Things I Love

This post is about a few things I can't live without. Ok, so I can live without them, but they certainly make life A LOT easier and more enjoyable. Maybe you will discover something for yourselves.

Deciding what to make is always my least favorite part of meal planning (besides grocery shopping). I think it's because I always feel like I made the same 'ol dishes and I quickly become tired of repetition. I discovered this amazing little magazine and it has changed my life! Do you ever get really discouraged looking through cooking magazines because the recipes are either 1) Too complicated 2)Require too many obscure ingredients or 3) Don't appeal to you? I typically have the same problem. Not with this magazine. I get one every month, and each edition has tons of recipes that are healthy, interesting, easy, and do NOT require a million ingredients. Plus they often use fresh ingredients and season with simple things like lime juice, lemon jucice, salt and pepper, etc. I use online recipes sometimes, but I like having something tangible to read in the kitchen without having to walk over to my computer to see the next step. So I love that the magazine is small and you can tear out any recipe you like and put it in a folder or binder, then flip through them when you are looking to cook a meal. Each page has one recipe only on it, so forget cutting out random shaped recipes and trying to fit them somewhere. Best $12 a year I've ever spent, for sure.

This was given to me as a gift. It's called the Itzbeen baby timer. It's genius and has been sooo helpful. I know you older readers may be thinking "all these newfound gadgets, when we were young we didn't have half the things you guys did and our babies turned out fine!" (direct quote from my mom :) This little gadget is SO simple and makes my life a lot easier because I have a terrible short term memory. Contrary to what it may seem, I don't keep the baby on a strict schedule or anything, and this is still very helpful. It has buttons you press when you last fed, changed, gave medicine or when the baby last slept/awoke. All you do is press the button and it starts a timer. So when you have no idea how long it's been since baby ate (and trust me, you won't if you're anything like me), you can just look at your little itzbeen and it tells you plain and simple. It's so small and clips onto your pants. It also has this awesome nightlight button for the middle of the night that gives off the perfect amount of light to see the baby but not wake her up. And the buttons glow so you can see in the dark when you are sleep deprived and have no idea if you last fed the baby 4 hours ago or 5 minutes ago. AND it has a little switch to remind you which side you last nursed on. Who would have thought this little thing would be so helpful? When we were in Atlanta and Athens for a week, I dont know what I would have done without it. Especially now that we are giving her medicine every 12 hours, I use the fourth button for this and don't even have to think about how long ago I gave it to her.  In conclusion, having this doesn't mean you keep your baby on a strict schedule ... but it comes in handy when you look at the timer and realize your newborn baby has been awake for FIVE straight hours because she thinks she should stay up all day long like an adult (fyi newborns should sleep most of the day and not be awake for more than a few hours at a time, max). It will help you with your sanity, trust me.

I hate removing stains. I hate scrubbing stains. I already have dry hands and I hate getting them wet for any other reason than is absolutely necessary. I have been using Oxi Clean powder to soak clothes in for a long time. It's brilliant. It's the only thing that gets out SET in stains- I mean clothes stained for several years, yes, it has gotten those out of my clothes. I just let it soak if it's a serious stain, then wash it. Otherwise I throw a scoop in the laundry if the clothes are prone to being stained. It's a miracle. With all this baby poop going on,  I was getting frustrated because the powder in the machine wasn't enough to get it out and I wasn't about to hand scrub each little thing (ah! no time!) so I found this sprayer version and you just spray it on the stain and throw it in the wash and voila! NO baby poop stains. NO deodorant stains. NO anything stains! Yippee! I get the baby version now because it's dye/fragrance free, but it works just like the original. Happy stain removal!

I don't mean to make this an all-baby post, but these are the most used items that come to my mind. Most people get a Pack n Play for their baby to nap in and to use as a crib when they travel. We have a small apartment and PnPs are HUGE, way to bulky for us. Well Graco makes this 'Light' version (don't we all love things light? :) that is much smaller but completely big enough for baby. It's called the Graco Travel Lite Crib. We love it. When we travelled to Atlanta, we stayed in bedrooms where a regular size PnP play would never have fit, but this travel one fit everywhere, right next to our bed. It also doesn't take up much room in the trunk. The colors are pretty. And it doens't have those extra bassinet features which we found unnecessary and too bulky anyway. We did toss the little sun shade thing because it was easier to not have to use it and it didn't serve much purpose. I highly recommend.

This post is a To Be Continued post... I encourage my other bloggers to write a favorite post (mostly for me, I'm selfish) because I get so many great ideas from you!