For your 52nd weekly challenge, we invite you to pat yourself on the back — You have a ONE YEAR OLD! The celebration is for you.

If you are inviting others to celebrate the big ONE with you, make some plans for it. Make it easy on yourself by delegating food and decorations to anyone who volunteers to help.

Since your baby won’t understand the event, traditional birthday party activities are completely optional. We let our guests know that the birthday boy would not be opening gifts in front of them and that his nap began promptly at 3:30 (whether or not guests were present).

My friend Christine honored this milestone by having dinner with her husband and hiring a babysitter. Heather threw a blowout camping trip for Holden (I mean herself) and attended an adults-only swanky Oscars party in honor of Milo.

This collection of super cute first birthday party ideas gives more inspiration on planning a party to suit your style.

Baby too young to be planning a birthday party? Go choose another challenge!

Go on, it’s semi-social, you can bring your baby or toddler, and you can GTD. (That’s “get things done” in Internet language. Seriously.)
When our firstborns were too little to know the difference between Target and the Children’s Museum, Whitney and I would meet with the boys to do some shopping and wonder if it counts as an outing. I say “yes”.

Meeting a friend out for errands is your 51st Rookie Mom challenge! Not ready yet? Pick another challenge.

Once, I met my (child-free) pal, Olivia, and we wandered the aisles at Whole Foods toting the little man in his cart and handing him banana chips at his every sign for “more”. We chatted amiably and I went home with ice cream. Ice cream purchase really put the kibosh on post-Whole Foods coffee dates, so plan carefully.

Thingamababy offers 10 excellent tips for how to get out of the house and shop all day with a toddler. He includes a great suggestion on what to keep on hand and what to leave in the car. If you’ve tried to take your toddler anywhere and run into frustration, you’ll appreciate the advice.

Grammy tries to read to wiggly gigglers

As your next weekly challenge, we’re sharing a favorite activity from our book, The Rookie Mom’s Handbook:

In the long run, Grandma, baby and Mom and Dad will all look forward to this annual tradition. Since you’re still a rookie, however, do this to the degree you feel comfortable.

How it works: You and your partner plan an overnight trip. It might just be to a hotel in a nearby city. Your baby’s grandparents come stay at your place, saving you the trouble of packing up your baby’s things. Train them on usage of the car seat and the coffeemaker and LET GO.

Encourage Grandma and Grandpa to establish special traditions with your child.

Add a night to Camp Grandma each year so that you take a two-night trip next year, and by the time your child is fourteen, dear Grandma will get a two-week fill of adolescent merriment.

If you’re a rookie grandma, we recommend The Granny Diaries to head off potential power struggles with rookie moms such as ourselves (because we know we can be difficult — sorry about that!). Here’s our review.

Are you ready to leave your baby for the night? Tell us about it!

Nine months on, nine months off? Something like that.

Your 46th weekly challenge is to obtain some new-to-you clothes that you’ll enjoy along with an afternoon of girlfriend hilarity all for the cost of some cucumber-scented spa water. The end of the year is a perfect time to plan a clothing swap.

Whitney totally hates this photo series but I love it. To be fair, she was trying on outfits from the “pass-through” pile.

We’ve mentioned this idea here and there, but here are the instructions for how to throw a clothing swap on your own.

I have hosted no fewer than nine clothing swaps with my stylish friends and spawned at least three known copycats. For the record, this is better as a a no-kids-allowed event (or just pre-crawlers), so let Daddy take the bambino out for a hike while you get some well-deserved girlfriend-time. The whole event can take less than two hours.

Here’s the step-by-step to planning and hosting:
(kind of long, but I want to make it mindless for you)

1. Stake out a day. Work with your partner or a babysitter to find a good day for the swap. Plan around naps and try to avoid mealtime so that you are not trying to be Martha Stewart while you are running around your living room half-naked.
2. Invite the ladies. Send out an evite to all your potentially willing friends.
3. Purge. Set aside a good hour and clean out your closet of stuff you haven’t worn in a year or wouldn’t want to wear right now even if the proper situation presented itself. Be brutal. If you’re feeling those flipping annoying post-partum body issues, get a good friend to help. (Do your marriage the small favor of not asking your husband if your “butt looks big in this” because it probably does!)
4. Merchandise. Clean and fold the things for the swap. Bust out the iron even. Create a separate bag of clothes so ugly you’d be embarrassed for your friends to see (stained t-shirts for instance) — these can go in the pass-through pile (modeled by Whitney as “Before”)
5. Think about how you’ll set up your space for the event. Is there a mirror handy in the living room or will you have to tidy up your room too? Is there space for hanging clothes? If you have room to “merchandise” your stuff, it is a little more fun to “shop”.
6. Make little signs — use the computer or write on index cards what the categories of clothing are so that guests can sort their offerings. (Download our labels here.) And, have a few blank labels available for the day of.

On the day of the event: tidy up, wear cute underwear, get some appetizers or have your friends bring them, and wait for everyone to bring you new clothes! We usually start out browsing the piles casually enough and trying stuff on here and there. Once you try on a cute spangly dress, it is fair game for someone else to have a go at it. Let your friends decide who really looks best in it. I am notorious for trying to get my hands on everyone’s good stuff.

Afterward, get someone to help you load the car or take stuff directly to the charity.

Note: we often have a grab bag category, maternity, men’s clothes, shoes, and baby clothes.

If you’re still not convinced, here are my top eight reasons to host a clothing swap:

1. eat drink and be merry (just easy snacks and spa water)
2. enjoy a fun afternoon with friends
3. feel good about donating to a worthy cause
4. get a heap of new clothes for free (especially good if you have a changing-mom-body!)
5. get a license to buy a couple new pieces for all your thrift
6. play dress-up and get silly
7. purge yourself of unwanted clothes
8. re-gift your recent holiday loot (I like to hold mine in January)

… I’m getting off my soapbox now.

So, do you love or shove the clothing swap for moms?

When my husband had to be gone for six whole nights on business leaving me alone with baby Holden, I panicked and called in my smartest mom friends for advice.

They had perfectly reasonable suggestions about lowering my expectations, keeping it simple, and making plans to keep from going stir crazy.

This tip came from my friend Molly, a mom of two, and thus an expert:

Think about one thing you might do if it were just you on your own, or perhaps if you were going to play host to a dear friend who you rarely see and wanted to impress. Visit a museum with an important art show? Take a drive to a beautiful place and go for a hike to see the magnificent view? Go to a cafe and chat with the strangers at the tables nearby just to feel the buzz of the city?

Now then – dive in and do that thing with your boy even if it seems like it might be stressful. I promise, it won’t be.

It will be fantastic and fulfilling because it will be the first time you intentionally planned something for your shared enjoyment and edification. A touchstone for all the many many times you will do things together, just you two, in the coming years.

Not wanting to let Molly or myself down, I saddled up the boy with most of his corresponding gear and we tried a new brunch spot, just the two of us. Me with a cocoa and him in his nasty highchair. We flirted with folks at other tables and shared our food. He ate some of my pancakes, scrambled eggs, and strawberries (I did have to pull the pancakes and strawberries apart in a decidedly un-adult fashion) while I licked some of his cheesy cauliflower off my hands.

What would you do with your baby if you treated him like a dear friend you wanted to impress? Now, go do it!

This is your 45th weekly challenge.

Your 40th weekly challenge is to celebrate that your baby has been on the outside longer than she was on the inside! There are many fun ways to celebrate this milestone. We’ve done cocktails and sushi (pictured) and a moms night out at the hot tubs in the past.

Inside Out Party at Blowfish Sushi

Unless you’re currently knocked up, I suggest wrangling a posse of girlfriends and doing all those things you weren’t allowed to do (in good conscience) while pregnant, stuff like:

• Drink wine
• Eat soft cheese
• Luxuriate in a hot-tub
• Ride an ostrich or mechanical bull
• Go bungee jumping

These are just my own ideas, maybe you’re dying to burn a duraflame log or indulge in some other activity that has us wondering if it’s so bad for the pregnants, why do we do these things to ourselves at all… Have at it!

Share your ideas in the comments to inspire another mother.

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!

Because Whitney is forcing me to take a maternity leave, I have asked several online friends to help out with guest posts. I am grateful to Kristen Chase for sharing her version of how to take a maternity leave from blogging so I can share it with you and learn from her example. I hope you enjoy the many great voices coming together this month!

Kristen with Drew, Bridget, Quinlan, and Margot

Because my job is so incredibly flexible and I’m a little Type-A, I relied on the persistence of my friend and co-publisher Liz Gumbinner to force me into a maternity leave.

My rationale, especially with my 2nd through 4th kids, was that I wasn’t really getting a break anyway since I had another kid (or two) to chase around, so the work, for me, was a distraction and a way to pass the somewhat boring breastfeeding hours, particularly late at night.

For my other writing gigs, I did my best to finish my work in advance, and then give them an idea of when thought I’d be ready to return. The beauty of working with (and for) moms is that they are very understanding about post-partum recovery. If only all employers (and colleagues) were like that.

I do, however, think that it’s important to take a break, whatever that means to you, and if you don’t have someone like Liz or a team supporting you, then I’d remind friends and family to insist on it, even if they know you’ll push back a bit.

photo credit: Kelly from Amerine Photography

Kristen writes so many places, I’m sure you are already reading her somewhere: Cool Mom Picks, Motherhood Uncensored, The Pioneer Woman (ok, she’s not THE woman, but she writes there sometimes!), Momanatrix, and more. I am so grateful to my online, real life friend for sharing her tips.

This week’s challenge is a summery activity for babies that can sit up on their own; this is your 34th challenge.

These ten-month olds (Theo, Del, Julian and Paxton) are having so much fun slurping on plastic toys and touching one another’s toes that they don’t realize their moms are having fun too.

Ingredients for a successful Margarita Mommies Group:

1. Shady backyard on a nice, warm day
2. Kiddie Pool with a couple inches of water
3. Mom-sized lawn chairs with toes dipping in the water
4. Plastic pitcher of margaritas with plastic cups
5. Splashing babies (diapers optional) — keep them in the shade or slather heavily with sunscreen before the party starts!
6. Daddies available to pick up mommy and baby afterward

This was suggested by my hairdresser as an awesome way to enjoy the summer!

Did you complete this challenge? Share your story and pictures.

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

Do you hate this challenge? Yeah, we’ve heard that one before. Go on, tell us why you hate it in our comments. Then pick another activity from our challenge list.

I am assuming that I am not the only rookie mom for whom leaving my child to be put to bed by a babysitter for the first time was scary. My kid never took a bottle, so I pretty much had to be there for a bedtime nursing for the first ten months. This feeling is the opposite of freedom, by the way.

Once your baby is reliably sleeping between 8 pm and midnight or beyond, you can resume the life you used to lead in restaurants and cafes by making dessert dates with girlfriends or your partner. This is the least stressful babysitter situation possible. Pretty much anyone is qualified to lay on your couch and watch TV while you enjoy a short evening outing, right?

Put your baby to bed the way you like. When you are confident he is asleep, head out to any of your favorite restaurants. Order dessert or a drink. Enjoy ambience. Leave.

This is your 31st rookie mom challenge. Let us know when you try it by commenting below or telling us on our Facebook page. Baby too young for this one? Pick a different challenge.

You probably did nice things to your baby’s room to get it ready for him. How about your own bedroom? Make a small change that will make you happy in your sleeping space. Move a piece of furniture, hang something on the wall, or get rid of a clutter pile. (I didn’t say clean up – just hide it somewhere else!)

Could you put your baby in a bouncy seat so that she can watch you re-arrange your bookshelves?

Every photo of  adult living quarters I considered for this post featured a vase of flowers on the nightstand. If you need an outing, how about to the farmer’s market to select a bouquet? Refreshing your bedroom is our 29th challenge for rookie moms.

Heather and I both painted our bedrooms in honor of this activity. It is one of the biggest impact, lowest cost design changes you can make. Our friend Wendy executed a marvelous makeover of an old typing table with spray paint last week. Check it out:

So what adult furnishings need a little love in your house?

Today’s thoughtful post about finding your groove as a twin mama is shared by Rachel Gurevich. Rachel mothers four amazing kids, writes about fertility for About.com because she has been there and done that. Thanks Rachel!

Twins are really cute in photographs. They make great viral video material, and the idea of having a best buddy for life is sweet. Caring for newborn twins, on the other hands, is not always sweet, cute, nor suitable to be videotaped and posted on YouTube.com. Not without lots of warnings for adult content. (That would be for the swearing, the crazy-no-sleep-blood-shot-eyes look, and the sore nipples – because if you think nursing one baby is hard in those first weeks, well…)

Don’t misunderstand me – I love my twins to death. (Almost literally, when you consider the fact that I thought caring for them in the early days would kill me.) I struggled to conceive for seven years, and when I learned of my double blessing, I laughed so hard in excitement that the ultrasound technician couldn’t do her job.

But I also cried, because while I was ecstatic to be getting a two babies at once, I *knew* this was not a two-for-the-price-of-one-deal. Twins do not lead to twice the work. It’s more like triple the work.

While our family custom is not to buy anything for the babies before they are born, we did buy car seats and a double stroller — car seats to take them home, and a double stroller so I could leave the house as soon as possible. This was, to me, extremely important.

I spent much of the pregnancy on low key bed rest. It wasn’t total bed rest, but I couldn’t do more than get myself to the doctor and back without having contractions and feeling like my back and my expanding tummy might break.

While with my older kids I was a baby wearing mom, I wanted a stroller for these two from the beginning. I have a Baby Bjorn and Ergo Carrier, but I needed to be realistic. Was my broken, out-of-shape, just-off-bed-rest body capable of baby wearing in those early months? No way.

My effort to be realistic did not take into account, however, how hard it is to get out of the house with twin newborns.

I tried a few times during the first weeks. I’d nurse one baby, nurse the other, supplement one baby, supplement the other, pump, change their diapers, get them dressed to go outside, go to the bathroom myself and then… it’d be time to start all over again. So I thought I’d wait until we had the whole feeding thing under control.

I tried again when I was only nursing and no longer pumping. But still, it seemed impossible. Nurse one, nurse the other, diaper one, diaper two, coat and socks for one, coats and socks for two, bring the stroller down the stairs, run back up for baby one, run down with baby one and strap him in, run back up for baby two, run back down and strap in baby two, start walking, and 10 minutes later, time to nurse again. Plus, I was physically exhausted before we managed the first block.

After giving this a try a few more times, I gave up. I sat at home and cried. I started to think I would never, ever go anywhere again. When I pictured my future, I saw myself on the couch, pale from lack of sunlight, a baby nursing at each breast, for the rest of my life.

I wallowed in self-pity for a few weeks. But as the weather got nicer, and my cabin fever grew, I became more determined to get out. I knew exercise and sunlight were key to kicking postpartum depression’s butt to the curb. I couldn’t just sit inside and cry forever. I never let nursing or any other baby related handicap keep me from getting outside with my older kids.

Plus, I had looked forward to having another baby for seven years – was this miserable, overwhelmed state how I wanted to remember their first year?

Then, I started to wonder if it really mattered how far we got on the walk. I mean, just getting the babies into the stroller – that was progress, right? And all those stairs, up and down with the babies, that was exercise, right? So even if we never got past the block, even if we never got further than strapping the twins into their seats, I was still doing something. I was still getting out of the house.

I promised myself that every day I would attempt to get out. And if I didn’t make it, I declared to myself that I would be ok with that. I wouldn’t see the end goal as a walk to a certain place. If I got my shoes on, and that’s all I could manage, I patted myself on the back for a job well done, even if the perfectionist in me tried to object. (I learned this seemingly simple and yet amazingly powerful mental trickery from Jennifer Louden’s Satisfaction Finder.)

The first few days, I got my shoes on, but not much further. Then, I started getting good at the whole stroller-baby-transfer process. I figured out how to save trips up and down, and I started to see the steps as part of the journey, not just an obstacle to overcome.

Eventually, I found myself going on real walks, almost every day of the week. Walks that covered several blocks, walks that lasted longer than 5 or 10 minutes. I started getting adventurous, taking turns down streets I didn’t know, for new views. Usually, I listened to music on my iPod, but sometimes I listened to audio classes or just enjoyed the sounds of nature and life.

My twins are 14 months now, and we go on a walk at least four times a week. These walks saved my sanity in the early days, and they continue to be a life saver now. In those early days, walking helped me get out of the house and enjoy some sunshine. These days, the walks allow me time for myself (in my head, anyway) and provide at least an hour of time when I’m not rescuing climbing toddlers from counter tops and bookshelves.

Once the twins fall asleep, as they often do during a walk, I’ll find a bench and do some cloud watching. Eventually, I’ll find myself staring at their precious faces, and that’s when I feel the love bubbling over in my heart. Because those walks give me inner peace and comfort, and they allow me to see the twins the way outsiders do – cute, sweet, and totally YouTube.com adorable.

Sending another big THANK YOU to Rachel for sharing her experiences with us for Twins Week. If you want more Rachel, check out her book, The Doula Advantage, which received endorsements from Dr. William Sears and parenting author Ann Douglas.

[Photo provided by Farrah Ritter]