I grew up next door to a boy one year older than me. His parents hosted my baby shower, a co-ed barbecue that he attended with his wife and their one-year old son. At the shower, my childhood friend, now a dad and a recent business school graduate, spoke these words of wisdom to me and Ryan: First three months, no ROI.

It is true.

There is not a lot of return on your investment in a baby in the first couple of months. You endure physical pain, hormonal intensity, and a fair amount of overtime, weekends and holidays included. Finally, after a couple of months, the tiny paychecks start to trickle in. Baby smiles. Plumper cheeks to kiss. Eye contact.

Yes! This is what I signed up for!

And from where I sit now, I am rolling in the dough. I am drawing a full salary with these two walking and talking kids, who make the most mundane of tasks an adventure. Sometimes, a laugh riot.

Truths that were unveiled to me yesterday:

Brushing your teeth is more fun when you place a towel over your head to block your vision.

Placing coins in a parking meter is a thrill.

Getting your own spoon out of the drawer is cause for boastful announcements. “I can reach it myself!”

Kicking one’s small legs to the beat of Moves Like Jagger as we drive through the dark, sudsy tunnel of the carwash is a 3-minute party.

Being allowed to bring your two favorite books to preschool is no small delight.

Though the whining and bickering — still daily — can bring me down, it feels really good to think about all the dull things I do on a regular basis and how much more I enjoy them through the eyes of Julian and Scarlett. That joy is the return on my investment.

As part of a series sponsored by Hallmark, we’ll be posting monthly about the idea that beyond birthdays, Valentine’s day, and Christmas, everyday life is a special occasion, worth recording and reflecting on. Like it? Here’s another take from DesignHerMomma.

Today Heather and I (and Sawyer) are headed for Chicago where we will be attending a Blogger Summit hosted by Kenmore. As my husband and I are actually in the market for a new range/oven/stove/whatever you want to call, you know, that big device that cooks food in the kitchen, I am extra interested in hearing about stoves/ovens/ranges/cooktops.

But, like any margarita lover, I won’t mind seeing a demo of a blender while we’re at it. With tequila in it. Okay? (My twitter friend Laura tells me that consumption of alcohol is critical to staying warm — and Chicago is a snowy 18 degrees currently.)

The question they’ve asked us, as a conversation starter, that I am now asking you is this one: Do you have any unusual, practical uses for your everyday appliances?

For example, our reader Elizabeth in Chicago told us on the Rookie Moms Facebook page that she leaves the oven light on as a nightlight in case anyone in her household wanders into the kitchen during the dark hours. Others warm up blankets and teddy bears in the dryer.

Myself, I just realized that the mac and cheese I usually take to potlucks to ensure my own child will eat SOMETHING could be made more enticing if I brought it in my slow cooker. Set it on potluck table plugged in to offer warm food. (Maybe everyone already knows that and I am a late bloomer when it comes to potluck protocol.)

Another blogger who will be attending, BusyDad, demonstrates using his stick mixer as a guitar accessory.

How about you? Do you have any appliance-related tricks up your sleeve? Do you store forks in your blender? Use your waffle iron to put cool patterns in your hair?

photo: TammyGreen

Last year, you guys seemed to really like the opportunity to win books from Barefoot Books, so I asked them to give us another chance to giveaway books. In the post-holiday reflections on STUFF, it feels really nice to give away BOOKS. Though you do have to put them away and decide carefully how to add to your collection, they hold their value for much longer than other playthings, don’t you think?

In honor of Chinese New Year on January 23rd, we’re giving away a copy of The Great Race, along with four other books of the winner’s choosing from the Barefoot Books shop. I’m totally in love with the artwork of Clare Beaton who uses hand-sewn collages in her books.

(Also, did you know that if you are truly passionate about children’s books, you can become a Barefoot Books ambassador — a work-from-home sales job.)

The Great Race introduces the Chinese calendar and signs of the zodiac.

How to enter: Usually we do one entry per person, but this time we’ll do two. Get one entry for your comment telling us your child’s current favorite book, and a second entry (optional) if you click over and LIKE the Barefoot Books Facebook page and come back to comment that you have done that. (Don’t cheat — we’ll check!)

On Wednesday Jan 18, we’ll close the comments and select a winner. The winner will be able to pick four other Barefoot Books to receive from this catalog.

We had so much fun creating our weekly challenge list for rookie moms in 2011 that we wanted to do something similar this year. But totally different.

I am excited to announce that we are working on a new content series for 2012, focused on making stuff. Each week, we will highlight excellent clever do-it-yourself projects for parents. That might mean crafty stuff, photography ideas, food, or other DIY problem-solving projects. To be honest, we’re not totally sure yet. Stay tuned for more details!

We are calling it “Makin’ It with the Rookie Moms” and we hope you’ll join us!

If you have a fun project to share, email us at moms [at] rookiemoms.com with the subject MAKIN’ IT. We’d love to feature your project!

Week 1: How to make a no-sew Moby Wrap

Week 2: Publish your own I Spy book

Week 3: Bake the easiest salmon in the world.

Week 4: Make a wipeable art table

Week 5: Photograph letter art

Week 6: Glue-free Valentine’s decoration

This the last post in our series sponsored by the Huggies Every Little Bottom program, and I hope that over the course of 2011, you have been inspired to think of moms in need from time to time, especially when you open a fresh package of diapers. For many families, providing the bare necessities, including diapers, is a financial challenge.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, if you’d like to help, here are three ways you can do it:

1) Hold your own diaper drive. Ask friends and neighbors to contribute and find a food bank or social service center that serves women and children that will accept your donations.

2) Be a Diaper Fairy. (Not a Diaper Genie). Select an item from Help A Mother Out’s Amazon wishlist and have diapers delivered.

3) Give money. Take your pick of organizations dedicated to getting diapers to those who cannot afford them: LA Diaper Drive, Diaper Bank of Southern Arizona, Help a Mother Out (California), The Diaper Bank (New England).

Thanks in advance for any help you give to this cause. I was happy to be a part of the 2011 ambassadors to the Every Little Bottom program and will continue to work locally to solve this problem.

My mom makes mini photo books with Shutterfly for my kids every time we spend a weekend together, so we have a whole bunch of them. She is/was a creative director at her own ad agency, so she’s pretty darn good at it. But the hardbound books that Shutterfly is promoting now are in another league. I saw them in person last month, and I was impressed.

What I like the best was the approach to storytelling they shared. It has helped me stop thinking that a photobook has to be a comprehensive summary of the whole year or even a whole vacation. This template, for example helps you create a top 10. How easy is that? Only ten photos needed!

It doesn’t even have to be a Top Ten of the year. It could be “Top Ten Things about Julian’s 7th Birthday Party” or “Ten Things Scarlett Does Everyday” or “Top Ten Adventures in Our First Ten Years of Marriage”.

Another direction: This template is for “A Year of Firsts.”

Yet another example:  Catherine from Weelicious made a book documenting how to make a particular kind of cookie. The whole book is photographs of the recipe steps with instructions. I think this would be fun to send to a niece or nephew. I was hoping the photos I took of Julian making slime could be used as a How to Make Slime book. (See exactly how Catherine’s book came out on Shutterfly’s site.)

Note that these templates live on the “Storytelling” tab of the Shutterfly site.

GIVEAWAY! Now that you have tons of ideas, and know that the bar might be as low as collecting 10 photos with a theme, here’s your chance to win $150 dollars of credit to use on Shutterfly.  We wanted to make sure that if you make a book, you can buy multiple copies and have them shipped directly to your loved ones. (You know what I wish someone would do? Make a book of their baby doing every activity on our list of 52 challenges for rookie moms! Shutterfly, can you help us make that happen?)

UPDATE: Giveaway now closed (1/2/12). Winner will be notified on 1/3/12.

When we hosted a Q-Tips twitter party last month, Terri K (@tkharmonic) tweeted: I’d like to point out that Q-tips make excellent substitutes for swords as they fit well into the hands of most action figures.

Hilarious! And something I wanted to try.

I challenged my sons (and husband) to battle with Q-Tips as weapons, and they took it a few steps further by creating a comic strip of a battle among LEGO Star Wars characters and ships. The storyline and dialog are by my four- and six-year old but the comic software was wielded by Rookie Dad Alec.

Disclosures:

Disclosure: this is a sponsored post by Q-tip as part of the Tipster Ambassador program. All opinions, creative ideas, and legos are ours. If you’re wondering, the comic strip was created by comiclife on the Mac.

One of the best parts about getting older is that the accomplishments of my peers continue to be more amazing. It is with no small thrill that I share the news that my blogging peer, the talented illustrator known Secret Agent Josephine is launching, not just one children’s book, but three!

And not just on one platform, but lots! That’s right, you can access her super fun children’s books electronically, because hey, it’s the future.

iPad/iPhone: ABCs, Colors, and Numbers.

Kindle: ABCs, Colors, and Numbers.

Nook: ABCs, Colors, and Numbers.

Paperback: ABCs, Colors, Numbers.

To celebrate, she has designed this complicated scavenger hunt book tour all over the Internets and I encourage you to follow along because there are craft templates and lovely images everywhere, plus mucho chances to win a print from Secret Agent Jo, who in real life is known as Brenda Ponnay. We are honored to brag that Brenda was an early reader of Rookie Moms and that she didn’t even get mad when we borrowed this illustration from her website. It is one of my favorite visuals ever.

That’s me her trying on pre-pregnancy jeans.

Secret Agent Alert! You can win the R IS FOR ROBOT print for your child’s room or your classroom!

Our print is the Letter R , but if you want to seek out a different letter, you can use Brenda’s site as a jumping off point to track down all the giveaways, each a different letter of the alphabet. You see, you ARE a secret agent! The best chestnuts are to be found on Pigalle Square.

To enter our Secret Agent Sweepstakes, simply comment below telling us your favorite R word. I’ll go first: I’m torn because my husband is named Ryan, but my ears prick up every time I hear the word ROOKIE used in conversation. I would love this print myself! Ok, your turn!

(On Monday, December 19, I will select a winner with the help of a random number picker thingy. Only one entry per adult human, please. U.S. shipping addresses only.)

Have you ever made someone a beautiful personalized photo book and seen their face light up? It’s a good feeling. After my mom took me to Italy to celebrate my 30th birthday, I totally “won Christmas” (my new invented expression for the best gift of the year — let’s all make it a thing, ok?) by giving her a commemorative photo book. Years later, it is still sitting in a highly visible spot.

I don’t know if I’ve had as good an idea for a photo book since then. I need one now, though, and I hope you can help me out. Snapfish has challenged me to unleash my creative lens on life in the form of a unique photo book and it’s a contest.

If your ideas spur to me win the best photo book out of a pool of ten, then we all win. Literally. If I win due based on the ideas of Rookie Moms readers, you commenters win a photobook, too!

Here’s some fodder to inspire you (to inspire me).

• I have a beautiful baby boy who is likely to be overshadowed in many ways by his big brothers. I could whip up a little book documenting his first three months, birth, or gestation.
• Then again, I have a delightful boy who has just become a middle son; I could create something uniquely his so he doesn’t feel that he has to be the biggest or the smallest just to get our attention.
• And Holden… well, isn’t everything in this house already labeled with his name? I probably wouldn’t do a dedicated “Holden is awesome” book but I could do something clever featuring our house rules or jobs that makes being the biggest a little bit more fun.

But let me consider your ideas (so we can really turn this contest up to eleven). What would you do? What should I do? How can we make this photo book really special?

Want to win your own awesome photo book?

Leave a comment on this post suggesting a creative idea for my book (and your email address please). I will choose my favorite suggestions from you guys and create a book using the Snapfish design experts. If my book is good enough (and kicks the butts of the 9 other photo books competing), you guys will win photo books too. I’ll share the final product and my process in my next post. Got it? So, bring it on!

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This post series is sponsored by Snapfish as part of the “Your Creative Lens on Life” campaign. Photo book credits will be awarded if my book wins the contest to the first 100 commenters below.

Omigod, once again I am totally serious and unsmiley in this Ragu video clip. What is my problem? I really am proud that I’m giving my kids the dinner experience I dreamed of as a kid. I am happy! I should be smiling when I describe it! Instead, I look like I’m discussing foreign policy.

Today we have THREE $100 gift cards to giveaway. Ragu is wrapping up their Mom’s The Word on Dinner campaign (a series of videos that I appeared in) and wants to celebrate by allowing you to splurge on something that will make you smile.

Here’s the deal: Comment below and tell us what you’d do with $100 that is related to FAMILY DINNER.

Enter only once. (Subsequent entries from the same email address will be deleted.)

On December 5, I will select three winners at random via computer. The three lucky winners will receive a $100 Amex Gift Card that can be used wherever American Express is accepted. Good luck!

I am sincerely thankful to Wonderforge for sponsoring this giveaway because it seems incredibly well-timed. There’s nothing like having a stack of great games hiding in your garage so that when you realize you need a gift in a pinch, you can simply go browse your pile of unopened toys. In my house, my husband is the smart one about maintaining a supply of versatile gifts that we use for birthday parties we’ve forgotten until the last minute. Today, we’re giving you a chance to win an entire stash of easy-to-wrap games.

A huge thanks to Melissa Harris whom I recognized from college when she began working in my office about five years ago. Now she is a mom of two, one of whom is nicknamed “The Anti-Preemie”. Earlier this week, she alerted me that today is the first World Prematurity Day and offered to write this “NICU Mom Survival Guide” based on what she learned as a NICU “survivor”.

Before we get to her tips, here is Melissa’s story as a video that her hospital produced about her baby’s story. Coincidentally, all five of the rookie babies were born in this hospital too.

In September of 2010, I gave birth to my son, Sam. He was just 24 weeks along and weighed in at one pound twelve ounces or 749 grams. We spent 95 days with Sam in the NICU at Alta Bates hospital. Every day was a roller coaster. Days might start out good, but deteriorate as the day went on. During our stay I had to watch Sam have four blood transfusions, get bagged by the nurses three times, have the crash team called to his room once, endure countless apnea and bradycardia events, contract an infection in his blood, have three spinal taps to test for meningitis, have to be reinutabed once, have heart surgery, and have eye surgery. Every day was a challenge, but Sam and I survived. Below are the key tips I would pass on to any new NICU mom (and one tip from my husband to all NICU dads)

1. You are the most important member of the medical team

Yes, the neonatologist and the nurses are the ones who can actually practice medicine, but it is you, the parents, that play a vital role in your baby/babies care. You are the one that is there every day. You are the one that knows your baby/babies better than anyone else. You are the one that can, and must, speak for your child/children.

Get to know everything about your baby/babies medical condition. Learn the medical terms and acronyms. Look at the chart every day. Understand what everything means. All of this will help you be the absolute best advocate for your little one/ones.

I feel like I am an honorary NICU nurse. I learned a whole new language filled with terms and acronyms like: apnea, bradycardia, CPAP, SiPAP, PDA, ROP, NEC, HA solution, and many many more. Being able to throw these words around made advocating for my son easier.

2. Ask for and accept help from anyone willing to give it

Sometimes, asking for help is that hardest thing a person can do. Get over it. You need the help. You will be at the hospital more than you are at home. A grocery store is a luxury you can’t afford. Running out of aspirin, ask someone to get it for you. Laundry piling up? Get someone to help. This is not the time to think you can do it all. Your job is to be there for your preemie(s). The people around you- its their job to be there for you.

My network was amazing. We had dinner delivered every other night. Groceries would just show up on our front porch. Our five year old had more play date and sleep over options than we knew what to do with. I made a decision early on to say “yes” to everything people offered. In doing that, I was never in need of anything.

3. You are human- allow yourself space (don’t get eaten alive by the NICU)

Leaving your preemie in the NICU is really hard. Moving yourself into the NICU, however, isn’t any easier. As important as it is to be present for your baby/babies, it is equally important for you to take a break.

For me, I tried to limit myself to 4-6 hours a day in the NICU. Any more than that would have been soul crushing. As Sam began breastfeeding, it became harder to stick to this limit, but we were nearing the end of our stay, so it was worth it.

4. Primary nurses are vital for your NICU stay

Not every hospital pushes for primary nurses, but you should. Designating a few primary nurses will make all the difference in your preemie(s)’s care. The basic idea behind a primary nurse is continuity of care. If you have the same nurse with your baby/babies day in and day out, they will get to know them, and will be able to tell right away if something isn’t right. Picking a primary nurse is more about how YOU get along with the nurse, than their skill level. Any nurse working in a NICU is skilled- how their personality matches with yours is key. As important as it is to find nurses you like, if you have a nurse you do not like- tell someone. You should never be made to feel uncomfortable when visiting your baby/babies in the NICU.

We were lucky to have a number of wonderful primary nurses, many of whom we still keep up with almost a year after discharge. Continuity of care helped save our son a number of times from unnecessary intervention: one time he was having lots of breathing issues and the doctor’s wanted to put him back on the ventilator, but his nurse was convinced there was another reason- and she was right, he just needed a smaller feeding tube.

5. Find an outlet for everything that is in your head

Having a baby/babies in the NICU is really hard. At the end of each day, you must find a way to release all that has built. If crying is what will help, then cry your eyes out. If you are a screamer, find a place to scream, and scream. Maybe baking or knitting is your outlet. Whatever it is, find it, and use it.

For me, writing was my outlet. I wrote every single day I was in the NICU. If I tried to skip a day, I found I could not sleep. There was so much running around my head, that I just had to release it everyday or it would consume me.

For the dads out there, you are the most important member of the support staff. Don’t expect a thanks right now, it will come later.

Your wife is in mama bear mode. She is 100% focused on your baby/babies and is totally unaware of all that you are doing to keep things going. She will, at some point, realize that you are the one that took out the trash, changed the sheets, brought her water and food, and held her hand. It may take her a few months, but she will thank you. Be patient, and know that without you, she would not make it. It is important, however, to remember that this is not just HER preemie(s). You are going through it too- so make sure to take the time to bond with your baby/babies and take care of yourself.

Again, thanks to Melissa for sharing! If you have questions for her, post them here! Did your baby stay in the NICU? What advice do you have for others?