Author Archive

I was grocery shopping yesterday and I happened to walk down the baby aisle. I always stop to see all the baby personal care products on the market to see if they have any “natural” ones out and most of the time I am disappointed by what I find.

This time was no different.

In fact there were two whole rows of Johnson’s Baby Wash completely empty due to a sale on the Vanilla Oatmeal and Shea and Cocoa Butter varieties.

 

Of course, now that I have had my eyes open to the toxins in our personal care products, I decided to look up the products when I got home. By the way, I strongly urge you to look up your own family’s products on the Cosmetics Database, you may be surprised at what you find. Gaining information is a small step in the right direction.

So back to the Johnson’s baby wash products. I wasn’t surprised by the number that popped up on the database.

 

 

 

Moderate Hazard

 

 

 

I love how a product that is supposed to be completely safe for babies, specifically says “keep out of reach of children”.

These products have 9 ingredients with a score of 3 and above.

Johnson and Johnson has brand power and it’s synonymous with baby products.

I used varying products of theirs on all of my children before being enlightened in the ways of personal care toxicity. I would love to say ignorance is bliss, but that is far from where you want to be with this issue.

Now whenever I see a bottle of body wash or lotion, specifically targeted towards babies it makes me ill knowing that there are still a wide range of parents out there who do not know what are really in these products and how they can adversely effect our children and their health. Brand power in this case is a bad, bad thing.

So from now on, I’m going to post products that I see, ones that are widely used, or maybe even organically obscure but still harmful and I’m going to post them on Toxic Tuesday.

I may eventually turn it into a linky so that others can do a little research and share what they have found. Let me know in the comments if you would be interested in participating in that.

Knowledge is power my friends!

 

And as always, shameless plug here,  if you want to switch to safe products and use a company that makes it easy to simplify by everyone in the family being able to use the same products, contact me about placing an order for Ava Anderson Non-Toxic.

“Out of youthful idealism and passion, Ava Anderson Non-Toxic was born in 2009. Always true to Ava’s ideals, we develop and produce cutting-edge, SAFE personal care products to the highest performance standards. We are leaders in providing wellness information, while sharing the dangers of toxic chemicals in personal care products with families across America.”

So you realize that your 8 year old minivan, with 178,000 miles gracing it’s odometer has reached that point of no return.

You can either pay to have the transmission fixed to the tune of at least $1500 or recognize it’s time to say goodbye.

We decided to say goodbye to our Grand Caravan..

She served us well, taking us on many family vacations, lots of soccer games and let’s not forget all those trips to school, as well as bringing two of our three babies home from the hospital.

But she had to go.

It was time.

Problem was van shopping while on vacation 400+ miles from home isn’t ideal.

Yep, you heard right.

We made it in one piece to PA only to have our van start acting up on us as soon as we arrived.

So we spent a lot of time online looking at vehicles, and even more time test driving and jumping from dealer to dealer.

It was high stress and a lot of frustration.

Monday night, which also happened to be Brianna’s birthday was the culmination of our efforts.

After spending all day van shopping, we took Brianna to Build-A-Bear and then to get her ears pierced, and then went off to see if my dream van was in fact at RideSmart Auto.

It was…

A fully loaded Chrysler Town and Country. I’m talking dual DVD people, and heated leather seats, up front and in the second row and power sliding doors, and a power lift gate too! And a back up camera! And.. and… and… so much more!

I am in love with this minivan!

So the very next day we went back to get the van.

After a very long day of waiting at the dealer, Brian taking it to the mechanic for a once over, waiting some more, talking endlessly with our bank, filling out lots of paperwork, eating some lunch, waiting some more..

Did I say waiting?

We got to take home our new baby..

I mean van!

I heart my Town and Country!

The kiddos love driving in style, their favorite thing to do, besides the DVD player of course, is shutting the doors with a touch of a button.

Brian loves the van too, not so much the spending money on a huge purchase, but oh well, you gotta do what you gotta do.

I will end with this..

Buying a van on vacation?

Definitely on my list of things never to do again!

Okay, I’m only 31 and I’m starting to feel like a dinosaur in the age department when it comes to technology these days.

I used to just understand things.. naturally.. there was no work involved.

But I don’t feel that way, not since my three kiddos have zapped the brain cells right out of me.

What was I saying again?

Just kidding… sort of.

I have a confession.

I just don’t get Twitter… at all.

I mean I have an account and if you follow me, I’ll follow you back as long as you’re a real person and not spamming me.

I have TweetDeck on my laptop and on my snazzy android phone.

I even participate in #FF (Follow Friday for those that are more clueless than me), sometimes, when I remember or when Terri over at Terri’s Little Corner faithfully #FF me because she is a rock star with high spirit and I heart her blog!

And occasionally I talk #OLTL and #GH with my soap friends…

Or #TRDC when participating with The Red Dress Club.

And when I read a blog post that I absolutely love and think others should read too, then I tweet the link and give that blogger props.

Sometimes, I tweet links to my posts too.. when I remember or when I become randomly obsessed with comments and stats, which is few and far between.

Otherwise, I don’t really participate. I barely post Facebook updates either, which is somewhat the same right? Okay not really.

I’ve heard rumors that it’s so very addicting, that once you start you won’t want to stop but…

I don’t like jumping into other people’s conversations in real life, so I feel just as awkward and shy doing so in the twitterverse.

Just on the fringes, watching, waiting and feeling like I’m missing something huge, but not entirely sure how to get the most out of it.

The community of which people speak of, I see it, right in front of me.

I’m like a ghost.

A presence not really known.

 

And since these feelings have fallen into the category Advice for Me: prompt #6 over at the #SummerBlogSocial 2011, I figured I’d join the fun that the lovely and talented Liz of A Belle, a Bean & a Chicago Dog and Jessica of Four Plus An Angel have put together as a sort of blogging conference/networking from home. Make sure you check out all the wonderful bloggers participating in it.

My son’s enthusiasm for baseball is just fascinating.

Why you may ask, because he has been obsessed since he was born!

Okay, perhaps we had a little something to do with his wardrobe choices early on, but the trend has not only stuck, it’s become his life.

He loves watching, playing, wearing and talking baseball.

He has more baseball bats and baseballs than we know what to do with because every time we are in a store and he sets his eyes on a shiny new bat I can’t help but buy it for him. I think of it as an investment in his future and mine, I mean when he makes the big bucks he’ll for sure buy me a dream home!

Heck, the kid broke his arm at the age of two and the reason I knew something was wrong was because he refused to put on his brand new baseball glove. Didn’t stop him from playing though..

Alex started t-ball this year.

Every Saturday, unless it rained, we went off to t-ball with a very excited little boy, holding his glove, wearing a big dazzling grin, chattering up a storm about how he was playing t-ball that day.

His team was the Rangers. Being huge Phillies fans we just had to deal. He did wear his shirt and hat with pride. He also enjoyed playing with his friend Braelyn!

His favorite part was batting, and the poor kid only got to do 1 inning a game, but he loved every second of it!

Plus, and I can’t believe I don’t have pictures of this, he would slide at every base, including 1st!

Alex has acquired his first of many trophies.

We’ll be sure to hang on to it, he might want it on the same shelf as his World Series ring one day!

Congrats on a wonderful season Alex!

I am very proud of you!

 

Had to throw this one in too because I just love it..

Yep, definitely the future of baseball right there.

He was born to play!