Packing for vacation used to be a labor of love, laying out the outfits and the shoes as I anticipated all the fun ahead. But now that I'm a parent and the airlines limit me to 50 pounds of baggage to boot, packing can be a nightmare. Je…
I realize that back-to-school is knocking on my door, but considering it stays warm and sunny in our neck of the woods until early October, I'm not sure my daughter will be sporting the brown eather Mary Janes on August 11. So I can blam…
My daughter is already a bit obsessed with computer games and she's only four. I'm afraid to think about what will happen when she hits the tween years and can do more than just move the mouse around. Thanks to Generation Cures , I'm arm…
While I've clearly arrived at the "Yoga Pants and Gauchos" trimester in my pregnancy, I'm not ready to give up on my style just because even my roomiest maternity clothes are suddenly very uncomfortable. So meet my new best friend, Bao B…
It seems like hooded towels only come adorned with zoo animals and licensed characters, and considering my daughter isn't into monkeys anymore and I'm not so into Dora, our options are pretty limited. That's not the case, however, since …
Not all of us can afford to hang real pieces of art in our toddlers' rooms, or spend hours strolling with them through museums gazing at the works of masters. Fortunately, for less than $15, we can all afford to share this little gem fro…
We don't come across too many wallpaper options for nurseries, or at least ones that we'd feel comfortable recommending. With all due respect Peter Rabbit, I love you, but I don't need a repeating pattern of 60,000 of you that my baby wi…
When your daughter is begging to stick 6,000 glittery clips in her hair, sometimes the plain old barrette doesn't cut it. So I've come up with this motto: "All bling in moderation unless you are Carmen Electra." And even then I can't say…
Being that my daughter was a little baldie for a very long time, imagine my excitement when she became obsessed with hair clips. Especially because I am not the type to stick barrettes on a bald scalp with Karo syrup. My enthusiasm was q…
A high chair isn't exactly the kind of baby gear you think you'll fall in love with. A crib, perhaps. A diaper bag , absolutely. But that eyesore in the middle of your dining room that you will spend the next 30 or so months of your life…
It seems like everywhere we look, there's a super cool new site popping up that hosts limited-time online sample sales of designer kids clothing. First it was Gilt Groupe , and now it's Haute Look . Essentially, Haute Look emails you abo…
When it comes to growth charts, we're the pencil on the wall type of family. Believe me. It's not like we love to write on our walls, but we have yet to find a growth chart that is both functional and is something we'd actually hang some…
I love my husband and am perfectly happy giving his name to my children, but just a teeny tiny part of me would like to take some visible credit for pushing them out of my nether regions. (Except for the stretch marks, that is). That's w…
I find it hard to believe that there are still scrunchie wearers in the world, unless they have all arrived here via time machine direct from 1991. Better option--wayyyy better option--is Knotheads . I will admit it took me some time to …
The very best gift you can give a new mother is a group of slightly more-seasoned moms upon whom she can rely. I was lucky enough to have such a thing after my first was born, but I also had times that I was pacing the floor at 2:00 a.m.…
Having grown up in Iowa on a farm, I'm probably at a slight advantage for identifying poisonous plants and snakes. But for the rest of us, or just kids who love all things creepy and crawly and generally nasty, there's Don't Touch That! …
It's the invasion of the eco-bags! They're flooding the market and the truth is, as long as they keep being cute, we're going to keep posting about them. The latest entry: BYOB from two ever eco-consicous women up in Vancouver, Canada. T…
A certain purple dinosaur has given this dude a bad name. But I'm thinking Barney Saltzberg is taking the name Barney back (yeah!) with 30 incredible children's books and four really swell CDs in his arsenal, including his latest musical…
Call me old-fashioned, but I love the idea of calling cards. Problem is, I have different contact information for different people. It really ruins the elegance of handing over a calling card when I have to scrawl corrections on it first…
You know those people who have a second home and visit it every vacation? Well, that isn't me. If we are going to pack up our family of five and go somewhere, I need to figure out where we're going, where we'll sleep eat and what we'll d…
We're going to go out on a limb and say if you've got money tied up in petrochemical pesticide stocks, this might be a good time to get out. The entire world is going greener, right down to their fair trade organic cotton underwear. Yes,…
I really do love my kids' names. Considering how many fights my husband and I got into before we finally nailed down Quinlan and Drew I might have them plastered all over their walls except for the fact that I have yet to run across a wo…
What do you get when you mix modern sensibilities with the ancient art of letterpress printing, then sprinkle the top with a dash of whimsy? The sweet yet minimalist designs of Dee & Lala , it would seem. My kids are unfortunately too ol…
Say "bean bag chair" and my mind flashes back to 1975, an image of a shiny vinyl blob sitting on shag carpeting. I can even conjure up the squeaking sound it made when I landed on it. The bean bag chairs by Cocoon Couture? Yeah, not one …
