I feel like I’ve been buying diapers forever!  Ok, it’s only been 4.5 years but, still.  I’m beginning to wonder what it will be like to go to the grocery store and not make a trip down the diaper aisle!

In those last 4.5 years I’ve tried pretty much every brand of diaper available in our local stores, trying to find the “right fit” for my kids.  I can honestly say that not all diapers are created equal and what works for one child doesn’t necessarily work for the other (even with diapers).

Recently I had the chance to test out the new Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max, hoping they would be a good solution for some of the diapering issues we’re facing with our youngest.

Issue 1 – She’s on the move!

It’s a given, she needs to keep up with big sister.  That means running, jumping, dancing, climbing.  And, until she’s 100% potty trained, she needs something on her little butt that doesn’t prohibit those ‘keeping-up’ efforts!

Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max are surprisingly thin!  Twenty percent thinner than the current Pampers Cruisers.  That means she doesn’t have the bulkiness of a typical diaper holding her back!

Issue 2 – This girl can drink her weight in water!

She loves water!  Loves it!  And where there is water going in, there is, um, fluid coming out!  I can keep up with this during the day and it has certainly helped in the beginning stages of potty training.  The problem is at night.  She consistently wakes up in the morning with a diaper that has soaked through!  Gross!  And LAUNDRY!!!

The new Dry Max technology in the Pampers Cruisers is supposed to lock the wetness away, making the new Cruisers Pampers’ driest diaper yet.  And I’m just going to tell you, it worked for us!  The Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max locks in an amazing amount of wetness and has consistently resulted in no-leaks for us.  Ahh, do you hear my washing machine sighing with relief?

Remember, I said earlier that not all diapers are a ‘good fit’ for every child, but the new Pampers Cruisers are definitely a good fit for us!  If you are looking to change up your current diapering arsenal, I would suggest checking out Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max when they hit store shelves this month!

GIVEAWAY

Would you like a chance to try Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max on your little one?  I am giving away, to one lucky reader, a coupon for a free week’s supply of Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max and a Liz Lange diaper clutch.  The clutch retails for $50 and is 100% polyester with genuine leather trim!

To Enter:

Mandatory Entry - Simply leave a comment below telling me how long you’ve been in the diapering trenches!  Are you just starting out or, hopefully, finishing up with the diapers?

1 entry - Subscribe to Stacey says… via RSS.

1 entry - Follow me (@Stacey_Says) on Twitter and tweet about this contest (you can do this every day and receive one entry each day!).

5 entries - Blog about this contest and leave me a link to your post.

5 entries - Not a blogger? Send an email to 5 of your friends with a link to this contest. Make sure you CC me (staceysays (at) me (dot) com) on that email and then leave a comment here saying that you did so.

The Details:

The One (1) winner will be randomly selected from the comments posted by Friday, March 12. All entries will be verified and must include an email address where I can contact you if you should win. This contest is open to US shipping addresses. You can read more about Giveaway Policies here.

*Disclaimer: I did receive a complimentary weeks worth of Pampers Cruisers with Dry Max from Pampers so that I could provide you with an accurate review of this product. However, receiving the complimentary product in no way affects my opinions stated here.

Read on »

As our kids grow up, we as parents love to play the game of “she/he got this from me and that from her/his father.”  It’s almost like a badge we award ourself for passing on admirable traits to the next generation.  The flipside of this game is admitting when we passed on our less-than-desirable traits to our kids and trying to place the blame for those characteristics on the other side of the babymaking equation (i.e. the person you spent that one special night with).

Sadly, my girls ended up with my inability to carry a tune.  Like most people who can’t carry a tune, we love to sing and don’t let those minor details of pitch and tempo stop us from belting out a song or two in the privacy of our own homes or local karaoke bar.

Abbi has loved to sing since she first began talking.  And she has the wonderful ability to hear a song one or two times and very easily catch on to the words…which also keeps me on my toes as to what we can and cannot listen to in the car together!  One of her favorite artists right now is Taylor Swift.  Say what you may about Taylor Swift but I’d much rather listen to her than Veggie Tales over and over and over again!  Anyhow, Abbi knows quite a few of Taylor’s songs and can even recognize one of her songs after just a few notes have been played on the radio.

Here is a video of Abbi singing “You Belong With Me” without any music.

Read on »

This month in the Happiness Challenge was an utter failure.  I don’t know what else to say about it.  The funny thing is that it should have been an easy month.  After all, it was all about Love!  How hard can it be to show the people around me that I love them?  Apparently it was more difficult than I had anticipated.

Week 5 (first week of February) was focusing on giving proofs of love.  So, I focused on giving personal attention to both of my girls — which means snuggling!  Zoe loves to rock together after her naps and Abbi loves to snuggle and read books together.  Sadly, I just don’t do this enough.  The funny thing about this week was that Tim was out of town again for work so he didn’t get any proofs of love.

Week 6 (second week of February) focused on fighting right.  Ah, yes, the fighting fair issue.  I’ll go ahead and admit that neither Tim or I fight fair.  We use word like “always” and “never”, big no-nos in the fair fighting world.  Interesting enough, Gretchen Rubin suggested that when your fights get heated to walk away and take a break, come back to the fight later.  That would never work for us.  I don’t know who it would work for.  For us at least, if we take a break during a fight we just wouldn’t come back and talk about what it was we were fighting about.  If we stop fighting about something then Tim figures everything is fine and dandy again, while I bottle it up and spew it all out the next time we have a fight.  Regardless if it has anything to do with what we are now fighting about.  So I’m just not sure about how to go about this one!

Week 7 (third week of February) told us to not expect praise or appreciation.  What?  You mean I shouldn’t be expecting my husband to notice and praise me over how clean the linen closet is?  And I’m not allowed to get irritated when he doesn’t hoist me on a pedestal for doing so?  Ok, seriously, this is something I’ve definitely learned since having kids.  I’m home all day and my “job” is to make sure that the kids are fed and still breathing by the end of the day and that the house is still standing.  My husband doesn’t expect (or at least he doesn’t say it) me to have a lavish meal on the table when he gets home and understands why the living room is in disarray when he walks in at 6pm.

Yet I’ve still found myself, on occasion, getting frustrated with him for not praising me for the work I have done during the day.  I’m used to working in the “working world” where you do receive praise for your great accomplishments and it has been a tough transition.  The funny thing is that I rarely give my husband praises for dragging his butt out of bed and to his office each and every day to make enough money for me to stay home with our kids.  So, I’m working on both ends of this — not expecting praise for every little thing I do and also dishing out praise more to him.  The cool thing about this one is that when you stop expecting the praise, you tend to treasure the unexpected praise even more when it does happen!

Week 8 (fourth week of February)…let me just say that I’m glad to see February end.  Not that I have anything personal against this short month, but I’m just looking forward to March and, hopefully, warmer weather!  Oh, so the resolution this week — kiss more, hug more, touch more.  Fun!

This one will be easy in respect to my kids (as long as I can put my phone and computer down for 5 minutes) because they love to snuggle!  They love hugs.  They love kisses!  The tricky one will be the husband since he is out of town, again!

So I’m not feeling too optimistic about my strides towards happiness this month. But there is always next month.  And I can continue to work on these resolutions.  I did get some encouragement when I was in Texas for the Mom 2.0 Summit.  I had the pleasure of hearing Gretchen Rubin speak during the Friday morning keynote.  She made the comment, “I just decided that writing about sad or frustrating things put me in a dark and miserable place.  I’d rather write about happiness.  You can’t help but be happy when you write about happiness!”

Out of that I have decided to write about more happy things here at my blog.  No, I’m not going to blow sunshine and rainbows up your butt and Yes, I will still write about the frustrating things in my life, but I’m going to try to focus more on the positive rather than the negative.  Ok, I might be blowing some sunshine and rainbows up your butt, too!

Read on »

It’s only fitting that the Rainbow Brite Adventure Pack cds and Rainbow Brite & Friends doll giveaway closes this weekend since I was in Target today with my daughters and my 4 year old was begging for another Rainbow Brite doll!  I hope your daughters/granddaughters enjoy the fun packed cds and Rainbow’s new look!

Rainbow Brite Adventure Pack cd winners:

Colleen

Laura

Jennifer H

Maureen

Traci

Ann

Amanda C

Yona Wiliams

Rainbow Brite & Friends doll winner:

Amanda C

Thanks to everyone for entering!  Remember, you can check out the new Rainbow Brite and enjoy some online games and activities at RainbowBrite.com.  And winners, you should be receiving an email from me regarding claiming your prize.  If you have not received that email, please send me an email at staceysays at me.com.

Read on »

I’m excited to tell you about these two films this week because each of them turned out to be something other than I expected!

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox is an animated film starring the legendary and very talented George Clooney and Meryl Streep as Mr. and Mrs. Fox!  The story is centered around the Fox family who, after being caught stealing by some farmers, settle in to a happy and safe home life with their eccentric son Ash and visiting nephew Kristopherson.  That is until Mr. Fox slips back into his sneaky ways and plots the greatest heist the animal world has ever seen!  Of course things don’t quite go as plan and Mr. Fox will need the help of his friends to out-fox the mean old farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean.

With a colorful supporting cast of Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, and Willem Dafoe, Fantastic Mr. Fox is definitely an entertaining film.  However, I would necessarily recommend it for your kids.  My four year old thought the animals were funny and watched bits of it here and there but she couldn’t follow the story line and the type of stop-motion animation wasn’t something she was used to.  I think older kids would enjoy the film, though, as it incorporates some great action.  I know I liked it!

Fantastic Mr. Fox is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.  The dvds are packed full of behind-the-scenes bonus features.

Free Style

Cale Bryant (High School Musical heartthrob Corbin Bleu) is a not your typical teenage boy.  Sure, he has big dreams, has girl troubles, and is full of teenage angst, but he’s also dealing with financial struggles of his family, which weighs heavily on him!  Despite his dreams of racing motocross professionally, he finds himself working multiple jobs just to help out his single mom.  It seems like everything is against him…until he meets Alex (Sandra Echeverria) who reminds Cale that the people around him love and believe in him and that anything is possible!

I’m just going to say it, I really enjoyed this movie!  It is a great story about a teenager who is not only dealing with all of these things going on around him, completely out of his control, but he also has to figure out who he is and what truly matters in his life.  I also love the theme of the importance of a supportive family and group of friends! I actually thought it was going to be one of those cheesy teen films but was pleasantly surprised at the great story line and action!

Free Style is currently on DVD and is rated PG.  I would definitely recommend this film!

The Giveaway:

I have 3 copies of Fantastic Mr. Fox and 3 copies of Free Style to giveaway here!  That’s SIX dvds and SIX winners!!!

How To Enter:

1 entry - Leave a comment on this post telling me something you wanted to do when you were a teen or something that you dream of doing even now.  (I still dream of being one of those people that brings animals to kids schools to teach them about the animals!)

1 entry - Subscribe to Stacey says… via RSS.

1 entry - Follow me (@Stacey_Says) on Twitter and tweet about this contest (you can do this every day and receive one entry each day!).

• • Fantastic Mr. Fox or Free Style? I entered to win them both on dvd at StaceySays.me!  http://bit.ly/deUtfW  @Stacey_Says

5 entries - Blog about this contest and leave me a link to your post.

5 entries - Not a blogger? Send an email to 5 of your friends with a link to this contest. Make sure you CC me (staceysays (at) me (dot) com) on that email and then leave a comment here saying that you did so.

The Details:

The SIX (6) winners will be randomly selected from the comments posted by Friday, March 12. All entries will be verified and must include an email address where I can contact you if you should win. This contest is open to US shipping addresses. You can read more about Giveaway Policies here.

*Disclaimer: I did receive a complimentary copy of these DVDs to review.  However, receiving the complimentary product in no way affects my opinions stated here.

Read on »