St-st-st-sticker Face, Sticker Face

Instead of a Wordless Wednesday post today, I'm just gonna share a regular picture post because I know I will have to use some words to describe this one.

This is what happens when you give Bean a page full of stickers.

Yes, she did this all on her own. 

Pinkie's Picks - Parties I wished I had been invited to.

It's time for this week's Pinkie's Picks!!!

(I'm saying that like I've remembered to post these every week. Everyone just play along, okay?)

This week we are gonna focus on parties! I love parties. Well, I love to go to parties. Putting them on always makes the Partyzilla in me come out. It's a flaw. I know.

I absolutely love this cake. You know why I love it so much? Cause she calls it The Girly Cake! Can there be anything any better? I think not.

I think this would be a great party game for a summer kids' party. (Hint, hint, Amberella.)

The Marie Antoinette Party by Les Chateau des Fleurs is just about the girliest-princessesy thing I've ever seen.

Can you imagine the sugar rush your kids would have after this CandyLand themed party from Party Love? (Spend some time looking through all the posts at Party Love. You'll be amazed at all the ideas.)

An Alice in Wonderland party from The Polka Dot Chair is a curious thing to be sure.  The Polka Dot Chair even has a post on a Lego party.  I do not speak "boy" so you'll have to tell me how cute that one is.

So if any of you are planning any parties like these, please don't forget to include Pinkie and Bean on the guest list!

Six years ago...

May 22, 2004

Six years ago.

We were married.

Wordless Wednesday - Elmo Bunny

Happy Birthday Rosie Posie!

Saturday was our niece's birthday. For the sake of the blog, we will forever call her Rosie Posie. Bean and I made her this card. The vintage image was a freebie posted by Free Pretty Things for You. As soon as I saw it on her blog, I knew I had to do something with it. But until she posted it and gave the link to Picnik, I had no idea how to add my own sayings. (Mush brain! Hellooo!)

These pictures don't really show it well but it is really red where it looks orange. That's just my wonderful phone at work again. I know! Buy a danged camera already!

Happy Birthday Rosie Posie!

I can't see clearly.

This is how I see the world now. Or at least how I see it when I'm driving.

I hate construction zones.  

But on the bright side, I learned how to make those arrows on my pictures now by using Picnik.  Woo hoo!

Frustration

Poor Bean is sick. She has strep throat. She has been in full-on sick mode all week long. Running fevers anywhere from 101 to 103. She can't sleep, she doesn't want to eat or drink. I am almost as tired as I was when she was first born.

I am frustrated over the situation because it took three different doctors on three different visits, along with $140 in co-pays, to determine it was strep.

I told you before that last Friday we took Bean to a local urgent care because she kept saying her mouth hurt and she would hold her throat when she would drink. She had injured her mouth in a "singing accident" by ramming a plastic tube up into the roof of her mouth. She was using the tube as a microphone and she jumped when she shouldn't have and the tube got her. Giggles, my MIL, thought that Bean might have strep after looking in her mouth after the injury. I called the pediatrician but they were closed so we headed off for Urgent Care. After explaining everything to the doctor, and also mentioning the possibility of strep, he looked in her mouth and told us that it was just the injury and it would be all better in 3 to 5 days. We were literally in and out in 5 minutes.

So fine. Fast forward to Tuesday and Bean has just been getting a little more testy and less likely to eat or drink. She started to really feel hot to the touch and her fever spiked up to 103 early Wednesday morning. I called that day and got her an appointment with her pediatrician's office Wednesday afternoon. By the time of the appointment, the fever had not come down. Bean constantly whined and cried all the time, she couldn't rest, and didn't want to eat or drink. She also had a bad dry cough. Giggles and her sister, The Accomplice, took Bean to the doctor's appointment for me. They explained all the symptoms, even mentioned strep, and they were told that she just had a virus and to treat it with Motrin. Granted, Giggles did say that Bean wasn’t very willing to let the doctor look in her mouth or her ears and I know how difficult it can be to wrangle a toddler. That’s no joke. Sometimes I think Bean is a lot stronger than I am. So I know it had to be difficult. But a strep test wasn’t even offered. So all Wednesday night Bean hardly slept and still kept saying her mouth hurt. By this time, her cough had teamed up with a bad runny nose and a still high fever and were doing their best to drive Bean crazy. I felt so bad for her.

It sucks seeing your loved ones suffer and you can’t fix it for them. The fever just would not break and no amount of Motrin or Tylenol was helping. I just knew something else was going on.

But how do you second guess your doctor? They have been there since the beginning. They know her. They have seen her grow. I love my pediatrician’s office but is it okay to call them back and say you think they should look again? I don’t want to be “one of those moms”. I’m sure I already am but I hate to add to my reputation. But you know what you know and you have these gut feelings. Plus, in our case, I had Giggles and The Accomplice telling me that they had the same feelings. They both just knew it was strep.

So I decided to get a second opinion. I asked the doctor next door to my office if he would take a look at her. I told him I could be completely 100% crazy. He said he already knew that but he’d still take a look at Bean if I wanted him to. (He’s a funny guy.)

So I brought Bean into the city. This doctor looked her over and he did say to me that by first glance in her throat, he thought it was viral bronchitis. So a virus, right? Yeah. That’s what the other doc said, Doc. But he did do a strep test. He didn’t think it would come back positive.

It came back positive.

What’s that, Doc? She has strep? The thing I mentioned to the first doctor almost a week ago? Yeah. Strep.

So now we are on antibiotics and Bean got a little bit more sleep last night. She still has a ways to go because the fever seems to really like her and it doesn’t want to leave. But she ate a little more last night than she has in a week.

It just angers me that it took this long to find out what was wrong with her. I know that doctors are humans and humans do make mistakes. Heck, I’ve even been known to make one here and there. But it’s just hard to take a mistake that makes your little baby suffer and feel bad longer than they needed to.

The Caregiver's Organizer review.

When Bean was a newborn, I was really hesitant to let others look after her. And by hesitant I mean she didn’t stay with anyone else for the first three months of her life. And it was well past her 6 month birthday before she stayed the night at my in-laws. Bean had horrible reflux as a baby. Horrible actually doesn’t even cover it. She would just be laying in your arms or in her bouncy seat and you would see her face turn red and she would start to choke. It just scared the life out of me every time it happened. And it would happen all day and all night. I just knew that no one would watch her the way I did. She was my baby, my responsibility. I knew that if something happened to her while someone else was watching her that I would never be able to forgive that person so I told myself the best thing was for me to watch her always.

That worked well for me for the first three months. Then real life set in and I had to go back to work. So when my maternity leave was over, I would take Bean to a lovely woman every day to watch her for me. Giggles, a/k/a Nano, a/k/a the MIL, would pick Bean up in the afternoon and watch her until I could run every one off the road get home from work to get her.

The sitter would give me a report every day of Bean’s daily activities. You never realize how much you want to know about someone else’s potty habits until you become a mom. I wanted all the info I could get. And I tried to give as much information to the sitter as I could. But I would always remember something I had forgotten to tell her and panic would set in.

I wished I would have found The Caregiver Organizer back then. I would have felt like I had all my ducks in a row and felt more at ease with leaving Bean.  The sitter probably would have felt less hounded and more at ease herself.

The Caregiver Organizer is an eBook that helps you compile all of the helpful and necessary information for anyone taking care of your children whether it be a sitter for the evening or a full-time nanny. You can customize the information by picking and choosing which sections you need. You can fill out the information on your computer and print it out. They recommend you use the eBook to create a binder notebook that you leave with the sitter. The best part of the Organizer is that it can “grow” with you. You can add or subtract sections when you need to, add children, change the information, whatever you need to and it is ready at the click of your mouse to be printed out and put in the binder.

One of the most valuable sections is the one on allergies. Thankfully, Bean hasn’t shown any signs of any new allergies and the ones she did have she seems to have outgrown. But I when I was a kid, this was very pertinent information my mom had to make sure everyone knew. I had allergies to most insect stings and some medications. Information like this is very important and needs to be shared often so that everyone can know what to watch for and what to do in case of an emergency.

There is a section called “What They Love/What They Hate”. This is a helpful section in our lives. Bean loves, loves, loves chocolate milk. She would drink it all day if we let her. But drinking chocolate milk all day isn’t good for her or her tummy - no matter what Bean says.  I can use this section to let the caregiver know that even if Bean begs, pleads, and whines, she can only have a certain amount of "the good stuff" per day. 

The Caregiver Organizer even covers household information such as areas that are off limits, pet info and even information on all your remotes. How many times have you ever been to someone’s house and spied their various remote controls on a coffee table? My boss’ house is like this. Occasionally, I get suckered into sitting at his house waiting for a repair guy while my boss is in court. He must have 5 remotes on his coffee table. I’d watch tv while I waited if I could figure out which one of the many options I needed to use.

I think using The Caregiver Organizer to share valuable information with your sitters will make you feel better about leaving your children with someone else and it will make your sitter feel more confident in taking care of your children. If you’re interested in trying out The Caregiver Organizer eBook for yourself, use "caregiver25" at checkout for 25% off your download.  There is also a hardbound edition available right now for 50% off.  Use "caregiver50" at checkout.  This is the same edition, same content, just a different name and printed in a hardbound cover with tabs.

*I was provided a free copy of this eBook for purposes of reviewing it for this post.

Mother's Day and other musings.

I hope everyone had a good Mother's Day. Mother's Day is such a bittersweet day for me. On one hand, I am overjoyed to be celebrating it now that I am a mother. But on the other hand, I miss my own mom so much and wished she was here with me because I know she would absolutely enjoy Bean to no end. And she would be sitting back laughing at me trying to keep up with Bean.

We didn't do much for Mother's Day. Hubz hurt his back at work on Thursday and so I shuttled him around to doctors on Friday. Also on Thursday, Bean was pretending to be a singer at my MIL's house. She had a plastic tube that she was using as a microphone and was standing on the couch rocking out. My MIL had just told her to get down and not jump with that tube near her mouth. Well...Bean jumped and the tube went right in her mouth. Put an inch-long gash in the roof of her mouth and messed up her mouth pretty badly. Bean kept complaining that her mouth hurt and by Friday evening I just knew her mouth must be infected. She didn't want to eat or drink much. So I carted her off to urgent care. Sixty bucks later I was told that it wasn't infected and just had to heal and to give her Motrin or Tylenol.

After you get news like that, you are very grateful but you also think "can I have half my money back since all you did was look in her mouth?" Oh yeah, they also gave me the "oh brother, you're one of THOSE moms, huh" looks. Those looks must not come cheap.

I planned on making very beautiful Mother's Day cards for those special moms in my life. I planned on that but when I sat down to get to work, I realized I didn't have all I needed. So I decided to make some Lemon Sugar Hand Scrub gifts instead. I found the recipe here.

Here's my version.

Nothing very fancy but it really is a great scrub and a cute gift. 

Here's a picture of Bean from a couple of weeks ago.  She is loving the warmer weather and wants to spend all her time outside.  That is a concept I just do not get.  There's no air conditioning out side!

Happy Mother's Day!

Bean and I would just like to wish a Happy Mother's Day to all the mommies out there, no matter where the babies come from or how many legs they have.

Happy Mother's Day!

What have I been up to?

Pinkie, where have you been? I bet you all were worried, huh?

Well, fear not. I am alive and well. I just had a deadline.

I was hounded asked by a co-worker to make invitations for her daughter's first birthday party and I've been wasting time working my butt off to come up with something.

You all know - first birthdays are a big deal. A really big deal. Not so much to the kiddo, but definitely to the mommy. So I was very apprehensive to take on this task. If I gave her something she hated, she would kill me. I didn't want to be killed, and I didn't want to ruin her memories of this special occasion.

But like I said, she hounded asked me.

Here's the finished product. Thirty uber-girlie invites. I don't have many materials on hand since I've only recently started doing cards. And I don't have many techniques to use so these cards are pretty basic compared to the ones I drool over and long to create. But I think they are pretty. And did I mention girlie? Yeah, they are "tres girlie".

Please overlook the quality of the pictures.  I know I need a good digital camera.  I know.

I hope they bring a smile to the faces of the people that receive them.  And I hope it turns out to be a wonderful party!