When I first had my daughter three years ago, my first shopping experience was when she was five weeks old.

I was stretched out, exhausted and hormonal. She was tiny, hungry and not a great shopping partner. But I needed nursing bras, so to the maternity store we went. My 34DDs had stretched to an uncomfortable 38EE and it was time to invest in some serious coverage for them.

I was horrified by what I saw. Not only was the body in the mirror someone else’s (perhaps an elephant’s or some large amphibian’s), I was unable to wear any of the cute lingerie I once enjoyed. The only bras now available to me seemed to be white, black or skin-colored, minus any of the cute, lacey embellishments that made them girly or even cute.

I nursed my daughter for a year, got pregnant again and have been nursing my son for almost 1.5 years and for all that time, I have been resigned to ugly underwear. Well, no longer.

HotMilk is a New Zealand based company that sells sexy nursing bras, camis and nightwear. I got my first set from them recently as part of my quest to be more fashionable and it was the first time in 3.5 years I actually felt sexy in my lingerie.

Why can’t we moms celebrate our new curves with underwear that celebrates it rather than grannifies it. Check it out:

I mean, why should moms have to sacrifice femininity just because we are nursing? I am glad someone finally thought of this. Now I want to see sexy orthopedic shoes. Let’s get to work on that ASAP.

I used to be a somewhat fashionable person. No, I did not have front row tickets at Fashion Week or always sport the most up to date wardrobe, but I looked presentable most of the time and wore a lot of fabulous heels.

No more.

Between pregnancy, running (which has made me ultra paranoid about foot safety), my now larger foot size and motherhood, my shoe closet has taken quite a beating in recent months and even though I have a large number of shoes, I usually alternate between Converse sneakers and my running shoes.

Shameful, I tell you.

Yesterday I left my house with the remnants of a banana mashed on my shoulder (and some in my hair), a shirt I don’t even like and the ponytail I wore to bed still in my hair. If I am thinking about the way anyone looks, it is my children. I want them to look their best because they way they look reflects on me almost more than the way I look.

It is like some secret badge of honor among mothers to look the most harried, the most exhausted, the most “mom-like” but I have had enough. This fall, I am implementing a new policy and am going to work on looking my best. It won’t be easy, especially given financial constraints, but I think between some of the cheaper, trendy stores, I should be able to find some clothing that makes me look decent.

If only I had the time to actually get dressed.

Look for posts on good park-going shoes that are also presentable as well as clothing that looks good and allows for easy, discreet nursing. Many future posts will now be dedicated to my new quest to dress well with limited time and two children under three. Hopefully I will have tips that will help other moms not end up looking like this:

People ask me all the time how I manage to stay fit and train for the marathon I am running this Sunday while also staying home with two little ones.

The answer? Juggling. A lot of it. Well, that and a good jogging stroller.

Recently, however, my 2.5-year-old daughter has declared the jogging stroller old news and prefers to walk beside me. While I appreciate that she gets exercise and also like the fact that she is fast on her feet and can go for miles (yes, miles. She has walked up to three miles with me before!), I also need to get my run in if I have any hope of being fast for this thing.

Enter her new “favorite toy” and the love of my life:

This is a Kickboard Scooter and is technically designed for children 3-5, but for my daughter, who is way too young for a razor scooter (even their younger model with three wheels), this is perfect.

We are using the scooter to teach her about helmet safety and she is pretty good about understanding that the helmet goes with the scooter. Hopefully this little lesson will take her into her school years (we also insist she use it with her wooden balance bike, which I will talk about more when she is old enough to really ride it).

The thing I like best about this scooter is that she can really go fast on it, but I am not worried about her at all. She steers it by shifting her weight as opposed to turning her hands, which might throw her off balance on a real scooter. She loves it because she gets to feel like a big kid and it makes her feel independent.

Plus, it just looks cool. She loves to tell people about, “my scooter! My scooter” and I love that it keeps both her (and me) active. It is also great for those of use who live in the city. She can take it on short walks to the store or the bakery and I don’t have to worry about jamming a giant stroller through the aisles.

If your kid can walk and has started protesting the stroller, look into this scooter. It has made my life infinitely easier.

I always thought it was a bit narcissistic when people used someone else's loss or grief as an excuse to "count their own blessings." But last night when I heard of the death of a local 4-year-old, I did just that.

I crept into Sam's room and curled beside the tangled mess she had become since R put her down two hours earlier, a crumbled pile of blankets on top of her, her hair matted and sweaty, thumb white and dimpled from her mouth. I curled into her and she sighed and nestled beside me and all I could think was thank god it was not her. And yet, I know it could have been. At any moment it could be any one of us.

It is easy in the moments—when she is fighting me not get dressed, insisting on taking toys to school when it is against the rules or pushing her brother's buttons—to forget just how much I adore her and how lucky I am to have both her and Alan in my life and not in the cliched sense, either. I don't find motherhood easy. I never will.

Perhaps some people keep a clean home, make stellar organic meals from scratch and always plan fun and intellectually stimulating activities for their children while also managing to keep smiling and having sex with their spouses. That person is not me, much as I wish it were.

I find motherhood exhausting and challenging so it is easy to forget in moments just how blessed and lucky we are. We had two healthy and easy pregnancies that produced two healthy, happy children of each sex. We have a marriage that is even stronger today than the day we were married and we are best friends.

Sometimes it feels wrong to count our blessings, as if we will anger the gods by being grateful. But at other times it is so necessary to remind ourselves, even in the midst of anger or frustration or even flat-out misery, that we are living enviable lives, that we have things others can only dream about and mostly that a life filled with love is almost always the key to a happy life.

So this morning, I took on my usual tasks—making breakfast, cleaning it up, cleaning Alan's poop, getting both kids dressed, cleaning the dog's accident, picking up the house, starting the laundry—with a sense of gratitude. And unlike most mornings, this sense of gratitude made it all easier.

Instead of screaming at Sam when she insisted on toting her Curious George book into pre-school, I gently took the book, rocked it, sang to it and "put it to bed," a strategy that seemed to appease Sam's desire to bring it inside.

Mommy stayed calm, Sam stayed happy and we all got what we wanted—an unusual outcome, indeed. So, I am grateful today, even on the heels of someone else's loss. I have lost many people I loved in my life and I know how easily people can slip away.

Today I am holding my babies close and remembering that even when it is harrowing and awful, it is actually a pretty wonderful life.

It is happening. Although I have begged, cajoled, reasoned and clawed, my baby has turned one.

He has a lot of new tricks—pulling up to standing, cruising around the furniture, getting himself to standing from his back. He can speak, even saying some complete sentences—“I want more”; “What’s that?” He tries to say almost every word that comes his way and communicates now so clearly.

He loves his daddy in new ways, which has opened up a whole new chapter in their relationship.

So why am I so sad?

Maybe it is because I know he may be my last. That every time I hold him close and cuddle him and bring him to my breast, we are inching closer to the last. His babyhood is fleeting, but it still seems like yesterday I was in the last weeks of my pregnancy, antsy and anxious, waiting to meet him for the first time.

I love this new toddler, to be sure. He is luscious and funny and his personality reveals itself in new ways everyday. But I will always, always miss my baby and I know when I look at him, I will always see this:

I know we have loads to look forward to, after all, his sister amuses me more and more each day. But I can’t help breathing deeply when he presses his little baby head into my chest and trying to inhale that smell deep into my lungs.

Everyone tells you how fast they grow, but it is only once you experience it that you realize those are not just platitudes.

My baby is one (happy birthday to him!) and I am thrilled to have pulled through the newborn phase of my second child with only slight battle scarring. But I will miss his little hands and feet and miss the time when he was all mine.

It all goes too fast, indeed.

Back when I decided to quit my job to devote myself full time to the kids (then just my daughter), I lived in fear that my husband’s fledgling pharmaceutical—the one that provided us with benefits, our car, food and roof—would tank.

And then seven weeks ago it did.

We had a lot of notice, months of it in fact. But in this economy, the job search was long and hard. My husband has never had any trouble finding a job. He was the type of person who got an offer from every interview he ever did. Until now.

After 8 months of exhausting searching, it became clear he would be laid off and we would have some time without his income. And though the generous severance did help, we were very stressed. The first three weeks of his time at home with us were spent in abject terror—me scrambling to find work (I had been slow to get back to work after Alan was born) and Rob feeling dejected and unhappy.

But then work started to roll in. I started to be able to breathe and let Rob take the reigns with the kids more. We fell into a routine of sorts. At certain points we even started to like it. Everyday was a weekend. We could spend Monday afternoon in the park! I no longer dreaded Sunday evening!

But like all good things, it had to end. After seven weeks, my husband is going back to work again on Monday. And while I am so proud of the higher position he managed to snag in this bad economy, I am also feeling a bit verklempt.

We may never have this again.

In the end, this layoff was a blip on the radar of our lives. None of my fears came to pass—the crippling financial deficit, Rob’s continued unemployment, losing our house, not being able to feed our kids. In the end, nothing changed. Except my perspective.

I have seen what it would be like to be a family of four all the time. And I don’t want to go back.

I am so happy for my husband, but so sad for us.

One of the hardest parts of having two children is never having my hands free.

Alan is almost 20 pounds (90 percent of that in his head) and loves to be carried, mostly by mommy. Plus, our double strollers are such monstrosities that we rarely take them to the mall or other indoor strolling venues.

In short: a baby carrier is an absolute must. And I have tried them all.

When Sam was little, I had a New Native pocket sling that she loved. Insta-sleep. I could do anything with it. When she outgrew it, I moved her to the Baby Bjorn, which was also a big hit with her.

I had hoped I would have the same luck with the boy. But, actually? Not so much. He hated the sling, just loathed it, kicking his little feet and screaming every time I tried to use it. My doula lent us a Snugli sling, which was also met with disdain. A friend gave me a Maya sling, which I figured he would like because it could hold him against my chest upright—his preferred position. But nope. Eventually, he accepted the Bjorn, which was our preferred mode of transport until he reached about three months.

That carrier is not built for the human back. At least not mine. We walk at least three miles a day and spend a lot of time at the park. I needed a carrier that would support that without wrenching my back or making my infant fuss.

Enter the Ergo.

Much has been written about this carrier and all of my friends rave about it, but at $100, it was something I wanted to think long and hard about before getting. Now? I think it is the best baby purchase a person can make.

The Ergo has three setting: front, back and hip. I have only used it on the front and back. At first Alan did not seem especially thrilled with trading his forward facing Bjorn stance with the new one facing inward (the only option with the Ergo), but he quickly grew to love it. Additionally, the first few times I put him on my back, I was terrified that he would fall. And though the instruction video says it is easy to put him on the back, I had some difficulty.

But none of that stuff matters because this carrier absolutely rocks. Truly. I have walked for miles with Alan on my back and on my front. He loves it, sleeps in it and seems very content. And I am completely comfortable with the shoulder padding and the design. In a million years, I could not design a carrier as comfortable as this one, but I am so grateful to those who did.

If you buy one carrier, this is the one to go with. My friends who have used the infant insert say it is just as comfortable as the sling, although I never used it so I have to go by their endorsement.

On Thursdays when I work all morning at my daughter’s pre-school with Alan on my back, I thank the universe for the Ergo. Honestly, I don’t know where I would be without it.

Roughly 50 percent of parents report having an 80 percent preference for 50 percent of the sexes.

In other words, half of all parents want a boy or a girl. I know I did. The first time I was pregnant, when the ultrasound tech waved her magic wand over my belly and announced that the little one inside me was female, I yelped in delight.

My husband was less pleased, but gradually did learn to accept the mountains of pink accumulating in our new nursery even though he fought—and won—a battle over the nursery walls after I had an ill-advised attack of girliness five months into my pregnancy and demanded a pink-and-white striped Eloise-themes nursery.

Let’s just say it is sometimes good to have a man around and leave it at that.

Moving on….I had always wanted a daughter and was thrilled with the result, but I was not surprised.

Six weeks earlier, just after the pee stick had dried, I broke out the computer, Googled gender and came up with this predictor.

Simply plug in the mom’s age, month of conception and voila! You know whether your little bundle is to be clad in pink or blue. The predictor, which has no basis in science or logic, boasts a 90 percent accuracy rating, which is roughly what my equally unscientific polling has revealed as well.

For me, for my husband, for our parents, for our friends’ kids and for at least a dozen Facebook friends, this thing worked with 90 percent accuracy.

Let it be revealed that ultrasounds—those modern marvels of reliability--are only 90 percent effective at revealing the sex in my experience. I know at least as many people who were surprised at delivery after thinking they knew the sex thanks for ultrasounds as I do people for whom the Chinese Gender predictor was wrong.

This works. I have no idea why, but it does.

See for yourself.

In the past three years, I have had exactly one period.

When I tell people this, they often react with such jealousy that I have had to scale back this announcement, only sharing it when it seems pertinent to the conversation, especially because of the reason: two back-to-back babies in rapid succession, late nights spent nursing, sore nipples and the other multitude of pregnancy/nursing for the 36 months straight.

In other words, it was no picnic skipping ye olde time of the month.

I am currently embarking on my second round of Aunt Flo since I became a Mama and since I have no plans for another sequel to “oops I am pregnant again, the sequel,” I think the old gal is destined to keep coming back. Every month or so.

And I could no be happier about it.

Oh, I know so many women hate their periods and it’s true. It is a messy, uncomfortable endeavor. But I was the last (the last!) of my friends to get my period. I was a flat-chested almost 15-year-old who was so jealous of my more voluptuous friends who laughed about tampons and pads and made me feel like I was still swimming in the toddler pool while they had moved on to the deep end.

When it finally came, I screamed and yelled, shoved my underwear into my mom’s hands and announced, “It finally came!” I think I would have shouted it from the windows if my mother had not wrestled me to the floor. I was a woman and I was psyched.

In college, while my friends dabbled in period skippage by going straight into a new pack of birth control pills and avoiding the placebos, I relished my five-day cycle. I know it sounds gross, but I like the monthly reminder that I am female, healthy and most importantly NOT PREGNANT.

In fact, there was only one time I skipped the placebos (on my honeymoon) and I spent the whole week bloated and uncomfortable despite the lack of my period.

So, I am not mourning this new phase. In fact, I am thrilled. My two babies are here. I adore them and they are healthy and my body is back to normal, back to its old self. I feel like shouting it from the rooftops, but instead, I will just announce it on the internet: She’s back. And this time, she is here to stay.

Before I had my children, I promised myself one thing: I would never become one of those moms who gives up her entire life just because I happen to have a small person tagging along beside me.

For me, this meant I would still write. I would still read. And most of all, I would still run.

And I have. But with compromises. When my daughter was born, I knew I needed a jogging strolle, so I bought one used on craiglist. I loved my Baby Jogger with all of my heart except for its one fatal flaw: it’s size. The thing was a monstrosity, seizing more than half of the space in our 300 square foot basement.

When I got pregnant for the second time, I knew I would be in the market for a double jogger, but I had no idea which one made sense. Until I met this:

And I promptly fell in love. The BOB Ironman Duallie. A double stroller made for long, fast runs. Swoon.

Together, my children weigh almost 50 pounds. That is a whole lotta baby to push up hill and it is not easy. I am not going to lie. Pushing this jogger does make for harder runs. And it is easier for my husband as he is taller.

But the stroller offers amenities that no other double jogger could even compete with. These include cushy, comfortable chairs for my precious cargo each with separate pockets for snack/drink, separate sun visors and the ability to recline. It feels sturdy and I am pretty sure the thing could survive a fall into the grand canyon, so revolutionary are its shocks.

It also folds up compactly to fit nicely in the trunk of our car (Volvo V50) and since the Phil and Ted’s has been out of commission after a certain husband popped all three tires, we have been using it as our main mode of transport the past three weeks.

It is not really an everyday stroller as it is built to withstand long runs, but it does fit through regular doorways, which few double joggers are able to do.

A double jogger is a pain, there is no doubt. My run days where I can grab my ipod, throw on my shoes and go out the door are best, but if I have to take the kids, both they and I are happy with the BOB Ironman Duallie.

The strollers do tend to run a pretty penny. This stroller is between $450-500 new and is hard to get on craigslist because it is so highly prized. Currently the BOB website is hosting a promotion to win a new one. Normally I would not recommend entering a contest that requires dancing baby footage, but this is no ordinary stroller. So, go for it. And if you like the stroller, report back here. We moms need all the help we can get when choosing out gear.