The 2010 Olympics started today, and I must admit that I am excited.  I have always loved both the summer and winter Olympics.  Whether it’s a skier speeding down a mountain or a gymnast defying gravity, the Olympics have always captivated me.

My first memory of watching the Olympics was in 1980 when my dad and I gathered around the television to watch the U.S. men’s hockey team beat the odds by defeating the Soviet Union.  I had never watched a hockey game before that, and I must admit that I haven’t seen many since.  All it took was one moment to solidify my Olympic spirit, and I became a fan.

My daughter has her own Olympic aspirations in the sport of swimming.  Watching Michael Phelps dive off the blocks and take home the gold was her inspiration.

Of course I realize the odds of making it to the Olympics are very small, but then again the chances of the 1980 U.S .men’s hockey team taking home the gold were quite small as well.  She is really just starting her swimming journey and is too young at this point to be able to determine what type of impact she may have on the sport, but I look forward to the adventure.

Who knows, maybe some day during a summer Olympics 10 years from now, you can tell people that you bought birth announcements from a mom who has a daughter who just won the gold in the 100 Freestyle.

MiracleMunchkins.com

There are several different bugs going around my daughter’s school right now.  They range from your typical colds all the way to a stomach virus, add in some strep throats and fevers and it seems everybody has something.  I got lucky with a stomach virus that seems to be lasting way more than 24 hours.  My daughter caught the cold with some major coughing.

My mom, my daughter and I all seem to have that in common. We catch a cold and we cough for weeks.  Needless to say, getting a good night’s sleep while constantly coughing can be a little tough – I’m sure you already know this.  Once my daughter turned two, over the counter cough medicine was what her pediatrician recommended – following the dose recommendations carefully and exactly of course. **WARNING- It is now recommended that cough medicine NOT be given to children under 4 and some doctors prefer that age to be 6**.  

Getting my daughter to take cough medicine was almost next to impossible.  It always involved major crying which of course made her stuffier and made the coughing even worse.  So several years ago when my daughter started coughing horribly with a cold, I dreaded the upcoming bedtime cough medicine battle.  I decided to see what kind of home remedies I could find.  I found various home remedies and they all had one thing in common – honey. 

**In case you skim while reading I didn’t want you to miss this –Another Warning  – Never ever give a child under 1 honey. It can be deadly because infants don’t have the stomach acid necessary to kill the bacterial spores and the honey will cause infant botulism**

Okay now that I’ve given you the warning, I can continue on with my honey story and it’s happy ending. The honey worked!! I couldn’t believe the first time we tried it and we had a night of no coughing. The recommended dosage is a ½ tsp in a single dose 30 minutes before bed for kids 2 to 5, a full tsp for kids 6 to 11, and two teaspoons for kids 12 to 18.

Dark honey is supposed to work significantly better at stopping coughs than the light honey. In addition, research done by the University of Illinois has found that dark honey has 20x more antioxidants than light honey, meaning more illness-fighting agents. For whatever reason, I have not been able to locate any dark honey in my area so we are using the light honey. In either case, this give a thumbs up to honey to helping ease kid’s (over 1) coughs.

MiracleMunchkins.com

Breathing in the cool crisp fall air and hearing the crunch of the leaves on the ground, these are all little things that make me feel content and happy because it means it is fall and football is here and football season is my favorite time of the year.  I love football which made me an oddball growing up in my family.   Nobody in my household watched football or sports of any kind for that matter – that includes my dad and brother.  Heck, nobody even played any sports. My mother couldn’t stand the thought that somebody would lose.   I got my love of football completely from my grandpa — gramps, as I lovingly called him, absolutely loved football.

I didn’t get to see my gramps that often growing up but when I did he always made me feel special.  If I was lucky enough to visit my grandparents over the weekend in the fall, on Saturday gramps and I would sit and watch “State” play together.  State was how he referred to The Ohio State Buckeyes and that was the game we would always enjoy the most because it was his favorite.  He would try to explain the details of the game to me and I would nod as if I understood what he was talking about but mostly I only grasped that the team that with the most touchdowns won.  On Sunday he mostly just enjoyed watching any game that was on. He loved football and what made this time with him so memorable and special is how much he included me in his interests, talked with me, and  joked with me – time spent together.  He didn’t tell me to be quiet or shush me, he answered any questions that I would ask of him and I imagine that I probably asked a lot. He would interact with me.

As I got older, gramps would call me on game day during halftime to discuss how the Buckeyes were playing.  It wasn’t a long conversation but it was how we touched base and it made me feel important and loved.  Gramps died over 10 years ago and still today, when I watch football with my daughter, part of me expects the phone to ring and to hear gramps laughing about a silly play the Buckeyes made.  I miss him very much but watching football now still makes me feel close to him and still makes me smile.  It somehow makes him seem like he is right here with me.

Sometimes we parents forget that we don’t always have to completely sacrifice and forget our interests when we have children, we just need to include our children in on our fun.  Sewing with grandma (something she loved to do), cooking with my other grandma (she thought of it as an art form), reading books with my mom (we spent a summer reading the Little House on the Prairie books series when I was ten as my mom loved to read), playing toss with my grandpa, woodworking with my dad, chinese checkers with my grandma – these were all interests that members of family had and they included me and they have shaped my life – Thank you to all of them!   It works both ways – by the way  – -our children love for us to take part in their interests as well.

It’s never too early to get started.  For those of you out there who are sports nuts and expecting a baby, we haven’t forgotten you.  We have baby shower invitations and birth announcements with sports themes.  One of my favorite birth announcements is when you take a photo of the baby dressed up in your team colors and we put that on the birth announcement – we can use your team colors in the announcement.  Just take a look at these links for some ideas and remember we are here to help if you have any questions

* Sports-themed Photo Birth Announcements – This includes football, basketball, tennis, baseball and golf

* Sports-themed Baby Shower Invitations

* Sports-theme (non-photo) Birth Announcements – This includes baseball, golf and tennis – Also sibling non-photo

Munchkins Mom at MiracleMunchkins.com

Yuck, just the word brings back horrible memories of day and night nausea.   There are still foods from that time in my life that I will never eat again.  The best way I can think to describe it is having the flu for months.  My morning sickness started off normal enough and then progressed  to the very rare, severe and dangerous form of morning sickness called hyperemesis which was for me morning sickness for the full nine months of the pregnancy including during labor.  I was still actually getting sick during labor but the moment my daughter was born, literally within a minute, I wanted to eat a bowl of cereal – it was the first time I had wanted to eat in 9 months.  This is a long story though and a blog for another time.  Right now I want to talk about that first trimester of morning sickness that most women experience and tips for getting through it.

I would really love to get some tips and comments  that we can post for women going through it right now.  Believe me I would have tried almost anything so let’s see if we can help.  To leave a comment, at the end of the blog, you’ll see the word “comments”.  That is a clickable link, even though it’s not underlined, just click to leave your morning sickness advice.  You can also cut and paste this link in to your browser – http://miraclemunchkins.com/blog/?p=172

So on to my tips……

The first thing I tried right at the beginning when I was just feeling a little yucky but nothing too bad were those motion sickness wrist bands.  The basic premise is that the wristbands provide acupressure to help relieve the nausea.  I’ve never had problem with motion sickness so I can’t speak to the effectiveness of these bands for motion sickness or chemotherapy (another use) however I didn’t ever feel that they helped reduce my morning sickness.  That being said, I rarely removed them as I wasn’t taking the chance.  At any rate, it was hassle-free, drug-free and definitely worth trying.

The most helpful thing I was told and that I tried to do was to make sure that you don’t let your stomach get empty.  An empty stomach will make the nausea worse and I definitely found that to be very true. By the way, this is typically why it is called morning sickness.  Our stomachs are the emptiest during the morning which means you usually feel worse at that time.  I felt horrible 24 hours a day but an empty stomach was like giving me a double dose of morning sickness.   That means you need to snack and snack a lot. This doesn’t mean tons of junk food, think healthy snacks.  Fruits are recommended but to be honest I couldn’t stomach it , for me it was saltines and pretzel sticks and they really did help.  Also, try keeping some snacks, like crackers,  at the side of your bed to eat before getting out of bed in the morning.

Sugary lemon drops -  a friend said she sucked on these during her morning sickness and something about them just seems to help a little.  I have never really loved hard candy but the sugary lemon drops really were comforting and did seem to make a difference.  I haven’t had them since but I probably sucked on enough of them during the first trimester to last a lifetime.

room temperature water – Ice cold water may make you feel worse when that cold hits your stomach, it did me, so try your water at room temperature.   Whatever you prefer, make sure you are staying hydrated, vomiting frequently will dehydrate you quickly.  Besides being dangerous, dehydration will also make you feel significantly worse.

ginger tea – okay, I hate ginger and I hate tea so I this idea also didn’t appeal to me whatsoever but ginger has long been used to treat nausea.

taking a vitamin b6 supplement- of course always ask your doctor before adding an additional vitamin as perhaps you are already getting your maximum amount through a medicine your doctor is providing you.  However many women have reported that taking a b6 supplement helped.   During my pregnancy, somebody recommend a vitamin e supplement.  I tried that for awhile and I didn’t really notice any improvement.

Okay ladies, let’s hear some things that may have helped you!!

Munchkins Mom at MiracleMunchkins.com

Alyson Hannigan was on the Ellen DeGeneres show earlier this year saying that she had pregnancy brain. I realize that this is old news now since this happened at the end of January but the topic of pregnancy brain recently came up while I was talking with a customer.

She had placed her order for baby shower invitations but put a shipping address that she had not lived at  for over 10 years.  Luckily she caught her mistake in time before we shipped – you have to love a happy ending –  and she blamed her crazy error all on the massive pregnancy brain she was experiencing.   She said that putting an old address down was not something she ever would have done before she was pregnant.

She isn’t my first customer to mention pregnancy brain either. Misspelling your older child’s name that you’ve been spelling for the last 5 years, putting the wrong birth year when you just gave birth a few days earlier, completely forgetting where you have registered for your baby shower…. these are all things some of our customers have blamed on pregnancy brain.  You know what, I understand this completely.

I’ve always prided myself on my excellent memory.  One of the best things about being in the birth announcement and baby shower industry is being able to work one on one with designs for each customer.  I’ve always loved when a repeat customer comes along with a new baby because I remember them from their first child.  I have a customer who orders photo Christmas cards every year for the last 8 years and I’ve just loved watching how much the kids have grown.  She always reminds me who she is when she places her order every year but she doesn’t need to.  I remember her and I’m am grateful to have the type of   memory that has allowed me to form special bonds with customers.  I am especially grateful for this because during the 9 months I was pregnant with my daughter and for about 4 months afterwords, my memory was just completely filled with holes.

My spouse has a horrible memory and during my pregnancy it was the first time I truly understood what that was like.  I couldn’t remember doctor appointment times and I had never had to write them down before.  I had a difficult pregnancy and I became very close at that time to a nurse who help me get through it but I could never remember her name even though I saw her every day for 3 months.  I did silly things like put the ice cream  away in the refrigerator rather than the freezer.  Sure that happens to all of us but you would be shocked if I told you just how often I did things like that.

I have no doubt at all that I experienced “pregnancy brain”, “cottonwood brain” as it is sometimes know or even the cute “momnesia”, however not everyone agrees.  According to a study done by Australian researchers pregnant women are not more likely to have memory lapses or problems with attention to detail.  I am definitely not a scientist nor do I play one on television but in our own little Miracle Munchkins world filled with many many pregnant moms, I go on the records stating that I am a believer that  pregnancy brain really does exist.

What do you think? Have you ever experience pregnancy brain?

This is a pregnancy / baby blog and can you believe we are already talking about college.   I remember reading when my daughter was born that the cost of a standard public  four year college would be over $100,000 or more by the time she was old enough.  Ughhhh – that’s a lot of money to come up with!!  It’s never too early to get started saving for college.

The best thing we did for college savings was enroll in Upromise and I can’t recommend it enough as it is completely free.  Basically Upromise has partnered with numerous companies and when you buy from those certain companies, they donate to your college fund.   You can register all your grocery cards and when you buy certain products at your grocery store, you get money donated to your upromise account .  It’s basically money for free.  You don’t have to buy things that you wouldn’t normally buy.   You will also register your credit card / debit cards with Upromise.   No, they don’t charge your cards at all.  This is also a way of knowing what you bought so that you can get credit to your upromise account.

There are dining programs, travel programs, mortgage lenders – - all different types of ways to get companies to donate to your Upromise account.  We have earned the most with our upromise credit card.  Everything we charge on this particular cards gets us money in our upromise account.

You also have the option of linking your Upromise account to a college 529 account.  Upromise will then rollover the money you have received from Upromise in to your investment account.

There honestly is no downside to this.  Since 2000, we have earned $6,000 toward my daughters college fund.  This is $6,000 we would not have had for college without upromise.  Friends and family can also sign up for their own upromise account and then “link” in to your so that their money goes to you.  This is great for grandparents to do and is also part of how we receive our upromise money.  Grandparents don’t have to play favorites, they can donate their account to more than 1 grandchild and you can have more than one child on your account as well.  Will this money pay for all of  college, not a chance but it will certainly help.

Upromise – Turn your everyday spending into college savings

It’s that time to offer our bloggers more savings. We thought we’d mix things up a little for the month of February with a different type of discount. How does 5% off your next order sound!!

To redeem your coupon: enter “FebSale” (without the quotes) inside the shopping cart where it asks for your voucher code. Once you Recalculate your order total, you will see a 5% discount added to your order!

This coupon is good for all items at www.MiracleMunchkins.com

RSVP Cards - will match your invitation!

We received another great customer question we wanted to post.

Question:  Do you do reply cards for baptisms?  
Ms. C.

Answer:  Yes we do reply cards, also known as rsvp cards, for all of our non photo invitations – - birthday party invitations, baby shower invitations and baptism invitations!  The cost is 0.50 cents each and will match the design on your invitation.   The best news is that it does not add any additional cost on to your shipping.   

 As with all of our printed products, nothing is “pre-printed”, meaning that we design everything just for you.  This means that you can also use the reply cards to instead provide directions to your guests.

How Do I Order the RSVP Cards?  For baby shower invitations, we’ve made things very easy.  There is an option on your baby shower invitation order form to add rsvp cards on to your order. 

 For baptisms and party invitations, there  are two ways you can order.

1. On the order form you are filling out for your invitations, there is a place to add additional comments or instructions.  It is there you can let us know how many rsvp cards you would like.   After we receive your order, we’ll confirm with you.

2.  You can place your order for invitations online.  Once you receipt your order number, you can email us at email@miraclemunchkins.com and reference your order number.  Just let us know the quantity.

That’s all there is to it!

MiracleMunchkins.com

Happy New Year Bloggers!  We have some exciting changes coming this year to our website.  We will be unveiling a whole new look, a new logo and  some exciting new designs and products.  

Along with that comes some great savings and discounts!  For the entire month of January, we will be offering Free U.S. Ground Shipping off of our printed items for every order of $55 or more!  This is a great value and available only  for future orders if you visit blog.

To redeem your coupon: enter “Jan Shipping” (without the quotes) inside the shopping cart where it asks for your voucher code.  Once you Recalculate your order total, you will see a discount added to your order for the same amount as the cost of ground shipping.