Around the Conrow House

If you were to have spent some time around the Conrow household the last few days, here are some things you might have heard...

• "You're okay, you're okay..." - Adeline, holding Elmo and patting his back. Apparently he's been having a rough go of it lately. She's comforting all of her animals these days.

• "Ooh, cute!" - Adeline picking up and inspecting her old newborn clothes I've gotten out for Pink Floyd.

• 9am: Adeline and Meredith eat breakfast; 9:30am: Breakfast ends; 10am: Adeline- "Eat, eat." Mommie- "We just had breakfast! What do you want to eat?" Adeline- "Lunch."

Speaking of getting out old clothes, I discovered in making various piles to be washed and prepared for Pink Floyd that some stains that never came out in regular washing before I packed the clothes away seem to have intensified in their stored state. After some searching online people seem to swear by "Zout!" stain remover and Oxyclean. My google search was specific enough to try to find stain fighting formulas for old - like 1-2 years old... - spit up and formula stains. So we took a trip to the happiest place on earth, aka Target, and picked up some Zout and Oxyclean and yesterday I began to fight stains with every power within me! :) I sprayed and rubbed in Zout on all the stains, then today I soaked all the stained clothes in a highly concentrated tub of Oxyclean dissolved in water (12 scoops in 5 gallons of water). You can soak clothes like this for up to 6 hours and I'm going to go ahead and let them soak for the full amount of time, but I checked on them after about 4 hours and was already really pleased with the results. Some stains I thought would never come out (especially after nearly 2 years) have come out completely, and outfits I thought could never be worn again literally look as good as new. I've heard this is a great trick for deep cleaning and removing stains from secondhand clothes bought on ebay and craigslist and at garage sales and things. The clothes literally look new. So that's my exciting laundry adventure. Tonight I'll be doing 3 loads of tiny baby things, blankets, and burp rags all in preparation for Adeline's little sister's arrival. It's getting pretty exciting around here :).

Note: You do have to have a fairly significant amount of time to devote to this stain-fighting routine, and you need to make sure you can take the clothes out of the concentrated Oxyclean solution no more than six hours after you begin and then have the time to wash/rinse them completely immediately afterward. I did read horror stories about people leaving things overnight thinking a couple more hours wouldn't hurt, or letting an Oxyclean solution dry on their clothes and it producing adverse effects.


And in other news, potty training in the Conrow house has officially begun! When I bought this potty seat it says right on it that you might have trouble getting your child to get off of it because it's so comfortable - turns out they were actually right. The kid loves this thing! :)


We also enjoyed our first foray into pigtails this weekend...


And Adeline was very helpful unwrapping Rolos for a fun project for Mommie. When she was done she got to eat one :)