Their new book, “Good Enough is the New Perfect,” brings their experiences interviewing over a hundred working mothers – and surveying over 800 more – about work, life, mothering, breathing space, and striving for the best that we can possibly be into a compact, easily digestible book that is a must for anyone beating themselves up over motherhood.  Or work.  Or the combination.

The book has hundreds of examples and showcases just as many ways of making it work.  It’s this decade’s compendium of how we’re making it work, and it’s a great read, browse, or just-carry-around-because-you’re-so-busy-book.  Check it out.  Take a breath.  And realize – you are working hard, and you can achieve great things.

Perfect is optional.

Disclosure: I was sent this book to review by Hollee and Becky (or their publicist – who remembers?); I received no compensation for this post.  Which is good, because it’s about two months late.

I bought the book myself, at the conference market, and received no compensation for this post.

The concept is simple – play a card, and check to see if it matches any of the other players’ top cards in shape or color.  If it does, grab the totem!  First one to grab the totem wins the round, and the other player takes both stacks of cards.

The game shifts with the addition of three special cards, alike enough to be a challenge, but different enough that a quick 5 year old can play — and keep pace with Mom or Dad.  We were sent this game to check out recently, and it’s quickly become one of our go-to games.

Disclosure: I was mailed a game to review; I received no compensation for this post.

Disclosure clause: No product or compensation was received for this review.

The water tastes clean and fresh, and the water station (you’ll want to buy extra bottles, or use your own aluminium ones by holding them up to the spouts) makes refilling them over and over again very easy.

Thanks, 3M, for this great new product!

Disclosure clause: No product or compensation was received for this review.

What I didn’t expect was how much more fun we’d have with it when we put the CD in and customized it, which I finally did this weekend.  Now each of the boys have their own login, customized with their name, picture, favorite colors — and the included story picks up on the favorites that I entered, so the story is slightly different for each kid! 

I also spent a little time uploading some favorite pictures of family and friends, as well as MP3 files of our favorite kids’ CDs — and now the iXL is their very own digital picture frame (with full-featured doodle program for them to customize their own pictures!) AND MP3 player.  Which means we now have music whereever we go – and with a good speaker so that they (and only they) can hear their music in the backseat of the car, at Grandma’s house, or in the playroom, even if I forget to turn the music on!

Which I do sometimes.  Motherhood?  Is demanding.  This little device empowers my kids to flip through photos and play their own music — I’m sure we’ll be using it a lot this holiday season! 

Now, where did I put that Christmas music?

Disclosure: Fisher Price sent me an iXL to review after BlogHer. 

Before I had kids, I had visions of perfectly arranged Playmobil sets dotting the living room – the veterinary office, the zoo, the fire station.  Then I had kids, and I saw how fickle a young child’s interest can be, and I satisfied this craving with a bag of secondhand Playmobil from the church garage sale.  But that bag contained two castles, just right for a battle, and the children and I put it together and play with it every so often.

Then the mail came on Wedesday, bringing two of Playmobil’s latest creations: the Knights Take Along Tower and the Pirates Take Along Dungeon.  My kids were hooked.  The littlest claimed the dungeon (“You’re in the dungeon!” being one of his favorite pronouncements) and my kindergartner was happy to take ownership of the castle and its knights.  They happily played for an hour, battling knights vs. pirates, putting the accessories on and off, and most particularly firing the cannon at each other (one comes in each set). 

It’s been four days now, and the mock battles continue.  The tower and dungeon each have a handle for easy carrying (by them, no less!) and all the pieces fold up inside for easy cleanup.  This is a great new addition to our playroom – and our travel kit, where they will surely go along to Grandma and Grandpa’s house, most likely with a couple of the Unicorn Take Along Castles for their girl cousins.  The easy cleanup and low price ($12.99) make these an attractive gift for any child 4-7 who likes battles, cannon, and/or lots and lots of small pieces and accessories.

Disclosure:  I received Playmobil’s Knights Take Along Tower and the Pirates Take Along Dungeon for this review. 

For the status of HR 4662 in Congress and to view the list of cosponsors visit http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-4662.

We support the Lymphedema Treatment Act of 2010 and will bring more information as it moves through Congress over the next year.

• Art and music instruction for children in El Salvador, Mozambique, or Romania: $20;
• A year of education for one child: $32; or even
• Shop the sale: $550 worth of school supplies for a village in need: $50.

I’m going with the sale — the school supply donation that is matched 10x by corporate sponsors. Because I can’t resist a bargain.

This year, I’m going to let my kids shop this catalog instead of the Toys R Us catalog that made its way into their hands last year. We’re going to talk about choosing to give instead of get. I wonder what they’ll choose — pigs? Ducks? New clothes for kids to wear to school?  I can’t wait to find out.

Disclosure clause: Not sponsored.

I’m so excited that I just had to tell someone! 

We did it the easy way this year.  Last week, we were all set to take pictures of the kids in their Halloween costumes.  They were so adorable – Widget was a tiger and Little Bear dressed up like a dalmation puppy, with gentle puppy barks “ruff! ruff!” as he held his paws in front of him and hopped like our puppies did this summer.  Since this is the first year the kids have worn costumes, I lined ‘em up and took a picture.  Since Grandma and Grandpa were here, I popped them in the picture too.  Then we took a family photo, since we hadn’t since June when Amie took our photos.  They came out so wonderfully that I decided to use them in our Christmas cards!

I hopped on Shutterfly last Monday, uploaded three family pictures, and cropped them so that even though none were perfect, there are three awesome photos on the card – one of all four of us, one a close-up of the boys (that was originally a picture with Grandma and Grandpa), and one a close-up of the hubs and me (where the kids were just not looking in the same directions).  I chose a template featuring the word JOY, added our names, and click! Done.

Done.

(There’s a lot to be said for done.)

I chose the 4×8 glossy cards this year, because of the pictures I had available, but I’ve been very happy with the 5×7 cards in years past.  There’s even a new cardstock option that seems quite elegant.  I haven’t used those before, but I ordered one with a coupon code (CARD4U) that I found on their site, and the quality is quite nice. 

My holiday cards should come today, and I can’t wait to see them!

Disclosure clause: This post is part of Shutterfly’s blogger outreach for their 2010 collection.  By including these links in the post I was going to write anyway, Shutterfly will send me a coupon for 50 free stationery cards.  Hope you don’t mind — I’ve used Shutterfly for every Christmas card we’ve sent since the kids were born, so you know I really do believe in their product.  I paid for the cards I’ve already ordered myself.