This is something a bit different and not at all art related so please bear with me. My sister in law Becky came up with this great website the other day and I want to share it with blogland. If you have someone you know who could use this site PLEASE feel free to forward this blog post on and the website info. The below text was written by Becky. Please stop by her great new site and check it out. I'm planning on using it because I have stuff all over the place!! :) Enjoy!
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I don't think any parent will argue when I say that the greatest education you will ever get comes when you have children. For instance, finding out just how many seconds of a parent's inattention it takes for a toddler to empty a whole bottle of baby powder on the new laminate flooring. Or, just how much milk an infant's stomach can hold and then expel in a fantastic yet horrific manner. Or how much everything goes up in price the minute you slap the word infant on it. Or how time seems to bend once you have kids. And by that I mean that no matter how much "extra" time you give yourself to get you and the kids out the door, you will never, ever, make it on time. Or just how a small amount of baby poo with its distinct texture and odoriferous emanation can bring a 6 foot man of steel to his knees, wretching and gagging in mere seconds. Yes, being a parent is the most valuable education one will ever receive. As my children grow, my education continues. It dumbfounds me at how these tiny people can continuously amaze every day with what they've learned without me realizing they have learned it. It also amazes me at how today's baby industry reaches into our pockets, getting us to spend more and more on items that we have to have. How does one survive today without a top of the line car seat or a reclining high chair? Well you don't. You take out a loan, maybe a second mortgage, sell some blood, or get a hold of one of those gold refiners we see on TV all the time now. (Just don't tell your husband).
Having children is not cheap. It's the absolute most rewarding experience but it is not cheap. Just recently, my husband and I found ourselves in the not so unique (I'm assuming we aren't the first to have this issue) position of having two baby monitors that were not made by the same company. Even though they had different channels to cut out static, we still could only get one channel to work at a time and therefore, only hear one of the kids at a time. I should mention that we have a 2 year old daughter and a 3 month old son at this time. So we still really need the monitors. We decided to invest in a new monitor, having to buy two so that we wouldn't have the channel issue again. Doing so made our current monitors useless. Well not useless. They could help collect some of the dust in our home and take a load off the piano. But, no, maybe someone else out there is looking for a baby monitor cheap. So I looked on a local website to see if anyone was in need and willing to pay a small amount for the monitor. I ended up getting in contact with a woman that needed a monitor as well as a "baby bumbo". In corresponding with her I learned that she, like us, had a huge need for baby items but lacked the corresponding amount of money. We struck a deal. I would give her the monitors and bumbo that we no longer used and she would give me a sit and stand stroller. No cash exchanged, no check writing, just a simple, yet very fruitful trade for both parties.
The day after this happened, I was up at 4am feeding our son when it hit me. There should be a website that simply trades baby items. Families would save so much money and would be able to clear items out that they didn't need anymore and get the things they did need. I got online and searched. Surely this wasn't an original idea I had. This has to exist in the vast universe that is the internet. I came up with nothing. There was one site in the UK that traded stuff but also sold stuff. Not good enough in my eyes. I wanted a strictly trading baby items site. And thus The Trading Baby was born. I went to Go Daddy, bought myself a domain and a website (for rather cheap I might add) and had it up and running within a couple hours. Then, to get the word out. Family and friends are the best advertisers in the world so I emailed everyone I knew and asked for help in getting The Trading Baby off the ground. I also went to Cafepress and opened a free shop. I created a support page on The Trading Baby that linked to the shop I created and voila, more advertising and a little financial support for the website.
So there. Just by having kids, I've been educated in love, odors, finances, insomnia, physics, creativity, website development, sales, time management, etc, etc, etc. And now, because of my children, I might be able to help 100's of families save a little money and still have what they need. Life is good. A little smelly some times, but good.
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