It's been one of those weeks here in Parenting Roundabout land (an enchanted place that now spans four timezones), and so we come together for our group chat with a shorter attention span and a more meandering style than ever. But that's where your brain's at too, right? Here's a road map of this week's conversation:

1:43: What's New With You? — Join is in a moment of silence for Nicole, who has just had her parents in her house for FIVE WEEKS. And a moment of thanks for OnStar, which saved Terri from a very awkward conversation with a parking-lot attendant.

5:44: That Storm Was How Big? — You might have heard, it snowed a li'l bit on the East Coast last weekend. We talked about what counts as an OMG STORM! in our various parts of the country. (Visit the French Toast Alert System and a Facebook message from the Bangor Maine Police Department to laugh along with us.)

17:44: What's for Dinner? — A mention in last week's episode of Terri's husband's old-school paper-based meal-planning system inspired us to talk more about how food gets on the table in our houses. Debates over the appropriateness of breakfast for dinner, leftovers for breakfast, and calling ham Canadian bacon ensued.

28:50: Interview of the Week — Amanda chatted with her husband, Jon, about the various complicating factors of going to birthday parties with your child with special needs. (Like, should you go? And should you stay? And is it okay to give homework as a gift?) For more on over-the-top birthdays, listen to Amanda's earlier chat with Lexi Walters Wright on the subject.

39:46: Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda shared an article on helping your child cope with taste sensitivity; Nicole shared an article calling for people to share their inclusion resources; Terri shared an article on 8 Ways to Make Parents of Children With Special Needs STOP Listening to You; and Catherine shared an article on active party games for kids.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We've noticed some contentious opinions online about the inflammatory issue of wearing shoes in the house. Are we shoe people, slipper people, sock people? Is it permissible to bring your own slippers to other people's house, or refuse to expose your socks to their floor? Share your shoe preferences and phobias in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

You see them all over the Internet, and in piles on bookstore tables. Adult coloring books are having a moment just now, but can you color us interested? Listen in as we share our coloring habits, and give us your own take on the adult coloring trend in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

Yesterday we talked about bedtime routines, and today the subject of our quick chat is the stuffed animals or other comfort items our kids go to bed with -- and we lose or leave behind at our peril. Listen in, and tell us about your child's indispensable object in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

In a recent speed round, Amanda suggested that she would like a Fast Pass for her kids' bedtime, which inspired us to have this quick chat about what our kids' bedtime routines are like and what's particularly weird, wonderful, or time-consuming about them. Is there a notable bedtime routine at your house? Comment here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

Since we know that our listeners don't have much time to read because of all of their grown-up responsibilities (though we do hope you've found 45+ minutes to listen to podcasts), here's a quick roadmap of this week's chat:

1:49 What's New With You: Finding gifs has become a major pastime for us, but one out of four of us hasn't quite mastered the art of pasting the right one in.

6:38: Topic 1—Do You Still Read?: After blowing past quite a number of efforts to seque by Amanda, Terri finally gets the message to start our first topic, which asks: Do we make time for book readin'? Do we think it's important? Do we make it a priority for ourselves, or are we so busy finding gifs that we never get to it?

15:49 Topic 2—Do You Have What's Required to Be a Grown-Up Adult?: Jumping off from a Buzzfeed listicle on the things you need to be a grown-up, we talk about what we've got, what we're missing, and what being an adult really means. (If you like the sound of Terri's in basket, it's on the Really Good Stuff site.)

27:18 Interview of the Week: Catherine chats with grandparenting expert Susan Adcox about kids and concussions, and shares lots of great information on how to recognize your child or grandchild has one and what parents and grandparents can do about it.

39:51 Shameless Self-Promotion: Amanda shares an article on "How to Help Your Tween Get the Writing Bug"; Terri selflessly promotes Barnes & Noble Readouts, which delivers book excerpts and a serialized novel to your Nook or Nook app; Nicole shares her site The Inclusive Class; and Catherine shares some articles on concussions: "What I Learned From My Own Kid's Concussion"; "Concussions - Symptoms and Signs"; Cognitive Rest; and "Safer Soccer: No Headers Before High School."

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and most especially for our spiffy new in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We are there for you, for all your procrastination needs. But if endlessly listening to our podcast is not quite filling your work time sufficiently, we have some other black holes to leap down, including word games, Web MD, food videos, and of course constantly refreshing Facebook. What do you do to keep from doing those things you're supposed to do? Share in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

The family that plays together ... probably gets annoyed at each other a fair amount of the time, especially if Monopoly is involved. We talk about our favorite and most hated board games, card games, and other family amusements. Are you a game-playing family? Share in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

On this week's entertainment chat, Catherine reports in on The Martian, the box-office success and Oscar contender, which she watched in a hurry after her husband checked it out On Demand. Then Terri gives her take on The Last Five Years, the blink-and-you-missed it musical that she was inspired to seek out after a discussion on the Try it You'll Like It podcast and was happily surprised to find newly added on Netflix, for a rare "hey, the movie I'm looking for is actually on there!" search victory. Finally, they chat about the next four episodes in a Parks and Recreation marathon ("The Stakeout," "Beauty Pageant," "Practice Date," and "Sister City"). If you'd like to join in that marathon, up for next week are four more episodes from Season 2: "Kaboom," "Greg Pikitis," "Ron and Tammy," and "The Camel."

We all have one, right? A wish list of things that would make Facebook so much easier and more pleasant to use? A politics blocker? A suggested-friend limit? A hoax-buster? An auto-liker? Join us as we fantasize about our most-hoped-for Facebook features, and share yours in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

In the time between our recording of today's Speed Round and releasing it this morning, it seemed like there was a new celebrity loss every day. We chatted about some past celebrity deaths that have been particularly unsettling, including Robin Williams, Philip Seymour Hoffmann, Natasha Richardson, and Princess Diana. What celebrity deaths have been milestones for your family? Share in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat.

We swear, we manage to get through this episode on swearing without violating our clean podcast rating, though we have to bleep ourselves plenty. Here's your bleepin' roadmap for this week's chat:

1:55: What's New With You?: And what are you wearing? Most of us made it out of our PJs for this recording, so yay us!

6:19: Topic 1 — Do you swear in front of your kids? Inspired by an article on the Scary Mommy blog, we have a bleepin' good conversation about the topic (and appreciate an article claiming that people who curse are bleepin' smart).

17:32: Topic 2: Powerball! — By now we know we lost, those of us who played. But it's still fun to think about what might have been. Recording studios! Private jets! Homes with the right lighting for video chats!

27:04: Interview of the Week — Terri and Amanda chat with Robert Rummel Hudson about whether and how parents of kids with special needs should write about their kids, which is a bit of a thing at the moment.

38:08: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared a substitution she'd like to make for that "cut and paste to support kids with special needs" meme going around, along with a list of more meaningful things to do; Amanda shared a series of pieces on “How to Say It: Responding When Kids With Learning and Attention Issues Are Frustrated”; Nicole shared her blog www.theinclusiveclass.com; and Catherine shared ideas for Valentine’s Day party activities and activities for the 100th day of school.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and most especially for our spiffy new in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Are you a purse person? A backpack lugger? The tote bag type? Since the four of us rarely see each other in person, scattered across the country as we are, we don't have a daily chance to check out our bags of choice, so we took this Speed Round opportunity to confess our favorite modes of stuff transportation.

After Amanda told her story last week about meeting Dan Rather in an airport, last week, we thought we'd all tell our tales of seeing stars. Listen to this quick discussion for our brushes with Lindsay Lohan, Woody Harrelson, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, and the cast of Modern Family. 

We didn't quite manage to watch the Golden Globes, though that doesn't keep us from having an opinion on the dresses. (Shoulders back, Kirsten Dunst!) Catherine hasn't quite kept up with her Downton Abbey viewing, but she's finding recaps (from the Fug Girls, Tom and Lorenzo, and the NY Times) at least as much fun  as the actual show. Terri hasn't managed to get to the theater to see the latest Star Wars, but she knows the biggest spoiler about it since Undateable went ahead and blurted it out on Friday's episode. One bit of pop-culture viewing we did take seriously, though, was our Parks and Recreation marathon, which we kicked off with the first and last episodes of Season 1, "Pilot" and "Rock Show," and the first episode of Season 2, "Pawnee Zoo" (the start of which, in the video above, particularly tickled Catherine). If you'd like to watch along with us, for next week we'll be continuing on with the next four Season 2 episodes, "The Stakeout," "Beauty Pageant," "Practice Date," and "Sister City."

After a trip to DisneyWorld, where you can FastPass your way to the front of the line for up to three attractions a day, Amanda reports that coming back to the real world was brutal. Why can't we have FastPasses for all those things we have to wait for in our non-theme-park existence? We imagined all the things we'd like to go to the front of the line for, and you don't have to wait at all to find out -- just press play!

To kick off a new week of Speed Round episodes, we took a cue from an article on Terri's About.com site and planned out some appropriate New Year's resolutions for people and situations we think could use some improvement. Who do you think could use a few resolutions? Add your picks in the comments here or on our Facebook page, or tweet us @RoundAboutChat. (If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience. And while you're at it, check out our Round 2 entertainment resolutions.)

Don't be fooled by our fabulous new intro music — this is still Parenting Roundabout you're listening to. We've done some format-tweaking for the new year, with a longer group chat that includes some introductory conversation, two topics, an interview with one of our regular contributors, and some shameless self-promotion. Here's your roadmap through this week's episode.

1:38: What's New With You? — We've been doing some traveling this week, and some book writing, and some writing avoidance.

11:42: Topic 1 — Are we the kind of moms who find it easier to spend money on and do nice things for our kids than for ourselves? (Hey, we really wanted socks for Christmas.)

24:15: Topic 2: Current Events — We discuss an article about "aspirational parenting" that got our backs up. Of course, we're not aspiring for our kids to be members of the power elite so much as just make enough money to buy us really nice socks.

39:03: Interview of the Week — Catherine talks with pediatric occupational therapist Meghan Corridan about good educational apps for kids. Find links to the apps and companies Meghan mentioned on her blog, MAC&Toys. The app Catherine recommended is Mathmateer.

51:11: Shameless Self-Promotion — Terri shared articles on questions to ask about your child's lunch and recess on her About.com site; Amanda shared a blog post she wrote for Matan called "Without Exclusion, We Wouldn’t Have to Talk About Inclusion”; Nicole shared a blog post she wrote for Disability.gov, "Not Just One Story of Successful Inclusion"; and Catherine shared an article from her About.com site on how to set family goals for the New Year (or how to drag your family into your New Year’s resolutions so you might actually keep them!).

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our podcast and most especially for our spiffy new in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

We should be coming to you today with a new full-length group chat, but our best-laid plans of recording after Amanda comes back from a business trip were foiled by flight delays. So Catherine, Nicole, and Terri recorded a speed round with their own bad travel stories in solidarity, and to give you your daily dose of Parenting Roundabout. Listen today to Nicole's terrible Canada-to-California journey, Catherine's father's ingenious way of getting car-rental people to pay attention, and Terri's crisis of career faith aboard a grounded plane, and keep an eye out later today or tomorrow for Episode 101 to finally make its arrival.

The Speed Rounds you've been listening to all week will be replacing Round 3 and 4 as you've known them -- we're tucking those mini-interviews into our group chats starting January 15. So the end of our anniversary week seemed like a good time to look back on our favorite Round 3s, Round 4s, and even Round 2s (which will still be bringing you entertainment chat every Tuesday-ish.) If you want to listen to the full episodes after hearing us chat about them, here are the links:

+ Nicole's favorites: Round 4s by Amanda and her husband Jon; Round 2s on Dancing With the Stars
+ Amanda's favorites: Round 3 on school lunches with Lexi Walters Wright; Round 4 on IEP meetings with Robert Rummel-Hudson
+ Catherine's favorites: Round 4 on Inside Out and Special Needs with Robert Rummel-Hudson; Round 2 on audiobooks and Dancing With the Stars
+ Terri's favorites: Round 3 on kids and commercialization with Lexi Walters Wright (and that Hulk cologne pull-quote); Round 2s on So You Think You Can Dance

(If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)

You talk to the same people for fifty to 100 episodes, and you learn things. Even in this speed round, we uncover a surprising height-related fact about one of our members. You might be surprised that however many surprising facts we've learned, we rarely if ever get together in person. See how many of these revelations about our past jobs and colorful vocabulary and musical knowledge and culinary preferences (one of us doesn't even drink coffee!) you've also gleaned from listening to Parenting Roundabout.

On the first Round 2 of the new year, Catherine and Terri look back on which entertainment product they consumed on New Year's Eve, how their DVR clearing is going, and what they've read and watched this week, including:

+ In Your Dreams by Kristan Higgins
+ Call the Midwife (book version) by Jennifer Worth
+ Water for Elephants, both book and movie
+ About Alex (and yes, come to think of it, as we discussed this movie's similarity to The Big Chill, we did accidentally say Phoebe Cates played the young girlfriend in that film when of course it was Meg Tilly. When you're old enough to remember The Big Chill, you're old enough to forget details, apparently.)

We're also plotting a marathon watch, probably of Parks and Recreation (and not Parenting Roundabout, as Terri initially said, although if you'd like to marathon our podcast, go right ahead!), although maybe of the first two seasons of The West Wing. Do you have a preference? Tell us in the comments here or on Facebook, or tweet at us.

If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

When you get into real conversations about parenting, it's easy to sometimes go a little to far and say something that makes you hope your child never, ever listens to your podcasts. Sometimes that's because we've said something that might be hurtful, but more likely for us we've said something that makes us want to throw salt over our shoulders lest we cause the very behavior we're talking about to blossom. So don't tell our kids about this episode, okay? We're going to just sneak it in here.

New for 2016! There's now Parenting Roundabout group chat fun for every day of the week. Tune in at 9 a.m. Monday through Thursday as we answer one quick question. Today we relive some things you should never do on a podcast, including saying things you wouldn't want your spouse to hear, confessing your winter grooming secrets, dissing your customer base, and ... um, wait, what was that ... oh yeah! forgetting your own name.

Woo-hoo! It's our 100th group chat, marking the start of a third year of podcasting for Parenting Roundabout. We took the opportunity to look back on our favorite episodes, play some clips from the past, and then wrap our heads around some numbers in the form of a fun (if somewhat slapdash) quiz. If you'd like to hear more than an excerpt from the episodes we favorited, here's where you can find them:

• Amanda chose Episode 53, "School-Lunch Drama and Scheduling Stress" 
• Catherine chose Episode 88, "Children's Books We Have Loved and Loathed"
• Nicole chose Episode 64, "Uncooperative Parents and Playground Pet Peeves"
• Terri chose Episode 65, "Feeling Anxious About Anxiety"

Throughout the episode, Terri was feverishly working to finish a by-the-numbers quiz on our longest, shortest, most popular, least popular, and otherwise measurable facts about our past episodes. Too many episodes were mentioned to link to here, but you can search the episode titles on this site to find and listen to them. Finally, we shared our 100th set of weekly recommendations: Catherine mentioned her long list of New Year's resolution ideas; Amanda kept with the 100 theme with 100 Activities to Do With Your Child for the 100th Day of School; Nicole added her 100th post on The Inclusive Class; and Terri had suggestions for making New Year’s resolutions for those who need them.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristin Eredics for our happy in-and-out music. (If you're reading this description somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.)