MOM BUZZ

Moms are talking about....

Metronaps: Jetson-style pods designed for naps on the run (www.metronaps.com) -- the stuff of which a sleep-deprived mother’s fantasies are made.

YummyMummyCareers.com: An online job bank that specializes in matching up career-minded moms with family-friendly employers (www.yummymummycareers.com) – the smart mommy track.

Inconsolable: How I Threw Out My Mental Health With the Diapers by Marrit Ingman (Seal Books) —a brave and honest account of how crazymaking new motherhood can be when baby has colic and you are struggling with postpartum depression.

Rememberthemilk.com: A free online organizing tool that lets you organize your life in a series of easy-to-use to do lists. Finally: an organizing tool that thinks the same way as a mom’s brain!

Confessions of a Naughty Mommy: How I Found My Lost Libido by Heidi Raykeil (Seal Press) —a tell-all account of how one mom’s sex life went AWOL after the birth of her baby—and what it took to get it back.

How items from baby’s change bag can double as “mom stuff.” Case in point: Munchskins Skin Care Avocado Cleansing Bar ($6, 65 g, www.munchskins.com) makes a soft and gentle beauty bar for moms. And the ultra-funky leopard-print Kiddo receiving blanket ($21 for two) can find new life as a table runner once baby is finished with it.

Mealtime Assembly Stores: Storefront operations that provide you with everything you need to prepare up to a dozen dinners in under two hours. And because the operators of these mealtime assembly stores encourage their customers to hit the kitchen with a group of friends, mealtime preparation is every bit as much about having a good time as it is about taking home a cooler full of yummy ready-to-cook meals. The U.S.-based Easy Meal Prep Association lists six Canadian members so far: Oakville’s SupperWorks, Kelowna’s Dinner Solutions, Edmonton’s Dinner Revolution, and Calgary’s Dashing Dishes and Entrées Express.

D*I*Y Planner: A free downloadable planner that can be customized to suit your life. You’ll find calendar pages, receipt trackers, and creativity tools galore. www.diyplanner.com/templates/official/classic

The Birth House: A first novel by Nova Scotia writer Ami McKay. Set in Scots Bay, Nova Scotia, where the author lives, The Birth House chronicles the history of childbirth and midwifery (Toronto: Random House, 2006, $29.95).

The "mom business card" (a.k.a. "mommy cards"). Check out Eventbliss.com, Reaganbridgeen.com, and FabulousStationery.com for some particularly fun examples of the mom business card stationery trend in general.

Pregnancy lit—an offshoot of "mommy lit" (which was itself an offset of "chick lit"). Two recent additions to the genre include Sarah Bilston's Bed Rest (which chronicles a mom-to-be's three months on bed rest) and Malena Lott's The Stork Reality (a novel about an unplanned pregnancy).

Parent Hacks: a collaborative weblog of "tips, recommendations, workarounds, and bits of wisdom" (a.k.a. hacks) served up by the true experts—real moms and dads (www.parenthacks.com).

Flickr: an online photo management and photo sharing website that is constantly reinventing itself to make itself even more useful (and addictive). You can show off your favorite photos to the entire world or keep those too-cute pictures of your kids as private as you'd like (www.flickr.com).