Gretchen Menzies helps moms lead a less stressful life, and it's only a mouse click away. "If I can take away one piece of stress for somebody, that's good enough for me," says the creator of essentialmom.com. "Once our friends started moving up here and asking us questions, we kind of became a resource for them."

She thought, why not provide a place where families could find information to help them through the reality of raising children and find fun things to do with them. After all, every Saturday at Applebee's starts getting boring.

Gretchen Menzies lives in Bedford Corners with her husband and two children. She has had a 10-year career in social work and project management with a leading community service organization working specifically with youth and family programs. She holds numerous volunteer and board positions with various Westchester County nonprofit organizations, and currently sits on the boards of two private foundations, in addition to her work as founder of essentialmom.com. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colgate University as well as a Master of Social Work degree from New York University.

The Web site has been up for about a year and a half, and she began with what she knew: classes she had taken, places she had gone with her kids. Then, with a background in social work, she started to explore the nonprofits and volunteer agencies in the area. Museums, day care centers, historical houses "They all have me on their lists, and they send me all their information," she says.

"It's 24 hours a day, and they can access it when they're having a bad day or in the middle of the night when they have a crying baby," says Ms. Menzies.

The Web site sticks mostly with the preschool age range and links families to pediatrician, legal, and financial services, contractors and painters, where to find the best food, and which restaurants take screaming babies and which don't.

It might seem that "the force" must be with her or something to amass all this knowledge for the community. Not really."I'm a mom in the community, so I'm out there doing the work that they are all doing," she says.

Ms. Menzies has a newsletter that goes out once a week to hundreds of moms throughout Westchester, and they are constantly responding with ideas, she says.

If your virus software breaks down and your computer catches a cold, she can also tell you it doesn't take a Web site to know that the libraries and the nature centers always have something going on for families. "The Westmoreland Sanctuary is a wonderful place to take the kids and hike around," she says, citing their "touch the animals" as one event that children love.

When things get serious at home, she offers advice in the form of articles, but doesn't necessarily offer her opinion. "I'm not telling them I know how to parent any better than anyone else," she says, so if there's an article on why you should let your child cry itself to sleep, there'll probably be one offering the opposite.

She would be delighted if the site turned a profit, but she keeps her focus on providing a community service. "I really want it to be a service for parents, and I don't want it to become a commercial site where there are ads all over the place," says Ms. Menzies.

Most of all, she wants to connect people through the joys and anxiety of raising a family in Westchester. "I really provide an honest newsletter where it's not all about flowers and roses and how much you love your kids, because for every day the fantasy fits the world, you're probably up to your pupils in preschool pink eye.

Essentialmom.com, Box 221, Bedford Hills; 523-1352.