Middle School Mentality

I want to start this entry by saying that I love my children more than anything in the world. That being said...

So it's been awhile since I had the time to sit down and write, but Hattie got her immunizations yesterday so she's drugged up on Tylenol... in other words, she's a napping fool today!


There's something I've noticed in the past few years about moms, young and old, brand new or seasoned. For some reason, there is this need to make everyone else out there believe that you experienced the perfect pregnancy, the least painful labor, have the best sleeping infant, and the most well behaved toddlers. That's as far as I've gotten since I don't have teenagers yet, but I'm sure this trend will continue.


Why can't we all just admit that pregnancy sucks, infants drive you crazy the majority of the time, and toddlers make you want a glass of wine at noon?

When I got pregnant with Ash and Gracie, it seemed like everyone around me was pregnant too, but they were all REALLY enjoying themselves. I felt like such an awful person because I HATED being pregnant. I was constantly nauseous, couldn't fit into any cute clothes, and wouldn't even DARE look at myself naked in the mirror for fear that the sight of the cellulite forming on my legs might make my morning sickness act up at 7:00pm. Plus, there was this little bitty part of me that was so worried I wouldn't love my babies. But why was I the only person feeling this way? I spent every day completely flooded with guilt, convinced that if I hated being pregnant, there was no way I would be a good mother.


Months feeling like years later, the crappy pregnancy was over. Now the fun should begin, right? I mean, if every other person around me was having such a wonderful time with their new baby, then I should be loving the fact that I had two, right? Again, wrong. I'm not going to get into all the craziness of infants because most people reading this already know that all they do is eat, sleep, and poop. But wait, mine weren't sleeping... and it was a lot easier said than done to get them to eat without puking half of it up. But oh, did they poop. Of all the skills at which they could be successful, this is the one talent they picked. The days were dragging by... I missed my family and wanted my babies to be the little bundles of joy that everyone said theirs were being. Before I knew it, I was wrapped up in my own little world of post-partum depression, and again, NOBODY else around me was going through it.

I'm not going to go into much detail right now about my PPD, because it's definitely worthy of its own entry. But for those of you reading this who have suffered or are suffering from post-partum depression, YOU ARE NOT ALONE!!

Getting through the first year of Ash and Gracie's life was excruciating, but I survived. I didn't handle it with nearly as much grace as the other moms around me who always seemed to have clean houses and perfect hair, but I survived nonetheless. And I was on a wonderful medication called Lexapro to help me through my PPD. Life should start becoming easier now, right? I think you know the answer by now. Ashton and Graysen were STILL not sleeping through the night, naptime was a daily battle, and they were extremely picky eaters. I had done everything the doctors and other mothers had suggested I do to get them to eat healthy foods and sleep longer, but nothing was working! And to make things even worse, every mother I talked to would go on and on about how their precious little ones preferred carrots over applesauce and slept thirteen hours a night after a day filled with two three hour naps. What was wrong with my children? Again, I was living in a constant guilt filled world. My children were going to eat macaroni and cheese every night for the rest of their lives, and I was going to have to spend the next eighteen years of my life tiptoeing around the house at night to make sure I wouldn't wake them.

It was around this time that I really started getting into Facebook. As many of us have, I became obsessed with reading people's status updates, feeling like it was my connection with other moms and the outside world. But I would also become extremely depressed when I would read about other people's lives. All of these moms were telling the cutest stories about how easy and wonderful their pregnancies/infants/toddlers were while I was at home PRAYING that my two little terrors wouldn't wake up early from their nap and interrupt my Facebooking time.

It wasn't until I started online chatting with moms that I made my discovery. I would be reading these status updates about these women with their perfect lives, then five minutes later, I would be chatting with that SAME mom about how awful and frustrating children are. And this isn't one mom in particular. I'm talking about five to ten moms who were absolutely miserable!! Hmmm... maybe I wasn't alone after all. It was as if a light bulb turned on in my head, and I suddenly had flashbacks of Middle School, when these perfect, popular classmates would come to school dressed flawlessly in that season's latest fashions, with their perfect hair, holding hands with their popular boyfriends. Oh, to be so lucky to just have a conversation with someone from the cool crowd. They were all so perfect! Obviously, I was young and naive while believing these things, but as it turns out, this doesn't stop in Middle School. Now, all of us moms are the popular girls, trying so desperately to show everyone out there how wonderful our children are, and how perfect the lives are that we live. But WHY?

I am truly interested in receiving feedback from anyone and everyone reading this entry. Please, I'm dying to know, what are your thoughts??

The best baby blanket ever

When Ash and Gracie were infants, I spent hours cleaning up spit up messes. I didn't know what to do to make this problem go away. We changed formulas, put Mylicon in their bottles, didn't move the girls at all for thirty minutes after a feeding, and so on. The word "inconvenient" doesn't even begin to describe this aggravating problem. Eventually though, I came to terms with the fact that we just had babies who were going to spit up a LOT. And I also realized that it was highly unlikely I was the only person with this problem.



It was around this time that I came up with the idea for our blanket. How cool would it be if a mom could just take the dirty portion of a blanket off and throw it in the hamper with the rest of her baby laundry, instead of having to wash an entire blanket for a mess the size of a quarter? Immediately, the benefits of this idea started pounding away in my head. Wow! I would save so much time at night not having to do two loads of just blankets. Wow! I wouldn't have to pick the girls up off the blanket and move them onto a new one. Wow! Justin will be so pumped if I actually save us some money on our water bill. Little did I know, the unknown benefits of this product would start revealing themselves once the blanket was actually created.



The process of inventing anything is slow and complicated. So imagine being in my situation, knowing exactly what you want to make, but having absolutely no idea how to make it. I'm embarrassed to say that before this process, I had never even picked up a needle and thread, let alone worked a sewing machine. My first batch of patches were laughable. I had fleece fabric with HUGE metal snaps put all over the edges. When you attempted to unsnap a patch from the blanket, not only was it a struggle, but most of the time you would tear the rest of the blanket up in the process. Not exactly the result that I was hoping for. So I thought, smaller snaps, thicker material. I got the thickest fleece I could find and the smallest metal snaps made, thinking to myself, "Okay, I've got it this time." Nope. Again, laughable. The snaps would pull right out of the fleece, and when you lay down on the blanket, you may as well have been napping on a bed of rocks. It was at this point that Justin suggested plastic snaps. Of course, I at first protested, simply because it wasn't my idea, but eventually I admitted that his idea was in fact better. Justin also came up with the idea of quilted cotton patches instead of fleece. Again (and you will not hear my say this often), Justin was right. With a cotton quilt, we could put as much batting into the blanket as we wanted, making it softer and more comfortable for a baby.



After many, MANY attempts (and one sewing class for Justin... shhhh, don't tell him I said that) I decided that we needed help. I had put together a detailed plan book, describing how to create these patches... we just couldn't do it ourselves. I sat down with a wonderful woman named Dana in Plano, who seemed skeptical of my idea at first, but eventually realized just how cool this product could be if made correctly. Dana told me to give her a week to make me a full blanket of patches. This was fine, considering it would have taken me at least a year. When I returned to her house a week later, I was absolutely blown away. Wow... this blanket was really as wonderful as I thought it would be! Dana had created twelve patches, exactly as I had seen them in my head. The plastic snaps were embedded into the edges of each patch in order to keep them hidden, and thick polyester batting was placed between the cotton material I had chosen for Dana to quilt together. It was everything I had ever wanted it to be!

I'm not going to bore you with the details of how we found a manufacturer to make our blankets, or the extremely long process in getting there. However, if you are starting your own business and need some tips, please let me know!! About two months after Dana made us a prototype, I found out I was pregnant with Hattie. To give you an idea of how long it takes a prototype to become a product, I got a phone call the morning that Hattie was born, and a trucker informed me that he had 1,000 blankets for me and was waiting at my house. Uh, yeah... like THAT was going to happen. I had waited almost a year for these blankets to be in my hands, and they had to pick the one day I couldn't be there to deliver them. It all got straightened out, and we had our blankets (we no longer had room in our garage to park our cars, but we had our blankets). Okay, so now that we had our blankets, they should just start flying off the shelves, er, the garage floor, right? Wrong. But we'll have a marketing lesson later :)

I was completely in love with this sweet new baby girl. Hattie was, and is still (knock on wood) the easiest baby I've ever known. She sleeps, she eats, she poops, and she lets you know when any of those needs aren't met. But I'm learning that even the best babies spit up. Yes, here we are again, with a baby who likes to puke up half her meal. Hmmmm.... if only there were a blanket that had patches and could save me from having to wash loads and loads of blankets every night. But there is!! Yes, I have been using the product I myself invented, and let me tell you, it WORKS. When Hattie was a newborn, we would place her on four patches instead of the standard nine that we have decided is a "full blanket". Why? Because she wasn't going anywhere! But she WAS spitting up. It was perfect. She would spit up, and I would have plenty of spare patches to change the dirty ones out with. Every time she spits up, I'm almost excited, simply because I see my hard work in action. And now Hattie is four months old, spitting up a little less, and I have the blanket expanded out to its full nine patch size, and also use the spare patches as burp rags occasionally. You're probably saying, "Wait a minute. Could it be that this already fantastic blanket is muli-functional?" Why, yes it is.

Not only is the Snap 'n Grow blanket great for barfing babies, it's also great for when your baby starts needing more room to move around. You just add more patches! Right now, we have a full blanket snapped together on our living room floor, and it's where Hattie spends 75% - 80% of here time. She is obsessed with rolling onto her tummy, and when she does, she stares with a certain intensity in her eyes at the cute animals on the patches (yes, there was one things I was able to do myself... and that was the artwork for the patches!). Okay... so it's good for spit up, expanding, AND tummy time? Yes it is. But here's the kicker...

As I played with Hattie on the blanket, I realized I hadn't heard Ash and Gracie talking in awhile. Silence is golden, but it's just plain scary with three year olds. I turned around and saw the two of them sitting directly behind me, each with patches in their hands. Gracie had taken one patch and had somehow snapped it together to make a really cute blanket for her baby doll to squeeze right into. Ashton was paying no attention to anything around her except the snaps on the four patches she had claimed. She snapped them all together, then unsnapped them, over and over again. The wheels started turning in my head. Could it be? Is it possible that this blanket could be fun for toddlers too? And the answer, once again, is yes.

We spend so much time trying to teach our children new things that we never take the time to realize what they're teaching us. Because of Ashton and Graysen, I now have an awesome invention that started out just for infants, and has now become just as fun and useful for a three year old. The snaps are a wonderful tool for developing their fine motor skills, and the girls love the idea of being able to make the blanket as big or small as they want. Plus, I never have to take it away from them! No crying children wondering when their blankie is coming out of the washing machine. You only have to take the patch away that's dirty! *Sidenote* I've even had one mom tell me she used the blanket on her toddler's bed while potty training, so she didn't have to take off the entire sheet that had been soiled, just the dirty patch. I wish I could pat myself on the back for figuring out all of the uses for this blanket, but it's been the people around me using it who have taught me. Thank you ALL.

Okay, I think that everyone reading this has probably had their fill of hearing about my blankets for the day. And besides, I've got a screaming baby and two very impatient three year olds who don't yet understand the world of blogging. If you would like to learn more about our blankets, or see what they actually look like, please visit our website at www.feistybambini.com. Keep in mind that I created the website and I'm still learning :)

So until next time... I hope you all have a wonderful day and get more sleep than I do tonight!

Ginnie

And so it begins...

According to the burnt out hippie I met at "Canton in the City" last weekend, websites are "so passe" and I need to start a blog about my baby business, as well as my life in general. So here we are. And I guess the only way to start my blog is to... well... start it!



My name is Ginnie. I am a thiry year old mother of three girls: Ashton and Graysen (3.5 year old identical twins), and Hattie Lane (4 months). But we'll get to them in a bit...



I was thinking last month when I turned thirty how different celebrating this milestone birthday was than celebrating my twentieth. When turning twenty, I stayed up a lot later, drank a lot more, and just had more energy in general. This year, I struggled to stay awake until midnight (as I have the past five New Year's Eves), and ate some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in celebration. When did I change?? Oh yeah, when I had kids! Now, I have traded in my halter tops and shot glasses for shirts that can't be pulled down by toddlers, and a closed water bottle that can't be spilled over by tiny hands. At first, when I became a mom, I had a really hard time handing over my independence to these screaming children who didn't even appreciate everything I had given up for them. My fake tan faded, and my hairstyle went from "cute and spunky" to "I don't care what you do to it as long as I can put it in a ponytail". Exercising became a distant memory, and I couldn't believe how going to the gym used to seem like a burden. Life as I knew it, was completely different. And to top it all off, I had these two itty bitty infants who needed me, and I had no idea what to do with them.



The first six months of Ashton and Graysen's life was hell. My husband, Justin (more about him later), and I were stuck in Great Falls, Montana, a town which after living there five years, we lovingly referred to as Mediocre Falls. Justin was in the Air Force, and this location was the base we were "lucky" enough to be stationed at. Before we moved there, people told us that there were two things one could do in Great Falls: become a fat drunk, or have babies. After practicing both, we decided to have babies. Justin and I had absolutely no problem getting pregnant; staying pregnant, however, was another story. We had one miscarriage at about eight weeks, and then a year later, we miscarried again at sixteen weeks. Needless to say, when we became pregnant the third time, it was difficult to get excited. But when I went to the doctor for my first ultrasound and he informed me I was having twins, all anxiety and morning sickness flew out the window and complete shock and excitement took over. Twins! How fun! Approximately 7 months later, we learned, as most any mom has, there was more to it than just fun...



I'm going to skip over all of the stories of my babies and the things they did to make me laugh and to drive me crazy... for now. What I really want to do is start talking about the reason why I decided to start this blog. I don't mean to brag (okay, maybe I do a little), but I have invented one of the coolest. most multi-functional and efficient baby items I have ever seen.



Almost all parents of infants (except for the lucky few) have struggled with their babies spitting up. And yes, we all know that this is just one of the "joys of parenthood", but it's still extremely annoying. For me, one of the most annoying things about my babies spitting up was when they would be on a blanket, they would spit up, and I would have to wash this huge quilt for a stinky mess the size of a quarter. When Ash and Gracie were infants, I was washing approximately two loads of JUST BLANKETS every night. Justin would get so mad at me, saying the water bill was too high, and why couldn't I just move the girls onto the other side of the blanket and avoid the dirty spot? Ha! Easier said than done. Not only is it impossible to keep a baby in one place while they're learning to move around, but the smell of the spit up alone was enough to make me long for the days of morning sickness instead of puking babies. Something had to be done!



Then one day, it hit me. What if there were a blanket made of patches, where you could remove just the one patch that had been spit up on, and throw it in your dirty clothes hamper instead of having to wash the entire blanket? The light bulb was bright and burning in my head, and thus, the Feisty Bambini "Snap 'n Grow" blanket was born.



If I were writing a novel, this is where I would begin Chapter 2. But since I'm blogging, I'm just going to end my first session by leaving you all hanging. However, if you absolutely have to see what this fantastic product is RIGHT NOW, please go ahead and check out our website: http://www.feistybambini.com/.



All of you other people are just going to have to wait for Hattie Lane to take another nap so I can sit down and write some more. Till then, I hope all of you moms and dads (and anyone else reading this) have a wonderful evening!



Ginnie