My almost three-year-old son is giving up his nap. Sigh. On the days where he naps, he’s wide awake at bedtime, past bedtime, way past bedtime, and is still trying to jump on the bed and sing songs about weasels at 9.30pm. A few cranky afternoons excepted, he’s a happy little chap all day when he doesn’t nap. I am currently in mourning for my afternoon sleep/internet surfing session/occasional housework binge.

After having a newborn who sleeps randomly, it’s nice when baby settles into more or less of a routine of three or four naps a day. By six months, babies usually need two naps a day at fairly regular times and moms start to relax (just a little) that they have gotten the hang of this nap business.

Bar teething and colds and other things that disrupt napping, the two-nap period is usually a fairly predictable one that moms can plan other activities around, like playdates, appointments and going to the store.

Then, just once you think you have a handle on napping, it all changes. Around when babies turn one, they decide that they only need one nap a day. I have a friend who’s son quit napping altogether at 9 months and another friend with a 16-month-old who still naps twice a day, so that date is subject to change.

The transition from two naps to one can be rough. There’s mornings when baby denies that she is tired. Then is too tired to fall asleep, has a 20 minute nap and is grumpy/hyper until she crashes in the afternoon. Or baby will nap beautifully in the morning, then be wide eyed all the rest of the day, go to bed early, then wake up extremely early, and her naps the next day are thrown off. Or any other permutations of refusing to nap, napping at odd times, random nap lengths and all that kind of fun.

The two-naps-to-one transition can take a couple of weeks to get through, and oftentimes nighttime sleep is disturbed too, as baby is probably not getting the rest she needs during the day, or might be getting more than she needs and isn’t as tired at night.

The good news? Once babies settle into the one nap routine, they tend to nap for longer. A two hour afternoon nap seems to be a common pattern, and is bliss after the 40-minute naps of before. It’s the perfect length for mom to have a nap too, watch a couple of TiVo’d episodes of Lost, or surf the internet. You thought you were the only one? Internet page views have a spike mid-afternoon and I’m guessing that’s a whole load of moms emailing, hitting facebook, writing their blogs and even visiting this site (thank you) while baby naps. So I think you’ll agree that the aggravation in making the transition is well worth it.

I have to warn you upfront that Twitter is hopelessly addictive. It’s one of those internet inventions that it’s hard to see the point of at first, but after using it for a while, you’ll be hooked.

Twitter is a social networking website. it’s like a personal mini-blog, but one that has extra neat features like social networking, and chatting.

Twitter is used for posting short messages, called “tweets” on your Twitter page. You can either use Twitter as just a personal blog, but where Twitter really gets good is when you link up with your friends’ Twitter pages. Your friends can read what you are posting, and you can read what they are posting. You can see all your tweets and all your friends’ tweets together on one page, so it’s great for communicating with a group of friends.

Lots of moms would love to blog, but don’t have time to write blog posts. Here’s where Twitter is so perfect: tweets are a maximum of 140 letters long, so you can post short messages in those free seconds inbetween diaper changes. And it’s much easier to type a little message one-handed while your sleeping baby is lying on your other arm.

All you need to do is to open a Twitter account, it’s really easy, and it’s free. Then, you can start tweeting. Search for your friends on Twitter, and click on the “Follow” button on their Twitter pages to follow what they are doing.

What are you going to write about? Well, Twitter asks you: “What are you doing?” so just type in what you are doing right now. Check out some of these cool moms who use Twitter to see what they are tweeting about.

You can use Twitter to chat and network too. We had an unexpected free afternoon earlier this week, so I tweeted “anyone wanna go to the park this afternoon?” and within 20 minutes later, a couple of friends tweeted back and we had a playdate.

As well as linking with your friends, you can do lots of other things on Twitter. If you are not completely sick of the election, you can follow politics. Barack Obama has the world’s most popular Twitter page, and then there’s Sarah Palin and John McCain… actually, those are two spoof sites mocking the Republican candidates. The real ones don’t seem to have embraced Twitter yet.

News sites like the New York Times and CNN post breaking news on Twitter. Many blogs also automatically send their latest blog posts to their Twitter site so you can keep up to date with your favorites. You can get a Bible verse sent to you every day by following ESV Daily Verse. You can follow celebrity shenanigans by following Britney Spears‘ Twitter Feed, and find out what Dave Matthews is doing at his.

You’ll be able to see tweets from all the sites you follow on one page, so it’s perfect for keeping up to date with, well, everything!

Babies Online is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Babiesonline so sign up for Twitter, and watch us, your favorite website and your friends. Get breaking news, entertainment, inspiration, and keep in touch with your friends, all in one place.

Pregnant women have a lot of questions. When will my morning sickness end? What will I see on my ultrasound? And what’s the best car seat to buy?

Here’s a great resource with the answers to all of the above: Aha! Baby.

From trying to conceive through to labor and delivery, Aha! Baby is a search website devoted to pregnancy.

The website is organized into topics such as conception, baby names, pregnancy baby showers, and mom’s health. You can pick a frequently asked question from one of the topics, or ask your own.

The reason Aha! Baby is more useful than Google or Yahoo search engines, is that all the information Aha! Baby provides to answer your question is reviewed to make sure it’s accurate and useful.

I’ve never had more questions about anything than when I was pregnant, and this website has everything organized to make finding answers – the best answers – as easy as possible.

Expectant moms, add this one to your bookmarks now!

Do we really know what your kids are doing when they are online? We as parents, might have to pay the price – and not in the monetary sense either.

Scenario # 1

Are your underaged kids downloading films and songs from the Internet illegally – with or without your knowledge? According to a technology news item at Redorbit, Internet providers and music trade industry have joined forces to stop piracy over the Internet. Users who download media illegally – they know because they are monitoring the piracy sites – are sent official warnings. Those who ignore the warnings have to pay the price – the slowing down Internet speed to restrict downloading big files.

Scenario # 2:

Are your kids part of social networks? Do they keep the blog? Do you check what they are posting? According to this article in Wesh2 Orlando, what your kids post on the Internet may affect not only them but the whole family as well. Some teenagers may tend to pour their hearts out to anonymous “cyberfriends” – be it about mommy’s drinking problems, daddy’s abusive behavior, drugs and sexual escapades at home. The posts may or may not be accurate but there are eyes and ears on the Net keeping tabs on you, be it current and prospective employers, creditors, or the police. Whatever has been posted might haunt us and our family months, years, decades from now.

Scenario # 3:

This is the scariest of all scenarios. They started years ago but are still ranging on – teen suicide pacts planned over the Internet have occurred in countries all over including Australia, UK, and Switzerland. Though such kind of pacts existed before the advent of the Internet, technology has facilitated the spread and planning of this psychiatric problem – even among people who have never personally met.

While we cannot stop our kids from using the Internet, there is clearly a need for checks and controls, maybe even censorship. My kids are still too young for me to worry about these things but I’m sure these technology-associated problems will not disappear but might even get worse with time. I only hope that when kids are old enough to use the Net, I will be up to the task to watch our for them.

This afternoon I got a phone call. The caller said they were from a credit card company, and could she speak to my son?

“He’s two”, I said. “I’m his mom, can I help you?”

The lady on the phone said she really needed to speak to him in person.

“He’s a toddler. He’s two. Why do you need to talk to him?”

Anyway, it transpired that a credit card had been opened in my son’s name, and they were calling about some detail on the account. They had my son’s name, and an address that’s similar but not quite the same as ours. So the woman gave me the number of the credit card company’s ID theft department, and hung up.

I was wondering how on earth the person who opened the account managed to do so? I guess they must have gotten the information from the internet. I work from home, I’m on the internet for hours every day, I shop online, I get parenting news, resources and ideas from the internet.

So while I try to convince Large Credit Card Company that my toddler didn’t apply for a credit card – and neither did I, which is what they insinuated – I remind myself to be more careful with what I share on the internet.

Even with internet security, like a firewall, anti-spyware software, and anti-virus software, you can never be truly secure sharing data on the internet, as fraudsters continue to find new ways to get at our data.

So the best way to protect yourself is to share as little as possible, and only disclose personal information to trusted sites. I blogged abut sharing too much on forums and message boards a few months ago, and I guess I need to listen to my own advice! And I’m going to be more vigilant about what information about my son gets on the internet.

More information about protecting yourself and your family from identity theft, and what to do if you think you or your child has been targeted….