Nancy Drew and the Mysterious “Wet”

Remember Nancy Drew’s first case here at Mommin’ It Up?  That was a doozy.  And fortunately, it’s been a long time since we’ve needed the help of that savvy teenage detective.   But yesterday, Sophie threw another mystery my way, and I’m gonna have to call in the big guns.

Soph and I were sitting in the living room shortly after noon when she decided to go upstairs. I figured she was headed up to her room to play with her dollhouse or read books and didn’t think a thing of it.  But then about two minutes later I heard her yelling, “OH no! It’s TOO WET!”

Crap.  That can’t be good.

I raced upstairs and found Sophie standing in front of the toilet with her pants and panties pulled down. “It’s TOO WET!” she said again?  ”What’s too wet?” I said. “Did you go pee pee in your pants?”

“No it’s too wet on your (she’s still got pronoun confusion) SHIRT.”  She replied.

I moved in to investigate.  Her pants and panties were dry, but she was wearing a long tunic-style shirt, and sure enough there was a small water spot on the back.  It was oddly round, and about the diameter of a soup can.

I put her on the potty just in case, and noted that her lady parts were also dry.  There was no toilet paper anywhere and it didn’t look like she’d gone potty yet.  She told me she DID need to go pee pee and as she sat on the the pot, I began my interrogation.

“Did you already go pee pee?”

“No.”

“Do you need to go?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get wet from? The sink or the potty?”

“The potty!”

And yet. There was no water splashed anywhere on the floor, her hands were dry, there was no water on the toilet seat.

She sat there a couple minutes but never did pee.  And I never could figure out how she got wet!  So we just changed her shirt and moved on.  But dangit if I wouldn’t like to know.  I was so curious I even SMELLED the shirt.  (I’m an ace sleuth after all.)  It didn’t really smell like pee.  Maybe there was just a little water on the bathroom floor?  I don’t know! The rest of that kiddo was bone dry!

So, Nancy and friends, where did the “mysterious wet” come from?

Post to Twitter

A Tale of Two Blues

As I write this, I am extremely sleep-deprived and my Frigidaire Affinity washer & dryer are working OVERTIME.  Why?  Because this morning at 12:30 a.m., I heard the unmistakable sound of puking over the monitor in Sophie’s room.  And, since we’d been to Cortney’s earlier in the afternoon where Sophie had consumed this navy blue cupcake, I KNEW it was going to be BAD!

It was baaaaaaad.  Navy blue puke everywhere.  On Sophie, for one, and in her beautiful hair, all over her PJ’s, her Dora sheets and pillow, her Eeyore blanket, and even some of her doll clothes for her Angelina Ballerina doll. (Not to mention the carpet, which my amazing husband steam-cleaned in the middle of the night AFTER we bathed Sophie.)

The Soph continued to spew blue (not the cupcake’s fault, I would like to say, she just got a bug somewhere) every 20-30 minutes for the next few hours.  Finally about four in the morning she was blued-out and nothing was left and then we got the neon-yellow bile.  She threw up continuously until 9 am, then things slowed down, but we still had several more incidents until 12:45 pm.  I would estimate she threw up about 20 times during that period. Poor Sophie, who until this had thrown up probably only 3 or 4 times in her entire life, was totally confused and traumatized!

So, like I said.  6th load of laundry in.  And I have at LEAST one more to go!  Including the jeans I am wearing.  (Hey, I have like, two pairs of maternity pants that fit!  I am desperate! Quick setting, quick setting!) We were completely out of clean towels by 7 am.  Did I mention how much I love the “quick” setting on my Frigidaire washer & dryer??

Pretty much all my favorite settings have applied throughout this day, especially Stain Clean and Sanitize! And since I have been awake now for oh…over 15 hours, I am very thankful that my Affinity dynamic duo are so easy to operate.  I haven’t managed to screw up any of said loads…and I am a walking zombie, or in this case, a “mombie” (as my friend Cherry likes to say.)  And the blue?  Is gone!  All of our laundry is blue-cupcake free.

So, I’ve been telling you about these great appliances for months now, and I think fate saw it fitting to give me something really EPIC to talk about for my GRANDE FINALE post!!  Ah, well.  Good enough.  The appliances were worth it!

And do you think it’s a coincidence that they are BLUE??

Blue looks GOOD on these machines!

_________________
This post was written as part of my involvement with Mom Central Consulting in the Frigidaire Test Drive Mom team. Frigidaire gave me an Affinity Washer and Dryer and I reviewed the heck out of them, and loved every minute of it!

Post to Twitter

You are DIRTY (or Makin’ It Work – Part DEUX)

So as I told you Wednesday, Emily and I and some other fab bloggers had a great night out with Tim Gunn thanks to the fabric care brands at P&G – Tide, Downy, and Bounce.  The next day (sans Emily, who felt the need to go to WORK – LAME!!!!!) we headed to one of P&G’s technical centers in Cincinnati for Fabric Care University to learn all about the science that goes into making these great products.  And Tim Gunn tooootallly sat with OUR table of cool OHIO girls at breakfast and we toootalllly gossiped about Project Runway and it was AWESOME!!!  But then he had to leave. :( Fortunately, the rest of the day did NOT disappoint!

Because we were in a super top-secret environment , we weren’t allowed to take pictures. SO you will have to settle for my brilliant word-pictures and this picture of me taken tonight after I got home from Target where I went specifically to purchase a bottle of Tide Coldwater Free HE!

Tide Coldwater for $3.64 at Target

You’re welcome. Yes, that’s right, I drank the kool-aid. I am really excited about saving energy by using Tide Coldwater and washing my stuff in cold rather than warm water. Because did you know that 80% of the energy used in doing laundry comes from heating the water?? ‘Tis TRUE! I’ve been wanting to make the leap to cold water washing for awhile, but I was too skeeered.  However, the good scientists at P&G convinced me that Tide Coldwater works!  So the leap has been made!

One thing about the good scientists at P&G – they are all REALLY EXCITED about inventing better ways to get our clothes clean. My favorite researcher was named Elaine.  She led several of the presentations and a tour of one of their labs that contained about 15 bazillion washing machines where they duplicate water quality from all over the world and figure out how to make the best detergents to get everyone’s clothes clean.  Elaine was SO enthusiastic and excited about her job.  It was awesome!  She was totally geeked out about fabric care innovation in a way that made us all geeked out too!  I LOVED her. I want her to come over and talk laundry with me over coffee.

One of the many eye-opening things that Elaine told us is that our bodies make 50 grams of soil a day.  That’s a handful of dirt coming off of ourselves A DAY!!!!!!!  I think I speak for everyone in the Fabric Care University when I saw “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!”  No wonder our clothes are so dirty!! And I won’t even go into the diagram they showed us that specified where all that body soil comes from. ICK. Just trust me, we are all dirty, dirty, dirty people.  And we get our clothes dirty!! And we need good fabric care!!

The other super-eye-opening thing I learned at Fabric Care University was all about how the different types of washers work.  I just got my new high-efficiency washer from Frigidaire (which I’ll be posting about next week, ohmygoodnessitissoooawesome) last week, so I was ALL EARS to learn about how HE’s work.  It was really cool to learn (I’ll share more of what I learned next week) and also to hear about how P&G works with washing machine manufacturer’s to make their detergents more effective.

As I mentioned, some of what we discussed was super-top-secret.  But I CAN tell you that Tide and Downy have some really exciting innovations coming up really soon.  They got ME excited about them and I know you’ll think they are really cool too.

Fabric Care University was amazing and really reinforced my Tide brand-loyalty.  I am excited to take the cold water plunge with Tide Coldwater and my new HE washer from Frigidaire and see how much water and energy I can save while still getting my laundry clean clean clean.  I will let you know how it goes!

Thanks so much to the great folks at P&G Fabric Care for putting on an amazing event and the hard-working team at DeVries PR who took such good care to make sure everything went smoothly.  I was so privilged to be a part of this event!

Post to Twitter