Works For Me Wednesday: Not Couponing (for now)

It's been a long time since my last WFMW post. I think that's mostly because I wasn't feeling very social added to the fact that I couldn't remember what ideas I'd already posted and was too lazy to go back and check.

But even if I don't participate, Shannon over at Rocks in My Dryer always hosts WFMW and there are always _HUNDREDS_ of ideas.

Anyway, so we all know by now that I've been uber-sick lately. Adding my uber ("morning") sickness to my natural non-cleaning tendencies and an extra super-dooper sensitivity to smells and you end up with a house that's even messier than normal, especially the kitchen (opening the fridge to get AJ's juice a couple of times a day was more than I could handle many days - and even walking past the sink is often still a chore).

As I'm starting to feel a little better, I'm attempting to re-tame the beast. I still haven't even thought about cleaning the kitchen (although I sometimes manage to throw out the trash and recycling that has collected), but I've been working my way towards keeping the living room tidy-ish and have done my semi-regular straightening of AJ's room. The dirty laundry is at least in the hamper and the clean stuff is folded, if not put away yet. So I'm getting there, slowly, but surely.

One thing that's helped at least the last few days has been me allowing myself to NOT coupon. I already feel bad enough with the messy house and the days where I could barely keep AJ fed, watered, and dry-ish. I also felt guilty that, when I could manage to get to a store and buy groceries, I wasn't making sure I was getting the best deals. Not to mention the fact that I was collecting coupons to clip, but never clipping them and if I did manage to clip them, they never got sorted and stored....which meant a pile of paper for AJ to toss everywhere over and over again....which meant more mess.

So the other day I made an executive decision. When I feel well enough to keep the house clean, I'll start up with the couponing again. In the meantime, I've absolved myself of the guilt of not couponing (and therefore the mess of paper that comes with it). I've got enough to worry about. I can let go of this for now. And it's ok. Not only that, but it "works for me!"

Works-For-Me Wedensday: 30 Days of Thankfulness

So I was trying to come up with something for today's WFMW post...and nothing was coming to mind. And I was trying to come up with something for today's NaBloPoMo post...and nothing was coming to mind. Then I remembered the "30 Days of Thanks" that I'd seen referenced on someone else's blog. Since counting my blessings is one of my very favorite things to do, the 30 days seemed like a fun thing to participate in. Plus, it's an easy way to have a post every day for NaBlo! :)

But starting on the 14th of November? How can that count for 30 days? Well, I figured that I'd use today to catch up by posting 14 things I'm thankful for, rather than just one.

And by the way, being thankful works for me! It helps me to keep my perspective on the "bad" things in life, if I remember how much I've been given. If you'd like to see other tips, go here.

1. A happy, healthy son
2. Enough food to eat
3. A heater that works
4. Air conditioning in the summer
5. Not one, but two working cars, neither of which is on its last leg
6. A job that I love
7. Being able to work from home!!!!!
8. The world's most confused cat (named Monkey, who thinks that either she's a person or I'm a cat)
9. A laptop!!
10. My "little" brother 'Link' who was 22(!!!) on the 10th
11. My little sister 'Elianna' who wasn't born in November
12. My older brother 'JediTagger' who wasn't born in November either
13. In-laws whose company I enjoy
14. My parents who, after 38 years of marriage still like each other.

Ok...so that's my catch-up post. From now on it's one per day (probably with more explanation). And for those of you who are wondering why my VNB isn't on this list. Well, he _was_ born in November...so guess which day will be devoted to being thankful for him? :)

Works for Me Wednesday: (Backwards Day) Getting Baby to Sleep

So it's Works-for-me Wednesday (Backwards Day!) again. That means that I get to ask a question about something and all the good folks out in bloggyland get to solve all of my problems. I've been planning this post since the last "Backwards Day" WFMW, but now it is especially necessary.

AJ is _NOT_ a good sleeper. He hasn't been since day one. I get so jealous of my friends who can be holding their kid (or someone else's) and the kid will just slowly drift off to sleep. I think I can count on one hand the number of times that AJ has done that since he was born. But that's not really the issue. We've got ways to get him to _go_ to sleep at night (nursing or if he doesn't fall asleep during the nursing, we leave him in his crib for a little while, then go back and help him go to sleep by lying him back down and patting his back)...we just can't seem to find a way to get him to _STAY_ asleep at night. Drugs don't even work. A full dose of infant's motrin got me (ahem...I mean HIM) two hours the last time I tried it. Last night, 0.8 mL (or whatever the higher mark is on the dropper) of infant's Tylenol got him to sleep _most_ of five hours, with only one major stirring, requiring resettling with Mama's help.

He was doing pretty good when the teething was just extra drool. But a few weeks before he was six months old, those 6-7 hour stretches disappeared. In the four months since then, I've considered myself blessed with copious sleep when it came in two-hour increments. Three or four hours at a time was like getting a glimpse of heaven.

In part, it's the teething. He's got three teeth now and is obviously working on several more. In part, it's his natural development. I mean, pulling up is WAY COOL. Except for when you do it in your sleep, then wake up standing and freak out! Fortunately, those wake ups tend to happen shortly after bed time, before Mama and Dada have gone to bed themselves and are easy enough to remedy - just lay him back down and he's usually back asleep immediately.

This past week, we've added a cold (his first) on top of all of that and it's been misery.

I'm actually REALLY good about going without sleep (even though I've been sans caffeine (yes, even chocolate) since 2000)...but I'm going out of my mind some days here. And I'm not a napper, so it's doubly hard to "sleep when baby sleeps" (especially when it's only 45 minutes).

AJ's 10 months old now. A friend who's got a 1-mo-old (her second baby) was complaining the other day about how hard it was since he was "only" sleeping four hours at a stretch! Four hours at a stretch, multiple times at night? I'd feel like I'd died and gone to heaven.

So my request is this: what tricks do you have for getting a baby to sleep more than two hours at a stretch (or at least two hours at a stretch)?

Very secondary to that: what are your tips for staying sane with no sleep?

And if you want to give advice to other people (or see what advice was given to other people), make sure you check out Shannon's post at Rocks in my Dryer.

Works for Me Wednesday: Keeping Baby Socks from the Dryer Monster

So you know how you always lose socks in the laundry. No one's sure exactly what happens...but there always seem to be a few less when you're done than you had when you started. This is especially true with those teeny-tiny baby socks. Well, one day, I had an epiphany (which I know that others have had as well, but I had this epiphany before I was even reading other "Mommy" blogs, so it was original, if not unique, in its origins).

Why not use one of those "delicates" bags to wash the socks in? I mean, everyone knows that the Dryer Monster has better things to do than to bother unzipping one of those bags, just for a tasty snack. I mean, seriously, there's _bound_ to be someone next door with loose socks for the taking.

So, knowing that the socks were safe from the Dryer Monster, I then moved on to the next epiphany. Why not keep the bag on the changing table in between washes? That way, when the socks come off, they go right into the bag and the House Gremlins can't take them and stash them under the couch or _in_ the couch or in any number of other hiding places.

But, even though I had a foolproof plan, I knew that, occasionally, things don't go according to plan and there was a small chance that the House Gremlins would succeed in hiding socks. So there was the third epiphany. Any time I couldn't find a sock, the loose one would go in the bag and stay there until its mate returned. Sure, a colored sock might fade a little in the multiple washings, but at least they'd find each other in the end. Plus, most of our socks are white, so it really wasn't a big deal. And the House Gremlins _always_ give up their prey _eventually_ (it might be when you move, but you always get the stuff back...someday).

So if you're looking for a way to defeat the Dryer Monster and House Gremlins in their search for your socks, try this out. It's easily adaptable for larger people too. Just buy a bag for each person and keep it near the spot where the socks usually come off. You might need to further refine for socks of color, but I'm sure you can make it work (laundry is the only place where segregation is ok).

So that works for me. For more ideas, check out Rocks in My Dryer.

Works for Me Wednesday: Coupon Chief

Is it Wednesday already? Well, since it is, apparently, I guess I'll tell you what's going to work for me the next time I shop online. I haven't used it yet, but it definitely looks like something I'll use now that I know about it. It's a website called Coupon Chief. Basically, they find all of the online coupons for you. All you have to do is search for a store or merchant that you'd like to purchase something from and they give you a list of all the coupon codes that are available. If you're like me and most of your Christmas shopping is done online, this could come in mighty handy.

For instance, say you were looking for a computer or computer accessories for the holidays. You could look for Dell coupons or HP coupons. They also have "big box" stores if you're looking for something more generic. All you've lost is a little time if they don't have any stores you need, but you could save big for free if they do.

As I said, I haven't actually used this yet, but I'm sure I'll at least look at it in the future. So check it out next time you're shopping online. For other tips, check out Rocks in my Dryer.

Works for Me Wednesday: (Backwards Day) Baby Stain Fighting

So today is "Backwards Day" over at Rocks In My Dryer's Works-for-me Wednesday. What that means is that I ask for some wise and creative ideas to solve an issue all my own.

While I've seen others post on previous WFMWs on stain fighting, I have to say that I'm still struggling with this - not with my clothes or VNB's, always with AJ's. Specifically, bibs and the legs of onesies.

I think my biggest problem is that I'm in a small condo with communal laundry facilities (meaning that I do laundry at most once a week) and no place that I can really leave something to soak with any regularity that either the cat or the baby couldn't get into, other than outside on our porch...which kinda weirds me out, plus it's starting to get cold and things won't stay liquid out there for too many more weeks.

This is what I've tried and the results:

• Dreft stain remover - worked pretty well, but not better than oxyclean stain remover, and neither got the entire stain out, even with leaving for longer than it recommended on the package. This would be a choice which would make me happy if someone could tell me how to make it work as Dreft is the cheapest of the stain removers by far ($3 at Walmart), and there are coupons for Dreft products, making it even cheaper!
• Oxyclean stain remover (both sprayed on and poured in with the detergent) - didn't see much difference when poured in with the detergent, but worked the best of everything I'd tried when clothes had already been washed a couple of times, then I think I tried the dish soap and washed again, then sprayed with Oxyclean stain, then left to sit overnight, then washed and dried. I haven't tried just spraying them and letting them sit overnight by themselves though, so it could just be the combination.
• Dish soap - maybe I did this one wrong - I put the soap on the dry clothes, rubbed it into the stains, then left them to soak in the sink for about 30 minutes. It worked some, but no better than anything else. I guess this would be the absolutely cheapest method, but it was _REALLY_ messy, and involved having a clean sink and work area around the sink (which doesn't usually happen in conjunction with laundry days).
• Shout Advanced gel - I seem to recall this working really well, but it's also _REALLY_ expensive and I go through a bottle in about two laundry days. I'd much prefer something cheaper.
• Bleach - other than to take color out of things that ought to be colored, I've never seen bleach make a difference on anything. And yet I keep buying it and using it with my whites.

I always wash the stained stuff in hot water, and usually wash them until I can't stand the effort anymore (or AJ no longer has clothes), then I dry them. I really don't care that much if colors fade (he's a baby, he doesn't care, and most of the issues are with bibs which are mostly white, or onesies - also mostly white, and usually worn under clothes).

Please help! Tell me a combination or a method or a product that works (worked) for you with baby stains! And if you're looking to help more people with your wisdom and creativity, then check out "Backwards Day!"

Works for Me Wednesday: Spacebags

So VNB and I have a pretty small place (~1000 sq. ft.). This smallness is compounded by the fact that when we married and moved in together, he was coming from an apartment of about 900 sq. ft., and I had stuff that had filled most of a 3-br house prior to storage in my brother's basement (while I was overseas).

Since I didn't have a job right away when we got married, I spent my days culling through my stuff (for a second time - I'd done it once before it went on the truck to come here from my brother's house), getting rid of lots of stuff, and finding lots of creative places and ways to store things.

Well, we'd found a place for everything (finally), with half of the space under the bed to spare when we visited VNB's folks and were given seven boxes of his childhood stuff - way more than half the bed. So he culled through that and we'd finally found a place for everything (which included "just put it in the second bedroom for now")...when we found out that I was pregnant and we were going to need that second bedroom for baby things, rather than our things.

So we both culled through everything again and got rid of another large chunk of stuff until we had room for all the baby furniture and stuff we could stand. Everything sort of had a place, but it was overwhelming. We put lifts under the bed and the futon to give us more space, but the whole place was still just too full. The problem was that we'd gotten to the point where if we threw stuff out, we'd want to buy it again when we got a bigger place.

We'd seen the SpaceBags commercials time and again, but one night, VNB said, "why don't we try those?" So we bought our first box (the one with lots of different sized bags). We were hooked. We started SpaceBagging everything that would shrink, and all of the sudden, we had room to spare again! So we bought more and bagged more stuff! and more! Until the only stuff left wasn't smushable!

They haven't been great about keeping their integrity (we've got a few that are still good, but not all of them), but the good thing is that you can suck them down, stick several of them into someplace small, then they can re-expand all they want without taking up any more space for you! They're a little harder to get out, but that's not a big deal.

In any case, SpaceBags have definitely worked for me! For some other great tips, look here.

Works for Me Wednesday: Recycled Changing Table

It seems that I can only manage to get posts together for WFMW. In my defense, it's because some of the pics for my Atlanta visit post were on our desktop computer while some are on this one and when I tried emailing them from the other computer, it didn't work, and in the meantime, VNB has wiped that computer and reinstalled everything. All the pics got saved, but we used like four different media so now I have to track them down.

Excuses, excuses, I know...believe me, the pics are worth the wait.

But back to WFMW, which is why most of you came here in the first place.

So, when AJ was in the process of being knit together, we, of course, started looking around for furniture for his room. VNB's boss very graciously gave us their (very nice) old crib which was just ending its usefulness in their family, and we already knew we just didn't have space for a glider or rocker, so the only thing left to get was the changing table and a dresser. After a _very_ brief tour of the _VERY_ expensive tables at Babies 'R Us (only a very few of which actually looked like what I had in my mind's eye), I convinced VNB to go with me to all the thrift stores and look for something there. After a good bit of searching (and a lot of him saying "can't you make due with this one?" with me replying "not really - it's too tall (or too short, or too something else, or not what I was looking for)"), we finally found the perfect thing.

It was a three-drawer chest of drawers that comes up about to my waist. Good, solid, wood construction, with only a little bit of damage way down at the bottom of the feet. It was the absolute perfect size - 18" wide, 40" long, 35" high (and had drawers - I didn't want that big open space underneath that so many of the cheaper plastic ones had). So, for $30, we brought it home, gave it a fresh coat of high gloss paint (not easy to put on evenly, but makes wiping it off a breeze, and we happened to have the paint on hand already), bought a nice changing pad for it (I think that was about $25), and we had ourselves a changing table for about $60 (instead of $600+). Incidentally, it has room for all of his little clothes too, making one less piece of furniture we had to find room for.

I'm sure that all of you crafty folks out there could do amazing things with decoupage and other stuff, but I'm just not that kind of girl. If I'd had more time and inclination, I probably could have stripped off the old stain and restained it to match the crib. Being 6-months pregnant (and with a husband who had a broken arm), I did not have that time and inclination.




The best thing about it is that when we're done with changing tables, we can just take the changing pad off and we still have a good, solid dresser. An expensive changing table/dresser on the cheap definitely works for me!

For some other great tips, go here.

Works for Me Wednesday: Too-Tart Baby Food

So it all started when AJ started eating the baby food peaches, which have a very strong odor, although I haven't sampled the taste. He liked eating them, but after every other bite, he would scrunch up his face and shiver, kinda like you would do if you were surprised by the tartness of a candy or something. While this provided VNB and I endless hours of amusement (AJ too because I'd mimic him and he thought that was the funniest thing ever), I began wondering what I could do to make the food less tart for him (especially when he started doing the same thing with the applesauce - there aren't that many foods for us to choose from right now, especially fruits for breakfast, so I wasn't about to give up on them).

Finally I came up with an idea - add the rice cereal that was just taking up space in my cupboard. AJ prefers that the peaches with rice cereal "age" for a few hours prior to eating (I guess to more completely merge the two flavors or something - he's going to be a gourmet chef, apparently), but he'll eat the applesauce with rice cereal right away.

One added advantage of this (besides getting rid of the cereal) is that it's helped him get used to the tastes. Now he can down a container of peaches without a second thought (or shiver). It also gave me the opportunity to accidentally give him squash with rice cereal for breakfast one morning (squash and peaches are roughly the same color, and did I mention it was morning?). While he was a little confused by that, he actually liked it, giving me _another_ opportunity to get rid of the rice cereal...and a way to make each container of food last a little longer.

So, rice cereal in tart baby food works for me! For other ideas, go here.

Works for Me Wednesday: Carrots as Teethers

I can't take credit for this one, although it's a brilliant idea and I'm happy to share it with the world. Our pediatrician recommended it in order to allow us to avoid toys from China several months before it was really scary to let your kid chew on toys from China.

Basically, you take a baby carrot of appropriate size (not too short or thin, but not too thick either), hand it to your teething child, and let them gnaw on it. They'll like the sweet taste, they'll love the coolness if it's right from the fridge (although don't freeze them because they get mushy), and it's too hard for them to bite off a piece (and is therefore of excellent hardness for teething).

One other advantage of this is that later on when you introduce solid foods, you can start with carrots and they'll recognize the taste (and remember the joy it brought them), making the transition just that much easier.

This _definitely_ works for me!

Works for Me Wednesday: Pasta/Rice Entrees

Maybe this one isn't so ground-breaking, but it works very well for our family (and for myself long before I _had_ a husband and baby). I turn those boxed/bagged pasta and rice side dishes into main dishes by adding in a chicken breast or about a pound of beef. It's like Hamburger Helper except that it's about 1/3 the price. My husband, who's a rather picky eater at times (at least in terms of veggies) really likes them. If you really want to get fancy, you could probably add fresh veggies too, but we haven't gone that far yet.

One box is about enough for two (if you have a veggie on the side), with at least one container of leftovers for hubs' lunch the next day.

Check out Rocks in My Dryer for more "Works for Me Wednesday" tips!

Works for Me Wednesday: Travel Diaper Rash Creams

So Rocks in My Dryer (really, I do more during the day than just read/advertise for Shannon's blog, but it's really a great blog!) hosts a weekly carnival called "Works for Me Wednesday." Each week, people from around the world post on their own blogs about helpful hints that work for them, and then link to their sites from Shannon's site. That way you can help others with your own ideas and be helped by everyone else's brilliance. Well, while I've been gleaning from the insight of others for months now, I've always felt like I had nothing to add myself...until recently. All of the sudden, I have six ideas for WFMW! So for the next six weeks at least, I'll be participating! :) Yay! No longer a mooch off of the system, am I!

So my first "works for me" idea involves those travel/trial sized packets of diaper rash cream. I don't know about you, but when AJ was born, I received lots of free samples, trial sizes, etc., of diaper rash creams. My original idea was to put those "little" ones in the diaper bag and use the "big" sized ones at home...but I found that I never used the ones in the diaper bag because I knew that once opened, there was no way to reclose the trial sizes - and there was no way that my little man was going to need the entire packet in one diapering.

So one day I had an epiphany. Why not put the big tube (with the recloseable lid) in the diaper bag and keep the samples for the changing table at home? That way I can use the entire sample package in as many diaperings as it lasts with minimal mess, but I still have a relatively mess-free way to have diaper rash cream on the go as well!

Now that he's seven months old (!!), we're starting on our final sample. After that's gone, we'll use one of the _really_ big containers of cream that someone gave us. But now I feel less wasteful, I've gotten a chance to see which of the samples works the best, and AJ's bottom is mostly rash-free!

Anyway, it works for me! Hope it helps you too!