.

I used to joke that if I ever had a third child, he’d be drinking soda from a baby bottle. This baby above is not my son, but a real-life ad from the good old days.

The ad copy reads:

This young man is 11 months old – and he isn’t our youngest customer by any means.

For 7-Up is so pure, so wholesome, you can even give it to babies and feel good about it. Look at the back of a 7-Up bottle. Notice that all our ingredients are listed. (That isn’t required of soft drinks, you know – but we’re proud to do it and we think you’re pleased that we do.)

By the way, Mom, when it comes to toddlers – if they like to be coaxed to drink their milk, try this: Add 7-Up to the milk in equal parts, pouring the 7-Up gently into the milk. It’s a wholesome combination – and it works! Make 7-Up your family drink. You like it…it likes you!

Thoughts?

Photo discovered on lunchtray.com

For the past few weeks, Whitney and I have been on the lookout for funny, germy behavior from ourselves, our families and our friends as part of an assignment from Clorox to find those unpleasant flu moments that everyone can relate to and highlight them in animated GIFs.

I captured my toddler playing in the garbage, licking his shoe, and learning to use a tissue. I filmed my friend during a combo-laughing-coughing fit during an evening out (and I wonder why we have so much trouble finding double dates!) while Whitney was busy doing some of the same weird stuff at her house.

The resulting comedy is enshrined on the Clorox #WTFlu tumblr page and you should definitely check it out.

Nervous about where your baby puts his slobbery hands? Feeling like you should bathe the kid after a day at preschool before giving too tight a hug? You’re in good company. I’m a total fiend about hand-washing and I still worry about how to keep my own kids healthy. Since I don’t have a magic wand to make the germs disappear, I wipe down the frequently-touched hard surfaces regularly to help kill the flu virus and then I hope for the best. #WTFlu

Check out the What the Flu Tumblr for some sick day laughs or groans and follow the #WTFlu hashtag on Twitter.

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Disclosure: We are participating in the WTFlu program as compensated brand ambassadors. Our opinions and silly animated gifs are our own.

Hi y’all, I want to know how you navigate your way around shared accounts in different situations.

As I was trying to create a spotify playlist for you for next week’s Tech Tuesday post, I ran into some issues with being unable to access the family account. Grrr. Having been married almost a decade, it seems that we have several yours-mine-ours scenarios in which we duplicate accounts or must log in as each other.  I wonder what other families do for books, movies, shopping, banking, etc.

Calendaring, we got handled. But everything else? Hmmm.

We have a shared email account that we use for school communication and most shopping sites. Between juggling our legacy (singleton) accounts and weird system mergers (like when Amazon ate Audible), things are rather murky in other areas:

• For our schedules, we each have google calendar and a shared family view. Each of the kids’ schools uses it too, so I have no complaints
• On iTunes, we are my husband. We both know his username and our super-secret password. Otherwise, we’d have to re-purchase every song, movie, and app. No thanks.
• On Amazon, I am prime, and the primary shopper. We are each ourselves for purchasing stuff; however on kindle and, now, audible, we are my husband. I do not know the log in info so I’m always asking him to do it; Kindle allows us to have various devices that he has to manage.
• On netflix, we used to be individuals until some weird “upgrade” made his account dominant. Luckily, I know the password.
• On Hulu-plus, we are him and I don’t know how to log in.
• On Paypal, we are HIM and other banking sites, we are each ourselves.

Basically, even though I learned how to program our family VCR in second grade, I can barely watch TV without my husband’s help.

There has to be a better way. Have you figured it out?

I named my sons Holden, Milo, and Sawyer because I liked the sound of each of the names with our (in my opinion, hard-to-work-with) surname and, to a lesser degree, each other.

Not the best story, huh?

As I was speaking to some friends last night, another mom gave the “because we liked the sound of it” reason for her son’s name, Max. It occurred to me that maybe we owe our children a fictional special story to go with their names.

So rather than these half-truths, I could invent a more beautiful fiction citing family tradition and the poetic meaning of each, a story they can tell their classmates:

Holden, we named you after an average brand car in Australia where I’ve never been.

Milo, we named you after some hot chocolate that I have never tried.

Sawyer, we named you after a water filtration product that I have never used.

Then again, if I really cared about those things, I could have done it that way from the start. What do you think?

Buying holiday outfits for my kids is not a tradition I’ve embraced so far in my parenting career. Well, not totally true. I do buy holiday jammies every year. What I mean is a fancy party dress with patent leather shoes or a little man-style outfit that is specially selected for holiday parties. When I have considered this tradition, I always think, “The kids can wear what they already have — the nicest version.”

Buying dress shoes for a boy who just wants to wear his “sprinting shoes” every other day of the year seems like a terrible waste.

This year, I’m stepping it up a half-notch. Tea Collection sent me a code to share with you guys (ROOKIEMOMS15) and a couple of days after that, I received their catalog in the mail. I liked the dresses for girls, and they’re not fancy at all. They’re festive, but mostly still made out of t-shirt material. They could be worn to school or to the park, meaning they’ll get more wear than just Thanksgiving Dinner and my dad’s synagogue’s Hanukkah Party.

I passed the catalog around in the car today and let my sister, my brother, and Scarlett all vote on their three favorite dresses. These were the finalists.

Tea Collection Swedish Lark Tiered Dress	Tea Collection Juniper Wrap Dress
Tea Collection Flower and Berry Smocked Dress	Tea Collection Akvarell Party Bubble Dress

I just ordered the one in the upper right. I know it doesn’t have a tulle skirt or a bow of any kind, but I think it will get more use than one that does. I could tell Scarlett liked it the most.

What do you think? Is it important to you to have a special dress-up outfit for your child for the holidays? How fancy must it be?

If you like my strategy, feel free to use code ROOKIEMOMS15 (until 11/20) as I did to save 15% at Tea Collection. They have boys clothes, too. Dress-up clothes for boys at Carters.com also look pretty good and reusable, while several fancier dresses for girls at Children’s Place are less than $30.

So, this pregnant woman walks into a bar… No, no, that’s not right. But pregnant people DO walk into things all the time. Ba-dum-bum.

Not funny now, but funny later.
When I think about what’s funny about pregnancy, it helps to take the long-view.

So many of the oddities and discomforts are actually quite hilarious when you’re not in the thick of it. For example: flatulence that a middle school boy would envy is mortifying in real life but terrific as an anecdote (“and then everyone exited the elevator at the next floor”). What about the amusing places we throw up (like the fancy restaurant that shall remain nameless or in my best friend’s driveway)? Gross now, funny later.

I asked other moms on twitter to weigh in on the lighter side of gestation and here are a few of my favorites.

Charly Baby Ts read my mind and tweeted: Getting stuck between stuff you thought you could squeeze through!

Sarah P (AKA @SARG814) said: Trying to tie your shoes Word. Frustrating now, funny later.

Sarah Whitten tweeted: Having to ask your husband to assess the bikini line before putting on a bathing suit b/c you can no longer see it. Eww.

Alice Daer said: Wearing a breathe-right nasal strip, a mouth guard, and compression socks to bed while holding a pregnancy pillow! Aww.

When the Baby Sleeps tweeted: The toothpaste dribble you always get down the front of your bump. Cracks me right up.

If anything jumps to mind, please share a funny memory in the comments to make our other readers giggle.

[Photo of me 8 months pregnant and laughing from Brian Smith]

When I first read this clipping from People magazine that talks about how many toys Americans have, I felt guilty as charged.

I thought that my own household probably has tons of toys that don’t get played with at all, and that my children would find it easier to occupy themselves in our house if they could only see the good stuff, but that the real treasures are probably sadly tangled with items they don’t care about.

I fantasized about an electronic system that would tally the percentage of playtime each of our toys get so that I could eliminate the least valuable items in our portfolio. (Hence the tagline of this site is “Two geeky girls’ guide to the first years of motherhood.”)

Then, before I sat down to post this clipping, I went into their playroom and looked around.  Most of the stuff seemed pretty good. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I imagined. And,  I’m embarrassed to say that the things they don’t use that are taking up space are LEGOs (I know, blasphemy!) and Thomas tracks and trains.

I always think that if I had curated the toy collection just right, our leisure time would be harmonious, no one would ask for the iPad, and clean up time would be a cinch.

I’m curious. What’s taking up space in your kid’s toy pile that doesn’t get used? Are you guilty of The Clutter Problem?

Related: See Charlie and Andy’s post about How to Commit the Perfect Toy Murder on How to Be A Dad.

The following is an excerpt from our new book Stuff Every Mom Should Know. We’re giving you little tastes of the book all week in hopes that next time you discover your neighbor is pregnant, you’ll buy her a copy for Mother’s Day.

Comebacks for Unsolicited Parenting Advice

Sometimes a well-meaning stranger cannot help herself but to tell you that your little one should be wearing a hat, not sucking on your keys, or drinking prune juice. Other times advice that you just don’t need comes from someone you love, like your mother or your best friend from college. In either case, it’s tough to acknowledge the good intentions of the intruder while simultaneously rejecting her suggestion.

You can always say, “That’s interesting; maybe I’ll try it out.” But frankly, if there’s no way in Hades you’re going to try her method, then find a way to comment on the idea, without involving yourself.

“Really? That sounds cool!”

“I’m glad that’s working for you.”

“I’ve never thought about it that way.”

Most of this unsolicited advice is another person’s way to dust off her own experience and pass it off as wisdom. It’s not meant to insult you personally.

When it comes to true interference, however, you may be forced to assert yourself as the authority. Another parent at the playground removing your child from a scuffle? Your brother threatening a time-out for your preschooler? Your mother-in-law telling your child she must eat something?

Simply say, “Hey, I’ve got it.”

This is a clear and powerful way to redirect the situation so that you are in charge while letting the interfering person know that, well, you are in charge.

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Find Stuff Every Mom Should Know at Amazon.com. Illustration from the book by Kate Francis.

I loathe the idea (and reality) of shopping for maternity clothes. Between the high prices, poor quality, and short shelf-life of most items, it’s enough to make a hormonal chick crazy. When I first was pregnant with Holden, I was the lucky benefactor of a large duffel bag of maternity clothes from my pal, Whitney. This last time, the preschool mama community opened their generous arms to provide me with bags and bags of baggy attire.

So, you’d think I’d love renting maternity clothes. But I’m not so sure. The premise sounds terrific:

Fashion Forward Maternity is a platform where women can rent a variety of high-quality designer wardrobe options for every phase of pregnancy (1st trimester through nursing) without spending a fortune!

Once items are returned, all gently used clothes that can no longer be rented are donated to organizations that support women-in-need around the country, including Dress for Success and Goodwill.

In many ways, I am an ideal candidate for this… but… I think my idea of “not spending a fortune” is different from FFM’s. Fees are upwards of $125/month PLUS a per item fee (of $12+). I guess for those prices, I’d rather keep doing what I’ve been doing: a combination of begging from friends, hitting the consignment shops, keeping an open eye for Craigs List deals, and (sad but true) shopping at Target for other essentials.

What do you think, mamas? Would you love to rent your maternity wardrobe? At these prices?

I loved sitcoms as a child. I fondly remember Tuesdays as the night when I could stay up until 9:30 to watch a cluster of my favorites: Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, and Three’s Company. Like most kids, I compared my mom to Carol Brady, Claire Huxtable, or Elise Keaton.  And don’t get me started on June Cleaver.

But the TV moms of 2012 seem more like me and my friends than those of yesteryear.

When I watch Up All Night, I feel like the writers are reading my mind. How do they know my innermost thoughts? When we watch the show, Alec is constantly looking over at me as if to say, You’re such a Reagan with almost every ridiculous thing she does:

• Birth. Yes, I too was concerned about the too-attractive doctor getting all up in there.
• New Years Eve. Year after year, I have turned to Rock Band and board games to convince my friends to come over after the kids are in bed and save us from hiring a babysitter. And like Christina Applegate’s character, I might be a wee bit competitive in this arena.
• Car shopping. This show gets me. I felt deflated when I bought my living-room-on-wheels aka Honda Odyssey, but it had to be done. Pimping out my minivan to show the world that I have a sense of humor about it is on the to-do list.

The show has a sitcommy vibe, but it’s all done with a wink toward my real life. Up All Night has it’s finger on my rookie-mom-desparate-to-maintain-a-love-life-sense-of-fashion-and-quality-friendships pulse.

When Modern Family is on, I’m such a Claire. Between her need to control the uncontrollable events in her life, the eye-rolling, the occasional bursts of spontaneity, Alec spends more time looking at me and nodding than watching the show.  When I interviewed members of my extended family about their favorite television shows, Modern Family was most often chosen by all generations (not to mention marital statuses, number of children, and sexual orientations). Yes!!

And Parenthood. Set in my own backyard of (imaginary) Berkeley. Though my family doesn’t play basketball to wash away our troubles, the writing is great and the characters feel real. Not surprisingly, I identify most strongly with Christina, the mom of three who just had a baby, but I get knowing glances from my husband about each of the women at different times. Even the teens.

Damn fine writing on these programs. Or maybe I’m just one huge cliche.

Who are your favorite TV moms? And how much do you identify with them?

Not watching my favorite shows? You totally should be. Amazon lets you watch them instantly from the start:

• Parenthood: it just gets better from here
• Up All Night: starts strong, stays strong especially if you’re in the baby phase right now
• Modern Family: if you don’t pee your pants laughing, then forget about it

Whitney just sent me a link to this cuh-razy looking iPhone/iPod case for babies and toddlers. Whoa. Fisher Price makes it so that little slobbery children can safely handle my electronica. Clever. But evil.

When Milo was nine months old, he grabbed my old school cell phone and slurped it into his mouth. Before I could pry it away from him, he hurled it to the floor. I was never sure whether the saliva or the impact killed the screen. But the phone was no more.

I pride myself on my very strong opinions, but I’m torn on this one. For about $15, would you pick up this gadget? Love it or shove it?

(While I hang out with my family, I am republishing a post from the 2007 archives for your entertainment. Enjoy!)

Last week, Ryan’s company threw a lovely holiday party. We were treated to a sit-down dinner at a well known fancy restaurant. With a babysitter I trusted, and a body that can finally fit in non-maternity clothes, I was feeling pretty happy as I took my seat at a table with three other couples.

I sat next to another mother of young children, and we talked comfortably for a couple of hours about all of the very important topics that once-hip women talk about — seeing live music in San Francisco, our interesting careers, and what to buy at Trader Joe’s. Oh, and why does no one ever tell you that all your hair will be falling out after you have babies? Yes, we covered all the good stuff.

Across from us, a couple of attractive newlyweds, probably bored to tears by our potty training tales, were charming and friendly. For a party full of folks I have never met, I was having a very good time.

Looking at the just-marrieds, I remembered the days after my own wedding, when Ryan and I could talk about nothing except how awesome our friends, family, food and festivities had been. “So,” I said to Mrs. Newlywed, “have you guys stopped talking about your wedding yet?”

“Can I be frank with you?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, leaning in with interest, hoping to hear that she cared little for her wedding, or that they didn’t actually have a wedding, so there was nothing to talk about. Something, I assumed, that would be related to her wedding.
“I went off the pill, that I was on for years, about a week before our wedding. Yeah, so you can tell where we are. Well, anyway, my hair started falling out because the impact of going off the pill is just like post-partum hormones.”

Apparently we had a misunderstanding about the topic of discussion.

My husband and her husband are in between us. Part of this conversation, but perhaps not wanting to be.

“So I just went off the pill,” she repeats. “Right, honey?” she looks at her husband to include him in the conversation. “Maybe a week before the wedding,” she tells us again. “Yeah, I just stopped taking it. Yasmin was the brand of my pill. I went off if it, and I was a total hormonal mess. Right, honey?”

Discomfort. I know my husband wishes he was not sitting next to someone who was sharing her birth control plans with us. He hates to be given too much information about people he doesn’t know. He could listen to women talk about hair coloring, vintage shoe collections, and George Clooney for a very long time, so it’s not that he has no tolerance for chick stuff. It’s the bodily functions. They’re private.

And the repeating — that was the worst part. She named the pill and continued to talk about it for at least three minutes. I was at first confused, wondering why she was telling me this. Then I remembered that the other woman and I had been talking about hair falling out postpartum.

I thought about the many conversations I have had with women I hardly know. One next to me in yoga class told me she got an anal fissure with the birth of her daughter. No problem. I’m not embarrassed or offended. But, if her husband was standing there, I sure might be. It’s not the way I believed the world is, but apparently there are some things I only want to discuss in the company of my own gender.

Tell me about your leaky breasts, your incontinence, your secrets to multiple orgasms. But don’t tell me in front of my husband.

As we waited for the valet to bring our car around and indicate the end of this very-much-fun-for-a-company-holiday-party, I told Ryan I was trying to shake off the discomfort of that birth control conversation. I think he was relieved that I felt the same way, as he does not want to believe himself to be a prude. And so we acknowledged together that there are some things that are not to be discussed in mixed company.