Check out the video above for my review of the Tommee Tippee Closer to Nature 90z Bottle ($7.99 per bottle) and the Tommee Tippee Explora Truly Spill Proof Sippy Cup ($7.99 for a pack of two). Both of these products (as well as a package of 2 Closet to Nature BPA FREE bottle nipples) were sent to me from Tommee Tippee at no cost in exchange for my review of their product.

You can purchase these products (as well as other Tommee Tippee products) exclusively at Babies R Us and www.babiesrus.com.  You can also enter yourself into a drawing to win a Babies R Us Gift card by becoming a Tommee Tippee Facebook Fan.  Click here for the entry link.

For more information about Tommee Tippee products visit Tommee Tippee online at TommeeTippee.com.

This year I hung my Treasure Map on the wall by my desk in my home office.  Then just the other day it hit me like a ton of bricks!  I have been struggling to write on my blog on a daily basis… as you may have seen, I’ve found the true reality of motherhood to be messy and all consuming.  Which is probably why I was still sitting at my computer at 1 a.m. this morning working.  So the realization that hit me as I sat and reflected on my Treasure Mapping masterpiece was that my map could help me write my blog this year.  Every little phrase provides the jumping off point for a great post topic.  Of course I won’t only write about what’s on my Treasure Map… but maybe when I’m stuck and need to get those creative juices flowing (in between cleaning up the apple juice that is flowing down my desk thanks to curious little hands) I can use my Treasure Map to prompt ideas.

There are 46 weeks left in 2010 and 74 topics on my list… so if I can manage to do one and a half posts every week from here on it I will make it through my list.  I don’t plan to write them in order… but I plan to write at least something about every single one.

So here are the phrases from my 2010 Treasure Map… I hope it inspires you to create a map of your own!

1. 2010, A Very Good Year
2. Live with Less
3. I Heart It!
4. Stay fit. Be Rewarded.
5. Get Your Pre-Pregnancy Body Back!
6. Eat Right
7. Take More Pics
8. Women Who Shape the World
9. Health
10. Just Be
11. Should You Eat That?
12. Life’s On… Tune In
13. Get Girl Time Back
14. The Many Women Who Shape My World
15. Pure and Simple
16. Life Made Easy
17. Let Your Imagination Run Our…
18. Purpose
19. Imagine That
20. Ranch Cowgirl
21. It’s a Pretty Great Place
22. Kids
23. Oprah Talks to Elizabeth
24. Relax
25. Summer… Be Outdoors More
26. Lifetime Learning Begins
27. Stroller Strides
28. It’s Not Fitness.  It’s Life.
29. Stroller Power
30. Connecting Mom to Mom
31. Life is Measured in Moments
32. Make Every Moment Count
33. New Parents
34. Baby & Me
35. The Next Chapter
36. It’s About Your Kids!
37. Family Matters
38. Parenting
39. More Choices for A Life Well Spent
40. Nature and Nuture
41. Get More Ideas
42. Summer… the Best Time of Your Life
43. Fly Easy…
44. Find a Better Summer
45. The Ability to Master Fresh Challenges is Your New Job Security
46. It’s All About Focus
47. Play. Laugh. Grow.
48. Life is Short, but Childhood is Shorter.  Teach them Well.
49. No Worries
50. Thinking
51. Be Creative
52. Love That!
53. Discover What You’re Missing
54. I am Beautiful on the Inside
55. The Long Way Home
56. Success
57. Thanks for Our Future!
58. Living on a Budget
59. University of Oregon
60. Curiosity Never Retires
61. Giving
62. Because There is Always More to Learn
63. Big Return from a Small Investment
64. Get More
65. Stop at Nothing
66. Sleep
67. Sunny Outlook
68. Giggle
69. More Outdoor Life
70. I Will Win
71. Joy
72. Lily Growing
73. Peace. Peace.
74. Family

That could add up to a huge payout by Disney.  In a study conducted in 2003, one third of American babies between 6 months and 2 years of age had at least one “Baby Einstein” video.

The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood has been working for years to get Disney to remove claims that the videos are educational and other groups hope to lessen the number of children that get set in front of the TV.  According to the American Association of Pediatrics children under the age of two should not watch TV.  Some studies have found that children exposed to television at an early age later have attention span problems.

Admittedly, I’ve put baby “L”, who is only a mere 11 weeks old, in front of the TV with a Baby Einstein video.  I picked up a couple at Costco that are aimed at teaching basic sign language.  Words like “milk”, “mommy”, “daddy”, “cereal”, “play” are taught during the video.

I don’t use the video every day.  However, when nothing else will help her to relax, the video does seem to grab her attention and she enjoys sitting in her swing and watching it… for about ten minutes.

Does this make me a terrible parent?  I don’t think so.  I often watch the video with her and my basic baby sign language skills have improved significantly… so maybe it’s making me a genius if it’s not making my baby one?!

What do you think?  Is it terrible to let your children watch TV under the age of two? Have you purchased any Baby Einstein videos?  Will you ask Disney for a refund?

Maybe I just found a great instructor and a great group of women… but I think it’s probably like this in a lot of Stroller Strides groups.  If you’re a mom that’s looking to get out of the house with your kids, get exercise and spend time with other grown women that spend their days feeding mouths and wiping behinds… I highly recommend that you look for a Stroller Strides class in your area!

ChitChatMom was not paid for this post and did not receive anything in exchange for promoting the company mentioned in this post.

All “L” wants to take during the day are a handful of teeny tiny cat naps.  Maybe 20 minutes at the most.  It’s long enough for me to take a shower or start a load of laundry or empty and refill the dishwasher. What it isn’t long enough for is much of anything else.  Now I realize at eight weeks we aren’t really going to have a “rhythm” down yet… but is there anything I can do to encourage her to sleep longer?  If she could get in a two hour nap at some point I think she would do better in the evenings.  We tend to have an all out baby melt-down some time between 4:30p and 7:00p.  She becomes inconsolable and it takes 20 minutes plus to get her to relax enough to even eat.

I would love any advice that you mamas out there in cyber-mommy-space are able to share.

Kate defended her actions to Life & Style saying that as a mother it’s her job to discipline her children how she sees fit.

So what do you think… does Kate have the right to spank her kids?  Is spanking a form of child abuse or is it a discipline tool that from time to time some parents choose to use?  Leave ChitChatMom a comment and let me know what you think?

The debate about the two options (and really there is a third, you can do a combo of both) has really heated up over on MomLogic where freelance publicist Christina Montoya Fiedler admitted that breastfeeding was not for her and then got a smattering of both positive and negative responses from moms.  One breastfeeding proponent mom went so far as to tell Christina that she was “selfish” and didn’t care about what was best for her baby.  Hey ladies… perhaps breast isn’t always best?!  Just because something works for you doesn’t mean that it’s going to work for everyone.

Be sure to check out Christina’s update on MomLogic and see what other moms had to say in response to her original blog post, “Breastfeeding Is Not for Me.”

Benefits of cloth diapers:

• Less diaper rash (I’ve read that this is true… don’t know for sure)
• Baby’s isn’t exposed to the chemicals and plastics in disposable diapers
• Children learn to potty train faster (they can feel the wetness of a cloth diaper more and the discomfort is an incentive to learn to use the potty).
• Less expensive than disposable.  
• Eco-friendly  

Disadvantages of cloth diapers:

• Somebody’s literally gotta scoop out the poop 
• More laundry to wash
• More prone to leaks than disposable diapers (could cause some pretty messy situations)
• Overall more work 

Advantages of disposable diapers:

• Convenience
• Availability (any corner drugstore sells them, so in a pinch you can always buy a bag of them).
• Did I mention convenience?

Disadvantages of disposable diapers:

• Expense 
• Terrible for the Earth
• Baby skin is exposed to the chemicals in the diaper and the plastics

So there are the pros and cons as I see them.  Now what’s a mom to do?  Before I got pregnant I honestly thought I had my mind made up about this issue.  We were going to go with cloth diapers.  Now that there are only 14 weeks left and I’m already exhausted, I’m leaning more towards the disposable diaper route for the sake of convenience .  Of course, at the end of the day, I want to do whatever is best for the baby girl… and I wouldn’t mind helping the environment (and our bank account) by using cloth diapers.

So I’m asking for your advice mamas.  Which way shall I go?  Cloth or disposable diapers?  Those are the choices… but which one is the right one?

As I have yet to be fully initiated into motherhood (this should happen around mid-August) I can’t give my two sense as someone who has experienced it, but I can say “yeah” I do think the media gets worked up over little things and often ignores the bigger issues.  Take for example the media obsession this week with the Gosselin family.  ”Is Jon cheating? Did Jon cheat?  How will Kate handle it?”  

I admit to being a fan of the show, Jon & Kate Plus 8.  I don’t set my TiVo to record it, but if it’s on I will often tune in to watch an episode or two.   I enjoy watching the kids interact with one another and seeing that at the end of every episode Jon and Kate have survived with eight kids.  It makes me feel confident that I can handle one just fine.  (Hold the phone. Why would I think I can’t handle one just fine? Hmm…  maybe I have the media to thank for that sudden lack of mommy confidence.)

When a certain tabloid mag “confirmed the fact” that Jon was having an affair it caught a lot of people’s attention.  When it all was said and done and I had read just about every story on the web there was to read about it, (I admit it, I did, I got caught up too) I was frustrated to see that Kate seemed to be getting a bad rap.  Not that Jon was getting off free and clear, (whether he’s truly guilty of cheating or not) but there was some insinuation that Kate might deserve this. That somehow because she corrects Jon’s grammar in episodes of the show or because she has a “take charge” attitude that maybe she pushed him to seek out “greener pastures”. I gotta say mamas, this is bupkis.  You don’t cheat on your wife whether you’ve got eight kids or zero kids.  If you want out… you get out.  You don’t “sneak” out.

When you put the media hype about Jon and Kate Gosselin’s relationship into the context of what the Momversation moms were saying in the video… you get just another example of how the media likes to show the downside of mommyhood.  ”Don’t have eight kids.  You’re husband will leave you.”  Instead of praising Kate for being a mom to eight kids they had to make fun of her hair, question her motives for doing the show and suggest that maybe she was the reason Jon got himself in this mess in the first place.  Thanks media, you’ve done so much for motherhood this week, considering that tomorrow is Mother’s Day and all.

Be sure to check out the blogs of all the Momversation panelists that contributed to the video; Alice Bradley – Finslippy, Asha Dornfest – Parent Hacks, Dana Loesch – Mamalogues, Giyen Kim – Bacon is My Enemy and Karen Walrond – Chookooloonks.

Let ChitChatMom know what you think?  Is the media in line or way out of whack? Leave a comment!

For the ninth year in a row, the team at Salary.com have come up with what they believe is the amount of money moms would earn if they were compensated for all of their “mom” related work.  Their calculations add up to some pretty hefty numbers.  According to their findings, stay-at-home moms would earn $122, 372 and working moms would earn $76,184 in addition to the paycheck they already bring home. That’s some serious money mamas.  Of course, it’s also some serious work.  

Moms, whether they stay home or work outside of the home, find themselves doing all sorts of “mom tasks” and jobs that add up to a lot of overtime.  While it’s interesting and a little fun to see the numbers, the cold hard truth is that moms just aren’t seeing that cash.  Instead they’re working to balance (okay, juggle might be a better word for it) family, work, school, etc. and get paid in hugs and kisses from their kids (and hopefully their partners) for all their hard work.  So don’t forget this Mother’s Day to show your own mom some love.  She might not be cleaning up after you anymore… but she did once and it’s unlikely anybody paid her for it.

Want to know what you’re worth?  Use the Mom Salary Wizard online at salary.com to calculate your “mom pay”.