Susan Izatt is an Early Childhood, Infant and Toddler Development expert and the Director and Co-founder of now-closed MoonSoup Early Childhood Studio. With years of experience playing with and teaching babies, Susan certainly knows how to get babies moving and make it fun. She agreed to share some activity ideas that parents can easily do at home with their babies excerpted from her upcoming book New Moms & First Time Dads. Thanks, Susan!

It's February and that means it's time for City Bakery's annual Hot Chocolate Festival. For every day in February, the popular Flatiron eatery City Bakery will be spicing up its delicious cocoa with a different flavor. And since it's a Leap Year, that's 29 days of hot chocolates that need to be sampled.

City Bakery is already a kid-friendly spot, but it's also nearby the wonderful Books of Wonder and lots of other family attractions in Flatiron like the Lego Store, the recently opened Dylan's Candy Bar and of course the Union Square Playground that it makes for a great winter outing. Maybe hit of the new MoMath Beaver Run exhibit pre- or post-hot cocoa? 

Looking for more to do this month? Read our February GoList for great NYC family events all month.

The recently opened Lowline Lab on the Lower East Side is stunning, child-friendly, FREE, hosts workshops for kids—and unlike any park you've ever seen in NYC.

The indoor park was built to test and showcase technology for growing and sustaining plants underground. It'll be open weekend afternoons for six months, making it a great, leafy (and warm) destination this holiday season for locals and NYC visitors. But it's more than just another great place to get in out of the cold this winter. The Lowline Lab feels like a peek into some futuristic world. Read on for the inside scoop on New York City’s weirdest new park, what it’s like to visit with kids and how to register for its free Young Designers Program.

These recipes are imagined by Mommy Poppins, but sponsored by The Laughing Cow® cheese.

Pinterest is packed with adorable snack ideas for kids, but let’s get real—ain’t nobody got time for that. And while it’s true that kids fall for presentation, that doesn’t mean you have to make everything look like an adorable panda/Minion/Star Wars icon to get them to eat it. The truth is, children love to feel grown-up, and it’s super easy to make kid-friendly snacks look like fancy party foods in a matter of seconds. Any afternoon can feel like a special occasion with these easy ideas that don’t just look and taste yummy, but can inspire even your pickiest eater to try something new.

There's something about the fall season that makes us antsy for a day trip out of the city with the kids to enjoy the changing leaves with a hike in cooler temps or just to explore a new museum a bit further afield, hot chocolate in hand for the ride. Maybe it's knowing that in just a short couple of holiday-fueled months, New York City will once again be plunged into a frozen tundra of black-crusted snow.

So whether you're looking for a road trip that's less than an hour away or a kid-friendly weekend overnight, we have 39 super fun destination ideas, including fall hikes in nearby Westchester, places to see wild animals (and dinosaurs) and sea creatures in Connecticut and New Jersey, and New York lighthouses, historic homes, foodie hot spots and seasonal fun like hayrides and pumpkin picking.

For more NYC getaway inspiration, read through our Day Trip Guide or visit the Mommy Poppins Travel site.

New York City offers near limitless things for kids to do from some of the best children’s museums and theater options in the world to our libraries, parks and playgrounds. Even locals get overwhelmed with the amount to do here each day and weekend. So we've put together the ultimate one-day itinerary for a family trip to NYC, making sure you take in all the top kid-friendly sights and activities, including Central Park, Times Square and the American Museum of Natural History.

This ultimate NYC family bucket list is designed to be fun for kids of pretty much any age, but we think school-age children will likely get the most out of it. It offers park and food breaks along the way, and could easily be stretched over a weekend or done at a slower pace for toddlers and preschoolers. Read on for your very best day in NYC ever, and check out the Mommy Poppins Visitor's Guide for more tips on the best kid sights and things to do in Manhattan, as well as Brooklyn, Queens and elsewhere around the city.

Every year a mom at our school makes these fabulous Halloween cookies and I've always wanted to try them myself. They're such a simple, clever idea and I love that they're not overly sweet with lots frosting like most theme cookies are. Feel free to improvise on the recipe. Some people add a little green food coloring or paint the fingernails. You can also add red gel to the "severed" ends or put some strawberry jam under the fingernails. Get creative.

After Halloween last year, I was astonished at the amount of candy my kids got, especially when I counted up the total calories. It really made me think twice and we ended up taking five pounds of candy and selling it to the dentist the week after Halloween. This year we found a healthier alternative to giving away candy for Halloween and it seems like there are lots of people feeling the same way because I keep reading about all kinds of things to do with your leftover Halloween candy besides eat it, from donating it to soldiers to using it to make a gingerbread house. Read on for some of the best ideas of what to do with all that leftover Halloween candy.