Photo by IFN Goff

courtesy of InStyle Magazine

You wouldn't think that the 3-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes would have affordable style. But Suri Cruise's cute summery look is more accessible that you might think...

Toddler Bedding Set from pomme

This floral toddler bedding set is a beauty—and it's not Dora the Explorer or pink!

Photo by NonnieJ

My 4-year-old daughter's new favorite phrase is "You're not the boss! Daddy's the boss!"

I don't know where she got that grave misconception, but my point in telling you this is that at least one thing in most mother/daughter relationships has been fairly constant through the ages: Daughters don't like to listen to their mothers.

Not even on Mother's Day. ("Honey, that milk is going to tip." "No, it's not." Spill.)

Sigh. I'm not saying that everything mom says is always right, but you'd think daughters would have learned something from all the guilt and regret of gazillions of generations before us.

Moms in The CafeMom Newcomer's Club are listing all the good mom advice they wished they'd heeded but didn't. Just imagine how different things would have been if you'd listened when she told you as a kid to ...

Photo by LisaAnnM

I'm not a huge Princess fan, and never was as a girl. Nothing against them, but my heroes were adventurers like Joan of Arc, Wonder Woman, and various brave women of my imagination who rode wild horses, shot a bow and arrow, and swam with dolphins.

Princesses just sit on their pretty pink butts, comb their hair, and wait for some guy to come along -- how totally boring is that!

Speaking of which, I'm ready to enroll my 4 year old daughter in the local chapter of Princesses Anonymous. Pink, pretty, bejeweled, delicate, feminine, is her entire world. Yesterday I tried to put a perfectly girly orange corduroy skirt on her and she had a conniption.

And today she informed me she doesn't want to wear clothes that she's already worn before -- in other words, she wants brand new clothes every day so she doesn't have to wear the same thing twice. Yes, and on which planet do you reside again, Sweetie?

Big kids and tweens love to hang out at the playgrounds in my town, and I'm pretty sure that even teens haunt the space in the evening, judging by all the beer bottles and potato chip bags I find there in the mornings. Grrrr, that makes my blood boil ... but the real reason I bring this up is because big kids hanging out at parks and play areas often intimidate toddlers and littler kids.

It's a tough one. Whether you are 4 or 44, you should be able to swing or go down the slide at a public playground if you want to. Who has the right to say someone else can't be there?

But another mom was wondering whether a particular group of kids in her neighborhood have crossed the line, and wrote of her frustrations with big kids talking trash at the playground in a Journal.

As babymama8505 tells it,

Enjoying some unplugged family time.

Photo by Dylansmomma

Have you ever considered turning off the TV -- for a day, a week, or even for good?

If so, today might be a good day to start -- it's TV Turnoff Week. That's what former television addict CalliesMommy25, mom of 2 year old Callie, did recently. Read her experience with giving up television for a month in her personal blog.

Not to ruin the surprise, but CalliesMom never did go back to TV.

"We still don't have one, and I LOVE it," CalliesMommy25 says. "It's made such a HUGE difference in the lives of me and my family. I get a lot of slack about it, people don't think it's a good idea because it seems so normal to have TV and so unusual not too, but I'm getting used to that and just letting it go."

If this was Cafe Suzanne's channel, I'd be talking about how great it is that my daughter burps all the time. When you're a baby, ejecting uncomfortable gas on a regular basis is a very good thing.

But my daughter is 4, well beyond the baby bottle stage, and she and some other friends at school have recently discovered how to manually induce burps.

And now life has become a burpfest. She belches all the time -- at the dinner table, in her brother's face (who joins right in), in my face, in her friends' faces. They have burping contests to see who can create the funniest, loudest, or longest burp.

Photo by isdisnormal

I'm not sure how the topic came up. One of those strange toddler non-sequiters between me asking my 4 year old to eat her chicken to her boldly announcing: "I love you and Maura both the same."

What? Say again ...

Maura is my daughter's preschool teacher, and I love her too. She motivated, nurturing, and affectionate. The kind of person who adores working with kids so much that she can't wait to show up for work in the morning.

But love both of us THE SAME?!!

Dave from Imagination Movers sexy?

You know you're due for some time away from the kids (among other things) when, after watching "Blues Clues" or "The Wiggles" for the umpteenth time this week, you start thinking, "Wow, that guy wearing the pirate hat, clown boots, and orange spandex shirt is kinda sexy."

"See? No mini skirt," says Mattel and Nickelodeon as they soothe fears over Tween Dora.

Here she is, the new Tween Dora -- probably a little sooner than Nickelodeon and Mattel planned. But as I see it, a good PR move in light of the droves of moms who went ballistic on the two companies after news last month that the beloved adventurer, Dora the Explorer, is taking on a second identity -- that of fashion-loving, jewelry wearing, girly-girl tween.

Some of them were our own CafeMoms:

"What, little girls don't have enough fashion-obsessed trash idols?"

"I think its okay to make an older Dora, but I hope they don't 'hookify' her and make her look like a Bratz doll. Gag."