1st Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations Sarah (sarahespn)!
I've sent you an email asking for you address to send your 16oz bottle of Basic H2! You'll have to let us know how you like it!

The Next Giveaway will be posted around the 1st so keep checking back!

Sleeping Habits

I'm a firm believer that if you don't want to do something with your toddler all the time, don't do it even once. Like buying her candy in the checkout isle at the grocery, giving in after you said no and she whines about it, or allowing her to sleep in your bed. Sure, the can be fun to do or bring some temporary peace, but at what cost? Weeks, or even months, of breaking this new learned habit. Kids at this age don't understand that they're getting the candy just this once - mainly because mommy was craving a snickers or wanted to try that new Milkyway (and has anyone tried that new Milkyway? The all caramel one? It looks awesome!). Give in to that whining just once and the word "no" has lost it's absoluteness and you're in for months of battling to get your power back. Ava goes through this when I let her walk through the grocery as opposed to riding in the cart because we only need one or two things. Then the next couple of times we go to the grocery she doesn't want to ride in the cart. Sometimes I bribe her (but not by making a deal. I don't say "if you sit in the cart I'll give you this to play with/a snack". I simply tell her that she needs to sit in the cart so that she can eat her goldfish - mommy has to get lots of stuff today) and then the next time it's simply "Mommy has to get lots of stuff today so you have to ride in the cart". That usually does it. However, when Daddy gave in to her crying about it once, not only did he have a miserable time at the store, but it took me weeks to get to her willingly into the cart again.

Now - here's where I've broken my rule and made our lives harder: At some point (I no longer remember when) we let Ava sleep in our bed. I think she was having bad dreams and I was stealing extra snuggle time. It became a habit - she'd go to her bed fine, and then sometime during the night she'd wiggle her way in between us in our bed. I was fine with it - extra snuggles for me! Weeks went by and finally Mike had had enough of being kicked all night. I started the process of breaking the habit, but then we went on vacation. Then my mom visited and slept in her room with her for a week. Things like that just kept coming up. It's been close to a year and every night Ava ends up in our room. It's going to be so difficult to break this - It's so easy to give in at 2am just to get back to sleep. Now, to make matters more difficult, a really close friend of ours lost his job 6 weeks ago and is having a very hard time finding a new one - he's over qualified for most and others are just too specific ("Looking for an HR Director with 10 years experience (fine). Five years in the so-and-so field (ridiculous)." We've offered for him and his partner to stay with us in April to give him an extra few weeks to find a job before they have move back to Ohio. We have a 2 bedroom house, so they'll be moving into Ava's room for that month. HOPEFULLY after that I can get tough and break this!

If anyone has any ideas on how to do this, I'd love to hear them!

Giveaway - 1 full bottle of Baisc H2

My first in what will be a monthly giveaway! My very favorite product, what got me started in Shaklee to begin with: A full size (16oz) bottle of Basic H2® Organic Super Cleaning Concentrate.

This little 16 oz bottle creates an unbelievable 48 gallons of super-safe, really powerful, all purpose cleaner (and yeah - that's how much water you buy when you buy ready to use products at the store). I've had mine for over 2 years and am about 1/4 way through it - no kidding - and I use it for everything - EVERYTHING. Windows, wood, counter tops, floors, toilet, cars, appliances, mirrors, and it even replaced the solution in my little green machine. I dust, sweep and then walk around my house with one microfiber cloth for scrubbing and one cloth for glass and just spritz the whole thing from top to bottom with Basic H2 and wipe. Living room, bedrooms, hallway, kitchen, and bathroom - spitz, wipe, done! The best part? It's completely safe to use around my daughter. Awesome.

The kicker - it costs $12. That's $12.00. How much did you spend on cleaning supplies products last year? Worse - what kinds of chemicals did they leave behind?

Ok lol - can you tell I get excited over Basic H2? There are 2 ways to enter to win your very own bottle and you may do them both: Leave a comment here with your email address and let me know that you have a)subscribed to this blog and/or b) become a fan to my Shaklee Page on Facebook . All entries must be in by March 15th - a winner will be chosen at random that morning. I'll notify the winner via email. Then that person can report back to me in a month to tell me how much they love me for changing their life! - Kidding about that - kinda =)

CLOSED

Been awhile

I apologize for the length of time passed since my last post! Just as we started winning the Battle of the Cough 2010, we caught colds. We're 90% better and ready to get back to our daily routine!

Because of the cough and the cold I haven't been to the gym in 3 weeks! This is detrimental to my Bikini by June goal! I'm very nervous about meeting that goal now, but I'm not giving up. I just have to work out extra hard and pay special attention to what I'm eating. I'm also making doubly sure that I eat something every 2 hours. Breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, snack, dinner - and the hardest thing of all - I'll be replacing my favorite snack of the day (our ava's-in-bed-let's-watch-tv snack - sigh) with a cup of green tea.

To help keep myself on track I've started a food journal. I'm still considering posting it in a blog - having it public would certainly make me more critical of what I'm eating - but I'm so far behind in everything right now from being sick that it'll have to wait until next week. I'll post what I have up until then.

And now Ava's ready for snack time =)

Giving Medicine to a Dinosaur Is NOT Easy!

About a week ago Ava woke up 2 nights in a row with a cough. Then, on the 3rd day she started coughing in the morning, and by the 4th day she had a persistent wet cough. Oh no...

It was a weekend so we just went to the store to get her some Children's Musinex - got the Target Brand for $3 less - (and yes I know she's only 3, not the required 4 - 6, but she's of size and I don't ever give her the full dose. Please put the torches down a call off the angry mob). She's really good about taking Motrin so I figured a yummy flavored syrup would be fine. I picked up grape - remembering the delicousness of Dimetapp with I was little. When we got home I poured her 3/4 of the dose a 4 year old would receive and handed it to her. She willingly took a big swallow and made the worst face and refused the rest of it. I tasted it and couldn't blame her. It tasted like Robitussin! Is the name brand better? I don't know, but I do know that I'll never get her to take purple medicine again. Ok, so the next day I went back to the store and picked up Musinex Mini Melts - orange this time. I took half the pack myself to both show her how to do it and to lower the dosage for her. It was delicious until the after taste hit me. She took it, but once the after taste hit her refused even WATER from me for an entire afternoon.

That night I bought her some Children's Benadryl - some delicious tasting cherry melts - in hopes of drying some of that yuck up. Those, of course, she loves. She slept good that night, but it didn't help the stuff in her chest. The next morning I tried dissolving some of the Musinex Mini Melts in some water and attempted to pass if off as her orange flavored Motrin. She took a drink, didn't hate it, but didn't take more and wouldn't take the 2nd dose 5 hours later.

Ava is very, very strong. She's in 95th percentile for weight and it's all muscle. She can totally kick my butt when she wants to and throws a fit. I hate these fits and I don't let her get her way when she throws them (and I have the bruises to prove it!). Thankfully this means that she doesn't throw them often. However if you're trying to syringe meds into her cheek you're in for a battle - and I mean sitting on a screaming, wiggling dinosaur-tough-toddler/preschooler, holding the meds in one hand and trying to open her mouth with the other. I tried this twice - not worth it.

By this time her cough's not any better and I can't get meds in her. I was afraid it had turned into bronchitis and/or an infection so to the doctor we went. This was our first sick trip to the doctor since she was 4 months old (other than for a strange looking insect bite that ended up being nothing and was gone the next day, and for an "iguana attack" - an iguana in Aruba wanted the grilled cheese she was eating poolside and walked over to to get it and slightly cut her leg with it's hugemongus claws. It was also nothing. If you go to Aruba - don't feed the lizards!). Sure enough she has a touch of bronchitis. He gave her some delicious tasting melts (that are $5 a piece!) to see if she'd willingly take it. She did after some coaxing (they could have made it LOOK appetizing for $5 a flipping pill!). He also prescribed a liquid antibiotic that I was pretty sure was going to cause WWIII in my living room that would last the next 5 nights. So that night after dinner I gave her her vitamin, the melt, and her antibiotic in a dose cup. She drank the antibiotics (which I thought tasted awful) without any complaint and ate her vitamin. Refused the melt. It was a 30 minute stand off. Finally daddy put it in peanut butter (yuck - grape flavored pb) and she took a bite and that was it. I hope we didn't ruin the peanut butter trick! No luck this morning on the pill either.

Ugh! After this I might put her in a bubble. I never want to do this again! This has been the worst week ever!

Bikini Ready by June - part 2

So it's been roughly 3 weeks and I'm happy to report that I'm seeing and feeling a difference. I've noticed my pants fit better and my unsavory muffin tops are much smaller! Not ready for the bikini yet, but I feel like I'm well on my way!

What I've been trying to do is hit the gym 3 days a week. I don't spend an exuberant amount of time there because I don't feel you have to do to get a good work out. I go in, I take a brisk walk on the treadmill for a few minutes to get my blood pumping and then I like to jog for 10 minutes or so, and then walk again to cool down before hitting a few of the machines. My machines of choice have been (and I don't know the names), but an inner thigh and buttocks machine, and an inner thigh machine (both look something like this), a glute machine, and a lower back machine. On Wednesdays I usually leave out the thigh machines and hit the rowing machine for my arms and upper back. I don't do much more than that for my arms as I have a 40lb 3 year old that takes care of most it for me. And then on Fridays I hit the elliptical (just won $2 on Swag Bucks checking my spelling there!) instead of the treadmill (which very quickly kicks my butt) and hit the floor for several ab work outs and stretching.

I haven't significantly changed my eating habits - but I already ate fairly healthy. On the days I go to the gym I drink a Cinch Shake (I tried eating a meal replacement bar one morning and could barely run for 5 minutes and I was exhausted after my workout), coffee when I get home (lol of course!), I have breakfast with Ava about an hour later and I'll have either cottage cheese with pineapple (one of my new favorite things) or greek yogurt with honey and flax seeds. For snack I usually have a fruit or a kids clif bar (1/2 the calories of an adult clif bar). At lunch I normally have whatever Ava's having, yogurt or cottage cheese for snack (whichever i didn't have for breakfast) or edamame beans, and then a small dinner. Portioning, eating more often, and rethinking my snacks are my main focus.

I'm feeling good about this!