosage in advance. This was really useful when baby was CLEARLY tired but couldn’t quite fall asleep because I was holding her instead of being in her crib. We held off using it as long as possible. Be sure that you test the Benadryl at bedtime before the trip. In 10% of babies they don’t fall asleep – they get really hyper! You don’t want to find this out on the plane that your baby has had a bad reaction and is shrieking from being over-tired and strung out. If you give it to baby at home and they go to sleep, then you should be fine on the plane. If you give it to them and they’re up for the next 6 hours, you probably don’t want to use it in flight.

Keep hands free. I packed everything in a large backpack (instead of a shoulder diaper bag) which was great for keeping my hands free to push stroller, find id and tickets, etc. I also had my purse-items in the backpack. So it was me, baby, backpack to take aboard, rather than multiple bags.

Most domestic US airlines no longer let you pre-board with children so get ready to board with the masses. Southwest stills let you pre-board.

For baby’s comfort: Remember to breastfeed or give them a bottle/pacifier during take off and landing to help with pressure in the ears. For take off I would suggest waiting until you are actually zooming down the runway to start since there can be long waits in taxiing before take off (and I heard about a woman who gave baby a bottle and baby had finished it long before take-off). For landing I found that it is really the last part that needs the sucking – 10,000 feet or the “final descent”.

Dress the babe in layers. Think through in advance what baby is going to wear on the plane – planes are often very warm or very cold. We did layers – onesie with outfit over it. When it was time to sleep it was easy to take off the clothes and switch into PJs, or pull on a blanket-sleeper-bag.

Pack one trashy magazine. Overall I would say that flying back from Sydney to Chicago with baby by myself was exhausting. I didn’t need ANY reading material- maybe one trashy magazine – because even when baby is asleep you feel the need to be awake guarding against any possible problem.

Consider a 2nd seat. To ease the burden slightly on the return trip we bought a 2nd seat for me (in Coach) for the LA – Chicago leg. We didn’t travel with a car seat, so it wasn’t for her to sit in. This was just for me to have space to spread out since I was alone – space to put diaper bag / toys on the seat, room to breastfeed without knocking into the person next to me. It was a lifesaver when we spent 2 hours on the plane, sitting on the runaway before leaving LA. Babies are very wiggly – I don’t know how long you could hold one by yourself in one of those 14 inch wide seats. (It was hard to explain to the airline what we wanted – basically had to buy a 2nd seat as if I was an obese person. But it was the only thing that kept me sane!)

Sing, sing a song. Lastly, I know that singing always calms her, so I sang about 47 rounds of Old Macdonald softly in her ear and had about 294 Bears in the Bed fall out. But it kept her entertained and quiet when we were sitting on the plane doing nothing. She did fuss for a few minutes before putting herself to sleep, but she always does that so I just had to be strong and endure (and endure what I felt was the pressure of 50 eyeballs watching me).

At destination: Then my second list was what I needed when I arrived at the new location. For me that was: crib & sheet, car seat, breast pump, milk storage bags, bottle, baby monitor, highchair. Through some scrounging I was able to borrow almost everything, and we now know that in the US in some cities you can actually rent baby gear.

More tips on how to travel light when you’re a rookie mom…

If you’ve visited RookieMoms.com before, you might know that we’re all about getting out of the house and having more fun with your baby in tow. We started this site as our own brainstorm of fun things to do and we just couldn’t stop. One could even argue that I had another baby just to keep on testing myself.

Here’s a quick report on how well I’ve been taking my own advice with respect to the rookie mom challenges for Baby 3 Quarter 2 (nerd!):

14. Start your own breakfast club. I am so proud to say that I started hosting a baby-mama breakfast at my house every other Thursday morning and it is delightful. I’ve inadvertently enlisted another mom to bring coffee while I provide (or just accept) baked treats. It is super fun and very real. (Go ahead and check off number 3).

15. Leave your neighborhood. Yes, we even went to Chicago. But around town, I gotta be honest, we do not go on very many stroller walks. I could be better at this. Grade = B+.

16. Walk into nature. Yes! Sawyer has been in the baby carrier and off-road stroller for a few legitimate hikes. There were sticks, bugs, and dirt.

17. Become a cruise director.  I will give myself partial credit on this one. Since I am a working mom and not on maternity leave, I have less occasions to plan a full week of baby-centric fun. Sigh.

18. Check out the library. Uh oh, no storytime for Sawyer yet and I bet he’d love it!

19. Invite someone dangerous over for tea. Check. See number 14. Some of my tea party guests are downright dangerous and most had never been inside my home before.

20. Visit a farmers’ market Yes. Baby boy has been to farmers’ markets and food truck street fairs a few times. I expect we’ll do more during the summer.

21. Talk about something besides sleep. Check. There’s also preschool, kindergarten, potty training, blogging. Oh, wait. Was I supposed to talk about something other than children? Let me think. Ok, I got it. We just bought a bigger house and it is a fixer nightmare, so my real life friends get to hear all about asbestos, lead, termites, and going over-budget.

22. Play in another kind of nursery. Briefly. We bought some grassy shrubs, there wasn’t much butterfly ogling. We’ll have to do that again.

23. Build muscles at bootcamp. Big YES! I attended a wonderful session at a local place called Woohoo Fit. Loved it. Sawyer bonded with the caregiver and I got all sweaty.

24. Be a tourist in your own town. I may be a little late on this one, but we took all the boys to visit the iconic clock tower (the Campanile) on the UC Berkeley Campus the other week.

25. Host an ugly baby (clothes) contest. I haven’t done it. As much as I truly love this challenge, I chickened out. Maybe if I just called it silly I could do it.

26. Count your steps. I did this a bunch of times pregnant until I lost my fitbit. Boo.

Thanks all for keeping me honest. See also eating my own dogfood months 1 to 3.

How are you doing on your own challenges?

Marketing Mommy is a blogger in the Chicago area who has two kids born pretty darn close to mine. And we both had a victorious VBAC with #2, and, we are both in marketing, so we were like, totally best friends, even before we ever really had a conversation.

She works full time, so pumping is part of her every day life. I feel for her, because I so hated the pump and all of it’s parts when I worked outside the home during Julian’s babyhood. Also, there were random drips of breast milk on my pump’s carrying case and sometimes on my lap. Sorta gross, even though I’m not sure why.

Miss Marketing Mommy invented herself a solution. She called it the “Pump Parts Terry Bag,” and like a good marketer, she sells us on it by describing the problem it solves:

My breast pump came with an ugly black tote bag (which I don’t use), but it didn’t come with a good solution for toting all of the pump’s parts and accessories, the horns and valves that come into contact with milk and have to be cleaned between pumping sessions.

Since I pump twice a day, I was washing those parts with dish detergent and hot water and giving them a cursory drying with paper towels. But they never seem to get really dry.

I’d been keeping them in a gallon Ziploc bag in my backpack, but I didn’t like how fogged up the bag would become and I hated using damp parts. Also, I found that cleaning the Ziploc bag even once a week was a pain in the butt. And I was never positive that it was really clean.

Enter the Pump Parts Terry Bag!

This velcro-close bag, designed by me and sewed from an old towel by my sweet mother-in-law, holds all of my pump parts and doubles as a lap pad for me, protecting my work pants from inadvertent milk drips.

No more damp horns and I can throw it into the wash every couple of days!

Nice work, MM!

Related activity: The Pumping Project (Share your story!)

Meredith is a grad school dropout, military wife, stay at home, over-thinking mom who started a podcast and blog over at overthinkingmom.com to amuse herself and, hopefully, others. She shared her five favorite babycentric inventions with us.  If you’d like to share yours, send an email to moms at rookiemoms dot com.

I’ve been a mom for less than eight months, but I’ve already donated six or seven trash bags full of baby items and clothing. This purge was not a result of my anti-consumerist tendencies, not in the least. I’m a sucker for a good marketing campaign and the ever so subtle bad mom guilt that creeps upon us when we don’t buy every possible piece of baby gear. When my daughter was four or five months old, I had a horrible vision of turning into a mommy hoarder (Wouldn’t that be a lovely reality television show), hence the trash bags full of unneeded baby stuff.

After getting rid of three out of five baby slings, one out of three strollers, a co-sleeper, a bouncy seat, and more, I’m now more in love than ever before with the material items we decided to keep. Looking back on the last eight months, these are five of my family’s rookie mom essentials.

1. Fisher Price My Little Lamb Cradle ‘n Swing: My daughter had colic and the only saving grace was this swing. We bought every imaginable “colic cure,” including a compact disc with the sound of a vacuum cleaner on repeat, but I repeat, ONLY THE SWING WORKED. We used it to help her nap until she was six months old.

2. Ergo Baby Carrier: A lot of people laud this carrier and for good reason. It saves your back, and your baby can cuddle up to you
without a lot of complicated wrapping. I only wish I had purchased the infant insert so I could have used it from birth.

3. Chicco Travel Seat Hook On Chair: Colic equals months of not leaving the house with your screaming baby. This means no peaceful restaurant trips or outings. I thought our public eating moment had passed us by, but then I saw a cousin using this chair. As soon as my daughter started solids at six months, she became our travel eating companion.

4. Evenflo Exersaucer: Immediately after buying the exersaucer off Craigslist, I felt guilt. I assumed this was another new mom trend I was blindly following in an effort to overstimulate and distance my child. Boy, was I wrong. Sometimes a baby needs to be corralled and amused while a mom takes out laundry, makes dinner, or uses the restroom. It will be a sad day when the magic of the exersaucer wears off.

5. Boppy (plus extra covers): This is the one and only baby item I used hours after giving birth and still use multiple times a day eight months later. I refuse to travel without it. Whether I nurse or my husband bottle feeds, the boppy makes our laps cuddly and comfortable! Why extra covers? After a legendary simultaneous poop and spit-up incident, I learned sometimes more is better.

What are your favorite tools of the trade? See ours (Whitney + Heather) here.

My friend Jeanine once told me there’s lots of fun time to be had with a baby at an outdoor store like REI: you just set up a sweet pad in the display tent with several of the Thermarest mattresses, chirping bird toys, and bright colored water bottles and have a blast.

The first time I took Holden as a baby he was most interested in chewing the tags off the Nalgene bottles. When I brought him back as a toddler, he hid among the large racks of clothing and totally terrified me. So, it might have something to do with temperament.

Whitney had a much different experience when she brought a mellow toddler, Julian. She told me:

We went to REI today and had a good time.

First, it’s wonderful for tiny toddlers who just want to follow the path around the store endlessly.

Second, they sell “Just Corn” and “Just Peas” which is my new method of feeding Julian vegetables. (More tips for feeding picky toddlers here.)

Third, putting a kid-sized backpack on your child without him noticing is an entertaining preview of the first day of Kindergarten.

And finally, if you are nearing the one year mark, I suggest purchasing the Nalgene sippy cup (now BPA free!). We are big fans. In this photo, Julian giving his opinion on framed packs to anyone who will listen.

This is my favorite format of a Mom’s Group picture, so I am reposting it from last year. If you have the chance to imitate it, please do!

I saw this photo on the Facebook page of a former co-worker and he gave me permission to publish. Thanks, Rookie Dad Eric!

Have you taken black and white photos of your baby yet? Put her on a solid colored blanket on your bed and stand on the bed, looking down at her. Then, get down at her level and take some close ups. Take some of her hands and feet, too. Outdoor light also makes for great black and white shots. Take that blanket with you and use your patio, backyard or local park.

In my job as a marketer, there’s a lot of focus on how much we moms talk to each other, exchanging advice about how to get our whites whiter.  Yeah, we blab a lot. And yes it’s true, we might talk to our friends, sisters and total strangers about the best stroller to buy when you’re going to have two kids under two years old, or how to get a six month old to nap in that stroller, or where to go for date night.

I’d say the most common assumption being made, based on the pitches I receive for this blog, is that we talk mostly about products.  But I think that’s wrong. I think we are more likely to talk about experiences or activities.

Which is not to say that I haven’t been influenced to buy something because of a blog post I read.

For your amusement, here are three examples of things that I actually bought because I was influenced by another parent blogger.

1) Trader Joe’s pub towels. Alma wrote that they are amazing for sopping up any liquid, including pee. The next time I found myself at Trader Joe’s I tossed two packages into my shopping cart. (Ok, so what she actually mentioned was the same product from Costco. Still, I was inspired.)

2) Pond’s Make-Up Remover Wipes. V-Dog listed these as something she’d be packing for BlogHer, explaining that after a long night of drinking and talking she’d be too lazy to wash her face properly. “Hey,” I thought to myself. “I’m that lazy, too!” Next time I went to Target, I tracked down those wipes. Did I get that one right? Perhaps it wasn’t V-Dog after all, but rather one of her partners-in-crime.

3) Bento box containers. After looking at Wendy’s lunchboxes week after week, I just had to own some similar containers. More than that, I wanted the experience of going to the Korean dollar store she referenced as being a 30-minute drive from my house. And so I went. And I bought.

But about what I’ve DONE? Where I’ve GONE or things I’ve TRIED? The power of bloggerific influence can be seen here again.

1) Photographed my kid in front of graffiti. I stole this idea from Sweet Juniper when they were living in San Francisco. Heather and I spent two afternoons chasing these photographs, and it was super fun.

2) Exercised. Last year, Kristen set out to reclaim her body from three pregnancies that consumed her early thirties. She blogged and tweeted about her commitment to the 30 Day Shred video.  Like a gaggle of other Motherhood Uncensored readers, I hopped on the bandwagon, making an extra effort to exercise and letting Jillian Michaels lead me through it.

3) Wore a scarf with confidence. Shana told me I could.

4) Made a toddler dress from a men’s shirt. Just like Dana.  (Ok, much worse than Dana.)

5) Taped quarters on my kids shoes. Mike did this, blogged about how much fun it was. Then I did it. Blogged it, too.

And how many people have bought a white noise machine because I or “The Rookie Moms” told them about it? A lot, it seems.  But I don’t care about that. I’m not looking to actively sell you guys stuff that other people make. (Unless I think it’s totally awesome and will help you get more sleep.) What I wanted, when I started this blog (with Heather) was to inspire new moms to get out of the house. I was on the other side of that first year, and I felt like my coping strategy needed to be documented, out there in the world, for other moms to read. Get. Out. Of. The. House.

We have listed hundreds of activities here.They’re written to inspire you to take action.

Did you try any of them? Did we influence your behavior, not to BUY something, but to DO something? Just curious.

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Speaking of action, I will be hosting a diaper drive in collaboration with Help A Mother Out in San Francisco during the first week of May.  If you live in the Bay Area, please come!

A huge thank you to Nicole Johnson, sleep coach and owner of The Baby Sleep Site, who offered these sanity-saving travel tips just as I’m beginning to obsess about sleep issues and toddler jet lag! In addition to being a sleep expert, she is also the mom of two boys (one of whom never let her sleep).

Once you’ve mastered the scavenger hunts and conquered the easy outings with your baby, it’s time to step it up and take an overnight trip with your little one. Grab your best girlfriend, or make it a family affair, but to deal with the anxiety about how your baby will sleep when she’s away from home, try these five travel sleep tips. They’ll also help keep you sane in the process.

1. Don’t Let Jet Lag Throw You For a Loop.
If you are going on a short (3 days or less) trip to another time zone, consider keeping your child on your home time zone for the duration of the trip. If your trip is longer than that, it will be virtually impossible to keep up with that 10 p.m. bedtime or waking up at 4 a.m., for example, so move your child to the new time zone as soon as possible (without torturing her with sleep deprivation!).

A good way to ease a child into a new timezone is to split the time difference on each of the first two days. So if the new time is three hours off her regular bedtime, put her to bed 1 ½ hours earlier or later (depending on where you are) and limit “sleeping in” to just the first day. Like adults, most children will adjust in a few days.

2. Establish Your Routine. Early.
Before traveling, make sure your baby’s routine is well-established. The more predictable his bedtime is at home, the better it will transfer to a new place. A good routine might include dinner, bath, pajamas, brush gums/teeth, read books, sing two songs and into bed. Try to stick to routine as close as possible on the trip for maximum success during the trip and when you get home and need to get back to normal.

3. Bring Home With You.
Reinvent home as much as possible when staying at a hotel or with family. Introduce a lovey that will give your child comfort being away from home. Consider taking your own blankets, white noise machine or music, books and any other security objects to ease the transition to a new place.

4. Consider Your Hotel Room.
Whenever possible, opt for a suite at an economical hotel, giving you adjoining rooms for roughly the same price as a single room at a higher end hotel. This can make your trip more relaxing, giving you the space to nap your baby and unwind after the kids are asleep at night (without having to hide out in the bathroom!).

Plus, having a quiet place can encourage your baby to sleep through the night. Also, pull the blackout shades over the windows to keep the room extra dark, for a few added zzz’s in the morning. (If, when staying with a friend, there aren’t curtains, a blanket will do.)

5. Allow plenty of time.
Traveling with little ones is no small feat. Relieve stress by building in extra time to get to your destination, allowing you to settle in, adjust to time changes and deal with delayed flights. If flying, consider taking an early morning flight to allow for a later nap in the hotel, should your child not sleep on the plane. (Planes are just too exciting for some little ones!)

If you’re driving, consider leaving around nap time, if your baby falls asleep well in a moving car. If he doesn’t, leave at least an hour earlier as the excitement of going on the trip can sometimes delay drowsiness.

The first time you travel, it might not probably won’t go perfectly, but keep trying. Maybe your baby was too excited to nap on the plane, or the hotel room just didn’t smell like home, or you forgot your toddler’s blankie. The more you travel, the more routine it becomes for both you and your child. The adventure is worth it for both of you and nothing beats being able to kiss her goodnight and then snuggle with your hubby or girl talk with your best friend.

Want more Nicole Johnson? She is the President of Babble Soft a groovy baby tracking software company (that I would have LOVED!). She has become an expert on infant and toddler sleep and has made it her mission to help other parents solve their child’s sleep problems, too.