Had to call poison control Saturday….

Okay, so I wonder how many parents have actually had to do this before–calling poison control. It was actually quite a funny situation, turned potentially scary, turned not-a-big-deal in a matter of about 2  minutes. A couple days ago, I noticed JJ had a little blister on his behind. I searched for a tube of diaper cream, but couldn’t find any. However, I did notice there was a little sample pack of some Desitin. I opened it up, put some on his sore and then put it up. Fast forward to almost a day later….John and I have just woken up and are checking email. JJ comes over to my chair with this gigantic grin on his face…and white cream all over his smile. Little bugger had found the half empty pack of Desitin and was sucking on it and had made himself a Desitin moustache and beard. So I grab the pack away, thinking, “Oh crap,” and give it to John. He reads it and it says if ingested, call poison control immediately. John searches for the poison control  number while I’m having a mini freak out session thinking I’ve made my baby sick or something. John tells the lady what happened and she’s like, “It’s not toxic, wipe out his mouth and give him some water.” What?!? That’s it?!? Why does the pack tell you call poison control and get all freaked out if it’s not toxic? Well, turns out diaper cream is made of zinc oxide and zince oxide is generally only toxic is its gaseous form. Oh well, crisis averted.

To Amway or not to Amway? That is the question.

Every mom knows that it is expensive raising kids. I heard on the news the other day that for a child born in 2008, that it is going to cost 221,000 to raise that kid. When I think about that, that’s like 4 1/2 years worth of our gross combined salary! Dang, I better start making some more money. Somebody give me a real job! Anyhow, we started exploring other options to increase income and one of John’s co-workers approached him with the idea of Amway. The concept is built on multi-level-marketing and therefore, the more distributors that you recruit, the higher your income is because you receive payment from Amway based on their sales as well.

Now, in the past couple weeks, we have both done loads of research on the company. We thought that if we could build a business off of sales only that it would suit our needs better because neither one of us have a salesperson mentality. However, in order to get to the first level of bonuses (3%), you have to sell roughly $375 worth of product. If you don’t sell that much, you don’t get anything. Some of the research we found stated that the average monthly payout for all “active” members was only $115 per month. That’s gross because you have to subtract any traveling expenses or supplies you might have.

Anyhow, I’m not sure if we’ve made our final decision or not, but we are definitely leaning in one direction. The recruiters are definitely agressive in getting people to join, but it all seems too scripted. There’s an answer for everything. So, I’m wondering. Does anyone have any personal experience with Amway? I know we all have personal opinions, so feel free to express those as well!

I’m impressed!!

So anybody that knows me knows that I hate housework. When hubby and I are both working full time, sometimes the dishes can sit in the sink for 2-3 days. The chores I hate the absolute most are dusting and vacuuming–mostly because they’re so time intensive. You have to move everything away, then dust/vacuum and then move everything back. It’s tedious! Well, I have been majorly impressed with myself this summer. Our vacuum has gotten more use out of it in the past two months than it has in probably the last year (or maybe even two!). Every Wednesday is free play gym at Gymboree from 3-430 and my mother has been kind enough to take JJ off of my hands and I vacuum each week! That’s a huge improvement because usally we might vacuum once every 6-8 weeks. It happens to be a chore hubby hates just as much as I did. I’d rather mop any day of the week, but since we don’t have any tile in our home (except our maybe 25 sq ft bathroom), there’s no mopping going on! I just hope I can keep  up the vacuuming at least once every other week once school starts up again in two weeks!

Crazy Kid!

Okay, so I’m about to lose my mind. It’s 7:15 am and I have already been up for 2 1/2 hours. My LOVELY son, JJ, has decided that it’s okay to wake up before the sun. Last night he was really tired and went to sleep at 7:45. The past week or two, he hasn’t been going to bed before 10 or waking up before 9. He’s been getting a full 11 hours each night. Granted, I don’t like him being up that late or waking up that late, but I guess I got what I wished for. So as I was saying, JJ went to sleep at 7:45. I knew there would be problems and so tried to wake him up on numerous ocassions. He woke for about ten minutes to have his bedtime bottle. He woke up at 11 pm and I was able to get him back down fairly easily. However, he was up again at midnight….sheesh! I couldn’t get him back to sleep, so I put him in bed with us and asked John to put him back in his crib when he woke up at about 4:45 or so….well, that plan didn’t go as I had hoped. That little stinker was wide awake by 4:45 am–which means I was not-so-wide-awake at the same time. What happened to sleeping 11 hours each night. I got jipped. Kid only slept 8 1/2 hours. NO FAIR!! I’m waiting for him to take a nap. Who am  I kidding? I need to take a nap. I only got about 4 1/2 hours of sleep. I sure hope this was just a fluke!

Weaning

Well, we did it. JJ is completely weaned. I think it was more saddening for me than for him. At a year I stopped pumping at work and was nursing 3 times a day. At 13 months, I dropped the afternoon feed. At 14 months, I dropped the morning feed and now at 15 months we are done. I was sad to have it happen. JJ could have nursed forever if it were up to him. He didn’t even put much fuss up about it. As long as he’s not reminded of it anyway (i.e., I’m covered up), he doesn’t throw a fit. He is down to one bottle a day as well–generally before bedtime. He has 2 sippys of milk and 2 sippys of juice a day. He’s such a precious boy. I am truly sad to have this part of our relationship end, but figured since I was doing it more for me than for him at this point that it was time. I am so thankful to have lasted this long especially because there were times when I wasn’t sure I was going to make it much longer.

What makes your baby laugh?

JJ is just a bundle of giggles. He laughs at anything and everything. Peek a boo is one of his most favorite activities and cracks him up. Looking at his own reflection in the mirror is quite amusing for him too.  He loves to play hide and seek…well mostly he hides, and I say, “Where’s JJ?” and pretend to look for him and he starts giggling. He’s super ticklish like his daddy too. Whenever I say, “I’m gonna get you,” he absolutely cracks up and starts running away from me. I must admit though, that although I really enjoy seeing his cute little face light up, that I really enjoy our quiet times when he’s just cuddled up next to me or we’re reading a book together. He’s growing up too, too fast.

Don’t know what to write…I’ll just put pictures!

It’s funny. Day to day as things happen, I think, “That would be a good thing to blog about.” Then I forget about it, don’t blog and the thought has left my mind. Now that I have time to blog, I can’t think of a dang thing to blog about. Maybe I could blog about all of my pregnant friends. There’s four of them now I think. Nah, been there done that, nothing exciting. Maybe I’ll just put some pictures up if I can find them on my hubby’s computer. Yeah, I think I’ll try that.

Working, working, working!

So, I have been busting my butt this summer so that I can find a job for the school year. This is a rough time to be a teacher though. I submitted applications to two districts (the only two that accept applications without open positions posted). That was to Riverside Unified and San Bernardino City Unified. I also sent in applications to a charter school in Riverside and to Alta Loma School District, even though the position they had listed was only temporary. I just need to get that one more year out of my way so that I can clear my credential.

This summer I’ve been working as well–as a stay at home mom. The thought had crossed my mind to get a job, but given the economy I didn’t even try. JJ and I have been doing lots of activities–Gymboree 3 times a week and swimming lessons in the beginning of the summer. I’d say, on average, I probably do about 1-2 hours of housework a day. I’ve also picked up a couple of tutoring clients–a second grader, a fifth grader, and a fourth grader. It’s been going well and it gets me out of the house for a little bit. JJ gets to spend time with nana and grandma when I go tutor because they come to watch him.

Gymboree!

So about a month ago we decided to take a free preview class at Gymboree. They have classes specified for different age levels. JJ is in level 3 which is for 10-16 month olds, so he’s a little more adventurous than most of the others in his class, seeing as how he’s almost 15 months old now. Needless to say, he loved it! I thought it was great too. They have lots of little things to play on that are arranged in different ways every two weeks. The instructors are great and have lots of energy. The only thing I don’t like is that the classes themselves are almost identical every week. There is bubble time and parachute time and time to call out Gymbo, as well as pushing the big air log. Other than that, there is usually one or two unique activities each week. The activities themselves are not very long, which I think is smart because attention spans aren’t that long at this age. It is $65 a month, which I think is kind of a lot, but it also includes free gym time 3 times a week. So you get 45 minutes of class time and up to 5 1/2 hours of free play gym time each week.

It finally happened…

So we just got back from our massive driving trip…Riverside to Tahoe, Tahoe to Chico, Chico to Sacramento, and Sacramento to Riverside. We were all absolutely exhausted when we returned. Because we were gone for so many days, I had a lot of catching up to do. When I woke up this morning, I was trying to get a lot of work done. Because of this, I wasn’t giving JJ a whole lot of attention. Soon enough though, he found a way to get my attention. See, it’s normal for JJ to dig through the diapers and occassionally give me one (or two or three or four, for that matter), so when he brought me one as I was working, I almost didn’t think twice. However, I decided to take a look down. What did I see? A naked little baby bottom! That little stinker took his diaper off and handed it to me! After some laughing, I gave the little bugger some loving, put his diaper back on, went back to work and he was happy enough with it.