Recycling Baby Gear

Whether you are shopping for your first baby, your first set of twins, or other siblings, it is possible (and FUN!) to purchase gear used in the Seattle area, without having to spend a lot of time or money.

We are interested in where you go, what you buy and how. Thrift Stores? Stores like Goodwill and Value Village? Or are you a Craigslist or Freecycle junkie?

Follow us on  Twitter and let us know!
 

Prowl with your little Pumpkins at Woodland Park Zoo

Pumpkin Prowl is coming!
Presented by Bartell Drugs
October 23, 24 and 25, 2009
5:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Tickets go on sale at all Bartell Drugs and at the zoo beginning October 5!

Three howling nights of treats await your little goblins at our annual fall fundraising event. Artfully carved pumpkins and live entertainment spark each evening and there will be plenty of goodies for children of all ages, too! Be sure to check out Zoomazium transformed into Boomazium!

Trick-or-treaters are encouraged to wear costumes and bring reusable bags from home to collect their treats!

Buy treats at PCC Natural Markets and support Woodland Park Zoo. This year’s PCC bulk Halloween mix will contain chocolates from Green & Black and Equal Exchange, along with some delicious bites from Larabar. Proceeds from the purchase of the mix will directly benefit Woodland Park Zoo. Come see the PCC Kid Picks Mobile at the zoo's Pumpkin Prowl event on October 25.

Visit the Pumpkin Prowl page for more info!

Seattle Twin Clothing Sale -- not just for Twins

Children's Clothing and Equipment Fall Sale

Saturday, September 26, 2009
9:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Aurora Church of the Nazarene
1900 N 175th Street
Shoreline, WA 98133

Only cash and checks accepted

Tylenol Recall

You may have heard that McNeil Consumer Healthcare (the makers of TYLENOL®) is voluntarily recalling certain lots of Children's and Infants' TYLENOL® liquid products that were manufactured between April, 2008 and June, 2008. All products manufactured met internal specifications. However, the company is implementing this recall because during this period, an unused portion of one inactive ingredient did not meet all quality standards. Therefore, as a precautionary measure, it was decided to recall all Children's and Infants' TYLENOL® liquid products listed below, which were made during this time.

Parents and caregivers who have questions or concerns should contact their child's health care provider or our consumer call center at 1-800-962-5357 (available Monday-Friday 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern Time). Consumers can find the lot numbers on the bottom of the box containing the liquid product and also on the sticker that surrounds the product bottle. The lot numbers of the affected products are listed below.

These actions do not apply to Children's TYLENOL® Meltaways and Junior Strength TYLENOL® Meltaways. The voluntary recall applies only to select lots of Children's and Infants' TYLENOL® liquid products.

Recalled Products - Full List


http://www.tylenol.com/page.jhtml?id=tylenol/news/subpchildinfantnews.inc

Jump, Stretch, Play at SGA!

Seattle Gymnastics Academy opens a new location in dear old Ballard. Yipeee!

Offering classes of course, they also offer a drop-in indoor playtime in the gym. Expose your young ones, ages 1-5, to gymnastics as you escort them through the gym. Read about the rules here.

And check out what the gym looks like, in progress!

What to be for Halloween? How about Green?

We love that a Seattle-area mom started the 'green', healthier, more eco-friendly path to having a green Halloween! Check out her press release here.


Check out Seattle Thrift stores for ideas for your twins. We recycled old red sleepers, blue ski hats, and used some recycled office supplies to make costumes for our twins.

Our son, however, did get a new Cat-in-the-Hat costume.

Our rule is, do what you can, when you can. If recycling and reusing are not convenient at the moment, just make a promise to yourself, your kids and your family to try again, while staying sane and enjoying the time you have! Happy Halloween.

Starting solids... the path to success.. or not?

The most important thing to remember is that solids, as intimidating and amazing as it seems, might end up just being a lick or two of your painstakingly mixed cereal, and then a closed mouth, a tossed spoon or a gag. Or, it could be (like my first son) a shoveling-in-of-everything at 5months old never looking back (and still drinking regular, timely bottles and sleeping through the night.

As you'll hear, solids are an experiment, a new experience, but not meant to replace milk, or take the place of a bottle. We always gave bottles at the same times, and then in between offered the rice cereal, quickly moving on to other purees and logging them just in case.

With our twins (since we were 'experienced parents',) we were more casual, offering solids when the babies seemed happy and content to 'play' and learn from it, rather than as a 'meal' or timed schedule.

I think you will be able to stick to your bottle/milk schedule and toss the solid experience in when you are all ready for it. If you try to force it, or schedule it, you might end up with unhappy group all around.

Some of the most important things we thought helped were to let the babies play with the spoons, bowls, food even at that very early, and very messy, age. Sometimes a hand in the food and then in the mouth might prompt curiousity, leading to letting you feed them the next time, if they are reluctant.

We used a bumbo seat on the floor on towels at first and let it be part of playtime for one of our reluctant twins.

The other skipped the whole pureed food rice cereal stage and went right to smooshy bananas shoveled in by hand...

Again, this is just my experiences, not any real advice. I wish you stress-free success and hope you'll share your stories!