I had the pleasure a few weeks back to discuss kids, transit, living carfree, and other urban issues with the folks on the excellent podcast TransitMatters.

If you're not familiar with TansitMatters, check them out - especially if you're in the Boston area. They are an advocacy organization "dedicated to improving transit in and around Boston by offering new perspectives, uniting transit advocates, educating riders and promoting a level of critical analysis normally absent from other media."

The family-centered episode I appeared on went live this week and you can listen to it here: PODCAST 30 - KIDS ON TRANSIT WITH LEE BIERNBAUM

Subscribe to their podcast on iTunes, your favorite podcatcher (yeah, I'm holding on to that term), or at their RSS Feed.

Also find them on Facebook, Twitter, donate, or volunteer.

If you liked the episode, be sure to let them know too.

P.S. If you are familiar with TransitMatters, know that I spend days considering what Parks and Recreation reference I was going to make following the intro and I came up with nothing. I hope I can go back on someday just so that I can reveal my inner Perd Hapley.

Just a note to let you know we're still around...

We're 3 weeks into the sleep training and things are definitely improving. This past week we cut out the last of the overnight feedings and wakings are down to 1 (or fewer!) a night. We've even had two sleep-throughs this week.

We've got some ideas cooking about new posts and we'll be back to our usual non-schedule in the next week or two.

Topics include:

• - sunscreen for home and daycare
• - how to pick a day care
• - tips for work life balance
• - how to encourage independence

In the meantime, we did use our sleepless nights to remember that lots of people interested in parenting things use Pinterest. So we set up a minor presence on Pinterest and, perhaps more importantly for you, add a "Pin it" button at the bottom of every post if you want to pin our stuff.

Happy sleep to you, and someday to us too...

Picture not related, just an excuse to show off the kids in Cardinals gear.

Sleeping soundly in the stroller, one of the many
moving objects he prefers to a boring old crib

Those of you who are regular readers may have noticed that we are fairly open about the trial and error that is involved in our (and probably all) parenting. All issues regarding sleep for our second child have been more "error" than not. When he joined our family, we implemented all the same wonderful advice from Baby 411 that worked so completely for our first child. As a result, our sweet, happy, laughter-filled child learned to go sleep on his own every night. He knows how to self-soothe, we have a consistent sleep ritual, and we put him down while he's still awake. And despite all of this, without fail, he wakes up every 3 hours, mostly inconsolable, all night long. He is now more than 8 months old and we are very tired.

We've tried many things. Beyond the tools we acquired from Baby 411 and the stuff we wrote about in our post about sleep, we went back to the source and implemented some more techniques from Ferber. We Googled and Googled and Googled (we may have even Binged once). We've owned and burned out the motors on multiple swings (though our Fisher Price Snugabunny is still going strong, if you're looking for a recommendation on swings). We've stepped up and down many different interventions, to only mildly improving avail. And so, now, we've finally gone to a professional and hired a sleep consultant. Did I mention how tired we were? Very, very tired.

We are now a week or so into implementing a new plan and things are improving overall. However, as with many behavior modification techniques, in the short term the medicine can be worse than the disease. Which is to say, our overnight sleep is getting worse as he's learning to put himself back to sleep in the middle of the night; we are all experiencing more interrupted sleep and more crying than we've had in the past. This, plus the upcoming Passover holiday, makes getting new content here a bit more than we can achieve.

We will be back in full force in a few days, once we've slept enough to at least remember which child is which. In the meantime, feel free to do one or all of these things:

Check out the Archives

How to drink a cup of coffee while caring for a 6 week old baby
Monitors: say no to the Kid TV channel
The nerdy mom's pregnancy reading list
Striking the balance between street urchin and sterile bubble kid
Out and about when you don't lactate (or choose not to)

Talk to Us!

Join us in the comments below (or on any page for that matter)

About you-

How many kids/fetuses do you have?
Where do you live?
What's your parenting superpower?

About us-

How'd you find out about us?
Anything you'd like to see us cover more? Less?

Guest Post for Us

Have you been reading and thinking "I know about this topic!" or "I tried this awesome thing that solved a problem and everyone should know about it" or just "The internet should hear my opinions more often"?

If so, send us an email stairwell @ acrossb dot com. Let us know what you'd like to talk about and we'll be happy to discuss a guest post.

We are so excited to roll out our baby registry - requested by you, our readers!

You will always be able to find it under the "Guides" section of our site. This is our best and most practical advice for how to fit your baby into your apartment while saving space, money, and your sanity.

So - experienced parents, what did we miss/get wrong?

Expecting parents - what burning questions did we leave unanswered?

We're just about 3 months into this whole blogging thing and we're having a great time!

In all honesty, we're amazed that about 900 (!!) of you have found the site and that lots of you stuck around (and come back again!).

Google Analytics can tell us a few things (about those of you who haven't blocked their cookies) like what time of day is popular (afternoon), more of you come from Facebook than Twitter, and we know you come from cities all over the world (lots of metro Boston, largely other Anglophone places, but we've had hits from every non-Antarctica continent).

But beyond these highly aggregated variables, we don't know much about you and we'd love to learn more about our new little community.

So given that this is the slow time of year at work and if you're reading this at home, you're quite possibly avoiding family, why not kill a couple more minutes with a fun activity.  In other words, we're inviting you to introduce yourself.

If you haven't noticed before, scroll down on every post and you'll see a place to add your comments. If you have a Disqus account, great. If not, you can comment as a guest, also great!

We both have a long history of lurking on blogs and forums, but now that we're on the other side of the website (that's how the tubes work, right?), we ask you to be bold and say hello.

We'd love to hear thoughts on any of all (or even just one) of these:

About you-
How many kids/fetuses do you have? (or as One Bad Mother would say in their charmingly all inclusive way: Who lives in your house?)
Where do you live?
What's your parenting superpower?

About us-
How'd you find out about us?
Anything you'd like to see us cover more? Less?

About unleashing your inner nerd-
Kirk or Picard?
Buffy or Willow?
Will you show the prequels to your children?
Harry Potter books or movies first?