We often write about music on the site, but usually the pop-rock or kiddie genres.  Young kids don’t know the difference between The Beatles and Beethoven, yet, they just know what they like.  Listening to live classical music can be a fun, educational and enriching experience for your whole family.  And lucky for us, many of the esteemed performing arts organizations in NYC offer special concerts with interactive elements, fanciful costumes, sets, pre-show workshops and other engaging ways to develop a young kid’s musical understanding and taste.

Find out where you can take your kids to these concerts and how to get your tickets.

This play space has changed owners. Find our new review here. While searching for indoor fun this winter, I found the perfect place—for my kids, and me. A place that feels more like a good friend's cool apartment than a play space thanks to a minimalist and modern decor, good music (Smashing Pumpkins and Kings of Leon on my visits), and huge windows that let in a ton of natural light and provide a nice reminder of the cold weather outside. Opened in September 2010 by the down-to-earth and enviably hip couple Wade Groom and Katja Douedari, Play is a place I'd happily hang out at all winter, for these reasons, and many more.

I love lists. So neat, so handy, so easy to read. And I love sharing our lists with you. Sometimes I think I started Mommy Poppins, just so I could share my information organizing manias with other people. And list posts have been some of the most popular posts on Mommy Poppins. Of course, 100 Things to Do with Your Kids Before They Grow Up, my mega-list, is kind of the flagship post of the site, but we have had some other great lists too from where to get the best hot chocolate to what to do on a staycation. Here are my top ten list posts of 2010:

My New Years Resolution is to work more efficiently in 2011, so in an effort to become a lean, mean, mommying machine, I am jumping right into our best bets for this weekend, after I alert you to a few things that are going on that you definitely want to know about.

Firstly, many of the cities museums are offering their monthly free “first” days this weekend since last weekend was the holiday.  Families can check out the goings on at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan for free on Friday or The New Museum on Saturday (read below for the scoop on that).  The fantastic holiday train show at the NY Botanical Garden closes this Sunday, so if you didn’t get a chance to see it yet – this is it, to sweeten the deal- Thomas the Tank Engine will be there greeting the kids and posing for photos.  Tickets are still available to see, The Inflatable Theater Company at Symphony Space, and they are definitely something not to miss, they use these transforming, fabric inflatables in their act and turn boxes into giant dogs and stuff.  Finally, if your Christmas tree is still hanging around, like mine is, have the parks department turn it into mulch that they can use in NYC’s parks this year.

Happy New Year! Read for our best bets and have a great weekend.

Yes, we're all wiped out from the holidays, but instead of couch potato-ing through the rest of the winter, why not venture out and see what New Jersey has to offer this weekend. We have a great contest for four FREE sets of tickets to the awesome Bari Koral Family band, and you can also finally see the holiday lights you missed because you were too busy during the actual holidays or take part in the wonderful winter activity of maple sugaring. Happy New Year, Jerseyites!

NYC is an ever-changing landscape, but even a jaded New Yorker has to be a little bit impressed with how many new and amazing kids spots opened up (or renovated) here in 2010 — Well, OK, technically, some of them opened in 2009, but they were still fresh and new in 2010. Here are some of our favorite new spots for kids in NYC this year. You won't be surprised that most of our favorite picks are not just awesome, but free. *love*

When the winter cold sets in, not only do the kids bounce off the walls, they also manage to turn the house upside-down. Better plan: Let them get the wiggles out somewhere else. Indoor playspaces were created by some very wise adults, let us tell you. Our favorite kid-tested spots will keep the small ones entertained for hours, and you with a clean house (plus some sanity).

I am halfway through this week of "Best Of 2010" lists and and I'm starting to think I might not be cut out for this type of thing. It's hard to pick some blogs knowing you are leaving so many others out. To make matters worse, my innocent little list of the Best Local NYC Blogs got linked from the NY Times, so now my choices are forever part of the blog of record.

So before I jump into my list of my favorite Mom Blogs, I'd like to make a little speech about how I am choosing. (clear throat, tap fork on glass). The blogs I am including are blogs that inspire me, each in their own way. They are also the blogs that I happened to have thought of during the few hour window that I wrote this post. Tomorrow different things will be on my mind and I will find new sources of inspiration (and remember old ones that I didn't think of when I was writing this — and apologize in my head to people I left off the list). But I hope that this post will be a source for you to find some new inspiration too, with some great blogs that maybe you didn't know about yesterday.

10 Favorite Mom Blogs that Inspired Me in 2010: