Christmas Cleanup

So, the cleanup begins! The tree needs to come down, the halls need to be un-decked and all the serving-ware needs to go back to it's home...it's this time of year I'm thankful for older kids who are home on Winter Break to help! Of course the teenager grumbles about this significantly, but I remind him that he can enjoy the time working on the cleanup project while using his new ipod! Speaking of small music making devices, the baby got one, too! Just this year Playskool came out with an MP3 player for the little ones; the Playskool Made for Me digital music player --the unit sits inside a larger animal shaped sturdy thing and allows the baby to push a button and hear the songs we've installed for him as well as others it comes with. Why the ipod folks didn't think of this is beyond me-- (they passed on the opportunity for a babypod? crazy!) and frankly the good folks at Hasbro / Playskool should be paying me for blogging about this! (but sadly, they're not). Anyway, the kids are quite happy with their gifts though I can't say the same for daddy. (let's just say that a pair of cords looked like a nice blue color online and in real life they are apparently "periwinkle".) In addition, my hubby thought my feet are smaller than they are so my new slippers don't fit. So after the cleanup, let the exchanges begin!

Sometimes you have to improvise!

This December is flying by and we found ourselves with a packed weekend of Christmas preparations, get-togethers and general merriment—i.e., trying to cram as much as we can into the last free pre-Christmas days. We spent all day Sunday enjoying an old fashioned Christmas Faire. Lots of fun, though a long day for baby in the stroller. This was our first “trip” more than an hour away with the little guy and I thought I had all the necessary gear for our adventure. Sadly, I realized one small but important baby item: the binky holder. Without this thing the binky would simply end up being hurled out of the stroller onto the floor. Well, as it turns out, I cleverly fashioned a makeshift binky holder out of a silicone hand sanitizer dispenser holder! No, really! This thing actually worked, complete with being able to tether one end to the stroller harness while holding the binky on the other end! [and yes, I remembered to remove the bottle of hand sanitizer first!] I was so proud of myself- I had a MacGyver moment! I have to admit here that it wasn’t that long ago that when hearing others refer to making something like MacGyver would I had no idea what/who they were talking about—I actually never saw that show. After hearing several comments about this and finally seeing a couple of tv spoofs (MacGyver getting himself out of a jam with duck tape, a rubber hose and a bobby pin) I finally got this reference and always thought to myself; “hey, I want to do a MacGyver thing!” so, there you have it- I’m a MacGyver mommy!

Holiday mishaps

I couldn't let this holiday season go by without first taking a glance back a few weeks ago to our event filled Thanksgiving. (Since apparently the entire month of November got by me without any blog entries I have to try to make up for that with this story.) This year, since we didn't have any family coming to visit or any family to go visit we decided to go out to a nice restaurant for Thanksgiving. It seemed silly to cook for just us and we thought it might be fun for a change. Well, we chose a nice place that we'd been to before and made reservations. We all got dressed up including the baby and off we went. The place was packed (apparently plenty of other folks thought the idea of going out for Thanksgiving was fun, too). The baby was pretty content in his highchair and we had finished our appetizers and were starting on our salads when all of a sudden the baby threw up...all over the table! Yes, apparently he had a stomach flu type thing and it hit him at this particular moment. I immediately jumped to my feet, started cleaning up the mess while hubby informed the waiter we'd like our meals "to go" and we made a hasty exit. Once home we got the baby cleaned up and in bed. In a couple days he was over the virus and then the rest of the family, one by one, got the same thing. Fun times. I figure this makes an exciting holiday memory to tell many years from now at future Thanksgivings. Interestingly, this is not the first time we've had a nice-restaurant-baby-explosion-incident. When the baby was just a few months old and still exclusively breastfed we all went out to a nice Asian place for dinner. Since we don't often get to do such things this was a special event. It was made even more special when hubby, who was holding baby on his lap, all of a sudden heard a rumble and looked down to see a diaper explosion of biblical proportions--said explosion went up the back of the diaper to the top of baby's pants and down hubby's sweater and his pants and onto the floor! I quickly grabbed the baby, wrapped him in a blanket and headed for the restroom (which thankfully did have a changing table--amazing how many places don't) and cleaned him up the best I could. When I got back to the table I looked at the rest of the family and just started laughing and said; "you know, times like this all you can do is laugh!" Fortunately, we had been able to eat our meals for the most part before this event occurred. Another exciting story to share for years to come!

I guess anything can offend someone...

An interesting thing happened while listing a few of the baby’s item’s for sale on ebay. Apparently, the standard comment I have on my auction listings about being a stay at home mom and trying to make a few extra bucks on ebay offended someone who took it upon herself to verbally blast me in an e-mail. For entertainment, feel free to read the ebay auction listing here, complete with the nasty comment in the Q & A section and my response for all the ebay world to see. (No longer available since it's past the 90 days ebay leaves listings up.) I was not about to respond directly to the person who made the comment, but since she so conveniently provided me with a writing topic I could not resist taking that opportunity!

It amazes me what ruffles some people’s feather’s. When being a stay at home mom selling a few things on ebay can offend someone, then truly anything can.