1m2aSandbox

Ok, listen up parents-to-be. Here’s the blog you will want to print out and put up on your refrigerator.

I’m not going to tell you all the stuff to buy for baby, or how to pick an OB, or epidural vs. natural childbirth. There are tons of books already written about that stuff, and frankly, it’s not as important as what we’re going to talk about today. Well, ok, so it is, but this is important too.

I’m going to give you a list to get you started on After Baby Comes. Yep, these fun nine months of pregnancy, preparation, and progesterone-induced puking will come to an end and when they do, you’ll be too sleep-deprived to get cracking on staying ahead of the Parent Curve. So read on, and get going.

This week’s poll we’re doing something different.

Instead of a poll, it’s more of a survey, and instead of a pre-written answer you click on and submit, you write the answer yourself, with a chance for a free gift!

Here’s my question: What’s the best mommy tip you’d like to pass on to other moms?

Do you have a tip for organizing your nursery? A trick for making homemade baby food? A secret for getting out poop stains, or soothing a screaming toddler in the middle of the mall?

I want to hear about it. So write up your tip in the comment section of this entry.

Be sure to include your email address, because here’s the added bonus –

I’ll narrow the tips down to a few favorites, and my girlfriends and stay-at-home-dad guy pal Graham  – my Mommy Focus Group that I turn to for help – will select their favorite tip. The winner will receive a FREE pressed puff from Pure Me (see my previous blog to understand its awesomeness), courtesy of the inventor of Pure Me, a fellow mom.

You don’t need to be a registered user to submit a tip; you can submit as a guest. But registered users will be much easier for me to get back in touch with, so if you submit as a guest be sure to publish your email so I can find you! And you can post as many tips as you want, but please post each one separately.

My girlfriends may publish tips of their own, but don’t worry, they know they’re exempt from winning the prize.

You’ve got until Saturday to submit here, so get to it! The winner will be chosen later next week.

Good luck, and speak up!

Last week’s poll certainly revealed to me that I’m not alone in the “Less Ain’t So Bad” school of grooming these days.

The poll focused on how your grooming habits have changed since becoming a mommy, and almost half of you said you try to look presentable and shower daily, but don’t spend as much time in front of the mirror as you used to. Most of the rest of you admitted to showering a couple times a week and combing when necessary, while one brave mommy (God bless your honesty!) said she’s happy to get out of the house without her breast pads showing, and with the spit-up blending into her fabric.

This topic came to me a couple weeks ago while I was showering one evening. I was hacking away at nearly a week’s growth of leg hair and thinking how different my standards are now than they were a year plus ago; I’m happy to shower twice a week and find time to shave maybe once in those seven days. As I realized how embarrassed I’d be to admit that to a lot of people (ironic, since I’m confessing it in cyberspace), I became defensive in my inner monologue, reasoning that there’s just no time with the baby! 

Maddie and I are in the habit of hitting the park every morning as part of our routine. She’s made a couple friends (so have I!) and is starting to look forward to seeing familiar faces on the playground.

Since it’s been so hot here – six days of around 100 degrees – Maddie only makes a cursory nod at the swings before heading off to the sprinkler rainbow. One of her friends, Naomi, is always amply stocked with water balloons, and the things fascinate my daughter. She loves to squish them in her hands, drop them and watch them roll, chew on them; you name it, she’s done it. And when she drops it or squeezes it too hard and it breaks, she stares at the ground in honest bewilderment, uncertain where the thing mysteriously disappeared.  

It seems my daughter’s been shopping for a personality recently, and I’m not sure but I think she’s been just haphazardly throwing whatever’s on sale in the cart.

Is it just Maddie, or is this a phase everyone goes through? These random things start emerging that make you scratch your head and wonder: is she watching German t.v. behind your back and not understanding the subtitles? Are you walking in your sleep and doing really weird things she’s trying to emulate?

For there seems to be no rhyme or reason to these idiosyncrasies popping up every few days. Here’s just a smattering of the Greatest Hits she’s collecting:

This week is World
Breastfeeding Week  and the subject seems to be everywhere. The
morning shows, the evening news, nighttime newsmagazines, all seem to be
talking about breastfeeding.

Granted, there are a few hot items
to cover right now. Babytalk, a magazine for parents, ran a
picture on the cover of a mother nursing and had 25% of its readers,
mostly parents, complain and call the cover offensive. CNN ran an article 
about it, if you’re interested, or you can simply hit pretty much any
parenting blog – try Dot
Moms or Daddytypes 
to read a couple takes on it – and get a good summary. One magazine
subscriber was so offended she ran the cover through a shredder, lest
her 12-year-old son see it and be inflamed with lust.

This, of
course, is coming hard on the heels of the national ad campaign that
likened not nursing to riding a mechanical bull while pregnant, so
harmful is formula for your baby. And it’s in the midst, too, of some
pretty high-profile protests by self-styled “Lactivists” staging
nurse-ins to promote breast-feeding in public. There's a great article
profiling the whole "nursing in public" thing; click here to
read more.

And as the battle of the boob heats up, I can’t help
but feel sorry for the people caught in the cross-fire: the new mommies.
On the one hand you’ve got moms telling you it’s going to cause your
child irreparable harm if you don’t nurse, and that you should be proud
of nursing and willing to flaunt it in public; on the other, you’ve got
people with the legitimate complaint that the recent baby boom in major
metropolitan areas like New York has resulted in the takeover of, well,
everywhere by new families; it’s not enough now to have a kid-friendly
space – it has to be kid-centered. (Click here 
to read a good article on that tangent). Stroller Manifestos banning
babies from bars at 2 a.m. are being posted in local clubs (well, duh, I
say) while defiant mommies are sitting down in the middle of Victoria’s
Secret to protest the removal a couple months ago of a nursing mother
from a store.