I love sniffing my little kid when she is asleep.

I love when I can kiss her little sleeping hand and smell Play-Doh, kiss the back of her neck and smell the days sunscreen or kiss her hair and smell her sweet soft curls.

I could watch her sleep all night. There are times that I go into her room and just sit by her bed when I can’t sleep. I listen to her breathing, watch her toes twitch with dreams and sometimes even get to hear her talk in her sleep (seriously, the girl is a sleeping chatterbox.)

I look back at all those nights my husband and I dreaded, knowing she would either wake one of us or fight going down. While it has been hard that we haven’t been able to add to our family just yet I treasure that I have been able to spend so many nights dedicated to putting her to sleep, letting time with either my husband or me be how she ends the day. She has never had to crawl into bed alone and fall asleep. We have always gone in with her and it has become second nature to say “I love you my little princess, sleep well” as I walk out her door each night.

Sure maybe some people would say that we have spoiled her by having such a specific nighttime routine each night. But every night I put that little kid to bed she wakes up older the next day. I am blessed that I am able to be there at the end of each of her days and also be there at the beginning of each of her mornings.

I dearly hope that through this special bedtime moments opportunity you have had the chance to see bedtime as a treasured time, not one to fear or countdown the minutes to (although I am guilty of that.) Hopefully you maybe learned some tips on how to make bedtime easier, something that is anticipated rather than feared.

I know I have.

I wonder sometimes if our kids are a little too used to the concept of monsters under the bed.

I know mine is.

If I ask her what’s under her bed at bedtime she says “a box full of cords.”

That’s boring because she’s right. There is a box of cords under her bed that go to a whole mess of stuff but there’s really no logical place for them in our tiny little apartment. So they ended up under her bed.

Sorry kid.

With movies like Monsters, Inc. and books like “GO AWAY, BIG GREEN MONSTER!” and our newest and most favorite discovery, “I Need My Monster” a book about a boy whose under bed monster goes on vacation and he interviews for replacements, she’s never really had to fear what lurks under the bed.

Shadows on the other hand are her nemesis. It all started when a My Little Pony balloon started losing air in her room and became caught in the stream of air coming from a vent. It ever so slightly bumped agaist the wall occasionally causing my kid such trauma she can’t handle having another balloon in her room ever.

With summer here it’s easy to avoid shadow troubles because most nights she’s so pooped she falls asleep before the sun even sets. But on those nights we get home late it’s the “good night light” that keeps the shadows at bay. She became hooked on having a nightlight when we were on vacation last year at grandmas, and whatever grandma has? Is awesome.

As silly as it sounds to me some nights to have her afraid of shadows in my heart I’m grateful that shadows are all that scare her right now. There’s so many other scary things in this world to be afraid of, things I won’t be able to keep her safe from.

But shadows? I can totally take them.

****

Do you have special monster fighting abilities?

Share your story over at SpecialBedtimeMoments.com brought to you by GoodNites® and not only will sharing what makes bedtime special in your house earn you the opportunity to win one of two $2,500 bedroom makeovers it will also give you the chance to win one of two remaining bedtime kits (worth over $250) from GoodNites® here at moosh buys and tries.

Each bedtime kit includes the following:

o $100 gift certificate to PajamaGram.com

o $50 gift certificate to Borders

o Blanket

o Bedtime journal for recording special bedtime moments

o Overnight tote bag to hold all items mentioned above

Simply share your story over at SpecialBedtimeMoments.com copy and paste your story into the comments below (or vice-versa) and you’ll be entered to win one of three bedtime kits. (After posting at Special Bedtime Moments and here in the comments section you can also tweet this contest and/or follow this promotion on Twitter at @BedtimeMoments for up to two extra entries. Please let me know if you have tweeted or followed or both in your comment. And please don’t lie. No one likes a liar.)

Leave your linked comment here for a chance at one of the bedtime kits. Grand Prize contest ends August 14th, three winners will be picked at random from all eligible entries. Good luck and good night!)

You still have one more chance to win…go here to enter!

***I have partnered with GoodNites® for this series of posts; I am being compensated for writing about my family’s bedtime routine and for promoting this contest (dude, you can totally win sweet stuff), not for endorsing a product.***

I have a very distinct memory from when I was about five of sitting on our blue couch snuggled up against my mom while my sister practiced piano. We were reading from McGuffey’s reader and I got stuck on the double “o” sound. I don’t remember my mom ever really reading to me. But I do remember her teaching me to read. And I read to her.

Now that my daughter is getting closer and closer to starting kindergarten teaching her to read, or at least help her get a head start is really important to me, not only because it’s a memory I share with my mom, but also my moms patience (OH MY GOSH THE PATIENCE) that she put into helping me to learn how to read before I started school has benefited me my whole life.

Ever since my daughter was teeny I read to her. It has instilled a love of books into her and there’s nothing she loves more than reading stories before bedtime. When she was little and could care less about pictures I read the Harry Potter series to her. As she got older we moved to classic board books, The Runaway Bunny being one of my favorites. I can still recite it by heart and will probably be able to with my grandbabies. As she’s gotten older we’ve moved onto the more popular titles of today, Fancy Nancy, Skippyjon Jones and Mo Willems’ Pigeon (our favorite being Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late! I even have voices I do when I read it.) But it’s also fun to read books with her that I remember reading as a kid, Strega Nona, Where the Wild Things are and Dr. Seuss.

Only recently has she started reading little words here and there on her own. Nighttime is a special time that we sit down and read. If she wants to read to me? I’m totally fine with that. If she wants me to read to her? I’m game. Sometimes we read together. She reads the words she knows and I read the rest.

Not much makes me happier than seeing her curled up in the corner of her bed in the morning reading to herself.

And not just because it means that I got to sleep in.

Want to add some books to your personal library? Share your story over at SpecialBedtimeMoments.com brought to you by GoodNites® and not only will sharing what makes bedtime special in your house earn you the opportunity to win one of two $2,500 bedroom makeovers it will also give you the chance to win one of two remaining bedtime kits (worth over $250) from GoodNites® here at moosh buys and tries.

Each bedtime kit includes the following:

o $100 gift certificate to PajamaGram.com

o $50 gift certificate to Borders

o Blanket

o Bedtime journal for recording special bedtime moments

o Overnight tote bag to hold all items mentioned above

Simply share your story over at SpecialBedtimeMoments.com copy and paste your story into the comments below (or vice-versa) and you’ll be entered to win one of three bedtime kits. (After posting at Special Bedtime Moments and here in the comments section you can also tweet this contest and/or follow this promotion on Twitter at @BedtimeMoments for up to two extra entries. Please let me know if you have tweeted or followed or both in your comment. And please don’t lie. No one likes a liar.)

Leave your linked comment here by August 7th for a chance at one of the bedtime kits. Grand Prize contest ends August 14th, three winners will be picked at random from all eligible entries. Good luck and good night!)

Long ago when the moosh was only a few months old I went into a higher end baby store where they were selling small pieces of fleece with various colored ribbons sticking out for $28. The label claimed that little kids love to feel tags on their toys, thinking this was complete hooey I went about muttering about $28 for a bunch of “tags.”

Later that day I noticed the moosh playing with a giraffe toy, it was keeping her thoroughly entertained when I noticed that she wasn’t actually playing with the toy, she was playing with the tag. I was at the fabric store within the hour purchasing the softest fleece and the most dazzling array of ribbons. Later in the day I had a crude piece of fabric with tags sticking out of it for around $6. (It was the first thing I had ever made with my sewing machine. Domestic? I am not.)

the moosh seemed to gravitate towards the thin velvet ribbons and not care much about the rest. Around the same time she became enamoured with a blanket made out of the fabric we all know now as “minky.” (I can’t stand the name FYI.) Determined to perfect the ribbon sewn into fabric idea I set out to find a soft piece of fabric similar to her blanket and to find more thin velvet ribbons.

A day later I had done it.

I had made woobie.

It was love at first feel.

The tiny little seven month old moosh never parted with woobie.

I don’t have a single picture of the moosh asleep from the last four years without woobie. She still sleeps with it everynight and when she’s stressed she holds it to her face in total Superstar fashion and smells it. Woobie has gone lost a couple of times, once on a camping trip, once in the mall and once in the thick of traveling across country. I even left woobie on a plane once.

I’ve never run faster in my life than to get back to that plane before it departed again.

Sleep does not come to the house of moosh until woobie has been found.

Needless to say, woobie has a smell all his own. Sort of a sour, sweaty, vinegar smell mixed with sunscreen and Johnson’s Curl Shampoo. To anyone else the smell is disgusting. To me? It’s a sweet disgusting baby aphrodisiac. Even at four and a half she still falls asleep with her little fingers intertwined in the ribbons, most have been rubbed bald but she’s never even noticed.

While woobie has been a pain in our woobies over the last four years when he decides to go missing or get dirty, it’s a little piece of fabric that lets the moosh know she’s okay no matter where she is. I never have to worry on a long car trip, a long vacation or when she’s away at a sleepover because as long as she has woobie?

She has a piece of home.

*********

Do you have a special woobie in your house? Something your kids can’t sleep without? Share your story over at SpecialBedtimeMoments.com brought to you by GoodNites® and not only will sharing what makes bedtime special in your house earn you the opportunity to win one of two $2,500 bedroom makeovers it will also give you the chance to win one of three bedtime kits (worth over $250) from GoodNites® here at moosh buys and tries.

Each bedtime kit includes the following:

o $100 gift certificate to PajamaGram.com

o $50 gift certificate to Borders

o Blanket

o Bedtime journal for recording special bedtime moments

o Overnight tote bag to hold all items mentioned above

Comments on this post are now closed. Please see It’s in the Book-Special Bedtime Apparatus #2 for another chance to win (same rules, different post.) Good luck!

Maybe you read on my main blog that I just got a new house and requested that Electrolux appliances appear in the currently blank appliance spots in my new kitchen.

I spend an unsavory amount of time in home stores opening and closing the doors of the Elextrolux fridge, THE LIGHTS COME ON GRADUALLY! Like every opening of the fridge is a CELEBRATION! The ovens have the most delicious sing song touch controls, HUNDREDS OF POSSIBILITIES. Dehydrate? Bread proof? Broil? IT. DOES. IT. ALL. Plus one model even has a little oven drawer at the bottom so you can simultaneously cook a pie and a turkey…my heart flutters at the thought.

When an email arrived about Electrolux’s Virtual Lemonade Stand Campaign benefiting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund I naturally was all over it. The chance to win an Electrolux Stainless French Door Refrigerator with Perfect Temp Drawer and support Ovarian Cancer Research at the same time?


By opening up your own free virtual Lemonade Stand not only will Electrolux donate a dollar to OCRF, but friends and family will have the opportunity to buy virtual glasses of lemonade for as little as a dollar and all proceeds go to the OCRF and you’ll both be entered to win the fancy GLOWING LIGHTS french door fridge. (Here’s mine!)

You have until September 7th to enter!

(And Electrolux? You can still keep Kelly and I’ll just take the fridge. And maybe the lemonade.)

My mother in law gave my daugther Bear on a Bike over two years ago and while I knew the publisher was Barefoot Books I had never really seen (or looked) for more Barefoot Books. That is until I found out I have a friend who sells them!  She does it because she loves them. She and I had lunch and gushed over our mutual love of Barefoot’s dedication to the art of the children’s book.

the moosh’s and my current favorite? The Barefoot Book of Faeries. Not only does it have gorgeous illustrations, it includes an audio CD with all of the stories narrated (which in the car? LIFESAVER.)

We both want to share the glory of Barefoot Books with you, head on over to Kasey’s site, (YEP! We’re both named K/Casey!) peruse around and let us know what your favorite Barefoot Book is. Leave it in the comments (with a valid email address) and you’ll be entered to win a $20 credit to Kasey’s Barefoot Books site.

Twitter for an extra entry.

Entries closed at midnight EST Tuesday, June 16th.

(Disclaimer: I was not paid by Barefoot Books for this post. I love them for free.)

Three years ago I figured that living next to one other family with young children in my new situation (halfway across the country in order for my husband to attend law school.) should be considered a blessing. We found our apartment through a  recommendation from them and were completely unaware until we moved here that our entire complex of apartments is filled with young families in similar situations. Whether it be dental school, law school, medical school or any other graduate program we were able to relate to each other and help each other through tests, graduations and board exams.

For more, head over to this review’s new home at Moosh In Indy.  All the comments have been moved over as well!

There’s even a monthly holiday in my house, fabric softener day.

Guess what you have to have to get good smelling clean laundry to fold?

A washer and dryer.

The fancier the washer and dryer? The better. (In my own humble laundry loving opinion.) The more sing song the buttons? The shinier the glossy exterior? The more whooshy the washing sounds? The more efficient the dryer? The more clean the clothes?

LAUNDRY DAY IS THAT MUCH MORE FUN.

I do love my washer and dryer. Sure some of the buttons don’t work and they for sure don’t sing, but my clothes come out clean!

But guess what? (come closer) I’m getting a new (to me) house. Which means someday I’ll get to get new appliances. Like a new washer and dryer. *swoon*

Did you know that Fridgidaire has come screaming back onto the market with appliances that come with a PROMISE that you’ll get at least 8 hours back in a month? It’s called the More Me-Time Guarantee. And it’s AWESOME. Seriously, if you don’t get more me time? You can return the appliance for the full purchase price within 30 days.

So here’s what Frigidaire is telling me, your laundry won’t take as long, but you’ll be able to do more faster.

My heart is racing just thinking about those 15 different wash cycles.

What would you do with an extra hour? Frigidaire wants to know. I chose actually doing my hair, taking a nap, reading more and dancing more. Go to the Mother Load and take their 5 things quiz and let the world know what you’d do with more me time and less dish/laundry/cooking/cleaning/scrubbing time.

The best part of the Mother Load site? The tag cloud to the right highlighting what everyone else would to with their time. The three word used the most throughout everyones answers? TAKE. MY. TIME.

Not only will you get to think about yourself for a minute, you’ll be entered to win Fridgidaire appliances that will SAVE. YOU. TIME.

If you missed it let me direct you to the site that has the same handsome man putting shoes onto the feet of cute little children all over the world.

The handsome man is Blake Mycoskie and in 2006 he came up with TOMS shoes, and for every pair of TOMS shoes purchased a pair will go to a child in need anywhere in the world.

One for one.

HOORAY! Shoes that do good things! But deep down I know that someone out there is thinking, well sure, buying a pair of shoes will help some kid, but I don’t want to be stuck with some shoes I don’t like even if it did help some kid I’ll never meet. (Of COURSE that person isn’t any of MY readers, y’all are a bunch of generous loving givers.)

Here’s the good news.

I have never (NEVER!) owned a more comfortable pair of shoes. And I’ve tried them all, KEENS, Merrels, Chacos, Crocs, Nikes…blah blah…the list goes on. And while I love every pair of shoes I own for one reason or another my canvas TOMS feel like putting a hug on my feet. When I first got them they felt a little tight, but after a few days they conformed to my feet, it’s the closest I’ll ever get to being able to go barefoot everywhere I go.

If you’ve seen me recently then you’ve seen my TOMS, they’re all I wear.

You know what they feel like?

Ballet slippers.

Flexible, snug, huggish.

BUT CUTE.

And in most cases they’re even vegan.

Go.

Buy these shoes. (For yourself, your husband, your wife, your children, your neighbors…)

Not only will you get an unbearably comfortable cute pair of shoes, you’ll help a sweet little kid who will depend on their pair of shoes more than you and I can ever imagine.

Remember when I was at BlogHer last year and I rubbed furry blue elbows with Grover and fuzzy pink noses with Abby Cadabby?

Well, you may not, BUT I DO. And not only because I cry from sheer joy every time I think about the experience. Abby actually CALLED. MY. KID. and left her a message telling her to always believe in her dreams. Grover and I made a DVD for her.

I MADE A DVD FOR MY KID WITH GROVER.

*sniff*