… over at Brand New Mama’s blog. I just stumbled on it while googling ourselves, so thanks to BNM for the pleasant surprise!

I just marked down all the remaining Catbird Baby mei tais. There are 4 fabrics left, and they’re $88 each until they move on out and make room for some new products for the fall.

This a front, back, or hip carrier that ties on to your body with long straps, no buckles. Baby can face in or out, and you can use it form birth to whenever you’re kiddo is walking everywhere and not needing to be carried anymore.

For our other current sales, click it :)

The next set of Beco carriers are on the way!

We’ll probably be shipping again on Tuesday

TheBabyWearer.com is a website that promotes, educates, and converses about baby carriers and slings.

They have also a large section for reviewing retailers and products.

I mention this for 4 reasons:
1) they have excellent articles and discussion forums
2) the product reviews can be very helpful for choosing a carrier to suit your needs
3) they have an extensive photo gallery of carriers in use.
4) if you have ordered from us before, you can review our store by clicking below.  If you’re willing to do this, click the box below and thanks!

I’ve found playgroups to be so enriching for children and a lifesaver when parenting-at-home starts to feel isolating, and really it’s not too hard to start one. If you just determine to do it, you can get your own going without much trouble and then have one more scheduled activity a week to look forward to.

All you need is some other families, a place to meet, and optionally, snacks or games or planned activities. But seriously, if you just want you get out of the house and help your kid make friends while you associate with grown-ups for a change, all you need are the people and the location. If you can organize that, people will be so happy with you they’ll not notice the rest.

You can volunteer your house, or pick a good park, and you can always rotate it to other people’s houses and other parks. Once it’s going well, you could branch out to outings like the zoo, walks or hikes, fruit picking, children’s museums, library storytimes and such. The social relationships could naturally develop into special occasions like trick-or-treating together too, and networking with parents can help you hear of more community events.

I’ve been in successful playgroups started in many simple ways. Really, the hard part is just deciding to do it and asking people to join. you can do this!

• a neighbor who asked a couple other neighbors plus some families she kept seeing at the park.
• four acquaintances from church agreed to make a weekly playdate and their friendship thrived
• a La Leche League member hoping to make like-minded friends simply announced at each meeting that she always went to a certain park Monday mornings and would welcome anybody to join her.

Sure, you could post an ad on Craigslist, or on a school’s bulletin board, but I’m being realistic here. You’re a busy parent and you’re consciously choosing good influences on your kiddo, and so maybe you feel iffy about putting an ad out to anybody. That’s why it’s so great to start with acquaintances who share a common interest- let the fear go and make that casual contact into a friend!

When our oldest was 3, he was not ready for preschool and I had no desire to send him out of the house, but I heard of something that worked out well and I think, would be of interest to some of you.

A group of local parents of preschool aged kids formed to do a weekly playtime and art class. It rotated through our houses. It was free, the only obligation was that when your turn came, you would plan an art activity and provide a snack and allow the kids to play in your home for an hour or so.

I loved this because it meant my son could do art projects more elaborate (messy) than I would normally suggest at home, and 90% of the time, somebody else was in charge of set-up and clean-up!   And like any group, it gave the opportunity to be exposed to other children and for me to meet new adults. Good stuff.

Last night the store met a milestone- the 25,000th visitor, and the 100,000th page view for 2007.

On average, as you see, a customer looks at 4 pages before they go. Of course many people see only one page and then move on, but they are balanced out by people who stay much longer.

Leather Pediped soft shoes: orange/brown Liam, pink Caroline, blue Braeden

Preschooler wooden toys: piano, band in a box, cutting food set, food groups set, shoe lacing/tying set, hippo pull toy, and the alphabet nesting/stacking blocks

Organic cotton newborn gift set