Mega Super Duper Kid Sale

Back home, in Sycamore, there is a school fundraiser where all the parents in the community can sell or donate their kid's stuff and both the parents and the school make money.

I've been to these types of sales before and I must say, the Sycamore sale is, far and away, the BEST.

Why?

Because it is so organized and the incentives are all in line to make it successful.

For instance:

The space is huge.

There are plenty of tables. There are hanging racks for big items or "nice" items in the back. There is a separate area for toys. There are about ten tables for shoes. The clothes are sorted by size and gender. There are boxes and bags for you to carry all of your new treasures. And there are multiple cashiers for speedy check out.

What's the secret?

Organization and Incentives

There appears to be a committee of community members or parents from the local elementary school who run this twice a year - Spring and Fall and it is well advertised in the community.

They put a call out to parents to donate. Parents then are assigned a "family number" as I'll call it and given a bunch of safety pins and price tags, and (I'm assuming since I haven't "sold" yet) a pricing guideline and a few rules.

There are 3 sets of tags - each a different color.

White: Try to sell it but if not, give it back to me so I can try again next year. Keep it at full price.

Blue: Try to sell it, then try to sell it for half price, then give it back to me.

Pink: Sell it or donate it. I don't want it back.

Each tag is safety pinned to the item and garments with multiple pieces are pinned together so parts don't get lost. Shoes and toys with are placed in Ziploc baggies to keep them all together with the tag taped to the outside. Each tag has a top and a bottom with a perforation for when it's sold. The tag includes a short description of the item (old navy shirt, circo pjs), the "family number", and the price, all duplicated below the perforation as well - typically $2 for shoes and clothes, $4 for pjs, and toys/strollers/beds/bouncy chairs can be whatever the tagger thinks is fair. Nicer stuff costs a bit more, but it's all really reasonable.

When a shopper selects the items they want, they head to the checkout tables where each tag is separated at the perforation leaving them with a record of the items cost and the "family number". Why?

That's where the incentives come in. The reason you get a "family number" for the stuff you donate is that you get a percentage of the proceeds from the stuff you sell. And that percentage goes up (I want to say your percentage increases by 30%) if you volunteer for 3 hours during the sale/setup/or take down of the event. This is a great motivator for volunteers and ensures that you have plenty of people to straighten, check people out, organize and keep things running smoothly. And, if you volunteer, (I think this is how it works) you can attend the pre-sale the night before and shop before they open it up to the community.

The sale starts at 9 am on a Saturday morning and goes until 1:30. From 12-12:30 they kind of close to regroup (again, I think that's how it is from memory) and then at 12:30, all of the Blue and Pink tagged items drop to half price. The white ones stay at the original price. And once they close up at the end of the sale, more volunteers come in to re-sort all of the stuff. Family's that want their unsold good back, have boxes with their number on them in the center of the room. Volunteers grab all the white tags and place them in the number boxes and Family's pick them up later that afternoon. The rest gets loaded up and taken somewhere to donate (I'm guessing again.)

Pretty neat huh? I'm one of those people who is always looking for ways to make things run more efficiently or better and this is one of the first times that I can honestly say whoever is organizing this thing really "gets it". That's why I keep going back each season and I either shop for friends from the city or convince them to drive the hour and fifteen minutes out to Sycamore for the sale. My friend Colette threatens to fly back from Seattle for it. It's that good. And this year, I got about 10-14 pants and shirts for my friend Alison's son Will for $27, and $10 got Andrea news boots and snowpants for her daughter Isabella. Ada got a whole new fall wardrobe with the $50 we dropped on her stuff - including snowpants, a snowsuit, pants, dresses and tops. Not to mention the fact that the parents in the community made some money, the school made some money and I saved a boatload.

Moral of the story: A family garage sale run right can really pay off for everyone involved.

My Friday Before Dinner

It's Friday. I've invited my college buddies over for dinner and what started out as just us and my friend Bob for dinner, turned into us three, Bob, Vern, Cara, Alex, Kim, Ted, Alison and Will. Sweet. We tend to have trouble finding time when we can all get together and this impromptu thing ended up working out really well.

Knowing that I can't cook, I arranged to order pizza and have it arrive about 6:45. Everyone planned to arrive around 6:30 or 7 and that seemed like as good a plan as any. We've learned from past dinners that if we don't pre-order, we starve while waiting for the food and then don't have time to play a game afterward, which is really what this is all about. Having fun with old friends, and playing games.

I had a few errands to run before picking Ada up so I left work at 4:30. I went to the ATM, then went to a different bank to make a deposit for the condo association. I have two letters in my hand that I need to mail. Previously, when making the condo association bank deposit, I though I had inadvertently put the envelope I keep the ATM card in, into the mail drop box with a bill I was mailing then. That resulted in me being distracted and telling the story about just how I'd lost the card when Ada fell down the back porch stairs. Yikes. Don't want a repeat of that. (It turns out that the ATM card was in an envelope on the kitchen counter the whole time.)

This time, I again have letters to mail so I crossed the street to deposit two bills into a postal drop box and re-crossed the street to be on the south side for the entry to the El train home. As I'm waiting for the light, it dawns on me that I can't remember where I put the ATM card. The light turns in my favor and I cross the street while quickly, not frantically but concernedly, digging in my purse for the ATM card envelope. I know it's there. I just can't find it under all of the crap I have. Why do I have a sippy cup, a diaper, wipes, and goldfish snacks in here? How the heck am I supposed to find...SMACK!

Oh no I didn't. Oh yes you did.

While intensely focusing on the contents of my purse, I continued to walk toward the El station and completely lost all awareness of my surroundings and walked straight into...wait for it...A BUS SHELTER. Thunk. My calf, knee and head all connected with the advertising side of the small structure.

"Oh My God. I did not just do that", I think.

"Oh yes I did." I start laughing uncontrollably. Then I realize, "What if there is someone waiting for a bus? They must think I'm an idiot."

I peer around the corner of the shelter. Yep. Hi there. In my head I'm saying, "That was me who just walked into the side of this place. Sorry about that. Hope I didn't startle you but damn, that's funny." In reality, I shot her a quick glance with the biggest smile on my face and quickly continued on my way down the street. Laughing to myself and at myself the whole way to the El train. Then I laughed even more as I sent my friend Colette a text retelling the event.

But that's not all.

I got Ada, got home and all but forgot about the previous "incident", putting it in my back pocket for a funny story later on. It was time I focus on cleaning up the last bits of things that are out of place and feeding Ada before everyone starts to arrive.

All is going well. I've done the dishes and she helped me put them away - which I encouraged as I quickly grabbed each glass plate and dish she handed to me from the bottom rack of the dishwasher. Boy was that nerve-wracking but she insisted on helping.

Ada is eating. I'm settled in to watch some Grey's Anatomy on ABC.com (since we don't have cable). I've supplied Ada with a gourmet dinner of bagel, goldfish crackers, graham crackers, turkey, and apple sauce. And I've just dumped out our old milk and given her a full cup of milk that tasted okay to me but is on it's last day as well. Why does our milk seem to go bad so quickly these days? I text Rick to have him pick up new milk since our friend Bob is coming over and that man drinks more milk than anyone I've ever seen in my entire life. Multiple gallons in a week. He could have been a dairy cow in another life.

All is well in the world. Rick comes home and greets us. He removes his winter coat (yes, I know it's early October!) and settles in next to us to see what is going on. I have two minutes left on Grey's Anatomy and friends will be arriving anytime now. Ada's finishing up dinner and... then... it starts. As we are sitting around all content with the world, Ada starts throwing up her entire dinner. At first, we think she's just choking on something and is going to spit it out. Then it keeps coming up, and up, and up. She has expelled everything in her stomach. All over herself, the highchair, the floor. Everywhere.

"It must have been the milk. I didn't think it was 'bad' but it clearly wasn't 'good'. Let's clean her up." I mutter as I take her to the bathroom while holding her at arms length, hoping to stay clean.

She is, by this time, hysterical. Screaming. Not quite sure what the heck is going on or why she has her dinner all over her body. I've got her in the tub and she won't let me take her vomit covered shirt off. I'm tugging, she's resisting. Finally I win and get her naked. I turn on the shower and start to spray her down. She's still hysterical.

"Screw it." I think to myself as she reaches out to me, wet, naked, and covered in her regurgitated dinner. She crawls out of the tub and into my fully-clothed, dry clothes and clean arms and cries. I get her to calm down a bit and then decide to join her in the shower to comfort her and get her cleaned up. So what if I have 8 people coming over for dinner in just a matter of minutes. They are such good friends, I practically consider them family.

I'm in the shower with her when I hear the first door buzzer. At least Rick's home to let people in. I'm shampooing her hair for the second buzz. We are rinsing off for the third tone. And we are standing naked, dripping wet and trying to towel off when the pizza arrives. Thankfully I set out money for the pizza guy ahead of time and Bob took care of it all. My kind of house guests.

I passed Ada out to Rick so he could get her dressed again. Then I quickly shuffle around the hall corner to my bedroom to get decent. A quick glance in the mirror reveals that my mascara has run, but overall my makeup is salvageable and my hair isn't too wet. Five minutes and a whole new outfit later, I'm dishing up pizza and enjoying friends.

About an hour later, I remember that good old bus shelter incident and decide it's a great time to share one of my most "blonde" moments ever as tears of laughter gush from my eyes.

Good times had by all.

Moral of the story: The best friends are those that can help themselves and love you just the way you are. And those that laugh with you instead of at you. Just keep laughing at yourself.

Parenting rule to live by: When in doubt, throw it out.

A New Car!

It's been a few weeks now but I'm just now getting around to posting about our "new" car. It's "new" to us since it isn't our Blue Honda Civic. Now we have Rick's parents former CRV. Presently known as our "new" Black CRV. Rick's parents love passing stuff down to their kids when they decide to shake things up and keep life exciting. They love trading cars or passing them on, and their generosity is flat out amazing. (And much appreciated I must add.)

Their one catch is that we "pay it forward". They paid for Rick's college, so we in turn need to pay for out kid's college. They bought Rick's first car back from him when we went down to one car, and they just recently shipped it to Rick's sister on the East coast. And now they swapped our Civic for their newer, more valuable, bigger CRV. Somehow we always get the better end of the deal. In this case Rick conveniently forgot the checkbook and only had one check so they got stuck paying the $80 bill for our registration while we pay the$15 transfer fee or something silly like that. They even picked up the tab on breakfast that day. We're so spoiled. Even so, I think it's a win-win situation because they really like doing stuff like this for us. And if we weren't good kids, I don't think they'd do it. Of course, we are good kids. Or Rick is and I just get to ride on his coattails and bask in his greatness. And they might favor Rick over his brother and sister just a little bit because he's the oldest and he supplied them with their first grandchild. And they kind of like her (a lot, like a really really lot, a lot). So maybe it doesn't have anything to do with us and is really all about Ada? Hmmmm.... interesting... Or maybe it's just so I can't complain when they spoil her with too many toys over the holidays because now I'll be able to fit them all in the back of the CRV. Or maybe now they expect us to go camping more often because we can't make the excuse that we have too much stuff to bring... Or maybe... they're just awesome in-laws.

(Note: I must mention that my parents are equally awesome in that they have also given us a car when mine puttered out. And they paid for my college education. And they give us meat from their garage freezer every time we go home. And they insist on paying when we go out to eat. And they spoil the heck out of Ada too. Now do you understand why I'm so busy? I'm trying to keep up with all this niceness from both sides of our families so that I can pay it all forward. It's a full-time gig. Thanks Mom and Dad!)

Moral of the story: Give thanks when anyone does something nice for you. Be appreciative of it. And reciprocate by doing something nice for someone else. That's what will continue to make the world a beautiful place.

More Fun = Fun

I have a theory...

Whoever Ada has more fun with, she naps less for.

Whoever she has less fun with, she naps for longer periods of time.

Whenever she's having fun, her naps seem to be about 45 minutes, sometimes less. But if she's having a pretty lame day, she seems to take the opportunity to take a 2 hour nap to catch up on sleep or prepare for the lack of sleep she'll get on the really fun days.

I say this because I think Alison is way more fun than I am and Ada had a good week or two where she'd nap for a few hours for me but only 45 minutes or an hour for Alison, knowing that Will might wake up before her and get playtime in and she'd be missing out. Clearly, she was having more fun with Alison and Will than with lame old mom.

This theory makes me feel better because she used to nap for 3 or 4 hours for Courtney and I was so mad that she wasn't taking naps on my days, when I should have been really happy that she was just saving her energy for my "more fun" days. See...

But then, I also thought if you were more fun and did more, you'd tire her out faster and she'd need a long nap to recover. In that case, more fun = longer nap. So which is it?

Moral of the story: Sometimes, being less fun has it's privileges --one being longer naps. OR the same can be said for being more fun. (Depending on which theory you subscribe to.) Either way, always being more fun, well, is always more fun.

Be Considerate of Caregivers

Obviously, in the short time that Ada's been around, we've had more than our share of caregivers to help us take care of her. We've always tried to guarantee our nannies and babysitters a set amount of hours each week, or at least a minimum amount of money each week, to help make their job a bit more secure and worth while. Being that we've only needed them three days a week, that was our way of saying "Thanks for being willing to help us out part-time and being flexible with our schedule." The idea was great, I thought. If Ada was sick, or they were sick, or we had to shift a day this week to next week, we tried to keep the same amount going to them each week, with any extra added on that week as well. I understand what it is to be young and broke and counting on a paycheck to pay your bills. But... this last nanny we had really seemed to mess it all up. Yeah, it didn't work the best for us in the end when our nannies decided to move back home or go to graduate school or get a full-time job because we'd always be stuck with a few un-used hours that we had paid for but never redeemed. That was just part of the deal and a price I was willing to pay for the convenience of our arrangement. But the painful part was having to carry over hours needed from one week to the next and trying to make sure we were close enough to even in the end to call it fair.

This time, we tried something new. Try for 29 hours a week but if something comes up or changes, tough cookies. This is a great arrangement for us, but not so great for our sitter. The first week, things were normal. The second week, Ada didn't wake up until 9 or 9:30 each day which cut into our sitter's overall amount of time she had Ada. But it didn't cut into my time I was able to work since I can work from home when Ada sleeps. It was great. I saved six hours that week. A similar thing happened the next week and finally our friend wised up and said something. And I'm so glad she did. I was so caught up in the excitement of getting work done, having Ada get a lot of sleep, and having to pay less each week for our sitter that I failed to put myself in her shoes long enough to realize that all this meant she still had to be ready at 8 am but didn't start until 10 and didn't get paid for those 2 ready hours. My bad.

The good news is that she brought it up. I realized the error of my ways and arranged to have a more flexible situation whereas if Ada sleeps in, we just shift our schedule a bit later since that still works with her schedule and mine.

On top of all that, our sitter is also our friend socially. That complicates things by blurring the lines of what is done as our sitter and what is done in friendship. To solve that issue, we just made a declaration that whenever she watches Ada while I'm at work is considered sitter time and anything else is friend time. We'll watch Will and swap kids back and forth as needed for date-night and whatnot. That way, neither of us feels weird about it and it's a win-win for us both.

Moral of the story: Put yourself in your caregivers shoes and be open with them about concerns or issues. Good caregivers are hard to find but can be easy to keep happy if you keep lines of communication open.

Ada's 1.75 Year Checkup

Since Ada's previous visit to the Doctoress at a year-and-a-half brought up the whole issue of her being a bit delayed on the typical toddler talking schedule, it was time to go in for a mini-checkup.

She's continues to maintain her own path above the standard height and weight chart. She's 32.5 pounds and 35 inches tall (six-foot here she comes!). I made a point to write down the words and sounds I heard her saying in the week prior to the appointment. That was helpful and the Doctoress kept the list in her chart. She's up to maybe 30 words and sounds, adding more each day. This past week she surprised me with a clear "Hi", "Bye bye", and "DD". She's also saying a lot of "Wa Wa" for water now too.

I think it helps that she's with two-year-old Will and our friend Alison a few days a week--she happens to be a former 2nd/3rd grade teacher and understands how kids learn best and develop. And Rick and I have made an effort to try to teach her new things as well. I don't feel like I have the energy to teach her much and I'm not sure how I'm doing, but I am more aware of what I should be doing and how to try to teach her more so I think that is helping. She's nowhere near the chatty Cathy that my niece is at age 3, but I think she's well on her way.

Moral of the story: Pay attention to where your child's development should be in relation to other kids his/her age so you know when something isn't quite right. The sooner you know, the sooner you can work towards a solution and possible eliminate the issue all together.

Cloth Diaper Trick

For those of you who are braving the intense grossness of washing your own cloth diapers... here it is. Finally. After doing this for a year and three quarters, Rick finally had the idea that maybe, just maybe, we should give all of the diapers a good rinsing before depositing them into the wet pail for the three days before they stank so bad we'd have to wash them. We used to just rinse out the poopy ones. Now we give the wet ones a whirl in the toilet bowl or under the sink briefly before transferring them to the wet pail.

Result? Not so stinky. Now we forget to wash them every three days...which kind of creates another kind of problem since the bin gets filled to the brim and almost doesn't fit into our washing machine. But that's a much better problem to have.

Moral of the story: Rinse as you go.