Children's Claritin Review

I recently received Children's Claritin as a part of a BzzCampaign. (If you'd like to learn more about being a Bzz Agent like I am, just go to www.bzzagent.com). I was anxious to try this allergy medicine on my tween son because he's always sneezing and clearing his throat with this snorting sound that makes him sound like a pig.

Getting him to take the medicine was no different than any other liquid medication. He hated the taste...but that's normal for my son. I loved that this medicine was active for 24 hours, so it's not something you have to try to remember to give them every few hours or so. Initially, I didn't really feel like the Claritin was working. I had my son take it 3 straight days in a row. I still didn't feel like it had done much because he was still sneezing a lot. However, when he stopped taking the medicine, he sneezed  lot more and that pig sound that I must have forgotten about, had come back.

My husband started dealing with allergy issues, so he decided to take the adult dosage (which is the same for children ages 6+) of the Children's Claritin. He said that the flavor wasn't bad, however, he didn't notice much of a change in his allergy symptoms after taking the medicine a couple of days in a row.

Overall, I would give this medicine about a 3 out of 5. It seems to work okay, but not as well as I would've expected from a major brand name such as Claritin.

My little Stinky Face has attended preschool since he first turned 3 years old. Lately though, God has been tugging at my heart, telling me that it is time to bring him home and start homeschooling him with my older child. Not long after I felt the Lord telling me this, my husband got a promotion, which means we will be selling our home and moving out of this school district. It's as if He was preparing me for this part of our journey. Stinky Face normally goes to school Tuesday through Friday, but I am now keeping him home about one extra day each week, to do school here at home. I think it's going to work out well. He's so eager to learn. He wants to be homeschooled! My only problem is getting him to stop! He throws a fit when I say that it's time to stop. He wants to continue on, trying to do things all by himself. But he needs my direction. Just looking at this picture, you can tell how focused and intentional he is. I love every moment of it!

This is the picture he was working so hard on. I think he's doing great for a 3 1/2 year old!  :0)

SCIENCE FUN

If you're anything like me, you wouldn't consider yourself to be crafty. And you wouldn't really enjoy science experiments where you have to run to different stores to gather up all of the material that you would need, then come home and spend hours on projects, tweaking them in your own way as you go along to see what else can happen. With this being said, I am so thankful to have found www.timberdoodle.com. This is the site where I ordered all of my 6th grader's curriculum and where I found the Big Bag of Science. 

It snowed on my stove!

This bag of science has seventy different experiments that we can do and almost everything we need is in the bag! The first experiment we did was Fake Snow. We've had a very mild winter this past year, so this was the closest we could get to the real thing. All we had to do was take this powder and mix it with water and wallah! Simple and fun! 

Stinky Face playing with the snow!

ANATOMY EDIBLE CELL SCIENCE PROJECT

This is our cell (jello, with a little bit of frost from being in the back of the refrigerator).

Adding in the parts that make up a cell (candy).

G.Q. chewing on centrioles (sour candy strips).

The final cell. I'm not sure what I did wrong because it didn't completely hold together. That didn't matter though. G.Q. still enjoyed this project very much and it helped reinforce his understanding of cells.

My son invented a game that we can't get enough of. It's SO simple that even our 3 year old caught on and plays along. The whole idea is to get someone to say the word "what". When they do, you tell them that they have the word. This is harder than you might think. All he has to do to get me to say it, is catch me off guard and say, "Mom". I respond with "What?", without even thinking most of the time. I like to get him back by saying a bunch of gibberish. He has no idea what I said, so of course he'll say, "What?", and then I will answer back with, "You have the word". Give it a try and let me know what your family thinks of this silly game!

 I left the laptop open while I went to the bathroom and this is what I found when I came back! My son can be so sweet. It's moments like these that makes me feel like, maybe I'm not such a bad mom after all!  :0)

In homeschool science, we are learning more about the skeletal system. Here is an experiment that my son did:

Shape a human (or other creature) from a lump of clay. Give it long, thin legs and arms; put a head on it's shoulders. Go ahead and squish the head flat because that's what your head would look like if you did not have a skull. (My son didn't want to smash his creature.) Now see if the figure can stand up on its own. If you made your figure correctly, it will not be able to stand.

Next, break a few toothpicks into different sizes. Insert the toothpick pieces inside your figure like bones. (Creature without toothpicks is on left, being held up by creature with toothpicks on the right.) The toothpicks are like bones in the clay figure's skeleton. They gave it support so it could stand up.

A poem I wrote to Jesus this morning...

I need more of You
And less of me
More peace of mind
And less anxiety

I want to trade in
My tears, heartache and pain
For Your joy that floods over me
Like a down-pouring rain

Lord take away
All my selfish ambition
As I seek Your face
For the one true mission

As I die to my old
Prideful ways
I ask You to mold me God
I am Your clay

Help me to start
Each day with You
To walk away from distractions
As I seek out the truth

My heart is broken, but I STAND, trusting God that He is moving on my behalf and on behalf of my family. I have seen first hand what addiction does to people and it terrified me. How can people who wake up the next day and not remember most of the day before, claim that everything is fine and that there is no problem? How can you say you love your child, but put pills and other terrible things before them? That is NOT love! I have done all that I know to do to help, but help can only go so far when someone is not willing to change. Now it is in God's hands, right where this situation belongs. I release it to my Heavenly Father!

I've had a pretty emotional day. I finally made it to the tax office today to figure out our tax returns. And while I feel extremely blessed that we are actually getting money back for both federal and state, I'm really bummed that we won't get enough to pay for a Florida vacation. My parents are down there for several months and I was really looking forward to seeing them again. I had it all planned out. My husband was going to spend just a week there and I was going to stay for 3 full weeks with the kids. I guess God has something better prepared for us here. We are trying to live by Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover plan, so I know that the Lord will bless us for being good servants with his money. I'm looking forward to seeing how He will multiply what He's given us!

Memories of my Favorite Preacher

I grew up in a Pentecostal church. In fact, my grandmother was the preacher. She was truly one of the most wonderful people I have ever known. Thinking about her the other day, brought me back to her church in downtown Cincinnati. I was about 11 years old at the time. I loved to sing, so my mom and I would always get up there and sing songs together. We would always sing, "Children go where I send thee. How will I send the oh, I'm gonna send thee four by four. Four were the four who stood at the door. Three were the Hebrew children. Two were Paul and Silas. One was the little bitty baby. Born of the virgin Mary. Down, down, down in Bethlehem.". This wasn't just any church, but a spirit-filled church. And my Mamaw didn't try to hide anything. Those doors were always open. I remember people running out into the streets, filled with the Holy Spirit. They'd run back in, run up and down the aisles and even jump over the chairs.

There were points where I doubted some of the things that were going on. I thought people were just acting, trying to please God. It's funny that I thought this, because many of these things were also happening to me. But I was a kid. Wasn't running around with a joyful spirit just normal? My biggest doubt though was when people fell out in the spirit. This also happened to me, but I could've sworn someone was down there pushing on my legs. Here's what happened on the day that I discovered that me falling out in the spirit was very real and it was definitely from God.

I went to church as usual, but I was sick and tired of wondering who gets down on the floor and pushes on my knees when I'm standing up front getting prayed over. I determined that this time, I would peak! So here I am with my arms up in the air and my eyes closed. There are people all around me speaking in tongues. And then I felt it. Somebody was down there tapping on my knees. So I peaked! It scared me half to death when I realized there was no one there. And then I immediately fell out in the spirit! I praise God for that moment. I had a major increase in my faith that day and it has stuck with me for my entire life.

I thank the Lord for a grandmother such as mine. She opened so many doors for me and taught me so much about Him. This story is just one of the great memories that her memory blesses me with.

THE SCHEDULE THAT IS CHANGING MY LIFE

I'm a very busy mom of two boys with very different lives. One is a tween and I homeschool him. The other is 3 1/2 and he goes to preschool during the day. Outside of homeschool, I go to the gym, spend daily time with the Lord, manage the preschooler when he's home, clean the house and keep a close watch on our money because we are doing Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover".  I also sing at church with our frontline and our choir. We have practices one night a week and I will be singing at least every 3rd week, both on Sundays and Wednesdays. I will also be working with K-5th graders at church to teach them three songs that they'll be singing for Easter. I love to sing and I love kids!!! I also have my own business, which I absolutely love. I have 89 people on my team and I'm trying to be a better leader for them, but sometimes it's tough to balance everything. There's so much more that I do, but I don't want to bore you with anymore details.

The reason I said all of this is to help you understand that I have a LOT to balance. I've always wanted to stick to a schedule, but thought it was just a lack of discipline that was stopping me. I've recently discovered that wasn't the problem at all. I don't know how many times I wrote out a general, weekly schedule. I would block off so many hours a day for my business, homeschool, church, etc. During those blocked off hours, things just weren't getting done like I wanted them too.

Here's what I finally found that works for me and I hope that it will be of help to you.

My new schedule has my entire day planned off in half hour time slots. I only plan one day at a time, the night before. This is very important for me. My husband's work schedule changes every day, so this is a major reason that what works one day, may not work the next. Another thing that has been a tremendous help for me is being very specific on what I'm doing during each half hour. So, instead of just saying "homeschool", I would write "Spelling & Grammar" in on a 1/2 hour time slot. Instead of saying "work on business", I would say "make calls to book parties". If I'm not able to finish something during that time frame, I stop anyway. I can either finish later in one of my free spots where I've marked something like lunch break, or if something else doesn't take the full 1/2 hour I can finish then...or if all else fails, I transfer it over to tomorrow's list.

With this new system, I've had more energy because I'm intentional on getting to the gym and starting my day with it nonetheless. I also get more accomplished in one day than I would've have done in a month. No joke!

I would love to hear your experiences with schedules and how you try to keep life balanced. Feel free to leave your comments below.