Oh, do you have a feverish, bored, restless kid, too?  We should form a club!  Here are some ideas for keeping sick kids occupied, at home or in the hospital:

1.  Knitting spool.  It’s fun when something from my childhood is still around in basically the same incarnation.  This is one of those things that makes a long knit rope, and my mom gave me one when I was a feverish, bored, restless child back about…well, no need to do the math.  I bought William a $3 Boye version at a craft store (I think Walmart has them, too), plus…

2.  Yarn.  I bought a $2.50 skein of Red Heart multicolored yarn, which I found at Walmart.  The multicolored yarn results in a STRIPED rope, which is significantly cooler than the Hippie Natural Unbleached Yarn rope I made as an ill child in the 1970s.  I like #950, which makes a rainbow.  Who’s a hippie NOW?
Read the rest of this entry

It seems wrong to look forward to Breast Cancer Awareness Month just because of all the pink stuff, but THERE IT IS. Breast Cancer Awareness has done a really good job of getting a ton of fun pink fundraising products on the market. For those of us who would buy pink stuff ANYWAY, it’s awesome pink riches—and a nice way to donate a little money here and there.

I was reading Lora’s post about cervical cancer and how it doesn’t get quite the parade breast cancer does. Uterine and ovarian cancer get left in the shadows, too. I’m guessing it’s because you can check yourself for breast cancer so it’s a good idea to make everyone aware of it. Other kinds, it’s more like Annual GYN Office Visit Awareness.

But it’s also a SHOPPING problem: I looked around and there are sites for the non-breast forms of Girl Cancer awareness, but they don’t SELL STUFF. If I can’t buy a pencil or a t-shirt for it, I’m not as aware, is my feeling about it.

Luckily, places like Etsy and CafePress step in where non-profits forget to tread.
Read the rest of this entry

We have family in town this week, specifically ONE family member, specifically my mother-in-law. I’ve been trying to think of some fun shopping-type things to post about here, but it feels like I’m attempting to surf the online stores while clinging to a piece of shipwreck: I am a little distracted by the SHARKS nibbling my TOES.

Some of us have lovely, lovely family members who are a joy to be around, but it seems like most of us have at least SOME family members who drive us batcrap crazy. Surely we can combine forces on this—if not to drive all those family members into a barbed-wire enclosure, at least to make their visits more bearable. I will share my tips with you if you will share yours with me.
Read the rest of this entry

I’m going on a flight this week to see my baby niece, and I am super looking forward to it. Not just because my niece is 6 months old and thus fully ripe for cheek-kissing and tum-nomming, but also because a flight means TIME BY MYSELF.  Here’s what I’m bringing with me for this lovely, lovely time:

Dove Milk Chocolate Almond Promises.  Uh muh guh, these are so yum.  They have little tiny bits of almond in them instead of big huge chunks, so not only is the almond more evenly distributed throughout the chocolate, it’s like having someone else chew it for you!

I’m also bringing apples and pecans, because OMG with the “Please Do Not Feed the Passengers” thing airlines are doing.  Also:  dental floss.
Read the rest of this entry

It is summer. Some of us work from home and may want to call upon “the babysitter” to help us us get through the long days with all the children in the house. Here’s what we’re watching at our house basically all day every day when the need arises:

Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends is a favorite of my 10-year-old and 8-year-old. It includes plenty of all the things they find funny: bullies showing themselves to be stupid and ugly, prat falls, crazy-looking creatures, plans going comically awry, pranks, spitting, insult humor, burping, jokes, everyone saying everything in a screamy hysterical voice. …Come to think of it, I don’t recommend this one. Never mind.
Read the rest of this entry

This is the spider plant that dominates the living room.  Back when my oldest child was in preschool, his class went on a field trip to a greenhouse.  Each child was given a baby spider plant.  I didn’t try real hard not to kill it:  I don’t like spider plants.  Of course it is thriving, and has thrivened for years, and when I am an incapacitated invalid it will be moved to my hospital bedside because my caretakers will imagine that such an old and healthy plant must be special to me.
Read the rest of this entry

I have cheap tastes.  If you’re coming down off the more expensive stuff, I have some recommendations.

I used to work with a couple of girls who were chocolate connoisseurs. They didn’t consider it chocolate unless it was a bar of squished cacao beans imported overnight from Belgium.  Lucky, lucky me, loving Hershey’s and Dove and Russell Stover.  I especially like the Hershey’s Symphony bars.  If you prefer dark chocolate, try the Dove dark Promises.  MMMmmmm.
Read the rest of this entry

I have five children. I don’t know if you realized this, but it is difficult to find decorative things that represent five children. You can buy “family labels” that have either one or two parents and either one, two, or three children. Holiday ornaments show one, two, or three peas in the pod. Personalized Christmas cards have room for up to six family members total. Target pharmacy has 6 different color-codes for different family members.

I’m definitely not complaining: five children is an unusual number to have right now. Expecting mass-produced items to be available for every family type/size is unreasonable. Still, I’m always on the lookout.

Recently a friend sent me a notecard with a picture of a nest on it. The nest had four eggs in it. This gave me an idea: could I maybe find a print of a nest with five eggs? Oh, sure, the biological analogy is shaky, but I like it anyway: maybe my kids weren’t born in a litter, but they all still seem like eggs in the nest.
Read the rest of this entry

Lately I have been feeling entirely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of children’s stuff in our home. We’ve got baby detritus everywhere — exersaucer, bouncy chair, jumpy suspended-from-doorway chair, Bumbo seat — and dealing with the eighty million toddler toys on top of all that was just getting to be a little too much.

So I made some small changes, and they have worked out so well I honestly feel like part of my brain has been cleared out and now can contain much more useful distractions than fretting about my cluttered house. You know, such as being able to quote Season 5 of The Simpsons in its entirety.

Read the rest of this entry

We have two kids and no plans to expand our family any further (with the possible exception of a fainting goat because hot damn, I’d never get sick of seeing this), and now that we’ve completed our childbearing activities I realize I no longer need to hang on to every item of baby clothes I own. I had no problem offloading my maternity wear, but then again, I didn’t find myself waxing nostalgic about a shirt the size of a circus tent.

Our youngest is six months old and he’s already gone through many of the small outfits I had saved after our first boy. I cleaned out the nursery closet the other day and ended up with a few boxes I plan to send to a couple of friends who are expecting their own baby boys, but there were certain items I just couldn’t part with. Like the incomprehensibly tiny striped onesie that both my kids wore during the first weeks after they were born, their coming-home outfits, the weird little yarn-tied hats they wore in the hospital. The first footed pajamas that fit, the hand-knitted cap gifted to us by a friend, even those unattractive teal-and-pink blankets they wrap your baby with at the hospital — I can’t bring myself to get rid of any of that stuff.
Read the rest of this entry