German Advent Calendar Thoughts

Advent is coming up. In Germany this is quite the tradition. When I was little, we would get cardboard calendars that had one door for each day of December that hid a small piece of chocolate behind it. When I got a bit older I realized this chocolate wasn't very good tasting and that ended my fascination with the whole ordeal. We bought calendars for all of the guys in the dorm last year. Chocolate calendars were only about 50 euro cents in Germany! Anyhow, while we lived in Germany I would often go to a German new site that had the news in English. Close to Christmas I found this article about the craziness Germans go to concerning advent calendars. I'm sure not all Germans are this touchy about their advent calendars and I'm sure there's some joking going along, but nonetheless, its still a funny article.

http://www.thelocal.de/opinion/20091130-23631.html

Here's an idea, again from Homemade by Jill, on making your own advent calendars. Not as crazy and competitive as the Germans, but perhaps a fun tradition to start with your children this year. I think I'll save this for next year since I've got a huge list to accomplish this year.

http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2010/11/would-you-like-to-sew-along-with-me.html

http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2010/11/advent-sew-along-week-2.html

http://homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/2010/11/ornament-templates.html

She's still posting about making this calendar, but this is all she has up at the moment so you'll have to follow her on your own.

Thrift Store Clean Up!!

Here's an example from Rachel about a thrift store find:



Today, the children spotted this. It was in a grab bag that we had to pay three dollars for. It was drawn all over and looked pretty junky. But I had done my homework. I knew what I was looking at. These bad boys go for $30 new on Amazon. The pages are erasable. They are laminated. So I bought the bag, scrubbed the notebook down and wrote Julius's name in the book in a nice dry erase marker.

One thing I've learned is that when you go to consignment sales, thrift stores, garage sales, etc. it helps to know what you're looking for and how much an item is really worth. Who would have ever thought that this notebook retails for so much? Pays to do your homework and keep a running list of things you're looking for.

Ikea Food for Free!

Ikea is running a nifty little special. Spend $100 before tax in the home furnishings department, go eat some lunch (or dinner), bring your receipt to the check out and have the cost of your meal deducted from your final bill. We needed to buy a couch for our new place since we don't have one anymore, so we picked one out, got some lunch with the in-laws, paid for our items (minus $27 food receipt) and signed up to have the furniture delivered. They have a flat fee delivery rate of $59 plus tax for the metroplex I live in. I imagine the delivery rate is the same for any Ikea and its surrounding areas. Now through Nov 14.

Oh and if you buy three kid menu items they get a free little stuff animal as well. I needed to ask the cashier about it when we paid for the food since she forgot to give it to us. I didn't taste the macaroni and cheese but my three year old ate it up and usually meals are a struggle for us.

Replacement Parts

I love going to consignment sales and I know that Rachel loves hitting up thrift stores. Since my child is still young, I get his birthday and Christmas presents at these sales. Sometimes when you buy things that are used, parts may be missing, broken, dirty or scratched up. If it is a well known brand, this shouldn't discourage you in buying it. Most companies sell replacement parts very reasonably. Here's one recent example:

I found an adorable firehouse for him for Christmas this year that I know he's going to love playing with. The only problem was that it came with only one fireman. I bought the set hoping that I could get more firemen for him to play with. It was such a great deal (the firehouse was $25 used where new I've seen it for about $80) that I knew I could rectify it somehow. I contacted Kid Kraft, the manufacturer, and learned that I could get two new firemen for only $3.50 plus s&h! Yay! Almost every single piece of this play set can be bought separately in case it breaks.

Checking out Ebay or Craig's list is another way to replace parts that you may be missing from a play set. I know that Little Tikes also sells replacement parts for their products and I'm guessing Fisher Price and most kid toy makers do as well. It makes parents happy to not have to pay to replace the WHOLE set when only one piece is missing or broken.

You may just need to think outside the box. Sometimes all you need is some elbow grease and Goo Gone, sometimes you need some paint. Its fun to get such great deals when you're creative about fixing them up.

Woot

I just learned about this nifty site today while at my mommy group. It's www.woot.com. They have a deal of the day which apparently pops up at 12am and when they're sold out, they're gone. There is also woot kids, t-shirt woot, and wine woot. The mom who told me about this said she's gotten some good deals from this website. May be worth checking out but I could see myself staying up till 12am to check out the deals each new day! Shipping prices seem reasonable as well.

One of Those Days

Ever have one of those days with your kids? We've been having those lately...well actually on and off since we moved back from Germany. I love #1 so much but there are days where we just butt heads or don't get along. I hate days like this. We seems to be constantly in transition these days and I think that's causing the chaos in our relationship. I am looking forward to finally moving into a place that is "ours." I think it will do the kid a lot of good. Changes in life are inevitable, but with kids they seem to be even harder. An older lady once told me that our demeanors as parents give our kids clues on how to act. And I've found that it can be true. When I feel like I'm in chaos tends to be when #1 also has a hard day. Just another day in the life of a SAHM.

Who's Responsible For Your Baby's Health?

Here's a funny story to share with the group. Well, it's almost funny. And by almost funny, I mean that it might be funny someday when the crying stops ringing in my ears. It happened about two months ago, so I give it another ten months or so until it's really funny.

Gabe, my youngest of four, had a rash. He was aboout four months at the time and we were going in for a "well child checkup" anyway. And the doctor had diagnosed him with "apparent MRSA rash" earlier, so I thought the rash might be worth looking at . Just in case.

"Apparent MRSA", by the way, does not mean he had MRSA. It means he MIGHT have had MRSA. It means he kind of sort of LOOKED like he had MRSA, and since he had been born in a hospital, and hospitals are a great place to pick up MRSA, maybe he really did.

Anyway, when the doctor asked if all was well, I informed him that the baby had a rash. He looked at it and said it was definitely not MRSA, maybe just a few mosquito bites? But in the meantime, he said that the baby had a high fever, and would be please drive into the city and get blood work because the combination of a rash and a high fever might mean something.

The baby had a what now?

So I drove home, feeling despondent. How had I not noticed that my child had a fever? Every other day, I KNOW if the baby has a fever. Even a mild fever I notice immediately. We cosleep with the infant, have the toddler in the room with us, and homeschool the older children. I KNOW THEM. I BREATHE with them! I KNOW IF THEY ARE SICK.

But I didn't know that he had a high fever.

So I picked my husband up and we drive into the city. Getting blood drawn out of a newborn is awful. They pricked his foot and squeezed drop by drop into three vials while he bawled for forty-five minutes. It was heart-rending. But it was for the best. After all, he had a high fever. And a rash. That the doctor had said wasn't a rash.

When we got home again, I called the doctor to get results.

"The bloodwork is fine," he told me. "And, funny story, three other kids after yours came in with high fever and no other symptoms. Turns out our thermometer is broken."

I'm not mad at the doctor - actually, to be honest, he's growing on me. But we have to realize that doctors have been trained to think a certain way. And our culture has trained the entire medical establishment to respond a certain way. If the thermometer says the kid is sick, he's sick. If the doctor ignored a number on a chart, he could be sued for malpractice.

But who is ultimately responsible for your child's health? You are. You are their mother, you have the highest stake in their well-being. You also have the greatest access to all the information about their health, their demeanor, their appetite, their actual temperature, their nutrition, and their development.

It is very common in today's age for a mother to take her child to the pediatrician as soon as they have the sniffles. "Jojo has the sniffles today. Going to take him to the pedi tomorrow and he'd better give him an antibiotic this time so he doesn't keep this cold for three weeks like last time." This is the mentality of having given up our responsibility. In the future, we will talk more about these things.

I am not advocating not taking your chil to the doctor, just remember that the responsibility is yours. If I had more confidence in myself last time at the doctors, all I would have had to do was ask them to check his temperature again. They could have used a different thermometer and saved me and the baby both a lot of heartache. Next time I will remember - if the baby has a fever, I, his Mommy, will be the FIRST one to know.