Kids and parents alike will delight in this light and lovely lemon poppy-seed cake from Real Simple — no oven required!

Source: Flickr user pathlost

A cookout-ready meal (without having to turn on the grill), these shredded pork sandwicheswill appease a crowd.

Source: Flickr user julishannon

Try something new with this Caribbean-inspired chicken stew from Jeanette's Healthy Living.

Source: Jeanette's Healthy Living

This easy balsamic pork roast is worthy of a dinner party but easy enough to make for your family's weeknight supper.

Source: Flickr user anotherpintplease

If your kids like a little kick in their dinner, whip up Food Fanatic's jalapeño popper chicken sandwich.

In a fraction of the time that it would take to make on the grill, this slow-cooker pulled pork is delicious on a bun with a green salad or coleslaw.

Source: Flour On My Face

With only a few ingredients, these flavorful sloppy joes are on the table and ready for noshing after a day of cooking slow and low thanks to your crockpot. You can even heat up leftovers for lunch the next day.

Source: Budget Gourmet Mom

This recipe for Egyptian lentils and rice from The Pretty Bee is a great vegetarian solution for nights when the kitchen cupboards are looking sparse. Enjoy it on its own, or enhance it with additional protein or veggies.

Source: Flickr user coldphage

So maybe a family getaway to Hawaii isn't in the cards this Summer. Instead, bring a taste of the islands to your family's table with Defining Tabitha's Kalua pork.

Source: Flickr user rfung8

According to Dr. Karp, parents can start introducing sleep cues on baby's first night. "Everyone tells you you can sleep train at 3 or 4 months of age — they can't learn how to sleep before that," he says. "But how come they can learn bad sleep clues? Why can't they learn the good sleep clues? It's so transparently wrong, yet everyone keeps doing the same thing over and over again!"

Source: Flickr user alphaone

Along with swaddling, Dr. Karp says white noise is the key to the sleep puzzle. "In the womb, [babies] have a sound that is louder than a vacuum cleaner 24/7. So to be in a silent room is bizarre beyond belief for them," he says.

He adds there are two types of white noise: low and high pitches. High-pitched noises — like beepers, alarms, and sirens — are great for getting a baby's attention. But lower-pitched noises — like the rumble of a car, train, or plane — are more soothing and can lull you to sleep. "The sound in the womb is very low and rumbly because babies are underwater and water filters out the high-pitch sounds," Dr. Karp says. "Most of the machines, the apps, have the wrong sound. They have a shhhh, which is irritating as hell to parents and not helpful to a lot of babies too. Low pitch — like the sound of rain on the roof — that you play all night and at all naps encourages a baby to sleep. So it helps babies sleep in that fourth trimester [the first three months]."

Dr. Karp goes on to explain that if they are used to the white noise from birth, it will train them to put themselves back to sleep when they wake in the middle of the night. "At four months, when you stop swaddling and babies get nosy, they start waking up at night, and if they're in a totally quiet room, they call for your assistance. That's why everyone's doing sleep training at four months. But you don't have to do sleep training if you get them used to these cues earlier on — the swaddling and the low-pitch white noise CD. Then you wean the swaddling, and when your 4-month-old wakes up in the middle of the night, they hear the rrrrrrrr sound and think, 'Everything's fine, I can go back to sleep.' If they wake up in a quiet room, they scream for their mom because that's who was with them when they fell asleep originally."

Source: Flickr user supersonicphotos

Once your tot is using white noise to go (and stay) asleep, will they have it forever? That depends on you, according to Dr. Karp.

"That's your choice at least for the first year. Parents always ask, don't they become addicted and stuck to it? And the answer is No. 1, they're addicted to it when they're born, so to go from having it 24/7 to none is way too abrupt for a baby. No. 2, you can wean it. The beauty of white noise, and swaddling for that matter, is you can wean it in steps. If you want to wean the sound, you just gradually lower the sound over a week or two and it's gone. Sleeping with your baby or nursing your baby to sleep, it's all or none. It's much harder to wean them off of that. Sleep cues are not a bad thing."

Source: Flickr user emerycophoto

It may sound counterintuitive, but Dr. Karp says it's essential to wake your baby as she's drifting off to sleep.

"When you have a little baby, it's OK to rock them to sleep and nurse them to sleep — in fact, you can't really stop them from falling asleep while they're nursing. However, they will get dependent on that. You [need to] feed your baby, swaddle your baby, turn on the white noise, and rock your baby to sleep. Then you slide them into the crib or bassinet and you wake them up — you tickle their feet or something and you wake them a little bit. They're drowsy, they're kind of drunk from the milk a little bit. They're swaddled, they have the white noise, so they tend to fall back asleep in five to 10 seconds. Or, at most, you jiggle the crib a little bit to get them back to sleep. In those 10 seconds, they're learning how to put themselves back to sleep in the middle of the night, without your help. So you can train a baby the wrong habits in the first few weeks, but you can also start training them the right habits in the first few weeks."

Source: Flickr user tiarescott

Many parents become lax when sleep training their second, third, and fourth tots because they're afraid of waking their older siblings. According to Dr. Karp, there's no need to worry. If you're using the swaddling and white noise methods from birth, the baby shouldn't be making much noise.

He adds, "if you have a 5-month-old that isn't sleeping, start using the white noise. Give it four to five nights and see if that works. Probably 70 percent of the time you can finesse your way out of a sleep problem just by adding white noise. But if you're determined you're going to let your baby cry it out, with your older child, put white noise in his room."

Source: Flickr user icanchangethisright

Putting an old wives' tale to rest, Dr. Karp emphatically says that rice cereal does not help a baby sleep longer. "When you look at it, why should it help?" he says. "Why would giving eight ounces of milk that's got a lot of fat and protein not help a baby sleep, but giving them one to two teaspoons of rice starch help them sleep? I mean, it's not quick-drying cement. It really goes through them just as quickly."

Source: Flickr user Philippe Put

Negotiating sleep with a vocal toddler or preschooler can feel like you're talking to a Neanderthal sometimes. Dr. Karp's developed the Twinkle Interruptus program to help train them to get to sleep. He says:

"So there's a broken record you get from doctors that you just close the door and let them cry and in three to four nights they'll learn to sleep on their own. It's torture! This fun little technique called Twinkle Interruptus can let you sleep train a toddler in seven days or less with zero crying.

So for five to six days you practice Patience Stretching that teaches toddlers to be more patient. The general technique is that when your child wants something, you almost give it to them, and at the last minute, you pretend to be distracted, making them wait a few seconds. Any child will wait five seconds. Once they learn to wait five seconds, then you extend it to 10, 20, 30 seconds. You practice it five times a day with little kids. What you're doing is rewiring the part of the brain that is the patience center. That week you start using white noise every night an hour before bedtime. It becomes a subliminal cue in the background that it is becoming time for bed. You also give your child a teddy bear or blanket.

Then you start Twinkle Interruptus. So when a child calls for you at 3 in the morning, you go to them to make sure they're not sick or vomiting, you see that they're really OK. You have the white noise playing, the teddy bear right there, so you sit in their bed, you snuggle up with them, you start to do your bedtime routine with them — sing a bedtime lullaby, whatever — and after about 15, 20 seconds of that, you say, 'Oh, one second, I just have to see daddy one second,' and you quick go out of the room or you quick go to the other side of the room for five to 10 seconds, they'll let you do that because they already learned over the past week that mommy comes back. Then you come back, you snuggle up, and you start doing your routine again, and then after a minute or so, you start doing the same thing. And then you leave for 10 seconds. Then again for 20 seconds. And maybe the next night you start at 20 seconds and then a minute. And usually by two to three nights they fall asleep waiting for you to come back in. And that's the end of it. You're doing it in a nice way, not going head to head with a Neanderthal."

Source: Flickr user peasap

After you've had about 10 medical professionals staring into your vagina under the harsh lights of a delivery room, your sense of modesty changes. And when you start breastfeeding, no matter how easy or hard, you just want to get the job done, and you don't always want to leave the couch or sit in a dirty public restroom.

My dad, my mother-in-law, my best friend's boyfriend, a co-worker, a perfect stranger at the aquarium . . . Only two people on this list have yet to see my boobs, and I can't say I'd give a crap if they did.

I used to admonish friends who were constantly checking their phone over dinner, but after one rare night out in which I checked mine as the bill arrived, only to see a stream of 17 text messages from my husband, I've loosened up.

Next time you see a table of people at a restaurant, all with their faces glowing inches above their iPhones, don't shake your head and declare the end of civilization. Maybe they are all just trying to make sure their babies are still alive.

Were you a "neat freak" before you had the baby? Well, get ready: you will soon have poop on your cheek and not even care! That's what scores of moms told me. They also said that if you weren't that into sanitizing, having a baby may turn you into the Purell police.

I've actually found that your cleanliness just becomes incredibly inconsistent. I keep the nursery room spotless and organized, but my clean clothes are now in an indiscernible pile of also-dirty clothes. I scrub baby bottles with a specially designated brush and overpriced soap, but I let our pet dog lick my baby's hands. None of it makes any sense.

In the age where every photo has a filter (and maybe a little photoshopping), it's rare that you'll allow the general public to see you looking anything but your best — hair done, glasses off, lipstick applied. However, there's no greater sacrifice a mother can make than posting an awful picture of herself in deference to the cuteness of her baby.

Also, if you haven't taken selfies before, you will now.

Remember going back home after your first year away at college and feeling like everything was the same but slightly worse? Welcome to your postpartum body. About four weeks after I'd had my baby, I discovered I had stretch marks. On my butt. I still don't know what was more surprising: that you could get stretch marks there, or that I didn't notice them for a solid month.

Just get the "sorry for . . . " emails ready. Before I got pregnant, I had an opinion about everything. Name a debate, I had a side in it: Stay-at-home vs. working moms. Breastfeeding vs. formula. Attachment parenting vs. normal parenting. (Yeah, sorry about that.) Now, I do for my own baby what I think is best for us, and I stay the hell out of other families' business. The one thing you can count on is that the minute you think you have it all figured out, it changes.

At least not at first. Yes, of course you do drop a sizable amount of pounds right after the birth, but just be prepared to plateau for awhile. And all this talk in your childbirth classes about the weight-loss benefits of breastfeeding? It happens, I'm sure, but don't expect it to click right away. It takes time (we're talking months) to start seeing that scale move, even a single pound, in a good direction.

I remember my husband calling out to get my assistance in the nursery room because our daughter had peed while he was changing her diaper. I was so mad that I missed seeing it! My husband got to see her pee and I didn't! And when my baby let out her first belly laugh, my best friend was holding her. What a sweet moment for them. As for the happy family in this photo? You can bet that mom is secretly pissed that that dude gets to be the one holding her baby.

After giving birth, I found myself casually posting about 47 baby photos and liking (for the first time) other people's mom-related posts. A few days later, it seemed people were posting a lot more baby photos! I also seemed to be getting a lot more parenting-related articles popping up in my feed. Had everyone jumped on the baby train at the same time I did?!

No, they didn't. Facebook is scary smart, and it uses a highly complicated algorithm that can tell I'm really into babies now. The bad news is that my feed has been taken over by the one thing I used to be annoyed by. The good news is I love it!

And, really, you probably aren't even doing anything "wrong." I currently know plenty of gainfully employed, happily married people who were dropped as babies. One of my closest friends was a month premature. Another friend of mine apparently cried 15 hours of the day for the first three months of his life, and he's still pretty cool.

And as for that whole "breast is best" pressure? I had a friend who had a terrible time with breastfeeding and felt awful about it. Don't feel awful about it. In six months, your kid will be eating with a spoon and this will all be a distant memory. And, hey, for the most part, I was formula fed, and I'd like to think I turned out OK.

The oil will make your baby’s bottom just moisturized enough that the poop will wipe right off. Otherwise, you’ll be there all day.

The little shoulder flaps in onesies aren’t just a fancy design keeping your little ahead of the trends; they’re actually there so that the head opening can become large enough to slip down your baby’s body in the case of an explosive diaper. That way, you can avoid getting poo anywhere you don’t want poo (not that there are many places you actually want poo, but you know what we mean).

Clean off your babe and deposit all the dirty wipes in the old diaper, lift it out of the way, and have a fresh one right there waiting for you. This saves time, and if your baby is a boy, it also saves you precious seconds in the race against being peed on.

The pacifiers that you’re given at the hospital (also available for purchase) have that hollow opening, which is perfect for putting the medicine dropper in. Granted, the flow through the tiny pacifier hole will make this a long process, but your stubborn baby will be soothed while also being duped into feeling better.

If your baby has gas, one way to relieve it is by laying them on their back and rotating their chunky little legs in a bicycle-pedaling motion (elbow to knee).

Swaddling is a thing of the past — now it’s all about the zip sleepers. You don’t have to do any complicated folds and stay up all night worrying about your baby coming undone or getting chilly.

Use these handy steps.

1. Place a square swaddle blanket in your baby’s crib like a diamond.
2. Fold down the top corner toward the middle to make a flat edge.
3. Lay your baby down on the blanket with the flat edge on the back of their neck.
4. Put your baby’s arms flat against their body and bring one side corner across their body and tuck it underneath them, leaving an arm free.
5. Fold the bottom corner up and over the shoulder of the remaining free arm.
6. Fold the remaining side corner over their flat arm and across the body, tucking it under their body.

While it’s tempting to want to keep your baby awake because you think they’ll sleep through the night that way, it doesn’t exactly work that way. Newborns need a ton of sleep, and trust us, a newborn kept up longer than 90 minutes is going to start to become more than crabby.

We know, this seems obvious, but there are plenty of moms who either stay up worrying, don’t think their child will be asleep for long and use the time for other things, or just choose not to get on a schedule with their child. If you want to sleep during your first year, try out this rule; you won’t regret it.

Like all other humans, we eat to give us energy throughout the day, starting with breakfast right after we wake up. If you’re feeding your baby as soon as they wake up, they’ll have nutrients to give them energy for their awake time (see slide nine), and then they won’t be relying on milk to fall back asleep, which can end up being a hard habit to break later down the road.

If you swoop in to save your baby from awareness at the sign of the first startle, you’ll never know if they’re truly finished sleeping. Sometimes they wake themselves or are crying a bit in their sleep — leave them for a minute to see if they stop before waking them fully by going in and picking them up.

The basket will work as a catch-all for toys and bubbles, but the water can flow freely in and out. You can also line the bottom with even more nonslip grip to prevent any slippage whatsoever.

If you sleep train your babe in a quiet room, chances are they’ll be a lighter sleeper, affected by any and every noise. Use a white noise machine or app, or try a ceiling or standing fan pointed away from them just to make some noise.

When you’re just laying around the house all day, open sleepers with stretchy bottoms and socks are the perfect outfit — they make changing diapers so much easier since you don’t have to button a million tiny little snaps.

Letting some cool air hit their bare baby skin or killing two birds with one stone and changing their dirty diaper should wake your baby right up.

Capture every expression, every milestone (whether it’s in the baby book or not) — just everything. This time goes so quickly, and there are so many photos you can take to really remember this fleeting time.