Happy Birthday! Cribsheet is officially two! Yes two years ago today a blog was born. May wrote an article that appeared in the paper announcing our community of new parents to the world. Time flies when you’re having fun (and lively discussions)!

Birthdays are a time to be reflective. Looking back on the year since our first birthday, here are just a few some highlights:

Cribsheet was nominated for a regional Emmy and we remain just that. Emmy nominees. (but we had a great night out!) 

Baby Vivian was born …the day the Gingko leaves fell.  

May survived on another 24 hour plane ride to Malaysia with two little ones.

We’ve laughed a lot and have had great discussions daily.

We’ve also cried on our keyboards more than we ever imagined: 

Brave and wise Sophie’s story,

Colleen Lindstrom shared Brady’s story

And then one brief e-mail in our in-box from Matt Logelin sent all of us reeling.

We were also able to finally meet several of you in person at our Cribsheet playdate. It was so great to put faces and names together. We hope to do more of those as we enter year three!

One statement that we hear from people over and over is how nice the Cribsheet commenters are. There are well thought out and respectful conversations happening here - such a refreshing breath of internet air - and so rare these days.  Thank you Cribsheeters! And thank you for all of your e-mails, suggestions, links to stories, and comments. Parenting, we’re all in this together.

To celebrate turning two we have a little giveaway! We will have a drawing to give away 10 of these “Cribsheet Cutie” refrigerator frame magnets to those who write the “Top Two” things you’ve learned as a parent. 

Please share your two parenting pearls of wisdom in comments below.  Funny, poignant, practical or whatever you like.  We will draw randomly from your entries and contact you for your mailing address if you’ve won.

How else might you obtain one of these frames you ask?

Come to the Star Tribune Booth at the Target Children’s Book Festival  presented by the Star Tribune. It is this Saturday 9/13. 10-5 in Hyland Park in Bloomington.  There will be a limited supply - so stop by before they run out! 

** Sorry, I neglected to put a deadline on our little contest. Please send us your “Top Two” things you’ve learned as a parent by midnight Friday, September 12.

Well, it’s been a year since our baby blog was born. Our birth announcement first appeared in the Star Tribune on September 9, 2006. 

It’s been an amazing time for Kay and me and we hope for all of you who’ve been along for the ride, weighing in on all things big and small that consume us all as new parents. We know this blog has endured because of all of you who’ve been moved to comment and share your experiences, guest-blogged, sent suggestions by e-mail, and those who simply come here to read everyday. THANK YOU!

To show our appreciation to our readers, we’ve got some fun giveaways on Cribsheet’s First Birthday. All of these revolve around posts we’ve featured in the past year.

1. An outing with MomCulture. Minneapolis mom Lenore Moritz takes parents and their young ones for private tours of art museums and private orchestera and opera performances. Yes, your toddlers are allowed to run around and yes, she feeds you lunch too.
2. A set of four “Now You Mombo” CDs by Nanci Olesen. Mombo’s mission is to “broadcast the everyday truth about motherhood (in order to save the world.)” Listen and I think you’ll see what she means…Nanci’s stories will make you laugh and cry at the same time. And finally… 
3.  A writing critique session with Kate Hopper, who teaches the Motherwords writing class at the Loft. Remember that primal scream you scribbled down in the dark of the night in between feeds? Or that book proposal now covered in dust. Kate will give you her undivided attention and honest insights on what works and what doesn’t.

And everyone is welcome to enter - don’t let the fact that the word “mom” is in every prize steer you away.

To enter -send us an e-mail (cribsheet@startribune.com) with your top choice gift and we’ll put them all in a (clean) diaper genie, shake them all about and draw the winners at random next weekend.

May and Kay (and our reasons for writing)

Many of you have probably stumbled across our blog or linked to us from the startribune.com home page. I just wanted to share how it all came about, from a glimmer in our eyes to fruition. May wrote this article that appeared in Star Tribune Source back in September.

Oh Baby It’s Blog Time

A secret locked room. Furtive comings and goings. Muted puffing sounds. For the longest time, we pumped alone.

Three, four, five women — the numbers ebbed and flowed like our milk — sharing a dreary lactation room that contained one (slightly stained) armchair, one side table and a stack of parenting magazines.

When I described it to a colleague, he said it reminded him of a story he wrote about sperm donation — same kind of room, different literature.

Then one woman tacked a makeshift schedule on the wall so we could coordinate pumping time for privacy. Others put up pictures of their babies. One day, I left a pad and pen and invited others to jot down random thoughts on parenthood and life.

My own first scribble — pen on paper! how quaint! — was a cry for help after I had gone back to work and my 4-month-old refused to take a bottle. My little Maya, the Indian iteration of which means Divine Force, showed her displeasure with a daytime hunger strike that lasted a week.

Miserable and missing my baby, I was afraid to call home for fear I’d hear the Divine Force screaming in the background.

My pumpmates consoled me by leaving web links on the pad directing me to helpful sites, or confessing to challenges of their own. Sleep deprivation. The pressures to breast-feed. One woman wrote a sweet goodbye letter to us. Her new baby made her realize she no longer wanted to spend two hours on the road every day. She was taking a job closer to home.

And so, a solitary pursuit became a little less solitary. Suddenly, it didn’t seem such a drag to troop upstairs to the secret fourth-floor pump room. There usually was something new to read and reflect on, a respite from the harried workday.

One mother, Kay Krhin, suggested we start a blog. If our small group were any indication, surely others were also bursting to share!

Luckily, our bosses at the Star Tribune agreed. The two of us — May and Kay — will write most of it, but its survival depends on you new dads and moms. We’re hoping you’ll rant or rave, join conversations and start new ones, tell us why we’re not crazy or why we are, and maybe even be a guest blogger now and then.

Is there anything as enriching as a new baby and as isolating at the same time?

Kay’s baby, Ben, is now 7 months old. She remembers when her husband went back to work, out-of-town relatives left and friends stopped bearing hot-dishes.

While Ben napped, she spent hours online, scouring parenting websites and reading message boards. But while there was a lot of stuff out there, she couldn’t find much that was local.

“I wanted to know things like, “Where can I walk indoors with my baby on a snowy day?” “What restaurants don’t look down their noses at strollers?” “Are there nearby mommy-baby yoga classes?”  ”Where are the local bargains for baby gear?”

So come on. Log on and tell us.