Passing it on

When I was pregnant with Brady, I read blogs and found a lot of good tips and ideas so I'm going to share mine with you!

• Jammies. If you are like me and hate mis-matched jammies, you'll like this. When I fold his laundry, I fold the pants up and then wrap them inside the shirt so that we always have matching jammies. It is so much easier at the end of the day, when some certain little man is getting cranky to just pull out a pair and not have to search for a missing piece!

See how happy he is (it could also be that he is wearing jammies with a ball on it!)

• Speaking of  baby clothes, I always keep a storage tote or giant diaper box inside his closet to throw clothes that no longer fit. It's so much easier than a few times a year purging through his closet. When it's full, I mark on the side what size and season it is! I do the same thing with toys that he has outgrown!

• Speaking of toys, I save EVERY box that bigger toys come in. So, than when he does outgrow that toy, I can shove it back in the box and not have to search for all the pieces. 

•  I could never find a syringe when I needed to give Brady medicine. I now store them in a bar food jar in the cabinet. Every night, he takes Zyrtec, I wash it and throw it back! 
•  Crayons are my nemesis. The kid loves them but i get tired of picking them up or shoving them back into that dumb cardboard container that lasts 2 seconds with a toddler. So, I use an old wipes box. They work perfect for little hands and he LOVES putting them away. It's a fun game! I keep all of his 'art' supplies (coloring books construction paper, etc) in a bin and it's a nice way to keep it together!

(sorry for the ugly table in the back ground. Our table started doing that right after we bought it but the place we bought it from refuses to refund us or honor the warranty we bought. It was 'our fault' for using it, I guess. What a great 'Value' it was. ;)

•  I keep a schedule of his day (more so when he was younger) in our cabinet for sitters and family with our emergency, work and medical info.
•  I keep a storage container of kid approved snacks in our pantry. It makes for easy access for when were are running out the door or for sitters to know what he can have! (Our sitter comes here 3 days a week so it's easy for her)

•  Frozen veggies. I keep bags and bags of frozen veggies in my freezer. I'm lucky that my kid loves his veggies and eats them at lunch and dinner but I don't always have time to come home from work and make them fresh which is why they come in handy...and for boo boos too! 
•  Brady loves yogurt tubes (yet, he refuses to eat yogurt any other way, silly kid!)  but he's not quite able to use them with making a humungo mess. I freeze them, cut em in half and he has a nice healthy 'dessert!'
• .Diaper changes. As he gets older, they get harder and harder. A friend told me she had would give her son's stickers when it was diaper changing time. By the time, they would take it off and on a few times, it would be done! I also keep a few other tools up my sleeve--empty lip balm jar I cleaned out. He likes to open and close the lid and it keeps him nice and occupied while I do what I need to! 
• Boo-Boo kit for the car (which I should have had LONG time ago!) I'm working on this now so I don't have a finished product to show but in my car I already have extra diapers, change of clothes and wipes in the trunk in case of emergencies (so I don't have to carry my child into Bed, Bath and Beyond in just a diaper again!) I also want to add more of a boo-boo kit too that goes beyond the first aid kit because when you're running errands with a kid, crap happens. Literally. Extra sippy cup, stain remover, boo-boo pack, neosporin, etc. Also, a few markers (crayons melt) and paper, a sucker for a real emergency, and a few toys.

• Don't be afraid to buy 2nd hand. I have found so many toys, clothes and baby/kids stuff, that still had tags on it or were almost new. Ask around for Consignment sales in your area! There are a few I go to each year and it really saves me a lot! I buy a lot of his play clothes because he's just going to get dirty so why spend a lot?
• I've also been really good about buying for the next season and getting clothes super cheap that way. For fall, I have him almost stocked up. I actually tallied up the cost I spent and what I would have spent and the savings was amazing! I spent less than $60 over course of a few months for clothes that would have cost me over $500. 
• Pictures. I take gazillions and I'm very particular how they are saved because I don't always know WHEN they were taken just by looking. I have each file named by his age at the time. Birth, 1 month, two months and so on. I even put a few extra files for Christmas and special occasions (first haircut) along with the month and year so in five years from know, I'll always know how old he was then. 
• Building on that, after a friend lost everything in a tornado in December, I thought about what I could do to make sure my most loved memories were protected. So, of course we have an external hard drive (if you don't have one, get one now) but that wasn't enough. If my house was destroyed or burnt to the ground, it would all be gone. I save all my files online. I have a few places I do this too and I can post later if you want!
  
  BUT...a parent I work with had the most fabulous idea! She burns them all on a disk and places them in a safe deposit box! Genius! 

                                                               

                                                            (found on pinterest linking here.)

   Lastly, a little reminder. Be truly be grateful for each day. Brady is at the age where he is a lot work. He's into everything and he's testing the waters. He's full of energy and wearing his parents out but at the end of the day, I have to remind myself even when I have lost all patience and I'm so tired I just want to not have to make dinner or read that book-(one.more.time!) that I can't redo this day or this moment. He's only this little for this moment and I am making this moment count.