Christmas Spirit, Where Art Thou?

I'm having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit. I'm not a grinch by any means. I'm super excited about the presents we are giving this year. I'm super excited for all the festivities but I just can't seem to actually get into the swing of the spirit.

At first I thought maybe when its December. But December came and I still wasn't feeling festive. Then I thought if we decorated but we decorated and I still wasn't feeling festive. We made Christmas baking. We got all the presents. I even started wrapping last night. I just can't find it.

And then this morning I started to clean. Really really clean. I cleaned out the fridge. I cleaned a bathroom. I cleaned the kids rooms. And magically I started to feel better. I'm eager to attack the rest of the house to see if I can be in full blown Christmas cheer by the end of the day.

Puj Tub

I'm not good at trying new things. I'm one of those people that likes what she likes so why bother fixing whats not broken. But my static ways have slowly been changing this year with my introduction to couponing. I've tried a couple of new products because they were free and I now don't know how I lived without them. So I'm growing and I actually am starting to like to try out new products (or at least new to me). And it is with this newfound love of trying out new things that I agreed to product test some products so that others could hear about great new products that they might not normally think of buying.

A month of so ago I offered to try out the new Puj Tub. All I knew was that it was a baby bath tub. Last thursday I recieved my Puj Tub in the mail.

I think the concept is pretty AWESOME!! It stores flat and easily assembles into a bath tub that fits in your sink. Its so easy my 5 year old figured it out without any help.

I liked how the tub fit snugly and didn't move around. Part of it was the size of the bath tub and part of it is what the puj tub is made out of.

As a new parent bathing your child can be very daunting. I'm a parent of 3 and I have to admit that I still wanted Csters help with bathing Kster when he was first born. I'm always worried that the baby's going to slip right out of my hands. I'm worried about their head. I'm worried about their belly button, or their circumcision. I'm just worried. This bathtub, would, I feel, eleviate a lot of that fear. There is so little water actually in the tub that you could bathe a newborn in their without worrying about getting the stump wet. And I think its so snug you wouldn't have to fear supporting the head the entire time you were bathing your baby. (Kster's past the floppy head stage so its hard for me to judge)

So onto the practicality of the product. As AWESOME as I think it is, the bath tub did not work for us. The product says its for babies aged 0-6 months but as you can see my 3 month old Kster is way to big for the tub. He's holding onto the faucet and to get him in and out I had to maneuver around the faucet. There really wasn't enough water in there once Kian got in to do any bathing.

I later tried the Puj in my kitchen sink. It worked better. I could move the faucet away from the Puj and it fit a little nicer but Kster was still too big to actually get water onto him. Again, little water is something you want with a really young baby. You can see the holes just beside him that let all the water out if you try to fill it too high. (And I didn't want to get him naked again to try it out. Its freezing here in Colorado.)

So my final verdict. I would definately use this bathtub with a newborn but the age range is really not that realistic.

And here's a picture of us product testers to prove we're real. :)

Check out the Puj Tub for yourself at the new web site exclusively for baby bath tubs!

A day at the store

The other day I had to go to a certain store to pick up a prescription. Kster had spent the entire night either crying, throwing up, or wanting to be in the perfect position on me to sleep. Usually he is an awesome sleeper so this was highly unusual and meant that when he wanted to take a 3 hour morning nap, I let him.

But a 3 hour morning nap means shopping in the afternoon with all 3 kids.

We arrived, and I picked up my prescription. Mster said she had to go to the bathroom and Lster then yelled "I HAVE TO GO PEEPEE TOO!!" (FTR he's not potty trained, by his own stubberness). So off we went. I couldn't even get the troops organized because once we opened the bathroom door they both ran to separate stalls, locked the door and proceeded to go. Both of them. I'm deciding maybe I need to try a different technique with Lster in potty training. Instead of staying home for a few days we are going to just hang out at the store for a few days because he will only go to the bathroom in a public restroom.

After the bathoom adventure we went to the womens' delicates to get me some nylons. While trying to find them Lster decided to kick his boot as high as he could off his foot. It came down on a display of lingerie underwear which showered upon him producing peels of 3 year old laughter. I finally found the nylons and while I was trying to find the perfect pair as fast as I could, Mster turned around and found the thong display. "Hey mom...look...swimming underwear. I need some swimming underwear. pleeeaaaaase."

Phobias

I never really had a phobia. There are things I don't like but I breathe a bit and get through it and move on with life.

Last week I found my phobia.

I was in my storage room and smelt something rank. I knew. I knew we had a dead mouse. I had to clean the room out because we were having guests coming that night and they needed a place to sleep that wasn't filled with the stench of rotting rodent carcass.

So I started moving stuff around and I found the mouse. It was definitely dead. I screamed. I threw a suitcase in the direction of the mouse and ran away, crying, up the stairs to the kitchen where my daughter looked at me with the widest eyes possible.

"Did you see something scary Mom?" she asked. I gasped out "yes" and continued to hyperventilate. I calmed down enough to realize that I would not be able to dispose of the dead creature. Just thinking about it made my heart palpitate at an unhealthy rate. So I called some friends whose husband is sometimes home during the day but there was no answer. I called a couple of other people whose husbands do shift work in hopes that somebody would be home. With every call I got support from the woman but no husband. She told me I could do it and gave me a big pep talk full of ideas on how to get rid of it without having to touch it.

Mster watched me the entire time. At one point she opened the knife door and suggested that she take a knife and stab it just carry it outside. Yep she did.

And I called Cster too but he was trying to get everything done at the office because he was already taking the rest of the week off. He suggested that I let Mster dispose of it if I was really freaking out (which I was) and she wanted to.

So I told Mster that she was going to be the lucky girl to get rid of the mouse. Immediately her face fell and her eyes started filling and my heart broke. Of course I didn't make her do it but that still left me with only me to do it all.

I armed myself with a broom covered in a plastic bag, a cardboard box and a piece of heavy paper and made my way to the basement bedroom. When I got into the bedroom (the storage room is off the bedroom) I again started to hyperventilate and cry and turned right around and ran (yes ran) back upstairs.

I finally went through the Church phone list desperate to find somebody who would be home and a name popped up and I called him and he said he would be right over. When he came I gave him all my "tools". He looked at me like I was on crack and asked for 2 paper towels. I looked at him like he was on crack and gave him 2 paper towels. He did the job and I was ever so grateful.

And I now know I have a serious fear of dead mice.