Terrible Twos

Next month, my husband is leaving for two weeks to go to Phoenix for an intensive MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) “boot camp”. He leaves a week from tomorrow and will be gone until the night of the 18th. Which means we will be celebrating Kaitlyn’s birthday a day late this year, fortunately she is too young to even know when it’s her birthday.

I’m trying very hard to gear myself up mentally for the task of parenting three children by myself, plus running our household, for two weeks. The boys will be no trouble, but Kaitlyn-oh, she’s a different story. She has hit the “terrible twos” with a vengeance. When she isn’t getting her way, she screeches, she scrunches up her face and cries actual tears, she goes limp if one of us tries to pick her up. Neither of the boys ever went through that, so we are just dealing with it the best we can. However, by the end of the second week alone? I might just be daydreaming about Condo Hotels in Maui or something. Wish me luck.

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Fruitabu, healthy and delicious!

I have never purchased a box of “fruit rollup” type snacks, because they are full of sugar and very little actual fruit. Fruitabu is different-not only is it made with actual fruit, it’s organic, too, so you can feel good about giving it to your kids as a snack, or eating it yourself

If you’ve ever shopped at a natural foods store or in that section of the grocery store, you might have noticed a fruit leather product made by Stretch Island, a family-owned company from Washington State. Fruitabu Organic Smoooshed Fruit is all natural, no additives or artificial sweeteners, with ingredients you can pronounce. And by the way, the “u” at the end of Fruitabu is supposed to have the two dots over it, but I don’t know how to make those characters. You can see what I mean by going to the Fruitabu website.

We received a box of Fruit Twirls in Smoooshed Apple (and yes, there are 3 “o”s in Smoooshed), a few individual Fruit Twirls in Grape, and a box of Fruit Sploooshers. I opened a Grape Fruit Twirl for Kaitlyn, which are made with organic grape puree. It smelled delicious, I unrolled it a bit and peeled off a piece. You know how sometimes fruit rollups are sort of tough? Fruitabu Fruit Twirls are tender, if that word can apply to a fruit snack, and when I popped the first piece in her mouth, Kaitlyn rubbed her tummy and said “yummmm”. Except for one bite for me, she ate the whole thing. I opened an Apple Twirl next, and managed to get a few more bites for myself. It was Soooo good. And each Twirl is a serving of fruit, AND organic, too.

I like this from the back of the Apple Twirl box:”Down every real fruit path
In our Fruitabu world
You’ll find orchards of organic fruit
that has been Smoooshed, swirled and twirled.
You’ll find fruit that can go
Wherever you may travel
just pull it from your pocket
unwrap, then unravel.
For our apple twirls
monkeys give their applause,
and can’t help but fill up
from their head to their paws.
We agree with the monkey
and hope you will see
just how tasty
naturally sweet fruit twirls can be.”

Next, I opened the box of Sploooshers Smoooshed Strawberry. I wasn’t too sure what it was exactly, but then I saw what was written at the bottom of the box-”squishy, slurpable, organic apples, organic strawberries and natural flavors in a squeezable tube!”  And that’s exactly what it is. Sort of like natural applesauce, but with strawberries, too. Considering that it’s impossible to get fresh strawberries in Michigan in October, I was thrilled to be eating what tasted exactly like fresh mashed strawberries. The box suggests freezing them and eating them like a popsicle, but I like to slurp them right out of the tube. I also think Sploooshers would taste great stirred into vanilla yogurt, or on top of ice cream!

Take a minute, if you would, and click over to the Fruitabu website. You have got to see how cute and clever it is. The “Our Story” link tells you a little about the company, “The Movement” has a really cute music “video” featuring animated fruit characters that Kaitlyn loves watching, “Our Fruit” shows you the nutritional info and the backs of the packages for both the Fruit Flats and the Fruit Twirls (with really, really great animation, whomever designed this website is extremely talented).  From the Fruit 101 link, I learned that FIFTY PERCENT of Americans don’t eat a SINGLE PIECE of fruit in a day, and 80% don’t follow recommended guidelines. I’ll admit it, there are days, in fact, WEEKS where I don’t eat fruit. I don’t know why, either! I like fruit, but somehow it just doesn’t get made a priority. If I can keep a Fruit Twirl in my bag, I can eat it in the car while we are running around, and there’s a fruit serving without having to deal with an apple core, a banana peel, whatever. It’s convenient!

So, take my advice, and pick up Fruitabu at the store. I saw it right with the other fruit snack products at our grocery store this weekend. It’s the green boxes with the delicious looking fruits on the front, and trust me, you will like Fruitabu, your kids will like it, and everyone will get their fruit servings if they don’t eat fresh fruit. Now, if only there was Vegetablebu, I’d be all set

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Review of Snack and Play Travel Tray

Family Travel Gear sent us a Snack and Play Travel Tray, and I am whole-heartedly recommending it to anyone who spends any amount of time in the car with a toddler!!!! Easily wipeable nylon with a soft foam core, two-inch high soft foam sides to keep toys from rolling off, and mesh pockets on the sides to hold coloring books and toys make this the ideal travel accessory. It looks like this: (not my child in the photo)

We haven’t been on any long road trips, but I’ve used it for our trips to pay our utility bills, which involves being in the car for about 90 minutes all together. Our car seat has arms on the sides that wrap around, so I can’t buckle it behind the seat, but I can run the buckle strap around the backside of the car seat and then pull it tight. Some paper, crayons, a few Hot Wheels, and her “babies” (small plastic Dora and Diego figures), and she is entertained for the WHOLE TIME.

Family Travel Gear is a great website you should check out. You can search by the age of the person going on the trip-Babies, Kids, Teens, Adults-and by what type of trip you are taking.  If you are going on an airplane and plan to have your baby sit on your lap, I highly recommend the Baby B’air Flight Vest Travel Harness-what a GREAT idea. It fastens around your baby and then buckles to your seat belt, so your baby stays safe even through turbulence.  They also carry a wide variety of magnetic games, activity books, portable blankets for the beach, document and toiletry organizers, and so much more. Check out Family Travel Gear’s site before your next trip, no matter how long it is!

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hey Honey, can you turn it down?

I love my husband you know. We have been together since 1985, and we are practically one person now. We agree on almost everything except one thing-what the volume setting should be on the TV at night. I think it should be just loud enough to hear but not so loud that it wakes up the kids, or the neighbors, or the President (well…) My husband, on the other hand, thinks it should be loud enough to hear every word, sound, background noise, if someone whispers, he wants to hear it like it was right in his ear.

The problem is, people who program TV shows have one volume for the show, and one volume for the commercials. Actually, two volumes for the show, because action sequences are always much louder than dialogue sequences. So for us to watch anything together requires him to keep the remote in his hand pointed at the TV, so that I can say “too loud! turn it down! Can you turn it up a little? Too loud!” I keep trying to convince him that we should just turn on the closed captioning so I can read the subtitles while my ears are safely protected with those headsets worn by air traffic controllers. Would that be so wrong?

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Hooked on Baby-Bows that stay put!

My daughter has been blessed with the kind of hair many of us would kill for-soft, shiny, silky, curly, but also slippery and baby fine. I refuse to cut it, even as the wisps hang down into her eyes, because I hated the pageboy-with-painfully-short-bangs styles that my Mother subjected me to as a child. However, as Kaitlyn’s hair grows, it needs to be swept out of her eyes, and therein lies the challenge: How to find hairclips, barrettes, something, that will stay in her hair.

The wonderful Moms at Hooked on Baby must have known how much I needed hairclip help, because they sent me two of their fabulous bow clips for Kaitlyn, and miracle of miracles, they STAY IN her hair!  Each clip has a teeny magnet strip on one side, so the clips stay in without pinching, and best of all, they look FABULOUS. I received the adorable “Little Miss Richmond” clip from the Plain Jane collection, which looks like this:

Isn’t that cute? It looks even cuter in her hair:

They also sent me the beautiful “Little Miss Boston” clip  from the Crystal Clear collection, which features an actual Swarovski crystal!:

Isn’t that gorgeous? And now, want to help me win some free stuff from the Hooked on Baby site? It’s easy! Place an order, and mention my name (Elizabeth Edwards) and my email address (table4five AT gmail DOT com), and if I have the most referrals, I’ll win free loot! And that would be really cool So hop on over, get your daughter/granddaughter/niece/friend some adorable hairclips, and don’t forget to tell them that I sent you!

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