From the category archives:

Month 12

Activity #44: Celebrate your way

December 26, 2011

For your 52nd weekly challenge, we invite you to pat yourself on the back — You have a ONE YEAR OLD! The celebration is for you. If you are inviting others to celebrate the big ONE with you, make some plans for it. Make it easy on yourself by delegating food and decorations to anyone [...]

Launch Camp Grandma

December 12, 2011

As your next weekly challenge, we’re sharing a favorite activity from our book, The Rookie Mom’s Handbook: In the long run, Grandma, baby and Mom and Dad will all look forward to this annual tradition. Since you’re still a rookie, however, do this to the degree you feel comfortable. How it works: You and your [...]

Activity #177: Join a museum

November 21, 2011

Like they used to say on TV, membership has it’s privileges. Both of the Bay Area children’s museums that I have been to are part of a consortium of Children’s Museums that have reciprocal memberships. This means that if you get a one-year membership at Habitot in Berkeley, for example, you can go to the [...]

First birthday party ideas

September 30, 2011

photo: The Macs Before we get all in a tizzy about first birthday parties and the cuteness you are about to behold, allow me to confess that I think the first birthday party is optional. Parents doing something momentous to celebrate their own first year of parenthood also seems like a fine idea (first overnight [...]

Activity #257: Meow, bark and tweet at the pet store

September 12, 2011

My friend Mary (who had her son Del in the same hospital the day after I had Julian) gave this idea to our moms group. She said that 13-month old Del loves the pet store where he can check out the animals, especially the birds. Does your baby love animals? Mine really did (and still [...]

Activity #191: Make a flipbook from your videos

April 13, 2011

When I read about the service, Flipclips.com, in Real Simple magazine a few years ago, I fell in love with the idea. During a long nap I had to myself, I hung out on the computer messing with the video clips I have of Julian. They let you upload a video and then make some [...]

Activity #223: Make magnets

November 19, 2010

This is a crafty gift idea, posted by request. I recently made a set of magnets for everyone in my Mom’s Group. I presented them in a stack with a little ribbon around them. I chose to do 1.5 inch squares, but you can do whatever floats your boat. All you have to do is [...]

Activity #51: Print baby trading cards

October 13, 2010

Until our first kids turned four, we held a yearly joint birthday party for the babies in my mom’s group, in addition to their own private birthday parties. When they turned two, I volunteered to do favors because the magnets I did the year before were such a hit. The two-year old party favor was [...]

Complain to your baby

August 4, 2010

Here’s the affirmation of the month: It’s hard to listen to whining! No one will argue with you on that. In moments of frustration, tell your toddler that, and don’t take the whining personally. Sometimes we feel like we can’t complain about motherhood. But we can describe it. If someone asks how it’s going, you [...]

Put your Stander-Upper down for a nap

April 15, 2010

Spend a little extra time putting your active monkey down, and see if it pays off. When Julian first started standing in his crib, I was at a loss for how to get him to nap. After listening carefully to Ryan’s procedure for putting him down, I realized I was trying to do it too [...]

Activity #7: Make a list of 50 things you like to do

February 5, 2010

This sounds like a self-help suggestion, but it’s actually really fun and the best part is trading your list with your friends and/or spouse if you can convince them to do it. Heather challenged me to do make a list of 50 things I like to do, and then she went all over-achiever on my [...]

Activity #256: Make a Memory game

December 22, 2009

Here’s a gift idea. Make a personalized version of the game Memory. You know, where you turn over two tiles to try to make a match. Each time you make a match, you remove the tiles until you have matched all the pairs. I made this for my grandparents one Christmas. It is about half-way [...]

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