Rookie Moms

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?”

Many museums waive admission fees on the first Tuesday 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.  Seriously folks, what do you do when someone parks too close to your car and you have a bucket car seat baby with you?!

Like they say on TV, membership has it’s privileges. Both of the Bay Area children’s museums that I have been to are part of this 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 free anytime. Also, if you travel to a place with a 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 crawlers and young walkers 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.

There is a lovely knitting shop in Oakland that invites us to come and knit with other moms, babies and moms-to-be. If you are a local to this area, check out Article Pract on Thursdays at 10.30.

Sarah in Portland wrote, “Mabel’s has long offered a knitting with babies hour on Mondays (1 to 3 p.m. I think), although I’ve most often gone with my babies at odd times and, often, found other babies there.”

Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks, also in Portland, has “clubs” — one is expectant moms, etc. They don’t have a specific time for babies now, either, but they welcome babies with toys and a little table just for them in the cafe.

Our Cambridge, MA correspondent, another Sarah, wrote “Minds Eye Yarns does not have a specific new moms group, however babies and children are always welcome, so long as they are accompanied by a parent or guardian! We also have lots of wonderful knitting patterns for baby and children’s clothing, toys, blankets etc, so come on down and check us out!”

Photo courtesy of shescrafty.com.

Thank God for TiVo, but 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 theatre is the common thread.

Julian’s first movie as a newborn was Closer and Holden’s was Star Wars Episode III. Both kids were frequent attendees of Baby Brigade during their first year.

The Rose Theater in Port Townsend, WA calls it Diaper Daze, and the Kerasotes chain in Illinois and IndianaMatinee Movie Magic. I thought I was pretty magical when I watched Julia Roberts in Closer 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, as they are called by Mann’s Theaters in Southern California, are a good early outing for freaked out new parents. Crying is totally allowed.

In LA, Monday Morning Mommy Movies weekly at 11:00 am (on Mondays, duh!) at the Grove, Beach Cities, Paseo, and Town Square. Thanks Portia!

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

For our local mommies:

In Oakland, The Parkway Theater’s Baby Brigade shows movies on Monday nights for babies under one year (and their parents!) along with a pizza and beer. The sister theater, El Cerrito Speakeasy does the same on Tuesday nights! Yahoo.

In Alameda, the Central Cinema also has a baby night for those under a year. We found out about it just after both babies were too old to go - darn!

In San Francisco, there’s Thursdays at 11AM at the Presidio Theatre on Chestnut and for a limited time, Tuesdays at 11AM at the Vogue Theatre on Sacramento.