Kid Crap - What Do You Do with It?

And no, I'm not talking about what you find in the diapers; I'm talking all of that baby "equipment", clothing, shoes, snowsuits, toys. It's amazing what accumulates over the years.

At first, most of us keep it for the next baby. Clothes are carefully packed away "in case we have another [insert gender here]." Somehow we find space in the basement, garage or attic for all of the bouncy seats, Jolly Jumpers, high chairs, cribs, change tables, exersaucers, diaper bags, diaper pails and so on and so on, unless of course you're brave enough to have another one while you're still in the midst of all of that stuff to begin with (I've done it once and man, that was crazy!)

After you've had two, or three, or sometimes four or more, you start madly planning a day without tripping over an Exersaucer every time you try to sit down in your living room. A day without a smelly diaper pail (because I'm sorry, no matter how often you change those suckers, they still stink). A day when you can walk through a doorway without being hit in the face with a Jolly Jumper. A day when you won't have piles of Rubbermaid totes full of outgrown clothing.

So what do you do with all of it?

In many cases, you pass it along to a friend, family member or friend of a friend who is having a baby. Sometimes it gets donated. There are countless used kids' equipment/clothing stores. There are online trading sites.

Lately I've been faced with this dilemma. We are most definitely done having kids. After four of them, we have boxes and boxes and boxes of clothes. We have two bouncy seats. We have an infant seat. We have a playpen, at one point had two cribs. There are bottles, sippy cups, toys, a "Playdeebug", a Jolly Jumper... it's Kid Central in our house right now.

Over time I've gotten rid of a few things, but there is still a LOT. I'd like to be altruistic and give it all away, but we could really use some extra cash after all of the money we've put out for this stuff over the years. I thought using Craigslist and Kijiji would be the answer, but it's been hit or miss, to say the least. My one experience with a consignment store last year was NOT a positive one.

Finally I decided on the age-old solution: a yard sale. I spent days combing the house, organizing clothes by size and gender, thinking of ways to display them, looking for other items that we could get rid of, all leading up to what I hoped would be the Great Day of Kid Crap Disposal.

Yeah, not so much. Bleh. Here's approximately how the day went.

We were up at 6am, in order to shower and dress and get the kids up, dressed and fed. While the kids were eating breakfast, we started taking things outside. By 7:15, despite the fact that our signs and ads all said we were starting at 9am, people arrived. Can I just say right now that "yard salers", those who spend their weekends combing sales for the ultimate "find" can be incredibly RUDE? One of the women who showed up over 90 minutes early had the gall to tell my husband that we'd never sell anything if we didn't get our things out on display. Um, maybe if you had shown up when we were READY the things would have been out!

Eventually we dragged the playpen outside with a bunch of toys for the baby, and despite my fears that he would simply stand there and scream at being penned in, he actually enjoyed watching all of the people and the cars go by.

People came, people looked, people left. I seriously was starting to get a complex. Eventually things picked up a bit, but I was really surprised at the things that were purchased when so much of the other stuff was barely looked at.

And in the end, almost none of the Kid Crap went. I still have boxes and boxes of clothes. An infant seat. Two bouncy seats.

I sent some of it to Goodwill. I was shocked to find that I couldn't give them a bouncy seat because it was a "safety item". Nor a stroller. So those came home.

I've decided to take some of the better clothes to a used kids' store and take my chances. I'll probably donate the rest, money or no. Hopefully I'll get some good Karma out of it, anyway. I'll keep lowering prices on the rest and put it back on Kijiji and Craigslist.

One of these days it'll all be gone. Of course, by then they'll have outgrown a whole new set of Kid Crap.

Yep, I'm doomed.

Before Bathtime...

Me: "Would you please stop wrapping your penis around that crayon?"

Sigh.

Update on the "Single Ladies"

I wondered if there would be a response from the parents or the dance school, and lo and behold only a few minutes later I found this at ABC News. Sorry, but I'm not buying it. Just because it "wasn't meant to be seen by millions of people" it's okay? And the bumping and grinding was not "taken out of context" because quite frankly, eight and nine year olds don't need that in a dance competition.

What's Wrong with Just Being Seven?

There was a video floating around today of a girls' dance troupe. It showed five seven-year-old girls, dressed in red satin boy shorts and crop tops, trimmed with black lace, dancing to Beyoncé's Single Ladies. It apparently went viral, getting over 2,000,000 hits, although by tonight it's been pulled down from YouTube for copyright infringement (by the video company, apparently). I did manage to find it again here:


Vezi mai multe video din Sport

First off, there is absolutely no denying the talent of these little girls. I'm astonished that girls that age can dance that well.

That being said, as a mom, I'm outraged. That any choreographer/dance teacher would find that appropriate for little girls is beyond me. That parents would allow their young daughters to do bump and grinds like that, wearing costumes that, quite frankly, make them look like hookers, is astonishing. Someone compared it to the pageant circuit, where apparently ambition for your child's success often trumps common sense.

I saw CNN's Anderson Cooper interviewing Dr. Phil about this, and he had a good point: out of those 2,000,000 views, how many were pedophiles? Because it was ripe for that.

When I was seven, I was pining for a Cabbage Patch Kid (yes, I'm dating myself again). I was wanting to listen to Michael Jackson's Thriller without upsetting my mom. I made houses out of cardboard boxes for my cats. I fought to get to stay up late enough to watch The Cosby Show. I wasn't grinding my hips on stage wearing next to nothing. I may still have been wearing geeky corduroy pants made by my grandmother at that point, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Why do little girls have to get sexualized at such a young age? I don't honestly even understand why letting little girls wear "bikinis" to go swimming is so cute. Aren't we supposed to be protecting them? Teaching them some self-worth? Teaching them that they are more than just their bodies? Because if this is what they're learning at seven years old, how will they rationalize saying "no" when they're pressured as teenagers? "It's okay, it's no big deal." Wrong. It IS a big deal.

The sad thing is, that those girls are so talented that they could have had tamer costumes and done a less provocative routine to that same song and it would have been just as good. Unfortunately we won't get to see that version.

I'm very curious to see if, in the next few days, this dance school comes forward with some kind of response.

Hives Aren't Just for Bees!

I have been very blessed in the kid lottery. Every pregnancy you pray that your child will be healthy, and for the most part I have four extremely healthy, smart, gorgeous kids (do I sound biased? Because I'm totally not biased...)

Having been an active participant on several "mommy boards", in the past five and a half years, and having mom friends IRL ("in real life" for those not up on their message board slang) though, I've experienced a lot of grief for my mommy friends who are going through health issues, sadly sometimes even death of a little one. I have one friend (whom I'm still trying to convince to write for this site) whose kids have such bad food allergies that she homeschools them, just to keep them safe from the allergens that could kill them.

Then here's me: not a care in the world - complacent even. Baby number four arrives, beautiful, healthy and big. He's what I refer to as "the world's easiest baby": he eats well, sleeps well and loves everyone to whom he's handed.

I notice, however, that he has some rather raunchy, LOUD gas after his nighttime bottles. He lies there and grunts and moans for about an hour after his middle of the night feeding. I decide to try Enfamil Gentlease, to see if it will help. Almost immediately the late night gruntfests stop. Although he had never been particularly fussy, he just seems to be happier.

By the time he's about six or seven months old he suddenly stops sleeping through the night. He starts waking up in the middle of his naps. His drool is so bad that he could fill a swimming pool. I assume that it's teething, except that no teeth are cutting through. Finally he starts vomiting a little bit, with a strong smell of stomach acid. I assume a stomach bug and try to wait it out for a few days, but he's waking up more and more often from sleep, so I take him in to check for an ear infection.

I'm lucky: in the middle of the doctor's visit, after the doctor had noticed the "excessive drool", Joshua threw up, right there. Not a lot, but enough that the doctor had an "aha" moment, and diagnosed him with reflux. I was shocked. He was happy, and he wasn't a spitter by any means. Projectile spit-up was something I had never, thankfully, had to deal with. However, within 48 hours of his first dose of Zantac he was sleeping again. It was miraculous.

And life went on.

A month or so later I was happily feeding him breakfast - apple raspberry baby food. As I went to get him dressed about 20 minutes later I was shocked to see dark red splotches all over him: hives. I was certain it was an allergic reaction, but to be certain we rushed over to urgent care. Since applesauce had been one of his first foods, we knew it had to be the raspberries.

So let's see: regular milk-based formula - no; raspberries - no. Okay.

Our next experience was an accidental exposure to egg whites (accidental since he was less than 12 months old and we knew he wasn't supposed to have them). At least, that's what we're still assuming it was. More hives. Then white chocolate. Hives.

Occasionally I tried going back to the regular milk-based formula. No go. He could handle cheese and yogurt, but not plain milk, apparently. I started wondering what on earth we were going to do when he hit 12 months old. With every baby it was this exciting moment: NO MORE FORMULA! Now I was terrified instead. What on earth was I going to give him? Was I going to have to give him formula until he grew out of whatever problem it was that the milk caused?

We decided to try and move him on to soy formula, to see if he could tolerate that, and then move him on to soy milk if it worked. It seemed all right, so soy milk it was.

Except that the soy milk, unlike the soy formula, didn't seem to agree with him, either. He started having liquidy stools almost immediately. Not diarrhea, but definitely not normal for a toddler, either. (Oh, the things a parent has to think about...)

Our family doctor, God love her, has never really known what to do with Joshua's milk issues. She didn't really know what the Gentlease formula was for (in her defense it's still new to the market in Canada), and she was suspicious of him possibly needing soy. This week I described the problems that we were having, and she wanted me to try whole milk. I was hesitant, but I agreed.

I haven't even been able to give him an entire bottle of whole milk yet and already I'm seeing problems. Back to the BAD gas, and his diapers are even worse. I'm honestly so frustrated right now that I don't know what to try next. I may try rice milk, as a friend suggested, but other than that I don't know what to try. Other than that all he drinks is extremely diluted apple juice. I'm so frustrated I feel like just giving him the gentle formula again for a few months, but the extra expense is such a pain.

I know that what I'm dealing with is so very minor compared to what many parents I know have gone through. As I said, I know that I'm very lucky. Still, after four kids you have a tendency to feel like you've seen it all. Other parents ask you for advice and you've almost always dealt with something similar. This is new territory for me.

I'll take any advice that my readers have to give! What kind of health issues surprised you as a parent?

No, But I Have a Dog...

A fact that is little known to non-parents is that those of us who have children laugh at you when you compare your dog to having a child. Truthfully, many of us who are parents did the same thing before we had kids, but let me just say right now: a dog is NOT a child! When your dog tells you five minutes before he has to leave for school that his history project is due today but he forgot to do it, when your dog wakes you up every 2-3 hours to suck on your nipples, when your dog decides that she will only eat yellow food from now on, comes down with chicken pox right in the middle of your busy season at work, needs to be comforted from her first broken heart or asks why Jimmy has two mommies, THEN you can say that having a dog is like being a parent. Maybe.

I have to say, though, that there are certain characteristics that older babies and toddlers most definitely share with dogs. So perhaps it's more apt to say that if you have a toddler, it's like having a dog? I mean, they chew up everything they can put in their mouths, you have to clean up after them when they eat, pee and poop (although I will say that dogs don't generally agree to wearing diapers), they get around on all fours, and as I just found out, they apparently like to play fetch.

I just found my husband in the kitchen with Joshua. Josh was playing with one of the random Leap Frog fridge magnets that we actually still have left and dropped it on the floor, making it skid across the ceramic tiles. Josh went and retrieved it, then brought it to Dad and handed it to him. Dad then threw it back across the room, Josh retrieved. They did this for about five minutes, both laughing hysterically. I told my husband he obviously missed our dog.

I'm not sure who's stranger: grown men or toddlers, but they are entertaining. Any other toddler/dog similarities?

Children's Motrin, Tylenol Recalled

Several common brand name medications are being recalled in Canada, the US and 10 other countries after it was determined that some bottles may have a higher concentration of the active ingredient than indicated on the bottle. In Canada, all bottles of Children's Motrin and Infant Motrin are being recalled, as well as Children's Tylenol Cough and Runny Nose suspension liquid. In other countries, children's versions of Benedryl, Zyrtec, Tylenol and Tylenol Plus are being recalled as well.

The FDA called the chance of medical problems "remote" but advises parents to stop using the medications as a precaution. It suggested generic brands as an alternative in the meantime. If a child has recently taken the medication and is exhibiting "unexpected symptoms" parents should consult a medical professional.

Parents can check the McNeil Product Recall website for details. As a note, I'm a little frustrated that it doesn't say anywhere that I can find what to do with the recalled meds. If anyone has more information, please post it in the comment section. If I'm able to find more information (I'll check with my pharmacist-mom) I'll post an update.