Rainy Printable....Dutch Priced!...(aka: free)

It's close to the end of April and we are smack dab in the middle of super dreary rainy weather.

I know what you are thinking!

"Uh, duh. You live in the Pacific Northwest. Ya know, Rain Land!"

Yup, I do.

Doesn't mean I'm not sick of the rain!

I am ready for SPRING....and SUNSHINE!

I whipped together a lil ole printable for you, to express my thoughts on the weather. It's Dutch priced just for you. You know, FREE.



Sunshine is coming soon. I'll be thrilled to replace this with a sunshiny spring or summery printable!

Enjoy,

A

Vintage Dutch Girl is on FACEBOOK! See new post links in your news feed!

Advanced Mama Scrubbing Math....

Lance and I spent a good 2 hours scrubbing Lola on Monday afternoon. (Lola is my sassy tahoe. Yep, I name all my vehicles. Why? Because it’s fun. And it’s fun to wonder out loud in the Costco parking lot, “Where’s Lola? We totally lost her!” Then the kiddos yell, “THERE’S LOLA!” I don’t know why it’s fun, it just IS.)

No, not scrubbing the outside, the INSIDE. Dis.GUST.ing.

We had an unfortunate non-stop vomiting bout on a car ride home from a Chris Tomlin concert a few weeks ago. Our normally two hour, ETA midnight trip was turned into a 2:00 AM arrival with a very sad and tired toddler.

Not to mention two grossed out and equally tired adults. But that’s OK, we still had phrases from the insanely awesome concert running through our minds: If God is for us, who can be against us? It kept me looking at the big picture, not dissolving into a hissy fit freak out at the present catastrophe.

Which it was. I had run out of my packed AND back-up car stash of baby wipes cleaning her up by the second episode and she was down to her last set of clothes. Six episodes later (Didn’t know someone so small could produce that much, uh, STUFF) and Lola was thrashed. Used up wipes, plastic bags full of gooey clothes, drive thru trash (hey now, don’t judge. Sometimes you just NEED a therapeutic ice cream and oreo blended treat…at 1 AM) and poor Lola looked as if she’d just barely survived a two week non-stop road trip across America. Poor girl.

I successfully took both kiddos’ car seats completely apart (a huge accomplishment ), dumped out the Costco sized bag amount of goldfish crackers that were stashed under, in and around the seats and hauled the pads and covers to the tub for a good old fashioned super detailed dutch scrub-down.

(Scrub brush x shampoo) + 3 hot water buckle de-juicifying pour thru’s/ 17 time rinse outs = a satisfactorily cleaned carseat.

That is some advanced Mama math right there. And everyone thinks my brother has all the math brains in the family!

Lola is back into tip-top shape.

Well, was.

I took my flu-afflicted Bubbalu to the pediatrician yesterday to be evaluated. Of course, we had lots of juice boxes and saltines crackers along to keep his tummy calm.

You know, saltines: AKA the most crumbly cracker on the face of this planet. And juice boxes : AKA entertainment, you blow into the straw and juice shoots out all over you, so awesome!

At least she looked good while it lasted.

And those thousands of juice drenched goldfish crackers? Smashed onto the garage floor….now covered by a kajillion juice drenched goldfish cracker hungry ants.

Ah well, at least I tried. Can you relate?

Off to put carseats back together, re-clean Lola and sweep out and spray the garage floor….

A

Facebook y'all!

New Mothers: Stuff you REALLY need on your Registry

It always makes me laugh to see the ‘suggested’ necessary items and products that baby stores tell new mothers that they need to be an awesome, properly correct and latest-article-in-a-mother/parent-magazine-following Mama to their new bundle of joy.

Ya know, let me give you some advice. Some real Mom, in the trenches, advice.

Register for stuff you REALLY need to survive the icky parts (potty training, the flu, motion sickness, stomach bug, teething diapers, acid poo blowouts just to name a few) of having a child:

1. A hand held shower head thingymajig. Something like this:




Seriously, save the money you were going to spend on: (…fill-in-the-blank…) that stores want you to believe you need…and get a hand held shower device. Believe me. Trust me. You will unfortunately get far more use out of it rinsing the poo, pee and puke out of clothes than you can even imagine. Seriously, trust me.

2a. Lots of buckets. For use in conjunction with #1. Also used for holding large quantities of bleach water for washing vomit off the floor. (This is a rough walked off estimate, but the puking episode that occurred in our house last night created a 10 x 11 foot rectangle of splattery yuckyness. This doesn’t include the walls and baseboards.) You COULD purchase a bunch of brand new cute buckets, but I prefer to use Dutchware: Gallon Ice Cream containers. They are AWESOME.

OR.

2b. You could use bright blue plastic surgical rinse basins like I use.

Kinda weird? Yup, but that’s what happens when your Mom is an O.R. Nurse. Unusable medical disposable products are the way to go. I keep two at all times in my stall shower for emergency soiled clothes soaking purposes. Pour in some of bleach, fill with hot water from your handy dandy hand held shower head and soak those clothes.

3. Bleach. Lots of bleach. It’s cheap and effective.

I’d rather smell some bleach in my house than the other stuff I’m talking about. Of course, open the windows so you don’t get lightheaded and fall smack in the middle of the splattery yuckyness.

4. Stain pre-treaters, preferably in a spray bottle:

That way you can keep your hands FAR away from the goo on the clothes. I buy it in bulk. Clothes with any sort of food (or other substance) on it gets a good dousing. IT WORKS FOR ME. Which is why Lil Chick can own and wear an off-white jacket that has survived an entire winter stain free. You can send notes of congratulation on my off-white stain free jacket success to my email.

5. A box of disposable gloves. For when you can't avoid touching the yuckyness. Trust me. WELL WORTH paying for these to deal with all of the above:

(Is it just me or does this picture look like a game of guess the wall shadow animal?)

You don’t want those yellow non-disposable gloves that you have to wash out and reuse. You WILL remember what those gloves touched and it WILL make you gag. Besides, I always got water up the loose sleeves and then had pooled icky water on my fingertips. Yech. I buy disposable gloves tight enough so water can’t get in.

6. Old t-shirts. Excellent floor/wall/child scrubbers. You can use em and toss em.

7. Air Neutralizer Spray/Febreeze/Air Freshener. Unless you think the smell of acid poo is a lovely odor to be inhaling all day long.


8. Coffee. Directions: Administer liberally and frequently:



This is just a short, off the top of my head, list. Have something to add? Shout it out in the comments!

Let’s talk Awesome Mama skillz, shall we? In my kid clothing tote bins I still have nearly full sets of (almost!) white onesies in every size*. That’s what I call awesome. (Not that I’m proud of it or anything...Totally lying. I’m ridiculously giddy about it.) That’s my life now, feeling extremely proud of clean onesies and the ability to clean up poo and vomit efficiently and effectively.

Awesome...

A

*(Disclaimer: There HAVE been times that I’ve tossed clothing that is soiled beyond recognition. Cause sometimes you are just plain sick and tired of scrubbing poo. Just keeping it real folks.)*

Vintage Dutch Girl is on Facebook. See new blog posts in your news feed!