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.

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

Most classes for babies provide a free trial experience. Take advantage of these freebies before committing to a paid class. Try to talk your other mama friends into joining you so it’s the most fun for YOU.

Your 41st weekly challenge is to contact a local music, dance, or exercise class for moms and babies, and arrange to take a free class.

• Kindermusik Village classes are for babies under 18 months and each class is 45 minutes long.
• Gymboree classes for babies focus on either music or playing – you can choose.
• Music Together is mixed age classes up to age five and the classes are an hour long.
• The Little Gym starts as young as four months old with a general movement and socialization curriculum.
• My Gym is a children’s “fitness center” that starts classes with parent participation at age – get this – six weeks!

You may find that your local independent music or movement centers for kids offer a free trial visit as well. Have you tried any? Let us know!

Not ready for this rookie mom challenge? Go back and start with an easier one.

One of the blogs in my Google Reader is Mom Inc, Daily. I was introduced to it by Mom Inc, Daily contributor, Jackie, a neighborhood friend and designing mom.

The founder, Cat, is a stationery designer in San Francisco. She launched the blog as a place for her and fellow designing moms to capture some of the tools, inspirations and best practices that support them in running creative businesses during the hectic years of motherhood. Here’s a little styleboard Cat uses to convey what her life looks like.

Cat does Q and As with other folks who are running creative businesses. I love when she asks them what their day looks like. (I just don’t love when they say that they wake up and exercise at 6 am because it makes me feel like I’m already behind.) Read some of the interviews >

Another category of posts I find intriguing are the “Biz How-Tos” which share behind-the-scenes info about being an Etsy seller or planning an event or photographing still objects. Read some of those posts here >

Awww, robot birthday party! Read about it on Mom Inc, Daily!

Now you tell me about one blog you read regularly. What is it that you like? The voice? The humor? The recipes? The photos? The comments from other readers?

If you are like I was, by the time my baby was 10 weeks old, I had not exercised for about 6 months. Baby Bootcamp was my re-introduction to sweating and I loved it. I am not a gym-goer in my normal life, and Baby Bootcamp was perfect for me. Here’s why:

1. Exercising in the company of other sleep-deprived, temporarily overweight, leaky-breasted women is more fun.
2. It was no problem that I walked the course rather than ran it much of the time. I had many excuses lined up for not running (all of which are somewhat valid and mostly shared by other participants).
3. Stopping to deal with my fussy baby was par for the course.
4. It got me out of the house to do something good for me and enjoy the outdoors.

This is our 23rd Rookie Mom challenge. Not ready for it? Go back and pick an easier one.

Once you’ve got the hang of it, you can invite your partner and show him or her how awesome and athletic you are. The other parent and grandparents can tag along for free.

Check babybootcamp.com and a similar organization strollerstrides.com for locations and schedules.

Did you complete this challenge? Share your story.

• Comment below and spill the details.
• Share a picture with us on Facebook.

[photo: strollerstrides.com]

Your weekly challenge is to enjoy the rainbow of colors at an outdoor plant nursery. Let her touch/listen to the wind chimes on display, tour the orchid hot-house, and watch the koi in the water garden pond (the bright-colored fish swarm up to greet kids because they expect food). A baby carrier is perfect to navigate the tight corners.

In Berkeley, I like the East Bay Nursery for its rows and rows of colorful flowers and funny butterflies. Just watch out for the bees.

This is your 22nd challenge. Did you complete this challenge? Share your story.

• Comment below and spill the details.
• Share a picture with us on Facebook.

Is your baby too old to be worn around in a baby carrier while you describe the difference between perennials and annuals? Toddlers and preschoolers are ready to “help” plant their own favorite veggies in the backyard. Not your style? Choose a different challenge.

A fun suggestion from our friend and fellow rookie mom, Rosa, is to pack yourself up and head into the city for a museum outing. Assume you go to a cocktail party sometime soon. When someone asks what you do, instead of mumbling about maternity leave or bursting into tears when you think about how you can’t drink much because you have to nurse every 3 hours and wake up at 6 am, change the subject and say “Have you seen the Rothko show?”

This is your twelfth weekly challenge.

Many museums waive admission fees on certain days of the month. Make that your big day.

Rosa reports that SFMoMa was a successful outing. “Both babies were intrigued by the colorful modernist paintings and sculptures,” she brags. “Mommies get to chat and enjoy the art too.”

For our Bay Area mommas, she suggests that you arrive late morning to San Francisco and use the Nordstrom mother’s lounge as home base. There is a great changing/nursing area for comfort and privacy. You can lunch in the mall’s basement food court, Sony Metreon or if the weather permits, eat outside in Yerba Buena Gardens.

Becky in Boston said that her baby Nick was a trooper at the Museum of Fine Arts. “He was patient. After lunch he nursed and went to sleep in the stroller, I pushed him around and looked at art, when he awoke, we looked at art together – I was amazed at what a great day we had together.”

I took Holden to the BAM/PFA here in Berkeley with some other mommy friends and he enjoyed it a lot (which means no screaming fits — yay!). We ate a nice lunch at the little cafe and negotiated tables, strollers, nursing, and crowds. Parking was kind of a pain, so it was nice to have girlfriends to sort out the logistics.

Did you complete this challenge? Love it or hate it, tell us how it went:

• Comment below and spill the details.
• Share a picture with us on Facebook.
• Name your destination on Twitter and use hashtag #rookiemoms.
• Or, link in the comments to your own blog post about this challenge.

My friend Mike used to take his toddler Miles out for Garbage Truck Friday each week without fail. They did it for years. Their routine included picking up muffins from the local bakery and following the garbage truck all over Oakland for an hour or so. It was something that they both looked forward to.

I like this activity for all rookie parents but its especially fun as a regular father/son outing; it includes so many things that toddlers love:

• CarbsYummy breakfast
• An easy excuse to spend time together
• Quickie tradition (see Crock Pot Monday or Fearless Friday) to give structure to the week
• Big vehicles (see scope out some big wheels)
• A way to get someone small to willingly go to the car (ok, that one’s more a win for the parents)

No offense to the trash trucks in your town, but the ones in Oakland are sweet. They have long robotic arms that do all the work. If Mike and Miles had invited me, I think I would have happily joined in.

Yes I have two sons and they’re waaaaay into vehicles, but I think this activity could work for most toddlers. Let me know if it works for you!

Baby-friendly theaters? Yes, please.

We sure love our DVRs and Hulu, but refuse to give up on going to the theater. Did you know some theaters also have special showings for new parents? These showings have different names in different cities, but the idea that yours will not (most likely) be the loudest baby in the movie theater is the common thread.

Both of our firstborns were frequent attendees of “Baby Brigade” (now known as “Bringing Up Baby“) at the El Cerrito Theater during their first year.

Select theaters are participating in a program called Baby Pictures. Check the website to see if there is a baby movie showing in a city near you.

The Kerasotes chain in Illinois and Indiana offers Matinee Movie Magic. I thought I was pretty magical when I sat in a movie theater while doing my first in public breastfeeding (without crying!) when Julian was 5 weeks old. (This mistakenly led Heather, my 19-weeks pregnant escort, to believe that nursing is easy.)

Stroller matinees are a good early outing for freaked out new parents. Crying is totally allowed.

This is your ninth weekly rookie mom challenge. Even if you cannot find a mom and baby movie in your area, consider taking a risk on an 11 am showing. Heather and I brought baby Milo to Knocked Up while I was super pregnant with Scarlett. We saw the first show of the day and only one other person was in the theater. Milo stayed in his carseat for much of the movie and when he got sick of that, Heather held him up on her lap facing the movie.  The volume at the theater is much louder than any grunting or fussing that tiny babies do.

In LA, Monday Morning Mommy Movies weekly at 11:00 am at the Grove, Glendale, and Northridge.

In Portland, McMenamin’s Kennedy School hosts the occasional Mommy Matinee and for cheap!

Austin, TX has Baby Day Movie at Alamo Draft House Cinema (Tuesdays). Parents are allowed to bring infants into the movie for shows starting before 2:05 pm. (check website for movie times and location).

In San Francisco, realtor Jill Russo sponsors a monthly Mommy Movie on the second Thursday of each and every month. And it’s FREE!

Have you done this outing? Please tell us where!
Loved it or hated it?
Not quite ready for a movie? Pick a challenge from an earlier week.

photos: Grand Lake by ThomasHawk on flickr; theater interior Associated Press

Our challenge for you this week is slather your baby’s feet with paint and commemorate their tiny size. Many paint-your-own-pottery places know how to help you get cute baby footprints on plates and mugs. This is your sixth challenge.

My five-week old's blurry little feet in the hands of an expert

We made trivets (the cheapest pottery available was a flat tile). I recommend tackling the cheaper pieces instead of taking on the set of pasta bowls, but suit yourself.

At Berkeley’s Brushstrokes Studio, they have seen their fair share of Moms’ Group outings and newborns squishing their hands and feet into paint and onto ceramic and had a few tips for us:

1. Paint and stamp feet instead of hands because babies clench their fists when they freak out. (Also they stick their hands in their mouths with much greater ease! So, Yuck.)
2. If you’re going to decorate the piece, do that BEFORE waking up your baby, because your baby may freak out necessitating a hasty retreat.
3. If the little footprint is less than perfect, you can use a paintbrush to fill in missing toes.

Again, I will stress to you: Paint everything you want on your piece while baby sleeps (or friend holds him) then do the feet and race out the door, because he’s likely to be pissed off. My baby was super pissed.

No place near you for such an outing? Paint some tiles at home for the same outcome but no outing. Fun mom’s group brunch activity.

Did you complete this challenge? Love it or hate it, tell us how it went:

• Comment below.
• Share a picture with us on Facebook.
• Name your destination on Twitter and use hashtag #rookiemoms.
• Or, link in the comments to your own blog post about this challenge.

My friend Jeanine once told me there’s lots of fun time to be had with a baby at an outdoor store like REI: you just set up a sweet pad in the display tent with several of the Thermarest mattresses, chirping bird toys, and bright colored water bottles and have a blast.

The first time I took Holden as a baby he was most interested in chewing the tags off the Nalgene bottles. When I brought him back as a toddler, he hid among the large racks of clothing and totally terrified me. So, it might have something to do with temperament.

Whitney had a much different experience when she brought a mellow toddler, Julian. She told me:

We went to REI today and had a good time.

First, it’s wonderful for tiny toddlers who just want to follow the path around the store endlessly.

Second, they sell “Just Corn” and “Just Peas” which is my new method of feeding Julian vegetables. (More tips for feeding picky toddlers here.)

Third, putting a kid-sized backpack on your child without him noticing is an entertaining preview of the first day of Kindergarten.

And finally, if you are nearing the one year mark, I suggest purchasing the Nalgene sippy cup (now BPA free!). We are big fans. In this photo, Julian giving his opinion on framed packs to anyone who will listen.

Three easy steps to a super cheap (FREE + GREEN) thoughtful gift:

1. THINK about your friend. Really think about them. What does she need? More time away from the kids? Time to run a great trail? An excuse to try the newest brunch place?
2. Write out some fun ideas. Use your markers or different fonts to make it look interesting.
3. Pack it up. Pretty envelope. Tin can. Decorative box. Ribbon around a scroll. Glitter on a toilet paper tube. Whatever you have on hand.

This goes along well with our holiday mantra of more fun and less clutter. Ok, I just made that up but it sounds like us.

You can do this for a friend — capture ideas for her to do on her own or things for the two of you to enjoy together.

Or, give this gift to a couple. A few years back, in lieu of holiday gifts, Whitney and her husband and me and my husband exchanged the gift of seven different date concepts. It was funny to see where we overlapped. Having written a book together, we were not surprised to discover that our styles of presentation were very similar.

Alec and I still have two more of the assigned dates to cross off our list (and we won because as far as I know, Whitney and Ryan have done only one!). If we can only squeeze in a date-night at the rock climbing gym on Friday night, then find a day when the kids are in preschool and we have no work, we might just get the daytime cycling date in as well.

We keep our list on our fridge so we never run out of ideas for dates. You can see our scribbles from which ones we crossed off already. This was indeed a gift that lasted all year long.

Related post: Babies should wish for non-material possessions