What’s the one thing you wish someone would have told you when you were a sleep-deprived, nervous new mom? What advice do you have to share with that mom who just brought her baby home from the hospital and is wondering… Now what?

Let’s share the mom love with those who are new to this world, a bit overwhelmed and in need of a bit of reassurance. We’ve all been there!

Please share your advice in comments. Thanks.

P.S. Here’s some advice received on the (public) Parent Talk Today FB fan page. Thanks, everyone!

Are you a mom-to-be with restless leg syndrome? Do you think the minimum driving age for teens should be raised? What do you think of the local parenting magazine in your community?

We’re talking about all that and more over at our Parent Talk Today  fan page. Stop by, become a fan and jump into the conversation!

Gail Alcorn McGonigle knows what it’s like to worry about an aging parent. McGonigle, author of Dad’s Home Alone – Caring For Your Elderly Parent, provided care for her own father, learning first-hand how to handle home care and how to create an environment where her father could live safely as he grew older.

She also earned a masters degree from University of Southern California (and as a UCLA fan, I’ll forgive her for that) and then dedicated herself to working as an occupational therapist, working with elderly and disabled men and women and helping them live fuller lives.

So there’s no one better, in my book, than McGonigle when it comes to sharing tips and tools for helping a parent live independently for as long as possible, for knowing what potential signs of problems should be watched for, and for knowing when Mom or Dad needs to live in a setting that offers more support.

McGonigle also has created a website and blog, Dad’s Home Alone, to provide even more info for adult children who are helping a loved one.

I know many Parent Talk Today readers are taking care of both kids and older parents. It’s a stressful juggling act. But this book and website can offer advice, resources and the knowledge that you’re definitely not alone.

A friend sent me these comments from her Facebook page, which she gave me permission to share with you (sans names, of course). Is there a mom out there who can’t relate?

Mom 1: “Sometimes I sit the car while it is parked in the driveway. It’s like my office. I make phone calls from there and have important meetings. Go through my mail. It is the only place I can find that is quiet.

Mom 2: “Hahaha! That’s what I use the bathroom for.”

Mom 3: “Mine has heated seats. I could sleep out there!”

Mom 4: “I go to parking lots and take naps in mine sometimes, in the middle of the day. Waiting for a cop to tap on my window to test me for something!”

Genny over at My Cup 2 Yours asks today, for Talkin’ About Thursday: Where do you go to relax?

My answer? Yosemite. True, I can’t go all that often. We usually get there about once a year. But when I’m there, walking around the snow-covered valley floor and looking at Half Dome and El Capitan, I realize that I’m just one small person in the world and that my problems, in the scheme of things, aren’t all that big.

For a busy mom who feels tied to her car and to-do list much of the time, that’s no small thing.

Where do YOU go to relax?

Have you checked out the new blog from Ladies' Home Journal, Ladies' Lounge? Good stuff here. And if today's post, by Louise Sloan, is any indication, these bloggers don't mind bucking a trend.

"Here’s what I want to know," says Sloan, LHJ's senior articles editor and the author of Knock Yourself Up: A Tell-All Guide to Becoming a Single Mom. "Are happy new moms just lucky, or are we also a wee bit simpleminded?"

"These days, it seems like all the cool new parents complain — bitterly
and hilariously — about having an infant. In memoirs, essays and blogs,
they debunk the cruel myth of that blissful first few months with a
cooing, snuggly bundle of joy. That’s Hallmark-card hogwash, they say
to their relieved readers, who find their honesty refreshing. These
writers adore their kids, but let’s get real, they write: A newborn
means being in a 24/7 state of extreme worry and panic, plus crushing
boredom, plus guaranteed post-partum depression and the most searing
pain you can imagine when you attempt to breastfeed. Miracle, yes, but
also… nightmare!"

Read on for Sloan's confession about her own new-motherhood experience. I'm adding this blog to my Google reader. Don't want to miss a thing from Sloan and the rest of this group of talented bloggers.

I'm happy to have Amy Howorth as a guest blogger today. Check out her blog, WiredElvis (a blog about a mom and her adventures in a wired world that still needs Elvis…) I love Amy's style and her humor. Check out this post and you'll become a fan, too!

Would
it kill them? To send me a little card saying that they are alive?
Other campers must be sending their parents letters. Maybe essays,
maybe line drawings that will someday be the basis for their college
applications:

"Dear Harvard, while
most children ignored their parents entirely while at summer camp, I
made these whimsical drawings to illustrate my contemplative time in
the forest. They are now hanging in the Whitney Museum, but are also
on my Facebook page for your reference…"

No,
my sons are out of touch. Trapped, for  all I know, under a fallen tree
that I have not heard fall. I cursed them the other day while talking
to my mother via the land line (my cell doesn't work at my house.  It's
like I'm camping…). "Mom, I have sent them something every day!
Cute cards! Magazines! Candy! And I get nothing."

Amused silence at
the other end of the phone. I know it is amused, because when she is
pissed and silent, she has usually hung up the phone. "Amy, that's
what you did when you went away to camp. I sent you TONS OF CARDS AND
YOU NEVER ONCE SENT ME ANYTHING."

By the way, the all caps are not a
typo. My 83-year-old mother is talking in all caps. 

Do you ever have the feeling that, between driving your kids to all their "enrichment" activities (ballet, baseball, karate — you name it) volunteering at school, working, doing laundry, arranging play dates, etc., etc., etc. that you're doing the right thing by your kids, but that your own life is somehow slipping away?

I've had that feeling lately, and it's a tough thing to admit, because we're all afraid of sounding selfish. Right?

Sure, we signed on to do all this, and much more, when we became parents. And we doing it willingly (OK, most of the time) and with love. But while you're watching your kids grow, experiment, learn and spread their wings, do you feel that your own life might be dying on the vine just a bit?

We're not doing our kids any favors if we end up exhausted and resentful.

When's the last time you had a mom's night out and just yucked it up with your girlfriends? Took yourself to a movie YOU wanted to see? (Harry Potter and Transformers don't count!) When's the last time you signed up for an improv class, jumped off the high dive, got in the car and had an adventure of your own instead of just heading to soccer camp for pick-up time?

Some days I look at my schedule, and between work and family commitments I have just about enough spare time to walk the dog. That's not healthy. So I'm making a different kind of commitment: to saying "no" to that next volunteer opportunity or to-do list item (anybody want to call the fencing company about our rusting one-year-old metal gate?) and saying "yes" to doing something that makes me feel more alive.

My son will still get where he needs to go. My work deadlines will be met. We'll still get dinner on the table. And no one will leave the house naked. But I will carve out more time for me. For my health, friendships and dreams. Funny thing is… That will also make me a better mom.

Care to join me?

Remember the simple act of pasting a few special photos, a valentine and maybe a flattened carnation corsage into a photo album?

Today, of course, it's a verb: "to scrapbook." And in our
"let's-go-overboard-and-then-fret-about-how-stressed-we-are" age, it's yet one more thing to feel guilty about.

"I sat down and looked at all those boxes of photos, and I just started crying," one friend tells me. "It all seems so overwhelming."

Another friend spends hours at arts-and-crafts stores, buying stickers and pens and assorted doo-dads, which then sit in a shopping bag in her closet because she's too intimidated by the pages in the scrapbooking magazines.

Who can blame us for feeling defeated? These magazines showcase an overwhelming Mardi Gras parade of artistic techniques. Peek-a-boo pages with sliding doors. Folded tea-bag embellishments. Photo kaleidoscopes. And have you tried taking skinny copper wire, rolling it into tiny circles with pliers and making individual daisies? By the way, don't forget the three shades of green raffia, which you'll flatten and twist for the leaves.

Then there are the baby pages. They're simple, really. Just cut your photo into 16 tiny pieces, add 16 pieces of different-colored translucent paper, and reassemble the whole thing to resemble a
gorgeous stained-glass window.

Frankly, I think I'll wait to try these nifty techniques until after my 13-year-old son, Matthew, leaves home for college. (College-spirit pages – with real mini-pom-poms!) Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll spend his childhood yelling, from behind a pile of acid-free card stock, "Can't you play checkers by yourself? I’m busy preserving your memories!"

I have to confess: I do subscribe to the scrapbooking magazines. But I like to read them in much the same way I peruse gourmet cooking magazines. Late in the evening, in bed, I linger over the pictures and read every how-to step. But just as you're not going to catch me leaping out from under my cozy comforter to whip up a Gruyère fondue with caramelized shallots, don't hold your breath looking for pop-up pages or hand-sponged clouds in my family's scrapbook.

Instead, what you will find is the first letter Matthew ever wrote to Santa, along with a photo of a little boy in flannel jammies placing a piece of cake and a can of Coke by the fireplace. And copies of e-mailed stories about Which Witch, a silly witch who plays tricks on children, written especially for Matthew by his grandmother. Nothing fancy here. No witches flying off the page. But those stories are there, safely preserved, for Matt to read to his own grandchildren someday.

Our baby pages aren't elaborate, either, but they hold lasting reminders of a special time: my scribbled list of things to bring to the hospital when I went into labor (what planet was I on when I wrote "playing cards"?), and the page from my husband's calendar where he logged the time and length of every contraction the night before Matthew was born. We also included our short list of names, so that Matt can look at it some day and wonder if life would have been different as a Gregory.

I also cherish the silly, and sometimes creepy, memories of family life with a boy who seems to grow an inch taller with every page I turn: Matthew, at age 3, running around the house with an oven mitt on each hand, pinching his “claws” together and declaring himself “Larry The Lobster.” The Father's Day when Dad received cereal, coffee and the sports page in bed, but only after agreeing to wear a "Cat in the Hat" hat for the duration of breakfast. And the page showing Matt and his not-too-crazy-about-snakes mom each receiving a "Certificate of Bravery" for viewing the live rattlers at the American International Rattlesnake Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

My family's scrapbook doesn't stay on a high shelf, away from curious — and yes, potentially sticky — hands. Instead, it sits on our coffee table, always open and filled with purple-painted preschooler handprints, photos of Matthew frosting Daddy's birthday cake and other snippets from our daily lives that will mean more to us, and our grandchildren, than all the twisted-wire daisies in the world.