This tech tip comes from my husband, Ryan, who is a great optimizer of all of life’s tasks, including his parenting pursuits. Case in point, I just received an email from him letting me know he had been alerted that a kid’s bike sized for our son came up for sale on Craig’s List in our neighborhood. (He sets up these alerts all the time. Years ago, I explained how, but I need to update that post since technology has improved.)

When we’re in a different town, visiting family, for example, Ryan uses the aerial views of locations provided by Google to select outdoor play destinations.

I wish I could tell you that the photos are detailed enough to determine if there’s a fenced-in toddler playground or monkey bars at a certain park. Alas, it is more helpful to get a general sense of a place like the amount of greenery vs. blacktop.

Some questions you may be able to answer by looking at a Google Maps view of a new destination:

1. Does this destination look good for one of the parents to go running while the other watches over the playground, ie is it a large park with paths versus a corner playground.
2. Is there a parking lot? (There are very few parking lots where we live.)
3. Where is there a baseball diamond near my parents house? (Important to our 8-year old son.)
4. Where should we tell our friends to meet us? Pick a landmark.

I have found that we have a totally different relationship with many towns we traveled to before having kids.

Note to self: Hey, this park near my in-law’s house has a swimming pool! Second note to self: Call ahead to find out if there’s water in the pool!

Have you discovered anything in your own parents’ neighborhood that you weren’t aware of before becoming a parent?

My caring husband bought me the book Mommy Guilt as a not-so-subtle hint for me to lighten up and have more fun when our firstborn was a baby. The subtitle, Learn to worry less, focus on what matters most, and raise happier kids, was appealing enough; and my commute and daily visit to the pumping room gave me ample time to read it. The book is filled with some helpful exercises and tips.

For over three years now, I have had the 7 Principles of Mommy-Guilt-Free Living taped inside my medicine cabinet. It turns out that if you feel mommy guilt when you have a BABY, it just keeps on piling on as your kids get older so you might as well work to fight it as soon as it rears its ugly head (like when the yelling starts).

Devra and Aviva (two of the authors) also have a blog at Parentopia. And they reviewed our book, which was super nice of them. Click over there and read a little bit today if you are in need of absolution from parental angst.

I’m a list-maker and a score-keeper; sometimes it’s all I can do to NOT literally track everything I do that is measurable. I have learned over time, for example, that it is really really best not to count who changes how many diapers in a marriage. But for good habits, it is nice to see progress on a chart, whether we’re talking about toddlers learning how to use the potty or mamas needing someone to throw a parade because we laced up our collective running shoes and logged a few miles — I get it!

I started using the Lift iPhone app, a community goal tracking tool, about a week ago to give myself big green checkmarks for reaching my daily goals. It looks like this:

To take it one giant step further, Whitney and I started a group for supporting each other rookie-moms-style. We want to create habits together that help new moms do activities and be social… and have more fun! Using the Lift community features, we can all cheer each other on. If the day is a total mess, you’ll have us giving you props no matter what. Our collective goals are these:

1. Take your baby on an outing (maybe one of our Rookie Moms challenges)
2. Connect with a friend (new or old, we don’t care)
3. Treat yourself in a little or big way (bite of chocolate or legitimate self-care, up to you)
4. Find something to be thankful for (a baby’s giggle or a partner who changes diapers, whatev)

Lift is also available on your web browser (if you join the Rookie Moms group at lift.do/groups/rookie-moms) to help you get started building healthy habits.

While you’re on Lift, you’ll find other habits you might want to try, go ahead.

Whitney said that she wants a gold star every time she makes dinner. Now she can give herself one.

Some other good actions to check off each day: Do something nice for my partner, Smile at my children, Go someplace new. Since you can make up your own, you’re only limited by your imagination.

I’m experimenting with a few myself and think I’ve gone too far.

Yes, THINK about getting to Inbox Zero is one of my current habits. I check that one off when I don’t DO the Inbox Zero steps. Ummm, what?!

Now that you know what it is, join us at lift.do/groups/rookie-moms

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Free to use. Not sponsored, just fun and helpful, we hope!

This post was sponsored by UrbanSitter.

The answer to how much you pay a sitter varies greatly depending on a lot of factors. One of the biggest is geography! Sometimes — when the rate feels too low or high — I need to whisper it rather than speak the number out loud. But let’s get real here. You’re wondering how much I pay and I’m wondering how much you pay. Living in the Bay Area, I pay near the top end of the range. Gulp. I’ve gone from paying $20 an hour for one baby to $5 an hour for two toddlers (once on vacation!) and back again to $12 an hour for all three children (but I found myself whispering that number, so I gave her a raise).

UrbanSitter did a nationwide study of how much folks pay their sitters and nannies and here’s the scoop:

At this point, a regular night out is $15/hour but when I go to a backup sitter, they often want more than $20. Gulp again. I don’t blame them, you couldn’t pay me enough to babysit for 3 kids. [Related: Put your babysitter on a retainer to take the emotional sting out of the financial pinch].

Because I still have a wild one-year old in the house, I feel more comfortable with a 20-, 30-, or 40-something with lots of experience, but I dream of the imaginary high school student who’s also our next door neighbor and totally reliable for less than $10 an hour.

So, spill it. How much do you pay for babysitting? Ooh, and I’m also wondering, do you ever tip a babysitter or nanny?

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This post was sponsored by the fabulous folks at UrbanSitter.com, who make it so easy for you to find sitters that your friends and contacts already like. All experiences with sitters described above really happened to me.

When we posted a list of 9 books for new moms and dads, I left out a book recommended by New Jersey reader Rebecca Cain, The Wonder Weeks because I had never heard of it and wanted to learn more. I asked Rebecca to tell me more about the book and she’s done us all the favor of providing a great summary. Here’s what she said:

In my previous corporate life, I thrived on calendars and schedules, project plans and milestone-delineated goals. I thought parenting would have at least some similarities –read the how-to, lay out the timeline, execute, goal achieved. (You’re laughing derisively now, as you should be.) Since my husband frequently travels internationally for work, for weeks at a time, I outsourced much of our prenatal reading to him since he’d otherwise be struggling to decipher foreign language newscasts. He was great at summarizing the 5 things that we absolutely must do –or avoid doing – to ensure our impeding addition would be happy, healthy, sleeping, performing calculus in her head, etc. Only, our kid rarely fit the descriptions we’d crib-noted, or her temperament just didn’t lend itself to their prescriptions. A few weeks in, I understood the roller coaster called “newborn” I’d just boarded didn’t come with a calendar function.

I wish instead I’d had my husband read The Wonder Weeks: How to stimulate your baby’s mental development and help him turn his 10 predictable, great, fussy phases into magical leaps forward, as I believe that armed with the insight of this piece I would have been more confident as a new parent, and more curious, rather than anxious, about how my new baby was experiencing the world. And, I would have had one of those project plans (at least in broad brush strokes) I used to love so much when life could be cleanly displayed in Excel (wistful sigh).

Based on 35 years of research by Dutch husband-and-wife academic team Hetty van de Rijt and Frans Plooij, The Wonder Weeks offers age-based baby behavior insight focused on 10 distinct developmental “leaps” from birth through 20 months. In addition to laying out when (as in, which weeks, by gestational age) you can expect your baby to be most difficult, they also present diary entries from 15 families at each leap, and offer optimism that the “wonder week” will end with positive growth for your child. Quite frankly, it’s the closest thing to a crystal-ball-for-parents I’ve seen.

A mom with a slightly older baby suggested The Wonder Weeks book to me when I was at my wit’s end with a clingy, crying, non-sleeping, 8-week-old, wondering if my previously lovely baby had undergone a complete personality change. “Oh, that’s a Wonder Week,” she said, almost off-handedly. “There’s another one soon. Get the book, there’s a calendar.”

A calendar?!

Skeptical of the book’s predictive power, so I first signed up for the free alarm service, which promised to alert me by email to the next leap a few days before it should commence. A few weeks later I received my first alert; two days after that she was well into the next leap, with its associated clinginess, crying, and crankiness (the “three C’s”).

Convinced, I bought the app ($1.99 for iOS and Android) and the full e-book ($12.99 on your iOS device). You can also purchase individual chapters for only the ages you want; since the Wonder Weeks are timed according to a baby’s due date rather than birth date, I’ve found the timer and the app really helpful too, since they do the math for me.

According to the authors:

we found that, surprisingly, all normal, healthy babies are more tearful, troublesome, demanding, and fussy at the same ages … From our research, we are now able to predict, almost to the week, when parents can expect their babies to go through of these ‘fussy phases.’…During these periods, a baby cries for a good reason … [this] is a book on how to understand and cope with your baby when he is difficult and how to enjoy him most as he grows.

In addition to plotting out when you can more or less expect Junior to be more challenging than usual, in each chapter van de Rijt and Plooij outline the behavioral signals of the upcoming leap, and the new abilities your baby will start to exhibit afterwards. They also offer ideas on how to engage these specific emerging abilities, so that playtime helps baby make better sense out of what’s going on in his brain. To help you later remember these blurry but beautiful times, the book provides a diary for you to record your own child’s progress through the leaps. Overall, they present a cheerful and upbeat approach to understanding your baby, with little of the “heed us or else” tone I’ve noticed in many other parenting books.

Beyond the peek into the future and the modicum of forward-planning it affords my otherwise anything-can-happen-with-a-baby life, I appreciate the positive support and “light at the end of the tunnel” The Wonder Weeks offers for each of the leaps. You feel like the authors are actually looking out for you and for your baby, and really just want you both to have the happiest experience you can. When I receive the “leap alert,” I remind myself to be more patient, more understanding, that my daughter is going through a confusing time and that’s why she’s crying/cranky/clingy – and, most importantly, it won’t last forever. The calendar says so.

You can find a hard-copy of The Wonder Weeks on Amazon (easier to share with your partner), a Kindle version (half the price), or purchase individual chapters on the authors’ website.

Mike Adamick is a San Francisco Dad that we’ve known since his first grader was a baby. We featured her doing normal baby stuff for a day, and I still love that post. In addition to thoughtful essays, his blog is stuffed full of creative adventures, crafty projects, and homemade clothing that he makes for and with his daughter. So it is no surprise that he wrote a wicked cool book with more of the same (minus the fondness for Broadway shows).

I was lucky to receive an early copy of Dad’s Book of Awesome Projects: From Stilts and Super-Hero Capes to Tinker Boxes and Seesaws, 25+ Fun Do-It-Yourself Projects for Families, and it is all that and a bag of chips.

My husband and older sons took it away from me and flipped through the book before I could get started. Milo was the first to ask if we could make everything in it THIS WEEKEND. And so we started a few projects.

He had his eye on this balance board project (the second in the book) and took it upon himself to make it without help!

The results of his efforts were adorable but flawed since he used only cardboard.

Within 24 hours, RookieDad Alec had obtained the proper materials and made a real rolling wooden balance board and started the second project on our family wishlist, the Hidden Book Stash.

I can’t say enough good things about this book but I will try. Dad’s Book of Awesome Projects is a terrific collection of projects both realistic and ridiculous (with a strong leaning toward the realistic) that kids and parents will enjoy together. It would make a fun Father’s Day gift or just a “let’s see how much stuff we can do with this Summer Vacation” present. Buy it for someone you love along with the materials for circus stilts or a bow and arrow.

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I received a free copy of this book that my boys are working their way through. This review/love letter was not sponsored. (This post contains affiliate links.) Mike Adamick kicks ass in the best possible way.

[Photos: Mike Adamick, Heather Flett all rights reserved]

Got RSS?

If you have a Google Reader account full of blogs you like to read, like I do, you probably already know that this feature of Google will be going away soon. Because I like so many blogs on Facebook, this news is not quite as devastating to me as it might have been a few years ago, but for those of you who like all of your blog feeds neatly stacked in one place, it’s time to explore a new solution.

If you mostly click around the web haphazardly, perhaps you’ll consider setting up an account where you can see and organize the blogs you want to follow. RSS readers are a nice way to browse, tag things for later reference, and discover new blogs to follow. RIP Google Reader.

What is a feed reader?

How does it work behind the scenes? Who cares. The key benefit is that I don’t have to remember to seek out the blogs I enjoy. New bloggy content automatically comes to my RSS Reader when it’s posted, so I never miss a post.

When I’m on a new website and I get that familiar feeling, you know, like “I like this site, but I’ll probably forget about it in a few minutes. I don’t WANT to forget about it, but I know myself, and well, I’ll forget,” that’s when I try to subscribe to the blog.

I look for the word “subscribe” or for this icon. Then done.

On RookieMoms.com, for example, the “feed” icon lives in the upper right-hand corner, next to our other social media icons. When you click on it, you go to a page that allows you to choose some different ways to subscribe.  (Don’t choose Google Reader. Or if you do, then you’ll want to export your Google Reader account before the end of June into something new.) If you prefer email, select “Get Rookie Moms delivered by email.”  That means that every time we post something new, you’ll get the post in an email. You don’t have to remember to come here.

RSS in a post-Google-Reader world

Feedly

Another option for keeping up with blogs that is gaining crazy popularity is Feedly. It’s a website and a mobile app that allows you to follow and discover content sources you love.  I have the app, and I imported my Google Reader account there, but find it a bit difficult to use. Apparently I’m the dummy because 30 million Google Reader customers have already transitioned and David Pogue from the New York Times recommends it. It does look very pretty.

Bloglovin’

Another tool to play with is Bloglovin’.  Here’s how they introduce themselves:

Reading blogs can be a pain in the ass. We created bloglovin´ so you wouldn’t have to visit un-updated blogs, open ten windows in your browser, or forget your favorite blogs web-addresses. With bloglovin´ we wanted to make your blog reading fun and easy.

Sounds good to me.

FeedInbox

FeedInbox is pretty much the same thing. And finally, there are bookmarking tools that can support your daily routines. Some of you have said you use Pinterest for this purpose. I should note, also, that most websites have feeds that you can subscribe to; it doesn’t have to be a “blog”. Go to the very bottom of the NYTimes.com website and you’ll see a small link that says RSS. On the page that follows, you’ll find options to subscribe to feeds for the home page of that site; US News; World News; Education; Arts, etc.

Flipboard

If you like to see a glossy, magazine-like experience, a handful of apps will do that for you, integrating your existing social media accounts with your feeds to produce one cool, personalized magazine that includes links your friends have shared, their photos and updates, and the blogs you’ve specifically added. See Flipboard. (It’s super cool!)

Ok, your turn. How do you keep up with blogs you want to follow?

If you’ve ever lost your enthusiasm for reading the same story over and over, you’ll appreciate our guest Abbi’s discovery. She sent this tip to us as an alternative to letting YouTube read to your child.

I was first introduced to A Story Before Bed via the Nursery that I work for here in Dubai – Blossom. All the staff were asked to record a book and upload the recordings the Nursery Facebook account at 7pm each night to build a library of interactive bedtime stories for our parents.

This novel (heh) idea was such a great success I was inspired to use it with my own child. I found that, as with all toddlers, my son loves to see himself on video and so we changed the experience up a bit – we all did it together! He may not have smiled during the recording – it was bedtime after all, but he laughs non stop every time we play back it to him! Have a look at our family’s rendition of Itsy Bitsy Spider.

If you have a look at A Story Before Bed, you’ll see that there is a wide choice of books to choose from and they are updated on a regular basis. So far we have recorded just the free books but there are options to sign up for a paid account and it looks pretty fair. Right now, the paid family plan is about $10/month and you can re-record books as many times as you like.

You could record the same book in a variety of ways, get Grandparents to record one to show the kids, or record a bunch of books to be played to your little one if you have to go away on work for a few nights – they can still get a bedtime story from Mum or Dad – pretty cool I think! I hope everyone who has a look gets as much use and fun out of it as we have.

Abbi lives in Dubai with her amazing husband, David, and angelic two-year old, Charlie. We thank her for sharing this creative web service. I shoulda tried using it before going away for the weekend without my kids. Oops.

Here’s the common situation: A super smart friend, let’s call her Julie, who always has easy cooking shortcuts when I go to her house, posted a question on Facebook asking about family dinner ideas. I remember that I loved at least five of the ideas Julie’s friends shared in the comments, but now I can’t remember a single one of them. This was four weeks ago so where is that Facebook thread again? Although the site can reconnect me with my 7th grade boyfriend, it doesn’t allow my to search my own posts.

If only I could search Julie’s page for “Parmesan”.  Or Lisa T’s page for “book club”. Or Kim’s page for “restaurant”. And now I can, with Diggity.

Both a website and an app, Diggity digs through your own instances of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It’s currently in beta, so it might not be perfect.

But here’s the magic: if you know what you were looking for was from a certain person or maybe one of three or four people — this is how mom’s brains work, right? it was totally, definitely, probably someone from Book Club who posted a discount code for a hotel in Santa Cruz — you can filter the search by person, or even by page, meaning a group or a brand that you follow.

This screenshot shows how I could track down that post about life-changing nursing sweatshirts that I know came from Ain’t Know Mom Jeans. Found it!

And one more thing. For more memorable moments, you can create “Shoeboxes”, which are curated buckets of the content you want to come back to or keep forever. For example, “Baby’s First Year” could be made of posts from your profile, your baby’s other parent, and anyone else who is likely to be sharing content you want to save in that Shoebox.

Say you’re Kim Kardashian. You could create a fabulous Shoebox of “Crap the media said about me while I was pregnant.”

Which of these two uses is more compelling to you: 1) searching for reference info you wanted to remember OR 2) safekeeping special social media content?

Geeky moms and dads need to leave the house too, right? While I love seeing you here on the blog, I want you to get fresh air and sunshine. If you need someone to give you some points for your effort, try one of these apps to gamify your outings. Geo-location apps turn walks with baby into a scavenger hunt. Nerdy parents will love to use foursquare, ingress, or geocaching apps to take their love of video games into the great outdoors.

1. foursquare. For adults with or without kids, wherever you go.
   Use your phone to “check in” to various real-world places whenever you arrive. If you visit one place often enough, you will become the mayor. You can also earn badges of honor for achieving different milestones in the game such as checking in 10 times in a day or going to 5 different movie theaters. Using the social features, you can find out which of your friends is nearby, share tips with each other, and leave photographs of your experience. I don’t know why I’m soooo very into it; there’s no practical application (aside from my documented obsession of data for its own sake!). As of this writing, I have more than 3,000 check-ins and a dozen mayorships.
   Get foursquare in the iTunes app store or Google play store.
2. Geocaching. For parents and kids alike, exploring for treasure.
   Use your phone (or an old fashioned website) to find hidden caches of miniature bits and bobs. I’ll admit that I’ve never done this, but I think it sounds really fun for just the right sort of geeky family. Shiloh tells us all about geocaching with her big pregnant belly and little infant sidekick and Whitney describes her family’s experience with geocaching including some smartphone apps.
   This Groundspeak Geocaching app is about $10 in either the iTunes app store or the Google play store but comes highly recommended.
3. Ingress. For parents and big kids, capturing specific locations.
   For Android phone users only, Ingress is an “augmented reality” game where you have to walk to different “portals” in your area/town. These portals are actually real landmarks, sculptures, and other public, historic or artistic sites, that you may never have noticed before. The goal is to capture these portals for your team, and link them together. The game requires you to be physically near these locations, so it gets you out walking and seeing new and unique landmarks in your local area. The game theme is pretty nerdy though: the two teams are the Enlightenment, who are welcoming new alien technology to the earth, and the Resistance, who are against the aliens. You choose either side to begin, and then your allegiance doesn’t change. My husband and eight year-old go walking for hours each weekend to play this game.
   Request an invite at http://www.ingress.com.

These are the geo apps we’re using. Do you have a geeky guilty pleasure that gets you out into the real world? Do tell!

Some photos are not quite worthy of Facebook, but are must-sees to extreme enthusiasts of your child. That’s why my husband and I set up a few Photo Streams on our iPhones.

A photo stream is simply an album that can be shared with a group. The photos are located in the cloud, so no need to send group texts, emails with photos attached, or push them out to Facebook. You don’t need any special app. All you need is iOS 6.0 or later.

Since my parents all have iPhones, but don’t check Facebook very often, this is a way to push all the grandparents a photo at once. We invited them all to subscribe our family photo streams by adding their email addresses. When we share a picture to our stream, they get an alert on their phone. If they want to look at the stream at anytime, they just click the icon that says Photo Stream and has a cloud icon at the bottom of the screen when you are in the Photo app.

To get this photo sharing party started, on your iOS devices, go to Settings > iCloud > Photo Stream, and turn on My Photo Stream and Shared Photo Streams.

Now, when you take 17 pictures of your baby sleeping, instead of putting them all on Facebook, simply share them with the Photo Stream you’ve created. To do this, click the sharing icon that you normally use to decide if you are going to push a photo to a text message, email, or Facebook, and a new choice will be Photo Stream.

In addition to the stream intended for our parents, I also created one just for me and my husband called “House”.  When I was shopping for dining tables for us, I walked around a store snapping photos with my phone. I added the photos to the House stream. Ryan’s phone alerted him that there were pictures added, and we were both able to post comments on the pictures. Now that the House stream exists, we can use it whenever there’s a need to share a photo just between us. Perhaps he’ll receive a picture of an overflowing toilet one day, while he’s on a business trip.

I can imagine using this feature if you have a shopping BFF who you’d like to share ideas with. (Note to Heather: If you tend to like the clothes I send you, set up a Photo Stream for us to share. If you don’t, pretend like you haven’t read this post.)

Here’s how it looks after you’ve shared a photo and your stepmom, who does not have a Facebook account but does have an iPhone, sees it.

On giggle.com, where we contribute a couple of times each month, an article about baby names caught my eye: 22 Baby Naming Rules Worth Following.

The “rules” were submitted by parents who were surveyed, and most make sense to me. See: No yooneek spellings.  Name your son (or daughter) Peyton or even Payton.  But not Peighton, Patyn, or Paitynne.

Rule #3 is the one I broke when we chose the names Julian and Scarlett just because we liked them: A first name should ideally embody some kind of meaning.  That might be family or ethnic significance, literal meaning, or even that you’ve loved it since you were seven.  A name with meaning is going to have more staying power than one you choose simply because it’s attractive.

Here’s another good one: Don’t let anyone pressure you into or out of a name.  It’s the Number 1 reason behind baby name regret.

And this one I may have followed subconciously, but I never actually did the math: Ideally, first, middle, and last names will be unequal numbers of syllables. So 3-1-2 tends to work better than 2-2-2. (My son is 3-1-3 and my daughter is 2-1-3, while I am 2-4-1. I think those of you who have one-syllable last name probably were more aware of this.)

Read all the rules of baby naming over on Giggle>

My own submission this month fell under the theme of budget conscious: 5 Easy Ways New Moms Can Pay it Forward — Saving Time and Money.

And stay tuned to the Giggle GAB blog for Heather’s upcoming post about hand-me-downs. With three boys, and a degree in engineering, she can figure this out if anyone can.

Telling you what’s on Giggle each month is part of our duties as contributors there. If you’d like to get to know their offerings, check out the shop.