A trick of the trade

As you probably noticed in my "Mother of 2"? post from last week, my son wears his pj's backwards. Allow me to explain...

You see, when you are an experienced mother (not like me) you know little tricks like turning pj's backwards. It was about this time last year that we started finding my son, then 2, in his crib. In his crib without his pj's on. In his crib without his diaper on, too. In his crib naked after doing...the deed.

I was beside myself. I found some footed pj's that had a zipper in the back, but they were way too expensive. I'd had people tell me to cut off the feet of his footed pj's and turn them backwards, but seeing as how my son would freak out about a little hole in the toe of his pj's, I didn't think that would fly too well. When I took my problem to facebook (because that's where all problems are solved) an experienced mother told me that I didn't have to cut off the feet of the footed pj's to turn them backwards. All you have to do is twist the bottom part of the legs so the feet face front when the zipper is in the back.

It was wonderful and welcome advice. I didn't need to spend an arm and a leg on the special backwards pj's and I didn't have to ruin all of his perfectly good pj's cutting the feet off. It takes a little bit of practice to get the feet just right, but after nearly a year of having to do this, we are definitely pro's.

Not to mention the comic factor of it all.

Happy Thanksgiving from our backwards super hero family to yours!

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Oh, snap!

Sometimes babies grow at an alarming rate. Which is great since our whole goal as parents is to keep our children healthy and growing. The downside: clothes fit for approximately 2 seconds. Which is especially hard when something is so cute and they only fit in it once. So I was so excited when I saw these two items.

First is Disney's Cuddly Bodysuit. They are so cute, come in styles for boys and girls, and have 2 rows of snaps so they can fit your growing baby a little bit longer. Why did it take me so long to find out about these?

Second is another item that I am kicking myself for not finding out about sooner. Onesie extenders!

My kids could have gotten so many more uses out of a lot of cute onesies if I'd had these!

Both of these items will make great baby shower gifts, and will make me feel a lot better about spending money on clothes that I know won't fit for very long otherwise.

You know you're a mom when you get excited about double snap onesies and onesie extenders.

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Kids clothes for less

I have a slight addiction to shopping. And by "slight addiction" I mean I'd shop every day if I could. And if you take that slight addiction to shopping and add a toddler and a baby to the mix, I have the opportunity to spend a whole lot of money very easily.

Luckily, (or unluckily, depending on the point of view) when I was pregnant with my son, one of my sisters gave me loads upon loads of clothes that her son had grown out of. I'm pretty sure my husband feels like he owes my sister a kidney because of all the money that saved us. I could very easily have clothed my son with out buying him much of anything for the first 2 years of his life.

When we found out that I was pregnant with baby #2 my husband was scared.

He was scared we'd have a girl, for 2 reasons.
1. He knows me and my love of shopping and how much I love little girl clothes and 2. There was no one around to give us loads and loads of girls clothes to keep my shopping at a minimum.

Up until the day we found out it was a girl, he was hoping with ever fiber of his being that we would have another boy so that I couldn't go shopping for girl clothes. Poor guy wasn't sure what to do when the ultrasound tech said that she was almost certain it was a girl.

So thank goodness for all of us that a friend told me about an amazing consignment store close by. Having a baby is expensive enough with all the things that babies need and how quickly they grow out of clothes. The first time I went to this consignment store to buy clothes for our daughter I spent about $40 on about 25 outfits!!! And because this place is so picky about the clothes they accept (no tears, stains, fading) everything I got looked new/practically new. I get compliments all the time about how cute my kids clothes are, which makes me feel great knowing that I can spend so little outfitting them and they still look so great. Not to mention the added bonus of consigning and getting a percentage of the sell price so that I can buy even more clothes!

Want to check out a thrift or consignment store near you but don't know where they are?? Here is an amazing website you can use to look up resale, second-hand, thrift, or consignment shops.

http://www.resaleshopping.com/

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