Reprinted from the wayback machine cuz I’m super busy today.

Holden and I used to cook together a lot. Before his little brother Milo joined our family, Holden would stand by my side at the kitchen sink and crack eggs, stir with a whisk, or rip greens for a salad. Unfortunately, I must confess, I now put the two of them in front of a 25 minute kid show while I race to get dinner together most nights. So I was a perfect candidate for this lesson a few weeks ago.

Holden and Shayna cooking at Eat Real Fest

At the Oakland Eat Real Festival, an amazing event aimed at helping folks “put the food back into fast,” Holden cooked on stage as part of the children’s cooking demo. Along with 3 other children, he helped make “Scissor salsa salad” under the guidance of Shayna Marmar.

Shayna is a from-scratch cooking teacher-extraordinaire. She started Honeypie Cooking & Events in Oakland to bring fresh, seasonal, and delicious foods back into our kitchens.

Scissor Salsa Salad, all kid-made

As she was leading the children through food preparation, Shayna talked about eating fresh real whole foods as often as possible. We sat on hay bales as she encouraged us to get our children more involved in the creation of their meals. She has seen many parents who said their children hated veggies eat their words while their kids ate salad for the first time.

I emailed her after the event to find out if she had any tips for the Rookie Moms who want to cook more with children, and she told us to get out the safety scissors:

While safety scissors are not generally thought of as a cooking tool, they work great in helping kids of all ages cut various fruits and vegetables. Keep a pair in your kitchen drawer, specifically for cooking, and your child will instantly be able to assist with food preparation tasks without the use of a sharp knife.

Help your child along by cutting the fruits and vegetables into slices/strips beforehand. Foods that can be cut with safety scissors include tomatoes, bell peppers, apples, peaches, cabbage, and cucumbers, among others.

She offered a ton of great hacks for getting kids involved in cooking; here are a few other tips I picked up from the demo:

• Leave your perfectionism at the door; better that the food products are kid-made than perfect.
• Do rough cut prep in advance so kids can avoid a lot of waiting time as well as large knives on counters.
• Think about what foods can be torn by small hands: lettuce, herbs, bread…
• For safer cutting, have a pair of kids’ safety scissors dedicated for use on food (see above) or use a butter knife for other foods that won’t easily fit in the scissors.
• 

  Mashing out some tortillas

  Don’t have a rolling pin? Wash some tools from the play-doh kit or use a cleaned can. Let kids use their hands to pound out dough and smash out tortillas.

• During the final tasting, ask kids “what would you change next time? what would you add more/less of?” to get them thinking and engaged in the process. Holden said “more tomatoes,” a big boy said “more spicy,” the little girl said “just right,” and the big girl refused to taste it. (can’t please everyone!)

Taste test, hmmm more tomatoes please

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I want to thank Shayna for sharing her tips with us!

Shayna offers cooking classes & parties for older children, teens, adults, and families as well as workshops for teachers & parents highlighting tips & tricks for involving children in the process of preparing and eating wholesome and tasty foods.

She can also turn your next kids birthday party into a healthy cooking party, emphasizing fun in the kitchen. How brilliant is that?! She also blogs at Peas and Carrots 123.

To accommodate our holiday guests in our tiny dining room with its four-top table, my husband ordered a new camping table from Amazon.com. It arrived in a cardboard box big enough for a 7-year old boy and a 4-year old girl to lie down in. How do I know this? Because my kids got in the box, of course.

In an excellent post about the most basic and universally loved toys on GeekDad, the author says:

Boxes can be turned into furniture or a kitchen playset. You can turn your kids into cardboard robots or create elaborate Star Wars costumes. A large Box can be used as a fort or house and the smaller Box can be used to hide away a special treasure. Got a Stick? Use it as an oar and Box becomes a boat. One particularly famous kid has used the Box as a key component of a time machine, a duplicator and a transmogrifier, among other things.

He notes humorously that this toy can be procured easily from Amazon.

[They] include one with virtually every order I place there.

Here are a few inspirational photos of cardboard boxes, the most versatile toy in your house this week.

from The Imagination Tree

to make while keeping your box-sitting toddler company: cardboard thank you postcards (via designsponge)

homemade marble run – this one is from a cereal box by Made by Joel

Cardboard shape sorter from Parents.com (this article has 11 more box ideas, but is super annoying to navigate due to the ads and one-idea-per-page format.)

I love the Dr. Seuss feel of this silly bedroom set. Make a few “frames” for kids art? via Tip Junkie who has 32 cardboard box ideas posted.

Probably not feasible for most of us, but we do have a handful of small people, furniture and animals who could inhabit a box, via Busy Being Fabulous

Another one from Parents.com. Unless you are a stylist for Parents magazine, your cardboard kitchen won’t look this cute, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

Have you come up with anything cool to do with cardboard?

Update: Two fabulous friends shared their boxes with us over on our Facebook page.

Cori’s kids show us in fast-motion what fun a box can be.

Mike knocks our socks off with this pirate ship he made for Emme to navigate puddles at the park.

After returning from a jaunt to Tahoe with his toddler, Ainslie, our friend Doug gave me tips on fun stuff to do in the snow. (That’s right old friends, I’m embarrassed to admit it but snow is something we visit out here — not endure. And we “jaunt”).

For the baby set:
Walk around with Bjorn and congratulate yourself for being active.

Sharon reports:

We would have normally planned to go snow shoeing or skiing and planned a romantic dinner out. But we spent our time walking around the village, shopping a little, having a nice dinner, going for a long walk, and taking lots of pictures of Ainslie.

Our friends, Doug and Sharon, are total bad-asses. So, when they recommend to take it easy with your rookie baby, you should listen.

Last year, Whitney and I did their 22 mile charity bike ride and were proud to complete it. Sharon did the whole thing 6 months pregnant while Doug had a 30-pound toddler in the bike trailer.

Since my New Year’s resolution every year since Julian was born has been to walk 10,000 steps a day, and so far I have failed miserably, I have a new piece of advice for myself. I should be doing as many errands as I can on foot. I did so much better when I was on maternity leave and then when I was working 4-hour days. Now, I’m not doing nearly as much walking.

If you are reading this looking for a suggestion for the day, this is it: Run errands. For reals, girls, run them. Ok, walk if you’re not a runner. Put the kid in the stroller, backpack or front carrier and head out the door to the place you need to go. If it’s within two miles, this is a reasonable feat. For most of us, however, I’d guess we can get food or necessities less than two miles from home. We can do it. If you do it, come back here and brag. I’ll give you a virtual pat on the back. This is your 49th rookie mom challenge.

P.S. If you live up in the hills, you can drive to the bottom of the hill and start from there.

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 Discovery Museum in Sausalito for a significant discount. Also, if you travel to a place with another children’s museum, you are totally in.

The point, however, is not the membership. The point is that these are destinations with rooms for crawlers. Usually they have mats on the floor or different textures and large scale shapes that babies and young toddlers can put their grubby hands on, in and through. The Discovery Museum Tot Room, for example, has at least four waterbed-type areas for babies.

If you live near one of these places, and buy a membership, consider it a mommy meet market. Go there when you and baby are feeling lonely, let down your hair, and have a juice box or two.

Your 47th weekly challenge is to seek out a children’s museum and make a special trip there with your baby. Tell us, how was it? (Baby too young for this outing? Start at the beginning.)

Photos: Minnesota Children’s Museum;  Children’s Creativity Museum in San Francisco

This homemade owl beanie is so cute, I had to share. Not only is it a simple sewing project, similar to the make a baby hat out of a tshirt post I did a few years ago, but the whole Owl in a Tree is a clever mom and baby costume idea. The mom behind this project is the author of the blog Humpty Was Pushed.

She provides step-by-step instructions in her post.

While she sews her owl eyes and nose to the hat, you could just as easily cut them from felt and glue them if they are just for one or two wearings.

Now that I know how to make a baby hat out of a tshirt, I have a hard time getting rid of any tshirts that have their hems intact. I see each of them as potential beanies!

Sewing not your thing? Buy one of these on Amazon.

My bloggy friend Carrie, the creative supermom behind This Mama Makes Stuff, posted this eco-amazing hack on her blog a few weeks ago: convert thrift store 80s prom dresses into princess dresses for your little fantasy lover.

I always hit my children’s resale shops at the beginning of October and again after Halloween to keep my children’s bountiful dress up collection going. I have observed, like Carrie says, that it is harder to find dress-up gear for sizes above 4T. This solves that problem.

If you live in an expensive area where thrift store prices are not actually cheaper than big box stores (I’m looking at you, San Francisco!) pass this suggestion along to your small town-based mother-in-law. Even better if she’ll do the sewing, too.

Since Carrie has mad sewing skills, she probably took in the side seams as well as shortened the hem and sleeves, but I’m sure a few raw edges would not bother most little kids.

Do any of you have bridesmaids dresses hanging in your closet that you might use for your daughter or a niece to play tea party in?

Are you ready to see some big smiles? Or looks of horror? Be prepared for either.

Our babysitter taught us the following method for putting Julian on the slide when he was too young to slide sitting up:

• Put baby on tummy, feet down, mid way up the slide.
• Place his hands up near his face, not down at his sides. Hopefully he is holding his head up so that you are not about to smear his face against the metal as he goes down.
• Let him slide down to the bottom.
• Repeat. Repeat. Repeat until your back feels like you need a week at a spa.
• Then sit down and let baby play in the sand while you think about that spa you’re never going to visit.

This is pretty safe (please note I am not a doctor or a paramedic) and after you get comfortable with it, you can let go and let him slide to the bottom.

Taking your baby to the playground to try out the slide is your 39th challenge for rookie moms.

If you’ve already made it to the playground with your baby this week, congrats! Not ready for this challenge? Go back and start with an easier one.

The wonderful thing about an almost-nine-month old is that fabulous head control that just screams “put me in a baby jogger and let’s see how fast this thing can go.”

Thinking about the open road with Daddy

Send your partner out for a short run with the jogging stroller and you can catch up on sleep, phone calls, or reading. Make sure to check with your pediatrician before the first trip for any safety tips. This is your 36th challenge (and you don’t even have to leave your bed)! Love or shove it? Let us know.

I recall the supreme pleasure of sending my husband out for a run with not one baby, but both!! I had a full extra half hour of near-sleep (after loading everyone up and making some mini waffles for the road) and a blissful shower before making pancakes and bacon without anyone crawling up my leg. Yay!

I have a really nice road bike in the garage. I got it as a high school graduation present. My friends and I, along with a Government teacher as our chaperone, planned to ride from Santa Cruz back home to Los Angeles over a 5-day camping trip. We trained for months.

We made the 6-hour drive to Santa Cruz on Day One, hit the grocery store for supplies, and headed for our first night of outdoor sleeping. Guess who fell off her bike, broke her elbow, and flew home the next day? Oh yes I did.

In 2000, I completed the California AIDS Ride, covering pretty much that same route, so don’t you worry, I got my victory tour.

Since giving birth, I’ve barely gotten on that fancy bike. It requires special shoes and all, which seems like a huge pain. Whenever we go on a trip away from kids, Ryan and I rent cruiser-style bicycles. I love how freeing they are.  And now I have one.

Huffy sent me and Heather each a $99 set of wheels to help promote casual riding around town. And that we did.

I requested a girl’s bike as I am five feet tall, and it fits me swell. See how mine is an inch or so shorter than Heather’s?

What do you think of Le Pregnant Heather on her bike? Is she Euro-awesome or what? Stay tuned for part deux of Moms on Bikes when I share pics of our friend in Denmark riding home from the hospital with her baby.

Do you ride a bike? For exercise, transportation, or just for fun? How do you fit it in with your parenting duties?

Disclosure: Huffy simply sent us the bikes and did not suggest any content for this post. When people on the street commented, “Cute bike”, I thought you might like to see my new wheels. Or maybe those people were just teasing me.

Taking the baby in the pool is both scary and funny.

A kid’s gotta stick his toe into the water at some point, right?

Baby Anneliese is having a blast with Erin

Buy a package of disposable swim diapers or a reusable one, and plan your outing. This is our 27th rookie mom challenge.

If you are alone, think carefully through the logistics of how you are going to change your clothes, change baby, get in the pool, get out of the pool, get on dry stuff and get back in the car. You are not as smart as you used to be and you will probably mess up part of this process and end up walking out to your car in just a bra and towel holding your baby in one arm and a diaper between your teeth. Let me just help you out: Take your stroller with you into the dressing room. That way you have someplace to put the baby, towels, wet bathing suits and diaper bag while you get dry yourself.

This is also a fun activity with a very pregnant friend.

Do you plan to take your baby into the pool this summer? Have you done it already?

Your 26th weekly challenge is to invest in a pedometer and aim for 10,000 steps each day. You’ll be surprised how many steps a mom can take just running around the house, but if you’re going to reach 10,000, you’ll need to take a walk outside for sure. This is good motivation to get some fresh air.

Both Whitney and I enjoy tracking things and counting steps has been an on and off obsession over the past years. One day, I called her and said something ridiculous like, “I hope you don’t want to do anything with me before Baby Brigade because I walked 17,000 steps today so I’ll be on the couch.” Being in the middle of my maternity leave, I thought this was a totally normal thing to say.

Whit recommends the Omron pedometer (pictured above, only about $17) because it has a memory function that lets you look at the past 7 days worth of data. Additionally, it tracks both your total daily steps and your aerobic steps, or those that were part of a 10 minute or more walk. I’ve also amped up the geekery with the Nintendo DS pedometer nugget. No DS? No problem. Advanced geekery and insight into your daily activity level with the fancy fitbit (for about $99, it tracks calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and sleep quality). More fun with data!

Do you, would you, could you count your steps?! Let us know we’re not alone!