About MommyBeta

MommyBeta is a running tabulation of our thoughts and news about motherhood. We are Natali, Jennifer, Nathalee and Alex. We all had our first babies in 2010, and we shared the experience over email, instant message, and text message and then decided to chronicle it all into a blog. 

The "beta" tag is an attempt to sidestep the hyper-sensitive, hyper-opinionated reputation that mommy blogs have. We don't pretend to be experts. We are learning as we go. In fact, the beta tag may never come off! We just want to get through the process with joy, grace, and as little mess as possible!

You are welcome to share your thoughts with us! You can email us at mb at mommybeta dot com. Thank you for sharing in this wild ride they call parenting

Natali Morris

Natali is a technology contributor for CNBC as well as an MBA student at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. You can find her professional bio here. 

Natali is the proud mother of two beautiful souls: Miles, born July 2010 and Ava, born May 2012. 

As a book nerd, Natali devours parenting books. She writes about her experience applying theory to practice, which does not always work, as you can imagine. This blog is where the rubber meets the road in her attempt to raise healthy and happy human beings who make this world a better place. 

See all posts from Natali here. Email Natali at natali-at-mommybeta-dot-com.  You can also follow Natali on Twitter.

Jennifer Nichols Parnell

A displaced Southerner, Jennifer moved to the big city of San Francisco nearly seven years ago. Two years later, she met her then-to-be husband through a fate encounter that began with a Missed Connections posting and the two tied the knot in August of 2009. 

They welcomed their baby girl in October 2010 and are loving every second of parenthood.

In between blogging, feathering her new nest in the burbs and trying to figure out this whole “motherhood” thing, Jennifer is a PR consultant and entrepreneur of a new social network for PR professionals and media called FlackList.

You can see all posts from Jennifer here and follow her on Twitter here. Email Jennifer at jennifer-at-mommybeta-dot-com.

Nathalee Ghafouri

Nathalee has always been a mom at heart.  Long before she was ever pregnant, she was the one with snacks and bandaids in her bag, insisting that everyone in the car buckles up.  Now that she's actually a mom, she's far more relaxed about the whole process than she ever imagined, but will admit that she's made more than one spreadsheet to make sure things are going as they should.

Her baby Nic was born in March of 2010, and in her spare time (while Nic naps),  she's also a freelance marketing consultant.

See all posts from Nathalee here or follow her on Twitter. Email Nathalee at nathalee-at-mommybeta-dot-com.

Alex Aranoff

Alex has been changing diapers since she was five years old. No joke, her aunt who lived next door had an in-home day care so she's been around babies since she can remember. Throughout junior high, high school and college Alex babysat for multiple families, each of them very different in terms of family dynamics and child rearing. She hopes to take the best of the best of what she's seen and learned over the years and apply them to her own family.

Alex is a PR consultant with more than seven years in the technology industry. Previous clients include Mozilla, Palm, HP and Zoho. Alex is also a certified personal life coach and hopes to use techniques she's learned to help her and fellow mommies through the trials and tribulations of parenting.

She currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and baby girl born in July. She's enjoying writing about her experiences as a new mother...the good, the bad and the funny.

See all posts from Alex here. Follow Alex on Twitter or email her at alex-at-mommybeta-dot-com.