Tha Winnah!

Janet won my A&D Diaper Rash products giveaway! Congrats, Janet!

Incidentally, she has an online store with the absolute cutest baby stuff. Go. Shop. Buy.

Review and Giveaway: A&D Diaper Rash Products

When I was pregnant, I had no idea of what my “must haves” were for the baby. All I really knew was that I needed diapers and some clothes of some sort. I lucked out on the clothing end and was given bags and bags of clothes by a friend who had had two daughters. I was also given a bouncy chair by the same friend (who had three of them) and that turned out to be one of the most essential things. The Poptart napped in there most days while I was in the living room or kitchen. As she got older, the bouncy chair turned into a Kick ‘n Play which let her build up her leg strength.

A year and a bit later, my top ten list of things to have when you have a baby is:

1. Bouncy chair (Best. Thing. Ever.)
2. Vaseline (especially for the first few days – the meconium poops are horrible to clean up)
3. Diapers (think of how many you’ll need, double it, and then buy twice as many as that number – that should last you a week or so)
4. Sleepers
5. Onesies
6. Receiving blankets (make excellent burp rags)
7. Ready access to a breastfeeding guru
8. A doctor I trusted (seriously, if you don’t have one, get another)
9. A travel system (carseat/stroller – so I could actually go out. I suppose this is only necessary if you have a car)
10. A supportive partner (seriously, I couldn’t have made it through the first few months without Darren)

(Sidenote: Strong legs + Busy baby = Early Walker. She started walking at 10.5 months and I’m not sure if this is a good thing)

As for the other end (ha! End! Diapers! Get it?), after a lot of research, we decided to use cloth diapers. For the first couple of months, I used a cloth diaper service. They’d come by every week, take the dirty diapers and drop off clean ones. It was great, it’s a family business and for starting out with cloth diapers I’d fully recommend them. Eventually though, I stopped using them and bought my own diapers which I found on sale from a local small online shop (which has sadly gone out of business). We stopped the service for a variety of reasons: cost (it wasn’t any less expensive than using disposables), my getting skeeved out at my daughter sharing diapers with other unknown babies, and there was a faint chemical smell to the diapers – like not all the detergent got out when they were cleaned. So I switched to my own diapers.

The problem with cloth diapers and diaper rashes is that you can’t use traditional diaper rash creams on them because the zinc oxide gets into the diapers and ruins them unless you use a liner. So when the Poptart was red and rashy all the time, I was kind of kicking myself for not considering that this might happen. We ended up using Vaseline, baking soda and fresh air – mainly because most diaper creams out there are zinc oxide based, and that will ruin cloth diapers unless you use a disposable liner.

So when I was contacted and asked to review A&D Diaper Rash Products, I jumped on it, hoping that there would be a solution.

And in a case of “Be Careful What You Wish For” the Poptart developed a bit of a rash right before I received the samples. Her timing is impeccable.

The A&D products are new to Canada and they look pretty good. There’s a cream (for treating rashes) and an ointment (for daily care and prevention).

(Oh and they’re called A&D because they both have vitamins A&D in them).

Pros

• Both products are paraben free
• You can use the ointment with cloth diapers as it is not zinc oxide based.
• The ointment can also be used for treating the results (i.e. – chafed skin) of diaper rash
• I used the ointment on the Poptart’s face rash (from teething) and it helped! I love multi-use products.
• The cream spreads well; I found other ZO based creams to be stiff. This one spread really easily and I ended up using a lot less for the same amount of coverage.
• Both are non-greasy.

Cons

• The cream is zinc oxide based and therefore not usable with cloth diapers unless you use a disposable liner.

So for me, the pros definitely outweigh the cons.

And I have a giveaway for you if you’re interested in winning 3 tubes of each of these products – that’s almost a year’s supply of diaper rash treatment products. All you have to do is answer the following question in the comment: what are your “must-haves” for new babies?

Contest closes August 30, 2010 and is open to Canadians (sorry US readers).

Disclaimer: I wrote this post while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central and received a Mom Central gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Mini-Renocation Winna!

We have a Winna!

I went to random.org and plugged in the numbers 1 to 30, and it gave me number 29!

Mark is the winna! His comment read:

I would love to redo the bathrooms with a sunken tub and walk in showers. Of course, the upstairs could use new hardwood floors. and of course, I will go to Bermuda or Aruba!

And you can still enter the Reno-cation contest to get $13,000 for renos, and cruise while they’re going on!

Review: Hydrasense

There are, in my opinion, few things worse about a cold or allergies than being so stuffed up you can’t eat or sleep properly. I hate, hate, hate being congested. A few years ago, I discovered the virtues of the Neti pot. After using it to flush out my sinuses basically every day, my allergies are a lot better.

And I was looking for a way to use it with the Poptart. It seems she’s inherited my sinuses which means they clog up at nothing. But she’s wiggly and won’t stay still in the required position long enough for the neti pot. I tried the saline drops and bulb syringe but it never worked properly. There are few things sadder than a stuffed up baby.

At the drugstore one day, I picked up some Hydrasense Extra Gentle mist in the hopes that it would work better than the drops. Next to it on the shelf was a Nasal Aspirator. Instead of having a bulb attached, there’s a tube that you suck on. There’s a filtre so nothing gets through into your mouth. I looked at it and hummed and hawed about it and would have tried it except for the $25 price tag.

So I just got the spray and it worked a lot better than the drops had (although the Poptart did not like being spritzed in the nose).

So when MomCentral contacted me to do a Hydrasense review in exchange for some product, I said yes. I expected that I’d get some drops or some more spray. I was quite pleasantly surprised when I found that they also included a nasal aspirator. And the timing was good because the Poptart had allergies going on.

And it worked. It really worked. Between the spray and the aspirator, she stopped snuffling and even took a nap somewhere else than me. It’s too difficult for me to take a video of how it works while dealing with a wiggling baby, so there’s a video of a much less wiggly baby having it used on him (or her) over here.

Pros:

• it works
• it’s all natural: from the website: “hydraSense® Easydose® or hydraSense®Ultra-Gentle Mist with Comfort Tip, a nasal solution composed of isotonic, undiluted, sterile, 100% natural-source desalinated seawater. hydraSense® contains more than 70 trace elements and minerals naturally occurring in seawater and is preservative free”
• she got used to it really quickly and stopped wiggling so much when I sprayed her nose and then used the aspirator
• she was always kind of snuffly – now she’s not
• the tubes of saline (Easydose) are handy for diaper bags and easier to use than the big bottles of saline drops
• the aspirator is easy to use and easy to clean.

Cons:

• the filtres are single-use; the aspirator comes with 5, but you have to buy more when you run out. If there’s a week-long cold and you’re using it 2 or 3 times a day, that’s a lot of filtres. I’d like to see a reusable filtre that can be washed and reused.
• cost: this stuff can get expensive, but you don’t really use a lot of it so it’ll last awhile, except for the filtres.
• it’s sometimes difficult to get a wiggly baby to cooperate and lie still while you stick something up their nose (although, this is not the fault of the product – it’s just how it works)

I really think that the pros outweigh the cons. And that the price tag is worth it, especially with helping your little one breathe. But, I can help you save on the purchase of an aspirator. All you have to do is go to the Hydrasense website to sign up for the Dolphin Club. If you do this by April 10, once you re-login, you can go to the online coupons tab and enter the coupon code MC2010. This will give you an $8 off coupon towards the purchase of one of the aspirators.

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Hey, Canadians! you can still enter my giveaway over here!

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Disclosure: I wrote this post while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central and received a Mom Central gift pack to thank me for taking the time to participate.

If I had $13,000, I would renovate…

…my kitchen. I have a serious lack of counter space. The builders attempted to put in a dining nook in one corner and missed out on the potential to put in more counterspace. I’d also get new cabinets, or at least reface the existing ones and get a new refrigerator. But counter space is my priority. I’d also go for granite or tile counters, and get rid of the tile on the floor and replace it with laminate (I am not a fan of hardwood). If there was any left over, I’d rip out the mirror in the master bath, put in a new countertop and proper lighting and medicine cabinet. I’d rip out the lino and install tile (heated if I could get a really good deal on it). But the kitchen is the priority.

And you know what would be even better than that? Going on a cruise while the renos were going on. I’d love to cruise the Greek Islands in the late spring.

So what would you do with $13,000 and a $7000 cruise? Here’s your chance to live it, baby. Royale is having its annual Reno-cation contest. You could win $13,000 to spend on renovations any way you’d like, and a $7000 Caribbean Cruise on Royal Caribbean’s “Jewel of the Seas” (and if you know me you know I wax poetic about cruising). You can enter once a day and the draw will be on June 29, 2010. The website also has other chances for extra entries.

But wait! Before you go to enter this fabulous prize, I’m holding a min-renocation right here. I’m giving away a $50 gift card to Home Hardware and a $50 gift card to Cara Restaurants (usable at Swiss Chalet, Montana’s, Milestones, Kelsey’s and Harvey’s). All you have to do is leave a comment by April 27th finishing the phrase: My ultimate reno-cation is…

The winner will be picked by random number generator on or about April 28th.

So leave a comment and click here to go enter the contest.

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In the interests of dislosure even though I’m Canadian and the FTC can’t do anything: this is a MomCentral Canada Blog campaign. I’m receiving compensation in the form of a gift card.

Review: Spud

(Backdated because I forgot to hit “publish”)

Awhile back, I was offered the opportunity to try out a grocery delivery service. Before committing to it, I emailed with their customer representative, Lesley, who was kind enough to arrange a credit to my brand new account at Spud in exchange for a review on the service (which you are reading now, and yes, that means I have been compensated in some manner for this post).

So, I tried it out and it was a good thing I was a week behind on that because the day of the delivery was also the day the garage door opener failed and I strained a muscle in my back.

So now, nearly two weeks later, I have gotten around to this review. My apologies to the people at Spud for the delay.

So now that that stuff’s out of the way, lets see how it stacked up.

The idea behind Spud! is that you make your order online and then, depending on where you live, there’s a day out of the week where they deliver in your area. For me it was Thursday. Orders have to be placed by 9am 2 days in advance, or at least it was for me.

The pros:

• convenience: groceries delivered right to your door? Hell, yes. Even if you’re not home, they’ll leave them outside your door (with dry ice for the stuff that needs to stay cold). Plus grocery shopping with an infant is difficult so anything that makes my life easier is a plus.
• quality of produce: excellent. They carry many of the products that I use anyways so its nice being able to get this delivered right to my door. The peppers I ordered were perfect.
• Local products: many of the products they sell are local or local-ish except for the more exotic stuff like cantaloupes, pineapples which are hard to grow in Canada. The best part is they provide full information on all suppliers including how far away they are from their Vancouver warehouse. If you’re concerned about your carbon footprint on this, then you choose suppliers that are closer rather than further away.
• Website ease of use: easy to use interface with appropriate “add to cart” features and ability to change amounts. Each product is essentially one-click shopping. They then provide you with a full breakdown including deposits on containers (which you get back as credit on your next delivery) prior to completing your sale. When I put my order in, the website did something weird, though: the screen greyed out and froze (but the order went through). I’m not sure if that’s their end, or my end (because I do use Internet Exploder 8 after all). Punch in a credit card when you set up your account and you’re done.
• did I mention the convenience? Most people who know me know that I will generally pay for convenience.
• Customer service: excellent. The person who delivered actually rang the bell and WAITED until I answered to make sure I didn’t have any questions. A few days later, I got a call from them asking how things were. Excellent customer service (I expect you don’t get the call after every delivery, but its great for new customers).

The cons:

• I think I am one of those people who needs to see and feel the produce before I buy it. I kind of like to know exactly what I’m getting.
• They don’t have everything I use: the idea is that you can order this stuff and save on the gas, travel, time, etc. However there are those one or two things that I need that they don’t have, so I end up going to the store anyways. And when you’re going to the store anyways you eliminate the savings, so you might as well feel the produce and know what you’re getting
• Cost: its expensive. Particularly the produce. Now I know they have to work in salaries, fuel, wear and tear on vehicles, etc. And you’re paying for more service than what you get at the store. However I don’t know if its a combination of living out in the boonies where I have local access to fresh veggies and fruit, and being on a reduced income because of maternity leave, or if they really are expensive, but right now, its too much for our budget.
• You need to be organized and plan your meals in advance so that you order the appropriate food - right now, this is a bit much for me.

So right now, spud isn’t for us – its way above and beyond what we’re willing to afford. I buy meat and fruits/veggies from places within a 10 minute drive already (and often closer). That said, once I’m back at work and we have two full incomes, then it might be a possibility.

In other words, my cheapness frugality is overriding my love of convenience and being waited on hand and foot here. At least for now.