Mommin' It Up!

January 4, 2011

Picture Perfect

Last week I embarked on a project to finally get our digital pictures organized and to print picture books. I had purchased a groupon for a photo book, and I planned to do one per year for 2008, 2009 and 2010.

Here’s the problem. Our pictures are completely disorganized! Well, that is the main problem. Other problems include the fact that our camera is CRAP and therefore so are all of our pictures, and also if you looked at our pictures, you would think my husband is a single dad (who takes his kids to do really fun stuff) because their mom is nowhere to be seen! AND, it became clear to me that we don’t take nearly enough pictures. The everyday moments are the important ones, and that’s what we miss (other than what we catch on our cell phones, ha).

Anyway, back to the disorganization. First of all, our pictures are spread out among at least four computers and three online archives. They are not all in one place. And frankly, I’m sure I forget where some of them are. Also, they are in no particular order, the file names are meaningless, and there are a dozen terrible pictures for every good one.

After a ton of work, I finally got the last couple of years organized on Flickr, and grouped into sets and collections. However, there are more where those came from! And I know Flickr isn’t a good long-term solution, and I need to have them backed up on something that’s in our possession.

I know it sounds silly, but this whole thing is causing me some serious anxiety, so always, I am turning to all of you smart people!

How do you organize your digital photos?

How do you back them up?

How do you print/display them? In actual old school photo albums, photo books or do you just let them live on your computer?

How do you weed out the bad pictures?

How do you make sure you are capturing your kids’ childhood on film and/or video?

I think this all boils down to that last question. I am terrified I am letting our memories disappear.

January 3, 2011

Palmer’s Skin Care for Mom & Baby

Back when I was writing for Blissfully Domestic, I first discovered Palmer’s products. I think I’d always known about Palmer’s Cocoa Butter, but I’d never really tried it. Back then I fell in love with Palmer’s Skin Therapy Oil; it is by far the best all-over body moisturizer I’ve ever used!

When the lovely ladies who do PR for Palmer’s heard I was pregnant, they sent me over a huge, wonderful basket of goodies – skin care especially for pregnant moms and babies! I used these products all through my pregnancy to help keep the stretch marks at bay. Here are a couple of my favorite products from the pregnancy skin care line.

Palmer’s Massage Lotion for Stretch Marks – I only have a few stretch marks from my previous pregnancies, but right at the beginning of this pregnancy I got some NEW unwelcome ones – before I was even showing! So I immediately put this lotion to work! I am happy to say my “new” stretch marks now are much less noticeable and I didn’t get any MORE!

I also loved Palmer’s Tummy Butter. It’s more of a thick cream than a lotion, and it was great for when my skin started to really stretch and get itchy and dry. The Tummy Butter gave my skin some much-needed extra TLC. It definitely pampered my tummy and kept my skin in good shape.

Finally, for baby, there’s Palmer’s Bottom Butter. Talk about a THICK, concentrated formula! Honestly, I used it on both myself and Sophie before Jonah was even born. I used it on my very dry hands at night to help restore moisture, and I used it on the eczema Sophie sometimes gets on the insides of her arms. It worked great for both purproses! It contains pure cocoa butter and Vitamins A, D, and pro Vitamin B5 – ingredients that help prevent and treat diaper rash and keep baby’s buns in good shape – but are also ok to use on big kids and mom, too.

So there you have it! Some amazing Palmer’s products to try. Thanks, Palmer’s for helping to keep my skin in good shape during my pregnancy!

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Palmer’s Skin Care provided me with a variety of products to review. All opinions on the products are mine alone.

January 3, 2011January 2, 2011

Happy nEw yeaR

Emily loves random capitalization, so that title is just for her. And because I think I am ever-so-clever. But I’ve already digressed before this post has even started! I rang in the New Year this weekend by going to bed at like 9:30 on New Year’s Eve and praying my baby would sleep well (he’s been extreeeeemely unpredictable in that department) so that I could get some rest. And he did do pretty well. In fact, it was his best night ever. Which would have been really awesome…if Joshua had not woken up at 1 a.m. with a 102 fever, abdominal pain in his right side, and nausea and vomiting.

Unfortunately for us all, Joshua has inherited my tendency to panic and freak out about…everything. He had discovered that same night that he had a very loose bottom front tooth, his first one, and he was CONVINCED that he had swallowed his tooth and that’s what was causing the stomach pain. (The tooth remains quite loose but intact.)

I, on the other hand, was convinced that he had appendicitis. Because I am an expert, see, ’cause I had mine out when I was 18 AND I had severe pain in my right side, fever, and vomiting with it. SO – I made Bobby take the kid to the ER. Adding to my worry was that the night before I’d noticed that Joshua had some swollen bumps on one side of his neck. But he had no fever, sore throat or any other complaints so I let it go. Now however, it had me even more concerned.

Bobby got Joshua ready, packed a few things, and they went to our local Children’s hospital ER. They were gone for three hours, almost all of which Jonah slept through – his longest stretch to date. But I couldn’t sleep. I was too nervous and worried. Bobby and I texted back and forth and then about 3:30 he texted that it was NOT appendicitis and that they were going to draw blood and do an x-ray to make sure the swollen bumps on his neck – his lymph nodes – were ok. So that’s when I REALLY started freaking – I would much rather have my kid have appendicitis than something be majorly wrong.

Then I didn’t hear from Bobby for over an hour, and I was fully panicked. Just praying the same words over and over again, basically. “Let my big boy be ok.” When Bobby walked into our bedroom at 4:45 and told me Joshua was fine, it was just a nasty virus, I burst into tears of joy and exhaustion. (They send him home with an Rx for Zofran {my old friend!} and 24 hours later he was much better). Bobby and I tried to lay down and get some sleep.

And THEN the baby woke up.

But I was so happy and thankful, I didn’t even care.

How did you spend your New Year? I hope it was happy and slightly less eventful than ours!