Planning Makes Perfect

I used to remember everything. The birth dates of random acquaintances. The phone numbers of friends I haven’t seen since high school. The code for bananas from my short stint as a grocery checkout girl when I was in college.

Then I gave birth.

The slate has been wiped clean. Yup, you know what I’m talking about moms. Mommy brain. Momnesia. Or as my friend Tracy calls it, “placenta brain.” The brain vamooses with the placenta, she says.

Unfortunately for us, motherhood carries with it a host of new things you have to remember and plenty of statistics you feel you NEED to remember. I can spit out my daughter’s birth weight, APGAR score and the day I found her first tooth, but I can’t tell you where I last saw the cordless phone.

Research has shown that motherhood is actually good for the brain on a neurological level (yay!), but the same researchers admit that a lack of sleep and stress are creating the symptoms we all feel. Since we won’t see another sleep-in morning until the teenage years, I’m just going to grin and bear it and make do.

I’ve come to face it - a mom’s only as good as her pocket agenda/planner.

With the Mom’s Plan-It 17-month engagement calendar at Chocolate Cake Club, I’m ready for my daughter’s first day at nursery school. Chocolate Cake Club founder Sue Kirchner created her business to give moms a chocolate cake moment every day – you know, that feeling when a wave of pure bliss washes over you after you lick the last little crumbs off the fork? Her answer was one place where moms on the go can find everything they need to make their lives easier. This organizer’s one of her picks, and as always she’s dead on target. Beginning with August for back-to-school, the engagement calendar is small enough to fit in your purse but packs the kind of help you usually find in full-size calendars. Stickers for kids’ activities and a folder for all those slips of paper are at the front, a new space for the grocery list on every other page.

For moms of older kids – and those who like to leave their plans hanging on the wall – I’d stick with Mom’s School Calendar from Mead. Yup, the office supply giant is now helping mamas on the move with a 6-month planning poster for 2008 and a 12-month calendar for 2009. With almost 450 color-coded stickers, this is the calendar to indulge your inner obsessive compulsive mommy.

Since we’re on the planning track, I hate to admit it with summer still baking upstate New York, but it’s time to start looking to reorder my planner just for the business side of things.

One of my favorites came straight from the mind of mama on the move Sarah Pinto “I am the mother of two small boys and since becoming a mom, I have to write everything down to keep things in some semblance of order,” Pinto says. “I couldn’t find a cute and purse friendly planner, so I designed it myself.”

Made in her hometown of San Francisco with soy-based inks printed on recycled paper, the pick for my purse is the Horseshoe. With a soothing blue background and a horseshoe in the middle, the front promises, “this is my lucky year.”

For moms who like to share the wealth, put in an order for one of Pinto’s Tapestry planners. A portion of the $25 price tag on each of the pretty pink planners goes to the pediatric cardiology department at the California Medical Center where Pinto’s own son has been treated for his congenital heart defect (CHD). With CHD the number one birth defect affecting all American babies, this is a cause that should be close to any mom’s heart.

If you’re the Lynette in your mommy group, the MomAgenda needs a home on your desk. Felicity Huffman says it keeps her organized both on and off Magnolia Lane, and I found so much packed into this slim book I can see why. The 17-month calendar inside the MomAgenda Desktop is repeated in a week-at-once section and a monthly view, and the front boasts a list of some of their favorite spots on the ‘net (although we’re wondering where Peekaboo got off to?). The back pages are set aside for wines, restaurant notes, even party guest lists and vacation ideas. The pull-out “Mom Essentials” means you won’t have to rewrite that address book and doctor’s list year after year. Just slip it out and slip it into your next MomAgenda.

Although my daughter’s not reading on her own yet, I’m fast learning there are “planners” for kids too – even if they come in a different form. Mom Moschel Kadokura created the On Task On Time for Kids after continuously struggling to get her 5-year-old triplets moving. It works on the age-old kitchen timer premise – spin the dial and it slowly makes its way back to the beginning to buzz. But Kadokura added a dry-erase board for mom on top and task stickers to set up in timed increments to keep our kids, well, on task and on time! Wall-mountable, the timer is designed for kids from kindergarten to fifth grade, but we use the basic timer in our house already to let Jillian know how much time she has left before it’s time to clean up her toys. We even time toy clean up and reward her for being a timely helper!

I showed you mine, now you show me yours! What’s your best mama on the move memory aid?