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!

Days at home alone with a baby can be soooo long. On the bright side, he’s a very captive audience and interested in all your innermost thoughts. Tell your baby about what you are doing to him when you change his diaper, lift him up, feed him. Narrate life’s little adventures when you clip your toenails, pee, or fold the laundry. I knew we were a family when I caught myself saying, “And this is mommy’s underwear” and he wasn’t in the room.

Alec discovered that this little trick also works for doing the dishes, but if you want to keep putting off doing dishes, I completely support that!

If having a constant companion share your inner dialog isn’t motivation enough, pediatric research shows that frequently talking to your baby can make him smarter. To up the ante, point at what you’re talking about.

“And now we’re going to pick up Mommy’s very hot coffee.”

The Berkeley YMCA used to have a post-partum hip hop aerobic dance classes where babies watch and participate. It is mesmerizing for babies who never knew mom could be so cool (or, in my case, so uncoordinated).

The class is best for pre-crawlers, but if you want to add some chasing to your dance moves, bring your crawling baby along.

Does your local gym have a similar class where you can get all pink-cheeked and crack your baby up?

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.

I have a huge plastic bin of fabric, but have not been interested at sitting at my sewing machine lately. I love all those beautiful colors and patterns that are folded and crumpled in my storage tub, and thought that this project, which I saw featured on MAKE, was an excellent use of them that doesn’t require threading a bobbin.

What you need:

• Fabric scraps
• ModPodge
• Blank canvas
• Stiff brush

If you’ve got a box of baby clothes with which you’re having a hard time parting, perhaps this is a way to memorialize some of your favorite itty bitty infant items, but do note that knit fabrics, which most soft apparel is made from, will roll up and fray at the edges, so take good inventory before you start slicing things into pieces.

Blank canvas can be ordered on Amazon. Here’s a 4-pack.

Get the project details on crazy mom quilts >

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…

I saw this adorable and super simple mobile on Sew She Sews and really wanted to share it. Jaime chose coordinating circles of fabric and stitched them together to form this hanging nursery decoration.

So cute, right? I think this sort of mobile hung high above the changing table might just be the thing to keep Sawyer on his back for the 90 seconds I need to change him. See more pictures (for pinning), full instructions (for following), and reader comments (with a flickr collection of other examples!) on her post, For the love of polka dots – a crib mobile tutorial.

Since most of us don’t have Whitney’s stash of adorable fabrics sitting around, Jaime sells a DIY kit through her etsy shop so you can make a mobile yourself without gathering all of the supplies. She’s talented and thoughtful.

Baby mobile not your thing? Choose another fun Makin’ it project.

Before having a baby, I had a very clear idea of what kind of mom I would be. Having read Babywise at the advice of a childless friend, I knew I would put my newborn on a schedule and fill my maternity leave with useful pursuits like crossing items off my to-do list and initiating sewing projects with the baby by my side in a bouncy seat.

The book’s instructions didn’t work out for me; among other things, it’s based on the premise that a baby eats every four hours (rather than the two hour cycle I seemed to be on). What the what?

Well, at least the bouncy seat came in handy.

Though I never used it for making playclothes from curtains (do I look like Mary Poppins, er, Maria?), having my sidekick in a baby lounge chair (like the BABYBJÖRN Babysitter pictured) has made me a better mama.

1. I smell better. My babies have loved hanging out in the steamy bathroom while I sneak in a shower. Because my washing machine is also in the bathroom, Sawyer’s presence usually encouraged me to do a load of wash. Feeling clean was something I used to take for granted, but not since becoming a mother.

2. I cook food. It turns out that my family needs to eat several times a day. Once I was able to remove Sawyer from my body (baby carriers are a necessity, yes?!), we graduated to putting the Babysitter on the kitchen floor so he could closely watch the hot action from a safe distance. Preparing meals sometimes feels like half of all parenting.

3. I preserve my relationships. Yes, with a baby nearby, my phone calls may sound sillier. I occasionally lapse into that singsong baby voice when I’m chatting with my girlfriends, but at least those calls get made. Having friends makes me a happier person.

4. I write and publish. With a little baby at the foot of my desk, I have written a gajillion emails, thousands of blog posts and two books (okay, the second book was written with baby in utero and not on the floor). Thank you to the seats that make these achievements possible.

5. I play with my children. By parking Sawyer nearby, I can play board games with the big boys while he watches us. We also like to entertain our tiny audience with family dance parties and impromptu puppet shows. As we perform, Sawyer gets plenty of chances to demonstrate his budding clapping skills.

And I’m sure we can all agree that the best mom smells good, feeds her kids, has lasting friendships, is proud of her accomplishments while always remembering to have fun with her children.

++++

This post was sponsored by BABYBJÖRN with whom we have worked to bring you a whole series of good stuff this summer, including giving away many of their products. Stay tuned!

Find out more about the BABYBJÖRN bouncers on their website.

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?

We got a great tip from longtime reader, Ghanimatrix, about how she squeezes in more me time. She says:

The best way for me to find “me time” is to either stay on top of chores so that nap time becomes leisure time, OR to go run an errand when my husband gets home and stop for a hot chocolate and space out before I head home.

Though I don’t exactly stay on top of my chores, she had me at hot chocolate.

The giveaway is closed but do read about the cute product! The HALO SleepSack, an item used religiously by every woman in my mom’s group, is an example of one of those things you have never heard of until you have your own baby.

Remember the scene on Friends where Rachel opens her baby shower gifts and then begins to cry because she doesn’t know what any of the items are used for?

Katherine: It’s a diaper genie.
Rachel: Oh, it dispenses clean diapers!
Katherine: No, it’s where you put the dirty ones!
Rachel: Well, that’s gross. Why don’t you just take it outside and throw it in a dumpster?
Mrs. Green: Well, are you going to do that ten times a day?
Rachel: It goes ten times a day? What are we feeding this baby, Indian food?

I could see that re-written to incorporate these vest-meets-sleeping bags.

The thing is, for the phase of life in which you need them, they are the perfect solution for keeping baby snuggly warm without the risk of loose blankets. Scarlett and Julian both wore their SleepSacks to bed over their jammies, even as toddlers.

And now, there are so many cute ones to choose from. (Back when my babies were born, there were only solid colors in fleece — and we had to ride dinosaurs to the birthing center in the snow uphill both ways!)

In the SleepSack Swaddle version, a “swaddle band” attached to the wearable blanket allows your baby to be swaddled with arms in, or arms out as a transition out of swaddling.

These new colors and patterns are available at Pottery Barn Kids stores and PBK online. You can add a name or not. (Note: I am personally against monogramming these for hand-me-down logistics reasons.)

Would you like to win FOUR SleepSacks from HALO? Winner receives her choice of sizes and colors.

To enter the random drawing, comment here telling us what your baby sleeps in: swaddle, SleepSack, nothing, or big kid blankets. (On Thursday, March 1, we’ll use a computer to select a commenter who will be able to specify her prize package.)

Huge thanks to HALO for sponsoring the giveaway. Please like them on Facebook if you’d like to be kept up-to-date on their products and safety news for babies.