Most Awesome 'Awesome'

Just found this via PostSecret... and so I must share:

  http://1000awesomethings.com/

'Slipper Genie' Mopping Shoesies

I have the adult, non-animal face adorned, but also hot pink version of these 'Slipper Genie' cleaning shoes, and my daughter has coveted them since she first laid eyes on them... but see, these below are now what my lil' sweet potato has as her own 'mopping shoesies' with which she can help mommie clean our kitchen tile floors! She loves to help me mop -it's hysterically cute- but she always slipped on the wet floor, until now! With her very own pair of 'Kids Slipper Genie', she's a slip-free mopping professional.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

All Too Small

This post was written November 20, 2010, and was totally forgotten until now:

These 'size 5' shoesies didn't last very long - - all worn for no more than 2 months' time before she grew out of them - -well, except for the jelly sandals, which she used all summer until mid-November. Those jellies worked great as lil' swim shoes, made by Trumpette Too. Aren't those lil' red ones with the white hearts to die for? Those were her round-the-house slipper shoes, worn inside only for no-shoes-on households like ours. The suede brown and teal pair were her favorites, enough so that I bought her another pair of them in a size 6, which she's wearing now. The darling pink, orange and yellow pair, she called them her 'candy corn' shoes -clever girl, eh? Before she had to stop wearing those, we had paired her 'candy corn' shoes with the outfit she wore the day of Halloween! She had a darling pair of white Keds (not shown), that she wore only a couple weeks, too tight for the top of her foot.

At the beginning of last summer (2009), she wore a size 3 and by July's end, she was into a size 4, wearing a size 5 by mid to late September. It's not that her foot is growing quickly in length though - - Ohhh nooo, we have a different issue when it comes to kids quickly 'growing out' of shoes... If we go by her footsie length, she should be in a size 5, but the top of her foot, due to her tall arch, is SUPER WAY TALL for a baby's footsie --plus she's got kinda meaty, chubby feetsies. Makes it nearly impossible to find her shoes that fit! Stride Rites won't do, nor will any Sketcher. Both Keds and Keens are totally out. I can't even find her something that will fit her from either Target's Circo line or Kohl's Sonoma line. I really have to search to find styles that have a far-forward cut for the top of the shoe with a long, height accommodating ankle strap. So far Pediped and See Kai Run are the only brands I've found that make shoes that will fit my daughter's feet. And even then, sometime the cut doesn't work: Her candy corn shoes were made by See Kai Run, and the leather toe portion was cut too high towards the strap placed across the top of her foot at the ankle, smooshing the top of her foot, so that the top of her foot looked like a lil' pillow = she wore that pair for barely a month! oh, and have I mentioned yet that the majority of shoes made by either Pediped and See Kai Run, they sell for a hefty price? Infant Pedipeds usually run $32 each, with their Flex styles costing $42 or more. See Kai Run sells for $38, $40-ish. Whether we can afford these prices or not, it's ridiculous to spend $40 on a shoe that will be worn for less than 2 months at best, so I scope out eBay for retired, last season pairs that were never worn, still new and sold in the box. Even still, it's hard to find her even those.

K, why am I writing about all this? I may have mentioned this before, but my daughter really LOVES shoes and has since she was teeny tiny, hording the shoes of others, carrying them around, trying to wear everyone's shoes, etc. When it comes to her love of shoes, my honey-man often states he feels like he's living in an episode of Sex & the City. Well, now it's gotten to be a bigger issue with the holiday season here [DISCLAIMER: Mind you, this is allll relative, I know, I know.], unable to find her a basic black pair of mary janes that would fit her feet for Santa pictures and family holiday pictures and everything else black shoes can satisfy as a classic shoe color. In short, we failed - - although I wound up getting a pair of navy, last-season See Kai Runs and polished them with black shoe polish. But that's not the main point of this post anyhow - - I'm writing to share the results of a tried experiment:

At some point we thought we'd found the end all be all of shoes that would fit my daughter's feet no matter the style: Crocs

My honey-man is NOT a Crocs guy, very prejudiced against the brand. Nonetheless, I'd bought her a like-new hot pink pair off of eBay sometime mid-summer and they have fit her perfectly, 'cept we found out they're a nameless knock off, not 'real' Crocs. I thought this wouldn't matter until I bought her a pair of real Crocs in the next size up for her growing feet. IMPORTANT NOTE: Her faux Crocs are truly her most favorite pair of shoes because they fit her feet sooo comfortably.

So I ordered a pair of 6/7 sized Crocs this month, polar fleeced lined for the cooler weather. Remarkably, they did not fit the top of her foot, so they were promptly returned. Out of curiosity, I decided to order the next size up, to see if an 8/9 size would at least fit the top of her foot - - This is what those looked like out of the box = very cute, especially for Crocs! ~

This is how they're 8/9 sizing compared to her lil' footsie

And here they are on her feet = total clodhoppers, total clown-like look on her, plus she had nearly FOUR inches of extra room in the toe!?

Needless to say, they were returned as well. Crocs don't work for her either.

'Ends & Pieces' Fruit Leather No More?

I actually had an "oh my all that's holy nooooo" moment standing in the middle of a Trader Joes aisle last weekend: They no longer stock their bagged "Ends & Pieces" all natural fruit leather (and the sobbing ensues).

Honestly, I do not know what I'm gunna do without it! My baby girlie LOVES the stuff! And because it's ALL NATURAL --absolutely nothing but real, unadulterated fruit, with no other ingredients added-- I have zero guilt letting her eating every day for her heading-for-home snack in the car, and whenever else she pipes up, "Fruit leather please?"

It will cost 5-6 times more to buy the real fruit leather in individual or boxed strips, rather than a nice bulk bag of mixed odd 'ends and pieces'. And our girlie goes through an entire bag of this stuff nearly every week!?! So yeah, a $4 bag of all natural fruit leather (and that's with tax included) versus strips costing $0.50 to $0.75 each, when she eats what amounts to two or more strips in just ONE SITTING nearly EVERY DAY!

We're talking the difference between spending $16 per month or, now, possibly $70 per month in fruit leather to maintain her typical intake?!? I think we're going to have to discover a new favorite snack. *sigh*

P.S. I will never consider 'Fruit Roll Ups', nor any day-glow selection of 'fruit chews' a solution to my new found dilemma here. None of them come near the real food quality of TJ's natural fruit leathers. Instead, they're all loaded with added sugars and artificial colors and whatever else; they're more like a food experiment or a desert at best. Fine for a treat, but not a daily snack in my book. My mum would roll over in her grave otherwise.

Cheshire Cat Costume!

Although we had a kind of late in the game switcheroo with our original planning, coordinating the Halloween costumes of the angel boy-O and our sweet potato girlie, I luckily found something acceptable and just in time! It should ship out shortly and arrive barely in time for our departure for Utah, Wednesday of next week. But lemme' tell ya, it was harder than I'd expected to score a toddler-sized Cheshire cat costume. The Disney Store doesn't even carry an adult version?!? One thing a bit amusing in my search... I found plenty of adult 'sexy Cheshire cat' costumes online, most including little enough fabric, they could maybe have fit our little baby girlie just fine! Instead, I went with this one: Just imagine this lil' blondie kitty as a little brunette and you'll have a good picture of what our lil' kitty-cat will look like.

Ending the Summer

The angel boy-O returned to Utah the weekend of August 8th. That Sunday he left, his daddy was off to Vermont two days later for a week-long conference, and he returned just this past Sunday. So for the first full week spent without the boy-O, I was alone with just the girlie, and the resulting quiet in our home, it was excruciating. Yeah, the house is way too quiet without him.

I miss most watching the two cuties wrestling amongst the thrown couch cushions and pillows, with him eating her cheeks whenever he can get a bite, tickling her arms and leggies as she squeals and screams, trying her best to free herself and scramble away from him, and he chases her into a corner of the kitchen where, as she giggles like mad, he devours her ankles... and all this usually happens just as she's supposed to be settling down for bedtime.

Ever since the boy-O left, I've been wanting this summer to come to a sudden end - - please, oh puhleeze! I'm tired to being confined to air conditioned spaces!! I need some cooler weather and pronto, so we can get ourselves out of the house without it being limited to either a swimming pool or nothing more than runs to either Trader Joes or the nearby Target. I exaggerate, of course. We've managed quite well this summer to keep ourselves busy and out of the house, and this past week, without the boy-O and my honey-man, was not much different really. It was just too quiet. But I am tired of figuring out ways to get out of the house and to avoid the Vegas heat as well.

I should mention in greater detail how we have been swimming a lot, indeed, which has been a lot of fun, but until recently, our sweet potato enjoyed running in circles around the perimeter of the pool more than she actually enjoyed swimming in the pool! Last week --and this week as well, which was a surprise to us, but that's a whole 'nuther story-- having no daycare service available because the girlie's preschool is closed for teacher development, I had a friend's teenage daughter watching her last Monday thru Wednesday. This girl is a swimmer --and a very good one- so I'd told her she could take our wee girl swimming in our development's pool if she wanted. I don't know what she did differently, but by last Friday, our lil' sweet potato became brave enough to try entering the pool without assistance, and was so no matter where I was in relation to her! So Saturday morning, off to Target we went to buy her a lil' hot pink Stearns infant life vest... I was hopeful, yet super skeptical seeing its lousy design, as was my honey-man when I'd called and spoken to him about it on the phone (he had no hope at all that it would work right).

The life vest was a total bust... my honey-man was right; I might as well drown her myself than have her wear one of those horrible things!! It situates her face right at water level!?! Hello?! Her first (and only) time wearing the blasted thing, I was reaching her how to float on her back, but as soon as she relaxed and let herself go, she got reeeally excited, and in her effort to get upright, certainly intending to clap a darling baby-hooray, the vest plunged her forward and downward at once, and she swallowed a bunch of water before I could lift her, and she burst into choking and hysterical tears.

Anyhow, I hadn't written here in a while because we've been busy with life, trying to enjoy the boy-O as much as we could before he was to return home to Utah. This post isn't terribly organized... jumping around here and there, leaving out tons of details/background. I threw my back out Sunday night in the same hour I'd laid our girlie down for bed and my honey-man returned home, and I'm on Lortab right now = I hate the stuff! Can't finish my thoughts (or sentences for that matter). The point of this post was to share the following: I miss our angel boy-O, real bad. I have to fight to not call him every morning and every night since he left.

I need to lay back down now.

P.S. I tagged this post with the "Blantant Product Blog" label, but in this case, it would be an ANTI-product plug.

Polkarama!

Before getting settled in for a new day at work --my last for the next week-- I was sure to check "Straight Outta Lynwood" made it on the iPod for the car, especially for the angel boy-O's enjoyment come our drive home from Yellowstone. He and I can sing all the words to "White & Nerdy" played on repeat, all that we want, no matter how hard my honey-man shall protest.

You Ain't Ready for this Jelly- ?!?

I never knew that what they were singing in the song "Bootylicious" was this:

"I don't think you're ready for this jelly."

And now I can't get this out of my head...

Gunna hafta play the chicken song now... I know that's just trading one earworm for another, but I just can't be caught singing "I don't think you're ready for this jelly."

Duplos Jackpot!

So our baby girlie has recently discovered Lego Duplo blocks - - I knew it'd be just a matter of time! So yeah, she's likes them a lot... So this afternoon, while she was napping, I checked both Amazon.com and Target for Duplo sets ... and oh boy! A basic blocks set of 80 pieces is listed for $20 - - and a 'building set' of only 71 Duplo pieces is listed for $39-46!?! And a 95-piece set with a building plate is listed for $85?!?

IMPORTANT FACT: Anyone who knows anything at all about Legos or Duplos knows you need more than 80 pieces to make yourself a Duplos house!

Well, ten minutes ago I scored a Lot of 410 used Duplo blocks for $28.25 on eBay, thank you very much! CORRECTION: FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY DUPLOS!

And when they get here, I'll throw 'em all into a hot bathtub with some ammonia cleanser and I'll soak 'em, and I'll scrub 'em, and I'll rinse 'em, and after they dry, I'll let her at 'em! And her big brother is coming for Memorial Day weekend --he hasn't been here since Easter!?!-- and I can only imagine the Duplo creations he'll make for her! WOO-HOO!

Our Lil' Book Worm

Our baby sweet potato girl is a book worm! Her head teacher has confirmed she loves books and more so than any of her classmates. She LOVES "Circle Time," always eager to sit beside her classmates in a semi-circle for daily reading time.

Her definite very first favorite book was "Sounds" from Hinkler Books, part of their Baby's Firsts series. It simply features images of all sorts of things with the sound each makes written across the page bottom. She will still bring this book over, climbing into my lap, ready to hear me read the sounds.

Her second favorite book was a solid tie between Piggy Toe's "Ten Little Ladybugs" and Harper Festival's "Cow Moo Mee" - - she still loves them both, although only recently did she rediscover the "Ten Little Ladybugs," eager now to point out and identify all the different bugs and animals.

Her third favorite book is from Cartwheel Books, "It's Spring," by Samantha Berger. Our lil' sweet potato still really loves this book, nightly, and now points at each of the animals featured, trying each time to use the sign for birdies.

Her fourth favorite book is one of my very favorites - the illustrations are so darling - from Chronicle Books, "My Friends," by Taro Gomi.

Her fifth favorite, a well known classic, "Goodnight Moon" from Harper Festival. This book didn't hit her favorites list though until she was about 11 months old.

We have tons of books for her to read, including a number of great Priddy Books, and nearly a dozen from the fantastic Touchy-Feely board books series by Fiona Watts from Usborne Publishing, but all the aforementioned "Top 5 Favorites" have been the ones she wants read to her, over and over, sometimes each read repeatedly in one sitting.

Not until her first birthday, did she really add new titles to her Top 5 Favorites rotation. It should be noted that we haven't yet been able to trust her to handle paper-page books with care, so the majority of the books we read and give her are all board books... but she has, like, 30 or 40 of them now since her first birthday for which I'd encouraged people to give her board books ~ yay me! Lookin' out for my lil' book worm!

Sooo, her latest BIG BIG favorite that she wants read every night now (along with "Goodnight Moon" and "It's Spring") is a Sandra Boynton board book from Little Simon books, "The Going to Bed Book," given to her for her 1st birthday. She loves this book and will point to all the animals, and she will turn round and look up at me, wanting me to identify each of geanimals as she points to each of them, like the moose and the rhinoceros.

A recent new favorite is another Harper Festival pub, "Harry the Dirty Dog." She goes nuts pointing out all the doggies and birdies and trees and flowers and the butterflies and she just gets soooo excited. She doesn't really let me read this book though - - she wants to flips through the pages faster than I can read them.

Another new favorite is "The Paper Bag Princess" from Annick Press. I think it's the voices I use though to read it that she finds the most amusing - - she doesn't yet know/recognize/appreciate this lil' books fantastic message for young girls. I'm really looking forward to the day I can try to teach other similar lessons, especially important for today's growing girls.

Lastly, the book for which I'd written a blatant plug last week, "On the Night You Were Born," from Feiwel and Friends... It isn't yet on her favorites list, but it's getting close (due to repetition) and all the ladybugs on one of its pages near the book's end. Ha!

A The Most Wonderful Children's Book by Nancy Tillman

This one had me crying by the second page: "On The Night You Were Born"

If you have children, you should buy this book and stat ~ I read it aloud to my lil' sweet potato tonight and she looked up to stare at me in wonder when my fat tears plopped down upon her yummy lil' chubby baby arm ~ and she gave me a hug.

Thank you again, soooo much, Leslie!
Mmmwah! oxoxo

Loving Kurt's Solo

GLEEEEEEE!

Lovin' Akeelah and the Bee!

This movie is sooo going on our 'kids must watch this' list for the angel boy-O and our lil' sweet potato!

Lovin' the Olympic Winter Games n' Old Spice

...but they're totally messing with my 2010 goal to get to bed at a more reasonable time --aiming for 10pm every night, to be more specific.

Oh, and we just saw an Old Spice commercial I've never seen [mind you, we aren't big TV watchers, so we haven't seen most commercials, honestly], and my honey-man and I, we're now dying from laughter.



And just a moment ago we both realized the time and said aloud, in perfect unison, "oh shit."

P.S. We love watching the snowboarders (Go Shaun White, Go Shaun White!), even if they do ruin the snow for us downhill dopes.

No-Go to Big Lots

I'd never been to Big Lots before, but decided the other day to finally check 'em out on our way home. I picked up a couple minor things, but nothing really worth writing about, except, um, there's a reason these are selling at Big Lots:

SOME BACKGROUND INFO: Over the past month, I've had a general craving for all things Oreo... Mint Oreos, Peppermint Candy Cane Oreos... and these 'Strawberry Milkshake Oreos" were a part of the latest effort to satisfy my jones'n for Os... What a NO-go!

Baby Purees O'Plenty!

I've been meaning to write about our adventures in homemade baby purees!! Yes, very, very exciting stuff here. For the baby's record though, I gotta write about this, plus, I'm a lil' proud of my efforts, gotta say. Offering nothing but fresh foods has been great for her health and my sense of accomplishment as a mommie.

So yeah, armed with nothing but Annabel Karmel's "Top 100 Baby Purees," I've spent the last 2 months dedicated to making our baby sweet potato's food from scratch, and I gotta say, it's wonderful! The only time she's eaten any store bought baby food is when we've been traveling out of town. Soon though, as her palate expands to include meats and cheese and more mixed food purees, we plan to be toting a baby grinder wherever we go-go.

Here's a list of her first baby food purees, starting with the first and so forth from there on:

1) Apple - the elementary baby food staple, of course
2) Sweet Potato - tastes like dessert, I swear - she loves it, of course.
3) Carrots and Sweet Potato - likes it fine, no big deal.
4) Petite Peas - her first favorite! No, really! Eat it right up, eager for each bite.
5) Pear - another staple mixed with cereal, likes it fine.
6) Broccoli and Peas - surprisingly, she eats it right up! - but results in BAD tummy bubbles, of course!
7) Banana - absolutely HATED it the first time, I mean really, really hated it = She cried!
8) Mango - can't eat it up fast enough, another favorite...
9) soooo we tried Mango with Banana - - but she wasn't a big fan of the mix, no fooling her.
10) Butternut squash - her very favorite to date! Have to admit it tastes really nummy.
11) Apple and Pear with Cinnamon - very tasty as well, like dessert.
12) Tried not-quite-so-ripe banana mashed with a fork = Success! However, it causes a lot of 'red-faced-n'-grunting' constipation, so we've given up on bananas for now...
13) Papaya, now eaten in tandem with the broccoli mix to help her digestion - she loves it!
14) Avocado - likes it fine, but the clothing stains are awful to treat, so it appears only once a week or less.
15) White corn - loves it, but only if warm... absolutely hates it if served cold.
16) Hodgepodge veggies - immediately HATED this mix = produced angry tears! Haven't tried it again since its introduction. [broccoli, carrots, corn, red pepper]
17) Foursome veggies - a total hit, warm or cold [peas, green beans, carrots, and limas]
18) Mango, Blueberries and Raspberries - may be her new favorite! And this may be TMI, but it's easily identifiable in her diaper the following day.
19) And today, while we're stuck at home together, sick, we're about to try the "Easy Pot Chicken" - - her first meat puree! Includes leek, carrots and sweet potato and some chicken broth...

She's gunna be eating better than we do!

About once every two weeks, I have a baby puree making extravaganza during which I might mix up 3-5 different purees while I'm doing some other kind of cleaning or cooking in the kitchen as well. Some food items requiring steaming while others just get thrown in the blender as is. I use silicone muffin pan forms for easy pop-out removal once frozen, and we just store the muffin cup 'disks' in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. The muffin pan also allows more portion size variance than when using an ice cube tray. One batch typically fills a 12-cup muffin pan, and we fill the muffin cups 1/2 way for some foods, like broccoli and berries, and to the top for larger portions.

When our lil' girlie was at six months of age, we began with one 1/2-disk usually mixed with a little baby cereal given around her dinnertime which is 5pm. After two weeks of that, she moved to a dinner of two 1/2-disks with some baby cereal, amounting to no more than a half-cup of food each night. At nearly seven months of age, she began having a 1/2-disk of fruit puree for 'brunch' around 10am while at daycare, which lasted for only a week. From there on until last week, she'd been given a 1/2-disk of some fruit puree mixed with some baby cereal for her brunch and a 1/2-disk of some veggie for an afternoon snack around 2:30pm. Her portions for brunch and her afternoon snack have both now increased to full-size disks. And for the past two weeks, her dinner has consisted of three 1/2-discs...

This next week, she will be EIGHT MONTHS OLD already?!? Holy schmoly, Batman!

Increase Insurance Co. Profits, Hell yeah!

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

102.7 Degrees

BE FOREWARNED: I will write in detail about baby boogers and phlegm at some point in this post.

Since Sunday morning, my baby sweet potato girl and I have had new matching colds, and this time around, we've had matching fevers to boot (her first fever yet), each topping at 102.7 degrees. Her fever broke yesterday, thank goodness, and mine finally went down around 10am this morning.

She's been sick for five freakin' solid weeks now, one cold after another without reprieve. Although none of her symptoms have warranted a doctors visit according to "Your Child's Health" (the book her pediatrician told us to use as a reference for anything and everything, and it's excellent, I must add), I called her peds office today for some pointers. Happily, I'll now be taking her to see her pediatrician tomorrow morning, cuz a month + of being sick is too much, as they agreed.

She really has been doing pretty well, despite being sick and sick for so long now. There's been no throwing up (knock on wood). She has runny nose at times --the worst yet has been just over the last two days; post-sneeze is the worst-- but her snot ain't exactly running down her face at all times (you know what I mean, those kids that have an endless waterfall of snot coming from their nosies?), nor has it been super green or thick. To say the very least, it's been quite manageable. As for a cough, she does cough a little, sometimes hard enough that tears well up and spill down to sit atop her chubby little cheeks, but she only coughs a little in the night, when she first wakes, and after she's eaten. Otherwise, one couldn't say she has a cough per se. And there hasn't at all been any coughing and gagging on phlegm. Although I kept her home with me yesterday and today due to her fever, she's been downright indomitable even when her fever was running hot! Me though? I didn't do nearly half as well with that fever as she had. I was shaking and sweating, and around 2am last night, it was beginning to feel like a flashback to last summer, and I was getting a little scared. Yeah, I haven't exactly been feeling all that perky, to say the very least (and it's too late for that). Oh, and I haven't been taking any cold meds because I don't want to pass anything along to her via my milk... Man, do I have a new found appreciation for cold meds! - - have I said this before?

Anyhow, over the last couple days, understandably, she's been a bit, um, clingy compared to her usual independent self, wanting to be held and carried ALLL THE TIME. I actually enjoyed it, quite a lot, but (and there is a but here, unfortunately) for over 2 weeks now, I've been sleeping propped up in bed with pillows at night to help my sinuses drain, and it's been aggravating my back. So that, coupled with the carrying of my 20 lb daughter over the last 2 days more than I have in the last 2 weeks' time combined, I woke with an angry back. By 11:40 am this morning, I sent a text to my honey-man asking him to come home as soon as he could, because my back was on its way out. And by 12:30pm, I called him to ask how close he was, because our baby girlie was in her room, awake from her nap, happily babbling away, and I was certain I wouldn't be able to pick her up out of her crib. Luckily, he was only 10 minutes from home, and I kept her entertained, standing rigid, semi-slouched over her, singing and talking to her while she remained in her crib, stalling until my honey-man's arrival.

Not being able to care for her right now is far worse than any 102.7 fever.

Pink Martini!

Although I seem to have come down with a new cold (sneezing, running nose, blak), we managed to make our way to the Henderson Pavilion last night to see Pink Martini. [THANK YOU AGAIN, AUNTIE RYNER for watching our lil' still-sicky wee one!] I'd first heard of Pink Martini in 1999, listening to a morning NPR broadcast on the way to work. During their NPR feature, they'd shared snippets of several Pink Martini songs, all of which, I totally loved! That same day, later in the afternoon, I went online and ordered their debut album, Sympathique, and to this day, it's my favorite of theirs. They have a new album coming out next month!

Anyhow, Pink Martini is, um, is a truly unique ensemble in today's time. What an understatement. Nevermind the fact Pink Martini is a TWELVE members-large production! Their music is nothing short of amazing - - French, Portuguese, Spanish, and even Turkish?!? Oh, and yeah, last night's concert? It was fantastic! I feel so fortunate to have had the chance to sit and behold their creative magic in live concert. Their musicianship is absolutely spot-on spectacular and China Forbes is a powerhouse. I love them.

And now I must go back to bed and cough my eyes out, thank you.

It's About Love!