Ramble On

I placed an order with A Toy Garden yesterday, in the afternoon. I want to say shortly before dinner time (6 o'clock at our house) and I got an email notification today that it had been shipped.

Holy wow that was quick!

I've been visiting this site since last October and just got around to ordering some goodies now. Most of it will be put away until some-other-day (of course I say that now but I have a really hard time hiding things from my kids, especially when I'm super excited about them!) but the rainbow silk is for my 6-month-old's Easter basket.

*squee* this will be my first, official, play silk. Yes my family is a play-silk virgin and I am super excited to see this and the rest of the goodies coming out way. I just hope I can hide them from the kids for a while.

More when the stuff shows!

Before I buy anything I always always google for reviews, however I never write them myself. Lazy? Maybe, or maybe because I thought my opinions were sort of worthless (I have issues). So I'm going to start doing these now because I have some products that I freaking love and would love to share with the WWW. I could just start posting *right now* about a list of things but I won't, I think it would end up being too much to wade through at once so I'll just start with the most important thing in world right now. Lotion.

Yes lotion.

My baby is 6-months-old and suffers from eczema. For the past three months (after the eczema just appeared) we've been trying everything to help her out the poor thing was bleeding night after night from just laying on the one patch on her face. I did a lot of research and took the chance on the Mustlea brand of products.


ezcema - by jayamaree on Polyvore.com

Every third day I bathe the baby with the cream cleanser, and wash her hair with the foaming shampoo. Actually, I do that in reverse. I put the shampoo on her hair and let it do it's thing as I'm washing the rest of her body. The shampoo won't work unless you leave it on for the required two minutes. After her bath she gets covered head to toe in the Moisturizing Cream, which really isn't a cream at all it's more of an ointment, it's very runny and makes the baby a bit sticky. This is what's working for us for now, along with a bit of steroid cream (which was prescribed) for when her flares get really bad (I'm really trying to avoid using it but sometimes I'm finding it's necessary).

These products are expensive, but I've found that they really do go along way. I've been using the shampoo since she was born and I'm still on the same bottle. That's three baths a week times six months, well you do the math, the point is it lasts a long time (of course my daughter does not have a whole lot of hair). I've linked to everything in my post but these products are available from drugstore.com, bathandbodyworks.com and some larger B&BW stores locally (ours did not carry them).

It has been pointed out to me that xmas in our house has gotten way out of hand. The children got about 18 gifts each, that included everything from Santa, us (mom & dad), and my parents. My brother also brought them two things each.

So I guess they each got 20 things. It didn't seem like so much to me because they got a lot of books and clothes. I love books and clothes and those are things that get a lot of use around here and I wrap everything individually, I love the look of a huge pile of wrapped gifts.

As you can tell I was offended by my husband's comments. In one way I feel like he was in a bad mood but in another way maybe he's right. I'm still smarting about it and it's been nearly three months now.

I am not shopping all year 'round this year as it leads to way-too-much-stuff and the kids don't really know what they want until closer to the event anyway.

True confession: we spent over 2000 dollars on xmas gifts this year. We buy for 20 people (including ourselves and the children). We just do not have the means to keep doing this. We need to cut it in at least half this year for sure.

I always second guess myself "is this enough" for certain people. Frankly, it hurts and stresses me out to even think about spending all that money on people that really don't appreciate the time or effort it takes to pick something out for them. I'm seriously considering doing the cop-out of gift cards for most of them and I've been admittedly against gift cards for years. I'm just tired of it all, just so very tired.

I really want it to be different this coming year especially for the kids it was so so stressful this year, for me, dealing with my husband's celiac diagnoses, and being expected to bake twelve kinds of cookies (not to mention pies, and cream puffs!) with no help. I didn't even make sugar cookies with my children. I also had a baby in September of last year so between breastfeeding and everything else i just feel like i lost it and I hate that I'm so upset with myself about it. I hate beating myself up about things like that and I do it all the time.

I hurt. I need to sleep.