Need some ideas for a great new baby gift? Amanda, Nicole, and Catherine have got your back. Terri? Well, maybe you can give some ideas to her. Share your go-to baby gifts in the comments here if they work, or on our Facebook page.

Those of us who live in a place where you spring forward did so yesterday (and if you didn't, surprise! That's why you're late for everything today). There's certainly lost sleep and dark mornings to complain about, but when asked what's good about daylight savings time, we all turned out to have the same answer (even the dog). Do you have strong feelings about DST? Comment here if you can, or on our Facebook page.

We're tired, we're crierd, and we stink at self-improvement. Good thing we have friends to get together and commiserate with (or snark with). Here's your roadmap to our festival of self-recrimination and venting:

0:53: Intros and What's New With You — We recorded this the day before Terri gave up coffee for Lent. So really, what was her excuse for being so snippy?

4:11 Insurmountable Challenges — If you've ever tried to make a major change in your life and failed miserably, you'll feel for us as we share our stories of washing out of the Infomagical Challenge, Yoga Camp, Vegan Before Six, and making friends in new neighborhoods. (How could anyone not immediately want to be buddies with Nicole?)

17:53 Volunteer Fatigue — Kid stuff does not run without parent volunteers, and Catherine's about had it. Are you one of those parents who barely pulls your weight? Duck.

28:51 Interview of the Week — But wait. It's okay! We didn't mean to exclude you from the conversation! Pediatric OT Meghan Corridan makes us rethink all our sniping with a review of the children's book Be a Friend by Salina Yoon and a reminder that Valentine's Day is the ultimate inclusive holiday.

40:52 Shameless Self-Promotion — Amanda shares an older article on ways to volunteer without actually being in the classroom, Terri shares a new article on the 20 Questions You Really Want to Ask at an IEP Meeting, Nicole shares a plea to including everyone in the class when it comes to writing Valentine cards with your kids, and Catherine shares some fun games and activities for Valentine's Day.

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.

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 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!

It’s that time of year when all the people have all the feels all the time, isn’t it? You're extra-busy, it’s dark all the time, it’s cold, maybe your kids are starting to have academic and behavior problems at school. And so you visit your social-media channels for a little dose of good cheer, and instead you get socked all over again. We have a good gripe session about how our social-media interactions affect our moods, how seeing certain topics in our feeds make us sad or angry, how certain friends appear to not know us at all, and how we have to learn again and again to NOT READ THE COMMENTS. (By the way, to all our friends who listen to the podcast, we're not talking about you. No! Of course not! Someone else entirely. You know, that person. Please don't write nasty posts about us.)

Next, we stop grumbling for a minute and celebrate those things we've learned in the process of being parents. Like how to make a competition-approved bun for an ice-skating kid using only our own two hands and a ton of hair gel. Or all the words to every heavy-metal song there is. Or how to score $300 worth of uncut keys and uncoded transponders online. Or who was on which lifeboat of the Titanic. Just like we recently said "Thanks, Podcasting" for a libsyn promotion, we now say "Thanks, Parenting!"

Finally, we share our recommendations for the week. Catherine directs us to her list of active toys for kids and her Round 3 with more suggestions from pediatric OT Meghan Corridan; Amanda thinks we should all go read Pew Research's "Psychological Stress and Social Media Use"; Nicole has a way to prevent that by studying up on ways to hide annoying Facebook posts; and Terri follows up on an earlier podcast with a checklist on when it's time to fire your pediatrician.

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

It’s been a rough week out in the world and in our own little worlds too. We started with a gripe session about a pair of issues most parents have faced: a child's health crisis, and a doctor's clueless attitude that makes said crisis so very much worse. From prescriptions given to mollify mom to casual announcements that "It could be nothing, or it could be a brain tumor," we tell our bad doctor stories and praise the white-coats who really seem to get it. 

A scary story that's been on our minds this week, especially when it comes to how to explain it to children, is of course the tragedy in Paris. Where once we only had to worry about giving our kids the gentlest possible understanding of a horrific event, now we have to factor in what they're going to see on social media and what they're going to say on social media. Should they change their profile pictures in solidarity? If they make a post or a comment, will their understanding be peer-appropriate? Are social-media gestures in these situations like the Instagram likes of the news world, done more to fit in than to make a statement? Do we need to worry about that? We think back nostalgically to the days when you could just hide the newspaper and turn off the TV.

Finally, we share our recommendations for the week: Catherine liked blogger Rebecca Woolf's post on dealing with worldwide heartache; Amanda recommended a PBS Parents article on "How to Help Kids Feel Safe After Tragedy" and one from the Washington Post on "Don't Let the Paris Attacks Infuse Your Parenting With Fear"; Nicole appreciated Terri's article on the dreaded wait-and-see; and Terri passed on articles about choosing the right pediatrician.

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

This week, the arrival of standard time and the influence of the Bloggess threw us into a tailspin of dark days and mortifying memories. After a brief opening chat that included the discovery that the "OJ Chase" is not something you can refer to and expect your teenager to know what you're talking about (it's what brought us the Kardashians, kids!), we compared notes on how we're surviving the change of time and light, and most especially the juxtaposition of the time change and Halloween, which is great for parents of teens, not so great for parents of tots who wake up at the crack of dawn demanding candy. (Where's that coffee IV when you need it?)

Next, inspired by a Twitter stream of mortifying events shared by followers of @thebloggess, we were moved to share our own misstatements (like saying "Love you!" at the end of conversations even when it's wincingly inappropriate) and missteps (like the one that sent Nicole sprawling on the floor of a Las Vegas casino). We wondered, among other things, why the sound in a room always drops just when you're yelling that embarrassing thing, and what the statute of limitations is for blaming farts on your kid.

Finally, we sought to redeem ourselves by sharing our recommendations for the week: Catherine introduced us to Minecraft Story Mode; Amanda liked a video called Taking Back Time that turns the time change into a disaster movie; Lexi passed on an article about long lines for story times; Nicole thought a video about a young woman exposing social-media deception had a worthwhile message, even if it made Terri grumpy (that video has since been removed, but you can get the gist from this one); and Terri shared an article of hers about time-change-related bad behavior (your child's, and yours too).

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for producing our episode and Kristen Eredics for our happy in-and-out music (and for being a live studio audience for part of the podcast). If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

If you’ve had any exposure at all to social media this week, you will have heard the announcement from the World Health Organization that processed meat (especially and specifically BACON!) is cancer-causing. How seriously are we going to take this information? Not so seriously, as it turns out. Amanda is still clinging to sweet memories of a trough of room-service bacon; Catherine's buying her kids BLTs; and Terri has heard too many scare stories about favorite foods to take one about something so delicious seriously. We wondered at the difference between "raises your risk" and "causes," winced at the idea of how much snootier vegans will be now, and planned to listen to Jim Gaffigan's bacon monologue and take bacon as seriously as Ron Swanson (if that's even possible).

Next, inspired by Terri's nearly two hours in a traffic jam with her daughter in charge of the radio and her husband in full "These kids today with their rap and their dirty lyrics" dudgeon, we asked: How much does today's music enrage/amuse/bore us? Uptown Funk got our thumbs up, Selena Gomez's current hit our thumbs down, and the repeating repeating repeating of the same songs our thumbs in our ears. We wound up reminiscing about the old days when MTV played music videos and we could still believe that 17-year-olds know about heartbreak. (We were that young once, right?)

Finally, we moved on to our recommendations for the week: Catherine shared an article she wrote about how to add more vegetables to your family’s daily diet (with advice for beginner, intermediate, and expert levels!), Amanda passed on a Wired article delightfully titled "Bacon Causes Cancer? Sort of. Not Really. Ish," and Terri offered some assistance for your next great dietary dilemma -- what to do with all that Halloween candy.

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

With a summer full of superheroes and superhero merchandising ahead, Lexi Walters Wright chats with Amanda about the challenge of getting through a supermarket or a Target without accumulating a cart-full of pricey licensed items that really do not have superpowers no matter how much your kid believes. They talk about the lesson kids learn about advertising when the branded stuff disappoints and the financial challenge of finding the name-brand stuff your kid just has to have, and recommend these sites for parents fighting the good fight against licensed everything:

+ Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood
+ Commonsense Media
+ Center on Media and Child Health

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

Inspired by a fairly hilarious fundraiser in which TV writer Wendy Molyneux dared people to make her go see the hated Entourage movie by donating to children's cancer research (read more in the Hollywood Reporter article Terri cited), we got to thinking about school fundraisers, those conspiracies to fill every nook and cranny of your home with gift wrap and cookie dough. Could schools find a way to put the fun in fundraising by banning packet programs with cheap prizes and inspiring us to want to put up our bucks? We brainstormed ideas, commisserated about the shrinking pool of people to sell to in the no-door-to-door age, and celebrated alternatives like restaurant meals, supermarket scrips, and the option to opt out.

Next, we looked at what happens to all that stuff we bought from all those awful sales: layers of clutter that only get excavated when we move. A New York Times article suggested that we all have a clutter set point that we will return to however many times we clear things out, and so we discussed our own personal set points, the value of having friends whose set point is much more cluttered so that we can feel better about ourselves, and the wonderfulness of big nice-looking storage bins.

Finally, we made our recommendations for the week: Catherine reviewed Gretchen Rubin's new book, Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives, and found an article on "UnBake sales"; Amanda passed on an article she wrote for PopSugar on refusing to do (most) school fundraisers; Nicole shared an article on creative school fundraising ideas (and also talked earlier in the episode about a presentation on inclusive education at UC Davis, downloads from which you can check out on her site); and Terri suggested some questions you can ask about whether your child is a hoarder. We'd also like to invite everyone to join us for a Tony Awards live-Tweet on Sunday night; we'll be using the hashtag #TonyPRP.

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.)

A tweet this week from Catherine about a 14-year-old in her carpool lamenting "where did my life go?" inspired this week's first chat topic -- because where did our lives go, and why do kids seem to feel their lives are moving as fast as ours? We talked about the aging properties of seeing the edgy entertainers of your youth becoming cherished institutions (happy retirement, David Letterman!) and, in your own youth, finding out that the pop singers you enjoy are younger than your own young self (it's tough being the same age as Taylor Swift). At any rate, we agreed to all meet at Nicole's retirement fantasy home for bingo and bocce ball real soon.

One way to mark the passage of time is annual traditions, and we talked about one that's common at the high school behind Terri's house: a "don't drink and drive at prom" pageant involving a cracked up car, ambulance, body bags, staged teenage wailing, and a guy on a loudspeaker. Do presentations like this really convince kids who intended to drink and drive to stop, or do they just freak out the kids who would never do anything wrong but are easily spooked? We chatted about after-graduation events, the need to talk about not texting and driving as well as not drinking and driving, and the importance of "do what I do" over "do what I say."

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week: Catherine has an article on 22 outdoor activities to do with your family (because it's Memorial Day weekend, ready or not); Amanda thinks you should use the weekend to go geocaching (on which Catherine has two articles); Nicole suggests visiting the website www.donttextdrive.com; and Terri has gathered links to all of Noah Galloway's dances on Dancing With the Stars for those who want to view them again or learn more about the army vet who danced with one arm and a prosthetic leg.

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.)

Getting organized seems to be tougher and tougher these days, with our schedules getting busier and busier, and more and more tech tools to help out in ways that require full days of programming and entering info. We discussed the allure of collecting pretty datebooks, the tech we've tried and adapted to our own needs (including Day One, Wunderlist, SimpleNote, iCal, and Evernote, which we don't quite know what to do with), our favorite low-tech tricks, and the proper orientation of days on a wall calendar.

Then we moved on to the current trend of formally announcing things like births, deaths, engagements, weddings, and other major life milestones online, rather than the old-fashioned phone chain or snail-mail. We shared our love of e-vites, our concerns about Facebook death notices, and our feeling that folks who miss things because they're not connected should go ahead and join us in the 21st century.

Finally, we shared our recommendations for the week. Amanda was too swamped by the events she has to organize for this week to come up with something, but Catherine recommended an upcoming documentary on obesity as well as the film Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day; Nicole shared her organization-apropos article on "10 Simple Tools to Help with Executive Functioning in the Classroom"; and Terri really thinks you should go right now and download NPR's Austin 100, which did indeed come out the day after we recorded and is available through April 2. (Did she mention that it's 100 free songs?)

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.)

In the first of our "Round 3" mini-podcasts on specific parenting topics, Katherine Lee, who writes about parenting school-age children at childparenting.about.com, joined Terri for a discussion of restaurants that ban kids -- and the kind of kid behavior that makes bans look like a good idea. If you are That Mom who comes unprepared and doesn't at least appear to be trying to calm your child, we're looking at you (although Terri is doing so with a little bit of sympathy and guilt). But we also offer some suggestions on how to handle restaurant (and airplane) outings without driving your fellow patrons to distraction, even if it's simply knowing how to make a quick getaway. Do you have opinions on restaurant bans, or great tips for restaurant survival? Share them in the comments. And for more child-wrangling ideas, read these articles from Katherine and Terri:

• Don't Be THAT Family - 7 Restaurant Manners Your Kids Should Know
• Going Somewhere? 12 Things to Put in an Activity Bag for Kids
• 10 Tips for Flying with Children
• How to Reduce Child Turbulence on Plane Flights
• 10 Tips for Dining Out with a Child with Special Needs
• "Staging" Your Child for Success

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

You may know better than to, say, post a naked selfie or talk politics online, but there are plenty of blaming and shaming posts you may have going that will make your friends just as hot and bothered. Join Terri Mauro (specialchildren.about.com), Catherine Holecko (familyfitness.about.com), Susan Adcox (grandparents.about.com), and Katherine Lee (childparenting.about.com) as we talk about our pet posting peeves, and how to be a friend for real.

It used to be parents could get away with a cake, a few games, and a goody bag full of cheap candy. Now, children's birthday parties seem to have taken on a life of their own. Join About.com parenting experts Terri Mauro (specialchildren.about.com), Catherine Holecko (familyfitness.about.com), and Katherine Lee (childparenting.about.com) as we talk about what's appropriate, what's over the top, and how to survive when your child has to make the birthday rounds.