This post is #3 in a four-part series sponsored by Dell. Leave a comment for a chance to win a Dell Inspiron One 2320 Touch computer! See end of post for details!

Since the day after Halloween I’ve been pitched all kinds of holiday/Christmas/Hannukah/New Years/Kwanza/Solstice phone apps for miles. There’s the one where you follow Santa on Christmas Eve (which I blogged about last week). Hell, there’s even one where you follow Hanukkah Harry on Christmas eve!

No there isn’t. But I did find this which is totally awesome and weird. Anyway. In the spirit of the season, I thought I’d pitch a few of my very own holiday applications.

1. Surround Smell: Christmas Tree Edition We will not be getting a Christmas tree this year (nor have we ever had a Christmas tree) … maybe because we’re leaning more toward Jewish traditions in our home but also, next week we’ll be in San Diego with my family where we all shop for a tree and decorate it together. Still. There is NOTHING festive about our house right now and that’s kind of sad. The smell of Christmas trees would certainly do this guy some good. I’m kind of totally craving me some holiday spirit right about now. See next app:

2. The Zooey Deschanel: She sings. She dances. She says all the right things. She even loves and dates elves. What more could someone want in a friend this time of year? Download “The Zooey D” and you’re sure to be festive and a lot more fun than you currently feel, typing this post in your sweatpants and Baby Bjorn with a pacifier tangled in your hair.

…I kind of want to live inside the Zooey D app, actually. Can someone in App-land (Appalachia?) make that APPen? (Sorry. I had to.)

3. The White Christmas 24/7 App: Have I ever told you I’m obsessed with White Christmas? If it was up to me I’d have it playing 24/7 on my television year round. Or in this case, my mobile device. I would appreciate Bing Crosby as my ringer, actually. OR “Sisters” by the Haynes sisters thankyouverymuch.

4. The Keep it All Together, Woman, What is your Problem!??? App:  This one not only organizes and sorts through holiday madness by compartmentalizing it all so you don’t have to, but ALSO decides which teacher gets what gift and what donations go where and which boxes should be sign(ed) for what items on which wish list(s) and what date/time the recital(s) are and OH GOD, I only have two kids to keep straight and I’m already failing and confused! AHHHH!

5. The NApp: An App that covers for you while you hibernate in your car for a day or two or twelve.

6. The Stop and Smell Your Family App – Sometimes, with all the craziness and the business and engagements one forgets what this time of year is all about: sitting around a fire with the people you love. I’ve been so stressed out and emotional and weird these last few weeks that I’ve forgotten how much I love this time of year. I’d like an app to help me get back on track, please.

Christmas 2010, decorating the gingerbread house with (a tiny! so young looking!) Fable

This post is part two in another four-part series sponsored by Dell. Thanks, Dell! You can read my other posts, and posts from other writers, at the Dell Family Tech page.

***

When I was a little girl, my parents read my siblings and me The Night Before Christmas on Christmas eve.  We’d read the book and imagine Santa preparing his sleigh. We’d open the fireplace, put out the cookies, write letters of thanks, climb into our beds and wait… until we fell asleep. Part of the magic was not knowing where Santa was or when he’d show up or which kind of cookies were his favorite. (We made sure to put out a fancy selection so he could choose what he preferred.) No one really knew WHAT exactly he looked like because every TV and Mall Santa were CLEARLY impostors. Santa was magical because he was a mystery.

But childhood is different now. In the age of Google, nothing (nobody) is mysterious. Least of all  Santa Claus. I went ahead and googled “is Santa real?” and this is what it pulled up: a million broken pieces of my childhood soul spoilers.

Of course, most kids old enough to google know the “truth” but what of those who want to believe longer? A little girl named Katie spoiled my fun in 3rd grade and I’ve never forgiven her for that. And while we’re busy trying to keep the magic alive for our kids by keeping them away from google, what about all the Santa apps and Twitter Santas and websites devoted to Santa and all his realness?

I don’t know what’s worse: googling that Santa isn’t real or following Santa on Twitter. The Santa I knew would NEVER tweet. He was far too ancient a being for such modern shenanigans! He drove a sleigh for chrissakes! And lived in a house with no indoor plumbing!

Hal and I talked about this last year after we all huddled around Google Maps together watching Santa and his sleigh via tracking satellite, Archer wide-eyed and riveted. Hal never had a Santa so for him, it’s ALL special. And mysterious. And magical. I realized this when I sat down to join them on Hal’s laptop, eyes glued to Google maps. And I’ll admit that for a moment there, my eyes were glued, too.

Because it did feel kind of magical. A different kind of magic than the one I grew up with but magical still…

This post is part one in another four-part series sponsored by Dell. Thanks, Dell! You can read my other posts, and posts from other writers, at the Dell Family Tech page.

***

In our household, this is a very special week. And not because it’s Thanksgiving tomorrow. No. This week we will be celebrating our first annual Rebecca Black Friday when instead of shopping, we join hands as a family and dance to the viral music videos of Youtube in honor of our Friday night theme-song songstress, Rebecca Black.

I was first introduced to Ms. Black via Hal who knows about every viral video weeks before it goes viral. I don’t know quite how he does it. I do know that it was he who turned me on to the Honeybadger video when it had less than one thousand views. (ED: Hal just informed me that I am completely unoriginal and that Kohls is trying to steal my holiday! In his words: “You’re a few weeks late with that joke.” My response: “Damnit, I don’t care! I’m going to embrace my late-to-the-Rebecca-Black-Joke-party and write this post, anyway! ) Now that everyone knows about my husband’s viral-video-pyschic genius (and my late-to-the-partyness), I’d like to talk for a moment about Rebecca Black, who, yes, I know is SO last year but that’s exactly why she’s worth celebrating, along with her peers, this Friday.

If you ask Fable who her favorite “artists” are she will list them in this order: Rebecca Black, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga. If you ask Archer, Jimmy Fallon will be on his list but only because Jimmy Fallon, Steve Colbert and Taylor Hicks’ cover of Friday is Archer’s favorite thing to watch on my computer (besides stop-motion car videos, obviously.)

Fable, rocking out to Jimmy Fallon’s Friday back when it first aired

In fact, some of our finest family times this year have been soundtracked by Ms. Black and her weekend shenanigans. We LOVE her and not in an ironic way, Silverlake. We actually truly love her and think Friday is the catchiest song of the year. Even though, yes, okay… it came out last year. (So far nothing in 2011 has been that catchy, real talk.)

Yesterday I told Fable “she looked beautiful in her sandwich” and by “sandwich” I meant “headband” because sandwiches and headbands are very easy to confuse, obviously. The day before that, I got frustrated because my leggings were being super weird when I tried to put them on. And by super weird I mean: a sweater. And then I walked down to the corner store to buy an Avocado to have with the Quinuevos Rancheros I was planning to make for dinner and left the store with a bunch of weird tea instead. Weird tea and no avocado. And on Monday, while waiting for Archer outside his school, I got seduced into having an actual conversation with an adult human. And it went like this:

Parent: “Hey, Rebecca! How’s it going?”

Me: “Hi… you!” (Totally forgot her name.) I’m so… here. I’m… going to go see… what? How’s the backpack drop questions for the night shift? What am I saying! I haven’t slept in, like, sick. I’m sick. That’s why my voice is. How’s your day?

Parent: What? Oh. I’m fine.

Me: Don’t listen to my voice because it doesn’t know to talk when mind is ready for answers!

Parent: Oh, okay.

Me: English is not first my language I know. I’m… having a day for lots of thinking. Did you sign up for the thing to go to the trip for Thanksgiving lunch? I made a check out to the person in the room I hope they got it.

And worse than that, I went on. And on. And on… it was like the more I kept talking gibberish, the more I assumed I needed to continue talking. Gibberish. Perhaps to make up for my nonsense with sense. Except… no.

The next day, I tried to explain “yesterday’s talking problem” as an effect of the extreme sleep deprivation I was enduring but the word “deprivation” was replaced by a neighborhood in Queens.

“Sorry about yesterday. I was dealing with sleep astoria.”

I have no idea where that came from. But after that, I shut my mouth, the end.

And don’t even get me started on the amount of time it takes me to write a post these days, and that’s not just because I’m writing one-handed, with a baby in my left arm. My brain is mush which is not ideal when it’s your job to sit at a computer every day and compose coherent sentences.

The night I went into labor my mom packed her bags and drove up to LA to be with us. And on Monday, exactly two months later, my mom will pack her bags and go home. Back to her life, leaving us with ours. This is not easy for any of us, especially my mother who every time we bring it up looks as if she might cry, afraid that without her we might self-destruct, which seems incredibly possible, I’ll be honest.

Yesterday I went into my closet to pick out something to wear for the day and for whatever reason, lost it. Okay so there WAS absolutely a reason. I had spent the last several days sick in and out of bed in the same hole-in-the-ass pajama pants and getting dressed seemed completely overwhelming in that moment. So overwhelming I cried. Which is kind of hilarious now in retrospect but at the time I was not laughing. After several minutes spent sobbing into a sweater, I finally slapped myself in the face, stood up and chose something (not the sweater) to wear out of my room and into the kitchen, where my mother stood at the sink cleaning bottes…

…And then I sobbed into her sweater. Which was SO much nicer than sobbing into my sweater because her sweater happened to be attached to HER and she had wisdom and advice and hugs… which I needed. Which I NEED, you know?

I have mixed feelings over all the changes that are occurring. My mom has been like a seventh member of our little immediate family and I don’t want anyone to replace her. It makes me feel weird and I don’t know, anxious? In fact writing about it right now is giving me diarrhea stomach. (Gross, sorry.)

Over the past few weeks I’ve been asked on several occasions what items are must-haves for the multiples mom-to-be. It took me a few weeks to round up my ABSOLUTE musts but here goes. Annnnnnnd GO:

Double Snap n Go (1) by: Babytrend $87

Babytrend is the only one who makes a double “Snap n’ Go” and it’s awesome. The price is right, it’s super practical (lots of space under the seats, can fit through doorways) and it’s the only stroller we’re using right now. Our plan is to rock it for as long as the girls fit into their infant carseats, which brings me to:

Peg Perego Infant Carseats $279

As a super generous gift my Nana bought us the (above) carseat(s) for the twins and they’re amazing. By far the nicest infant seats I’ve seen. They’re actually PHYSICALLY attractive as well as being well designed and safe for babies 5lbs and up. (Reverie was exactly 5lbs when she was released from the NICU and she was able to safely come home in this seat.)

Contoured Changing Pad (Portable) (various prices)

I’ve been sleeping in the living room for the past five+ weeks since the babies came home from the hospital so every night, I set up shop in the dining room, prepare bottles, arrange the changing pad on the table, surround it with diapers, changes of clothes et al and get ready for my night of napping on the couch between feedings. (This way I don’t wake Hal and he can get a full night of sleep and work on a full brain.) I do realize the portable changing pad is kind of the only changing pad that exists so this is pretty much just a reminder to take full advantage of its portableness. No need for a changing table when you have a bed and/or furniture to plop a portable pad. Just make sure it’s of the contoured variety.

Boppy Pillows (2) $25 each (does not include slip-covers which you will also need)

We heart Boppy Pillows. They’re ideal for mothers both nursing and not. (I nursed/pumped for the first six weeks and am now feeding solely with formula. More on that soon.) Boppy pillows are SO TOTALLY helpful for those with cluster-feeding twins. I know some twin mothers tandem nurse which is AMAZING. I, however, am not, so when both babies wake hungry at once and I’m alone I prop them both in the Boppy, bottle in each hand and rock. Without the Boppy, I don’t know how this would work. And having two is ideal for when friends and family, and/or nannies lend a hand. The girls also enjoy being propped in their Boppys on the couch while I work.

Baby Bjorn Bouncy Seat, $132

Without the Bjorn Bouncers I don’t know that I would ever have a hands-free moment. Swings are great, too (I don’t have a particular swing to recommend. They’re all basically the same?) but the Bjorn bouncers are extremely portable, super easy to clean and in use pretty much all day long. When we eat? Babies sit in their bouncers. When the kids are all home and I can’t carry babies on my person? Bouncer central. They’re actually seldom in their crib, even to nap. (They prefer napping in the Bouncer and I don’t blame them. It looks CRAZY comfortable in there, all canvas-y and awesome. Investing in TWO bouncy seats is a must and the Bjorns are by far my favorite. (They’re also fab for soothing fussy baby #1 while feeding hungry baby #2 . I can feed one baby and bounce the other with the tap of my feet and feel very accomplished indeed.)

Dr. Browns Bottles $21 (with preemie nipples)

Because I was pumping breast milk and supplementing with formula since day one, and my babies were in the NICU for two weeks, they bottle fed more than they nursed. (If your babies are in the NICU they will be fed with bottles in the beginning so the nurses can monitor their food intake.) Because of this, they preferred the Dr. Browns bottles to all of the other bottles we purchased. And because of the slow flow of the hospital nipples, even the standard infant nipple was too fast a flow for the girls. Most stores don’t carry the preemie nipples so you’ll have to order (or register for) them online.

Many thanks to Dell and Babble for providing me with this awesome Dell Inspiron computer + another to give away to a reader! This post is part four of my four-part series sponsored by Dell. You can read my other posts, and posts from other writers, at the Dell Family Tech page.

***

The other night while up at all-hours, I picked up the phone that had wedged itself in the couch cushions between myself, Boheme (who was asleep on my chest) and Reverie, who was gazing at the wall in her Boppy pillow. I was feeling a little on the lonely side in the way new moms feel lonely – isolated and angsty. In love with my babies, sure, but also craving some adult companionship outside of our cocoon of boppys and bottles. So? I dialed up twitter.

One of the first tweets to appear on the screen of my cell was tagged #zombiemoms and mentioned something about 3am feedings which I had just, moments before, survived. Bo and Rev were awake and STARVING at the same time which made for a very chaotic experience of nursing one babe with my left arm and bottle feeding the other with my right. (I’m still doing solo night shifts so Hal can get enough sleep to function at work. In the mornings, after my mom takes the kids to school, she takes the babies so I can sleep a few hours.)

with Reverie, one of my two napping buddies

…Anyway, I had just come off my 3am feeding, desperate to hear from my fellow night-feeders, when I first saw the #zombiemoms tag. I searched “zombiemoms” and pulled up dozens (hundreds?) of other tweets, all from moms from every which where, up at all hours of the night with newborns like mine. I scrolled through… read about how one mom hadn’t slept in two days, another mom whose baby was so colicky she had to bounce on a yoga ball just to keep him quiet as not to wake the toddler she had sleeping in the other room. I read endless tweets about exhaustion and anger and guilt. About joy and love and happiness. About loneliness and postpartum depression, about breastfeeding pain and bottle-feeding guilt and, peppered throughout, the loving responses of other moms in the same exact boat.

Incredible, I thought. And it was. It is.

When I first started Girl’s Gone Child it was because I was desperate to trade stories with my peers, other mothers, parents. None of my friends had children and mom groups intimidated me. I was dying to communicate with someone, anyone, dealing with the same sleeplessness and frustration and joy. Someone my age. Or older. Or younger. someone willing to share honestly and openly. Strangers willing to become friends: moms with dot coms, dads with .typepads.

In 2005 when Archer was born, there was no twitter. But there were bloggers, like me, writing about the experience of new parenthood and the challenges therin. And it meant everything to me. People like Dutch and Wood of Sweet Sweet Juniper, Stefania of CityMama, Heather of Dooce, Pierre Kim of Metrodad, The WeirdGirl… Their stories were there for me when a so-called “mom parent group” wasn’t. Their voices carried and carried me through…

I like to think that, in a way, I am returning the favor. That we all are and that’s why we’re here. We blog and tweet and write on each other’s facebook walls as reminders to ourselves and each other that we’re not alone. We post at all hours of the night so that other parents and peers can find us flashing away like lighthouse towers, and sail toward shore.

The following post (three of four) is sponsored by DELL and their fancy new Inspiron All-in-One 2320 Computer which (hooray!) is up for grabs for giveaway! (See rules and regs below.) Thanks, Dell! You = awesome.

***

The day I was discharged from the hospital, miserable and sore, empty-handed with two newborns in the NICU, Hal brought me home, sat me down and handed me a present. Yes, a present.

“Don’t yell. This is not a push present. This is a ‘you need this and refuse to buy yourself one so I will’ present. It just happens that you just gave birth.”

The gift was a new laptop he had purchased the day after Bo & Rev were born after seeing me struggle to write from my hospital bed on a five -year-old laptop, a chunk missing from the right side and a wifi stick that seldom worked. (My wifi broke over a year ago and I’ve been using a wifi stick ever since.)

Hal had been trying to convince me to buy myself a new laptop for the last several months. But I LOVED my old laptop. It had soul, man! Like a vintage artifact!  Of course WORKING on a vintage artifact is not ideal and no matter how hard I wax poetic about the allure of typewriters and rotary telephones, they’re impractical in today’s world of tomorrowland.

I have a hard time reconciling this. Perhaps I’ve read far too much post-war Parisian literature about writers banging away on hundred year old machines so that new gadgetry doesn’t appeal to me at all…

And yet the world requires we make upgrades so that we can compete in a tech-based society. That’s especially true for those of us who make our living in a technical field. For instance blogging on a defunct machine is just stupid on my part. And yet… it took me several weeks to pull Hal’s generous gift out of its box and put it to use.

The following post (two of four) is sponsored by DELL and their fancy new Inspiron All-in-One 2320 Computer which (hooray!) is up for grabs for giveaway! (See rules and regs below.) Thanks, Dell! You = awesome.

***

I recently bought a pair of shoes on my phone. I was in a boutique, fell in love with a pair of shoes that did not exist in my massively-large shoe size (10) so I quickly googled the brand on my phone, found a pair on Shop Bop, bought them and left the store. A few days later they arrived and were gorgeous. And ill-fitting. Of course, by the time I tried on the shoes I had already misplaced the packing receipt and the box was repurposed for Archer and Fable’s new “castle fort” and I was like, “Oh screw it. Maybe one day my feet will shrink and fit into these suckers.”

I’ll justify anything NOT to have to send it back. Which is why I’ve never been a good online shopper. Etsy? Rules. I buy every gift on Etsy for the most part but ordering anything else online has always been a disaster for me. Because I ALWAYS find a way to order things that don’t fit me. And then I’m screwed because I’m too lazy busy to send it back. Or I lose the receipt. Or the box. Or I have to buy a new box and stand in line at the post office for 67 hours and then pay for shopping (lost the packing receipt with the regular receipt) and then me trying to “save time” by shopping online backfires and I’m late to pick the kids up from school, grouchy because the guy in line at the post office accused me of cutting (when I would NEVER cut ever) and the after all of that, I forgot to buy stamps! And we needed stamps BAD! AHHHH!

So, anyway. I recently bought shoes on my phone and then swore off every buying anything wearable on my phone (or online) again. FINDING items online is one thing, like this bag for instance which after weeks of perusing the Internet (and two whole blog posts devoted to the search) I finally found one. On Nordstrom.com. But instead of buying it online, I jumped in my car and headed to the mall.

ed: shot-vac sold separately

THOSE WERE THE DAYS. Now? Jumping in the car is not an option.

(Remind me to tell you the story about how after two hours of prep and rallying the posse to get into the car to go for ice cream, Boheme decided to have a poop explosion and then Reverie woke up starving and then, after driving approximately three feet off the driveway, I put the damn van in park and we all went back inside, where I busted open a box of popsicles and called it a night.) Wait. I guess I just told you the story. Please ignore me. I am sleep deprived.

Sigh.

For the last few years I listened to parents swear by doing ALL of their shopping online and I’ll be honest I was always like, “Is it really THAT hard to get out of the house? Pulease.”

“Don’t knock it ’til you try it,” I was told by a friend with two toddlers.

I told her that shopping online for things like paper towels and tampons made me fel like a weird Internet vampire. That was before leaving the house became highly unlikely.