For this week’s special Mother’s Day Blog Blast, Parent Bloggers Network is asking us what our Mothers handed down to us.  I was adopted when I was 16 months old,  so I might not have resembled my Mother physically, but she definitely passed some traits down to me.  She passed away in 1997, a month before Ryan’s first birthday, and Chris and I both wish she was still here to see how the interests she passed down to me have passed onto our kids.

My Mother taught elementary school, mostly second and third grades. And she LOVED books. She would go to teaching conferences and come home with canvas tote bags stuffed full of the latest Newberry and Caldecott Award winners.  When she passed away, my Dad had me go through the books and choose ones I wanted to keep before donating the rest to a special collection created in her honor at the public library.  I definitely think that I inherited my love of a cute  canvas tote from my Mother

I lived with my parents for a while after I graduated from college, and after my Mom retired in 1991, I helped her catalog her books. As we went through them, she would hand me certain ones and say “just look at these illustrations”. She had an eye for books with the most amazing illustrations, and she taught her second graders as much about the artists as she did about the authors and their stories. To this day when I browse the childrens books at Barnes & Noble, I look for ones with unique  illustrations as much as a good story line.

My Mom loved Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit. I have a tea set in my china cabinet, with tiny plates and cups and a teapot, with the most beautiful Peter Rabbit illustrations on them.  I find myself drawn to Peter Rabbit stuffed toys and board books, to baby blankets and onesies, to Christmas ornaments and china figures.  I’m saving the tea set and the little  The World of Peter Rabbit books in the presentation box, and I would be thrilled if one day, one of my kids said “hey Mom, can I have that?”

So. Those are the things my Mother left me, the things she passed down.  The Parent Bloggers Network Mother’s Day Blog Blast is sponsored by JOHNSON’S® Brand,  Their second annual Celebrity Hand Me Down charity auction runs from 7 pm PT on Thursday May 7 through 7 pm PT on Thursday May 14, featuring items donated by celebrity moms Gwyneth Paltrow and Jessica Alba.  All proceeds will benefit the new global JOHNSON’S® NO MORE TEARS® Clean Water initiative via their well-known charitable giving site, Baby Cause.

So tell me in a comment- what did your Mother pass down to you??

Parent Bloggers Network is doing a blog blast this weekend about housecleaning.  I wish I had a snappy post for you with a chore chart and a cleaning schedule and great tips for managing those daily chores and the weekly ones or whatever, but here’s the truth:

I Am A Lazy Slob

I like having my house be clean, don’t get me wrong. I don’t actually enjoy looking down my laminate floor hallway and seeing dust bunnies and bits of god knows what, it’s just that I’m too lazy to DO anything about it.

And now that I’ve read a few of the other posts that PBN bloggers are doing on this topic, I have found my sisterhood. Heather, Jenny, please teach me the secret handshake and send me the t-shirt, cuz I also have a husband who does the dishes and the laundry after work (even though I’ve been home all day and have no good reason not to have done them myself except for being LAZY).

This blog blast is sponsored by Pledge Multi-Surface cleaning spray, but because I didn’t get the post emailed to PBN on time, I won’t be getting a free can of it in exchange for writing this post. I might win a $250 VISA card that they are giving to someone at random, so yay!

I’m also totally bummed, because Pledge has this website called How I Clean Now and there’s a video message from Trish Suhr of The Style Network’s Clean House. AND, it says five BLOGGERS are getting cleaning interventions from Trish! I LOVE TRISH.

And, in what must be the definition of irony, I LOVE Clean House. I love it so much that my oldest son, who gets up early for school and watches a little TV, RECORDS Clean House for me at 6 AM! I don’t like
to clean, but I sure like watching other people do it!

So anyway, click that link up there for How I Clean Now to print out a $2 coupon for Pledge Multi-Surface, and visit Parent Bloggers Network for links to more housecleaning (or lack thereof) posts.

Without a nightlight, going into my 3 year old’s bedroom at night would be like walking through a minefield wearing a blindfold. Despite our best efforts to help her keep her room picked up, she likes to slip out of bed after we’ve shut the door and play with her toys, inevitably leaving a trail of little wooden cars, small Schleich animals, and dollhouse furniture between her bed and the door.

For a while, I had a traditional nightlight plugged in, the kind with the little lightbulb and a plastic cover. But Chris and I decided it was TOO bright, giving her too much light to see by during her secret nighttime play sessions. She didn’t like having no nightlight, so we compensated by cracking her bedroom door open, but because we live in a one-story ranch house, that meant she could also hear the TV we watched at night. So that was no solution either.

Thus, when Parent Bloggers Network asked for volunteers to review a new LED nightlight that also doubled as a flashlight, I was eager to try it. They sent me this adorable Sylvania PalPodzzz Portable Nightlight with a removable Flashlight, and we LOVE IT!

The adorable ladybug is a removable flashlight that charges on the leaf-shaped base. What I like best about it is that it gives Kaitlyn her own flashlight to play with, meaning our flashlights that we keep for emergencies don’t get left on or end up hidden in a toybox somewhere. Also, in nightlight mode it’s a nice soft ambient light rather than the harsh yellow of typical nightlight bulbs.

And the fact that her nickname is Katiebug Ladybug makes the ladybug shaped flashlight even more special to us There is also a rocket-ship shaped flashlight with a launchpad-shaped base for space lovers. Both of these sell for just $19.99, which is a great deal! I feel good about recommending you purchase a PalPodzzz for your nightlight-lovin’ kid!

This post was brought to you by Parent Bloggers Network, visit the site to read more reviews of this great product!