Rookie Moms

Hey, did you hear? The price of US postage went up. Again! So while I’m busy double-reindeer stamping our late Mother’s Day cards, you can put your favorite photo on real US postage stamps on PhotoStamps.com. For (slightly) more than double the cost of regular stamps, you can make custom photo stamps with your adorable kid’s picture.

There are discounts when you buy 2 or more sheets. It’s an adorable concept for sure and I love to make practice stamps (like this one) with the interface, but the cheapskate in me can’t stomach the prices. I’d rather get real stamps and put kid stickers as a sealer (or inside for re-use).

Has anyone done this and loved it? Or can you help me think of an occasion when paying double for stamps could save me on putting something expensive in the envelope…?

Bye bye cheaper stamps.

AKA “Give your baby a tomato facial”

Go on, what are you afraid of? Let your baby really experience her dinner by getting all up in it.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I could have ever let Holden get this far into his food. Sure, I fed him on the floor and let him eat cottage cheese with his bare hands but this photo makes me really impressed with Mother Hoodwink for letting baby Boomba take it as far as he wanted to.

I know Julian is fond of beads and Holden loves to dance around with scarves, but I haven’t gone to the trouble of setting up a dress-up area.

I don’t know why… wouldn’t a little treasure trove of costume fun mean that I could sneak a few extra minutes in front of my computer sending instant messages or reading email?!

After reading this post about how to amuse toddlers, I’m going to get busy pulling together all the hats and miscellaneous other accessories to supplement that one lone scarf.

Older children (4-5 year olds) enjoy playing dress-up with clothes but toddlers normally haven’t developed enough dexterity to manage this game. What they can handle is beads, bracelets and hats. Provide a mirror so they can see themselves wearing the accessories.

If your tot is still very oral it would be wise to choose beads that have an embedded string (like Mardi Gras bead) rather than strung beads which could become a choking hazard if the string breaks.

Read 23 other ideas for amusing toddlers and see SteveGerber’s photo tips for capturing the dress up fun!

[I found this tip on the amazing instructables site via sk-rt]

I’m sending you on a scavenger hunt as your activity for the day.

Take a picture of your baby that captures the essence of the city or town in which she was born. Maybe a famous landmark is in the background, or maybe she’s sitting on the shoulders of a local celebrity.

So far we have a picture that captures San Francisco, and the one to the left here that shows Julian basking in the L.A. sun with palm trees in the distance. I’m still working on a concept for Berkeley.

Photojojo has some great tips for photographing in and around your city. So, get outside and do it!

Show us what you’ve got by posting your link to your baby’s birthplace photo or adding rookiemoms to your flickr tags.