What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood | Parenting Tips From Funny Moms

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Super-Secret Amazing Things We Want You To Know About

by What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood
November 25th 2020
00:47:14
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We asked all of you to tell us your super-secret awesome things: the life simplifiers that you think everyone else needs to know about. This episode has an incredible collection of indispensable cond... More
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you beep boop boop on the outside. What fresh hell Laughing in the face of motherhood. It was like a rotting whale carcass of a stool with Margaret Apples and Amy Wilson. Is that a of the scissors. A podcast that solves today's parenting dilemmas. So you don't have Thio. I'm sorry. Yeah, Yeah, I'm there. Hey, everybody. Welcome to what? Fresh Hell, This is Amy, and this is Margaret. And guys today we are discussing the super secret things that on Lee you know about. They're not gonna be secret anymore. No, the secrets out. We I don't remember how this idea came to me, but I guess it came to me, really, with the light board, which I have talked about probably too much on the podcast you haven't talked about in the podcast you talked about in the group. I guess maybe that's true. So come to our Facebook group facebook dot com forward slash What? Fresh hell podcast. And you could find the group from there. And I

got from my sister for my middle child who was into art at the time. A light board. It looks like an iPad, but it doesn't do anything except for light up bright Lee. Does it light up bright Amy or brightly? Depends on if you're writing a song about it or just talking about it. It's a song lyric. You have to do light up right. It lights up very lightly. It's bright and you put a drawing like a print out from the computer like, say, you know, a picture of Bambi and then you put another piece of paper on top and you can trace the picture that you've printed out, and it doesn't have to just be like a black and white. It could be my son has gotten way into it. My oldest and he's into fortnight. And so he printed out pictures of all the fortnight characters, and now he has his hand drawn drawings of the fortnight characters. And I will say this is a guy who has always really struggled with his fine motor skills. And so his handwriting is illegible and kind of slopes up, slows down. I mean

, it's a bit of a hot mess Express, and I always was kind of like Go arts, not this kid's thing. But we'll figure out what is this kid's thing? And it turns out, I mean, he will draw on this thing for a very, very long time every day, and it's the greatest, and I've never heard of it before, and I thought to myself. Why am I the only one who knows about the awesomeness of the super secret thing the light board costs? I want to say under 30 bucks and it has given us a million hours of entertainment. So we asked the listeners in our Facebook group, What are the super awesome things that you think more people should know about? And we got so many answers. So I've collected them all. I'm gonna put the links to the things we're gonna talk about today up on our show page At what? Fresh hell podcast dot com. Ah, lot of them are Amazon links. And if you using Amazon link, we'll get a couple of cents. We'll get a little kickback. But I want to encourage you in this holiday season. If you see something you like, you can also call the local hardware store

, you know, variety, store, and see if they have it and give the local people business. And I'm not saying you have to buy everything on Amazon. It'll be a good way to find some of these awesome things we're gonna talk about today. Exact same A. Alright, lead us off. I've let us off with the light board. What is Amy, your super secret thing? I wanted to start with stuff for us because we're always talking about the kids. This is stuff that makes our lives easier. I mean, maybe his parents and maybe Justus people. So this is something that it's a gift wrap cutter from Scotch like Scotch tape. 3 a.m. They made a gift wrap cutter, and it is this gadget that I've had for about 15 years, and I hide it so nobody else can. Someone else will take it, and I need to know exactly where it is, because when it's time to wrap eight birthday presents or 30 Christmas presents or what have you? It's almost like a razor, but it's in between two things, and you can slice the gift wrap so perfectly and so cleanly it saves you like if it's Christmas time and you got a lot of presents to wrap. If you feel me, this will save you 90 minutes by itself. This'd I can really

see being like giving you joy. Chills like cutting perfect wrapping paper is such a gift to your spirit and soul. Well, it's like it's not even that. It's straight. Its's of the scissors. It just takes so long. And this goes, It's so fast it saves you like 90 seconds per present. My kids have an expression. There's a lot of YouTube videos now, even for kids that are just like it's like those cakes where they pour the glaze and it looks really perfect. And they call them satisfying videos. Or it's like, you know, something that's gets cut slowly, perfectly. I think they call it A S M. R. It gives you that certain tingly, happy feeling when you see yes, things being like sliced or cut in a very specific way. And I can exactly picture getting that feeling by being like like a razor and cutting. I can picture it. It's like a little pacman, right? But there's a razor. It's one of these things were apparently they don't make it anymore, so you can still get it up. But put the link up on the show page. People like, Why did they stop making this? It's the most amazing thing. Yes

, it is, and you could still get it fab. Caroline says the bug bite thing is her thing. it's actually called this the bug bite thing. It's a game changer, she says. This makes bug bites disappear, assumes you notice a bite or feel the itch. It's like a suction thing, and you put it on there and it sucks out. The venom and the bite in the itch are gone, she says. I use it in my infant. It's reusable forever. I have used it to get out splinters, and I buy them in six pack so I can give them to everybody. I know I am so glad she brought this up because I have two Children who are wildly susceptible to bug bites. I mean, is this a myth that bugs like some people, more mosquitoes? I don't think it's that they like people. I think that's the math. But I mean, some people react more. Some people have more histamine production or something, because when we were on the RV trip, my father in law and one of my sons got no bug bites and then three of us looked like we had some sort of pox, you know, we were covered head to toe in these giant welts, and then

all of us including myself, were scratching them badly and ending up with, like, scabs. And it was gross. But we were really itchy. And so I constantly am running around with that little. It's like a Benadryl type cream. You know, it's supposed to take the chow cortisone cream. I want the bug bite thing and I'm gonna order it. It's cheap to page. This is an amazing one. She uses these stretchy dining chair slipcovers. Oh, I just bought one Northern Brothers dining shirt. Slipcovers. These the ones you have their stretchy I don't know. I didn't pay attention. The brand I just bought them these air stretchy dining chair slipcovers that come in like 26 colors and prints. She used them for her counter stools. You can use them for high back dining chairs to they look great and they're like $25 for a set of four, and they completely cover your dining chair so your kids don't wipe their hands on your good upholstery. We have three bar stool chairs because we have, ah, countertop, you know, in the kitchen where we have all of our meals basically

and they are the bane of my existence to clean. They're just constantly coated in goo. And then I go and do a deep dive and, like scrape and clean them for four hours. And then two seconds later they look exactly the same. And so I'm getting these episodes going to cost me a me oh, it costs. May I bought all these things, Yes, but I had another bar stool that was patted and the side had started peeling off and my kids would sit at my computer in the kitchen and peel it while they sat there. And so it was like a rotting whale carcass of a stool, and I was about to throw it away. And then I think I saw Facebook out for one of those covers, and I covered it, and it's exciting and new. Come aboard. It's expecting you, Amy. It's amazing. Jen says. You could just use pillowcases on the backs of chairs. She uses those when her kids around, and just for the pillow cases in the wash. So you don't even need to buy the slipcovers other. These slipcovers, I will say, look a lot better than you would think they would. I think that and the slipcovers. There is something because we have

one thing I enjoy about having whatever my kids are 89 and 12. I did find living in the house where everything was like rubberized. And there was, you know, pillowcases on everything and towels on the couch. I found that depressing. I think I might invest in just like three slipcovers for our stools and call it a day rather than stare at pillowcases. Right the coffee table with the bumpers on it, like it's a season of your life that you want to move past when your kids air 8 to 12 years old. Yeah. Don't pretend you've moved past that stage. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not so precious and princess see, but I'll tell you what. I want that, Meghan, this is one that I Absolutely yes, this is a game changer. No tie, shoe laces. They are stretchy, so they turn any pair of tie shoes and to slip on and slip off. These are crucial because it means your kids can put them on without tying their shoes. But they're also if you have the kind of kid who shoes, they're always getting untied and they're not really noticing or retiring them, and they

walk around with their shoes untied on the way to school. Get these shoe laces because they never come untied their a game changer and you can get them in. You know any color you need. You can get black ones for their dress shoes. You could get white ones for their sneakers. They're fabulous, and I will say none of my kids know how to tie their shoes. My 12 year old has finally mastered it, but it's because I just with three closely spaced kids and trying to get out the door. I couldn't be bothered. And embarrassingly I had to sit my 11 year old down and be like, Here's how to tie a pair of shoes. But guess what? He figured it out. He knows how to do it now. It's a life skill you could pick up in about five minutes, so don't worry about it. It's like, I mean, this does sort of delay that they need to tie shoes, but they need to tie shoes again and again and again, and this makes it so you're just not worrying about that because soccer cleats Meghan mentions, and that was our problem. I had a soccer player who was playing soccer on the field with the cleats untied every five minutes. This solved that problem nice. I like Lisa. We have definitely shared this tip in the old time ease episodes. Good night's disposable

bed mats lay one on the mattress under each of my kids bedsheets. If they have an accident, it's a quick change the sheets and then back to bed. Know what mattress? And we could take this up a notch. We could level up from this, which is bed mat sheet. So if there's an accident, you take the top sheet off and the bed mat and then the bed's still made and then you wash it and do it again. There's no making of bed when it's dark outside. When it's night. Night time, that was. I don't remember where I had that revelation, but yeah, we definitely talked about that triple. Make the beds, and then if there's a problem, you can unmake just the top layer and then you clean that and then it's good to go. Brilliant. Seems to me that this is sort of always a good thing as long as it's not one of these crinkly loud. But that's why wouldn't you always have this over your mattress so as not to run a mattress when you know the stomach flu comes or whatever? Oh, the stomach flu. Please don't come. Make the mattress out of the good night's disposable bed. Matt. Make every surface in your home out of that surface and you'll never

despair again. Brooke has a sort of corollary to my gift wrap cutter. She uses the canary cardboard cutter. She says she could make your kid to play house with doors and windows in five minutes and then he'll planet all afternoon. Very handy to have around. But then I loved Melanie's. Melanie leveled Brooks Canary cardboard, cut her house up by saying, Use principal shipping labels. And then you can go on Google images And just like your kid is printing pictures of a fortnight guy or whatever. You can print pictures of, say, the controls of a spaceship or whatever, whatever your kid wants and then print the labels and then they go on the house, and then you're not like trying to draw spaceship for your kid. It's just all there already. Yeah, Google images. It's also slightly dangerous. So you have to with supervision on Lee with supervision. I definitely remember my kids being gathered around and saying something about like they wanted a bomb picture. And I was like, Whoa, before we put that in Google images, let me be here, you know? So it's like thing. It's not necessarily just adult topics. It's

, you know, you gotta watch some of the things that, like spaceship, you know, you might not get images that you want to deal with, Heidi says. Raku Remote app on my phone. So a bedtime when they won't turn the TV off, I turn the router off. Ha ha. Guess the Internet doesn't work. Brilliant. Have you ever seen the thing where it's like people have the scrambler so that if people are talking loud on a cell phone, I don't know if they work anymore? But it was like a thing. I feel like I saw it virally back in the day, like it was a thing that could scramble cell phone signals so people couldn't talk on their cell phones. Well, yeah, it's like if you're sitting on the train and the person excuse like. And another thing that but I worked in a room around. They're going on. You hit this little button and it makes your cellphone turn off. I don't know. There's definitely certain restaurants, right? I've definitely been in places like Oh, come on, mysteriously just in here. My data plan doesn't work. I think it still exists. This is brilliant, though. I've never occurred to me that you could do this to keep the TV from working. I like Gina style a lot. She sleeps in her workout clothes for her five AM work out. The only thing I cannot

come around to in this post is a 5 a.m. workout. But God bless you, Gina. I mean, God bless you. It would not happen. Otherwise. I'm not gonna lie. Your kids can sleep in there close to if they're, You know, if it's late, whenever my kids stay up late, I'm gonna put your school clothes on and get in bed, you know, and especially if we have to travel, You know, you have that 8 a.m. Flight. So you got to get up at 4. 30 and start moving sleep in your clothes? Yes, one of my remote learners. I won't say which one has a habit of showering after school and then getting in the clothes for the next morning, right around 4 p.m. And then just rolling through until 3:30 p.m. The next day. When they get back in the shower, I'll take it. I mean, if the showers happening works fine for May, I have absolutely no disagreement with that. I have a remote learner who has become semi feral during this time, and he never wears a shirt. I mean, he just never has a shirt on. He just likes to roll shirtless. They don't care on the classroom. Zoom. Oh, no, no, no. He has to put it on for Zoom. So But it has

become just a family because on the family resumes and whenever anyone, I mean he is shirtless 24 hours a day. Except for then suddenly, there's a mad dash of like, Oh, no, I have to be on a zoom. Where's my shirt? I'm laughing, imagining, like if there was a zoom background that was actually a zoom foreground so he could just sort of arranged himself behind like a picture of, ah, you know, polo shirt. So he has a nice there is such a thing because we just did. Oh, let me tell you, this is a super secret thing and we just did a virtual escape room. Amy, do you know what that is? I only know because you told me, but I think that sounds amazing. This is a super secret fun thing. So the company that we used was called perusal dot com p a r u z a l. And it's a zoom. It's like a regular escape room where there's locks and the team has to solve it and get out of the room in an hour. It's a virtual version, and my sister set us up with it, and I was like, I don't know, It's so much fun because my family's consuming so much. It's like, well, basically just telling each other plots of TV shows we've seen at this point there's nothing else to

say. And this is like the whole family gets together. And it was just silly fun. And but all this to say it was a nautical theme, and one of my nieces had a full Pirates outfit on. That was a zoom front filter like you're talking about. That's a super secret. Awesome thing. Yeah, if you upgrade zoom, you get like funny hats and glasses and stuff. So that's another super secret thing. We'll be right back. Amy Choosing between what's best for your baby and what's best for your wallet. Never been my strong suit. Not so easy. No, I recall spending more of my infant daughter's Easter outfit than I did on my own. I mean, we got cute pictures, but still, luckily, hello, Bello is here. Toe. Lighten the load on your bank account by offering premium baby products at affordable prices. Hello, bellows Diaper Bundling service lets you choose from over 20 different fund rotating designs. Each bundle comes with seven packs of diapers, four packs of plant based wipes and a special

freebie with your first order guys. Thoughts and prayers to all of you still dealing with diapers. I do not miss those days. If you go to hell, Abello dot com slash laughing. You'll get 25% off your diaper bundle order. That's a huge bang for your buck and a lot of potential blowouts saved. That's hello. Bellow dot com slash laughing to start bundling with 25% off your order, plus, get 15% off any add ons like vitamins or wipes. Don't forget, that's hello. Bellow dot com slash laughing. I have two teenage boys to feed, so when it comes time for dinner, I'm always grateful when it's a hello fresh night. Not only does Hello fresh, let me skip trips to the grocery store. It has lower prices for their larger box sizes, so more servings means more savings. You've heard us talk about Green Chef, and we really liked them, too. And that's because Hello Fresh owns Green Chef, which allows them to offer a wider array of meal plans to choose from and us to offer discounts on both Hello Fresh offers more than 20 chef crafted delicious options every week to help you break out of your recipe, right

, try new things and make any night feel special. We made the salsa roja chicken enchiladas this week. They were so good we want sort of like a medium spicy version. It was a total crowd pleaser. We love a crowd pleaser. Keep your fridge stocked by adding extra meals or additional proteins, quick meals like breakfast on the go or their 10 minute lunches and even deserts. To satisfy that sweet tooth, go to hello, fresh dot com slash 80 laughing and use the code 80 laughing to get $80 off, including free shipping. Oh, you heard us. That's $80 off when you goto Hello. Fresh dot com slash 80 laughing and use the code. 80 Laughing Amy, What's a super secret thing just for you? Mike's Hot Honey. Oh, baby, do you love it? Amy, I know that secret as well. It's so good. I don't know where I saw it. It was one of those impulse buys. I know where you saw it because I bet you saw at the same place I saw it, which is Hello, Fresh maybe. Oh, and then they had. It is like a side. That's where I found out about it. They put it, they had it in one

of the dinner packs. And let me tell you, it's life transforming Mike's hot honey. It's just honey that they sort of I don't know. They distill I don't They got a little Sarasota in it or something. It's like they caught pepper in, but just a little. It's so good in T u T But honey and taste, This is like honey with a little kick. I would have never thought of that. I mean, I'm sorry to younger. Yeah, I'm there. You just shocked me when you said you were putting it in tea. I make like a chicken breast. Put little sour cream on it, put panko on it and then, you know, do it in the oven. So it's like quote unquote. It's baked fried chicken, kind of breaded chicken. And then I just do a drizzle of hot honey. On top of that, it's amazing. Steaks. You could eat it on anything. It's good on, like toast with peanut butter. Hot honey. Yeah, it's good hot, honey. Guys, I feel that is a super secret thing, and Mike's Hot Honey is not sponsoring us. And yet, if they would love to sponsor our entire podcast for the rest of our lives, we would talk about nothing but Mike's hot on the hot honey because we love it. I have something

that, like I would never have thought you were definitely gonna laugh at me when I say this, and I never would have thought that they'd be so great. And they're so great. My sister got these for me for my birthday. Sasha Dish towels. These are made out of sorry's like Indian saris by women who were sort of rescued from horrible circumstances in India, and they now make leftover saris into dish towels and, you know, tea cozies and things like that. They are the most beautiful, colorful things to have, like lying around in your counter. They're beautiful, and they soak up more water than anything I've ever used. Like my sister said that you will love these dish towels. And I was like, Oh, I guess I love these dish towels. They're an amazing, amazing gift Or just seriously just get him for yourself because they're pretty and they make your kitchen slog a little more pleasant. This is the kind of thing that, like you're not into it, and then all of a sudden you see it and you're like, I can't live without it. I'm a believer. He's the best dish, Emma says, a coffee

warmer. I was just gifted this for my birthday. and it is a game changer. I have it plugged in on the corner where I inevitably end up setting my coffee when someone screams and poof, No more cold coffee that gets microwave six times before I finally drink it, I will add an addendum to this. My dad is the ultimate dude who has everything, right? Every birthday, every If you're like every dude, is there another like, long biography of a past president? Or is it a sweater? Like I just feel like his gifts are so lame. But I will say I got him last year for Christmas and it was not cheap. It was I spent I want to say like, 70 bucks. So it wasn't a, you know, stocking stuffer type gift. It was his main gift, a smart coffee mug. So rather than it being a coffee warmer, it's a mug that keeps the liquid inside at whatever temperature you choose. Like you beat Boop boop on the outside. It literally has an app on your phone. Oh, my gosh. That you program the mug to keep the temperature. I mean, it is truly the gift for the person who has everything and it is probably a level

of civilization that we should not have achieved, which is like I can have an app that keeps my coffee at exactly the same temperature. But let me tell you, my dad loved this gift. It was such a hit. I'm going to get at least one of those things and maybe both. Both the coffee warmer and the smart mug from my spouse, because the one thing he can't stand is coffee. Like, what's the boiling point? 212 F. He wants his coffee to be like 211.5 degrees Fahrenheit and goes to all sorts of length, but it doesn't actually have a warmer. Yeah, I feel that my t experience. I don't drink coffee, and I don't drink tea with honey in it, as we've already established. But my T experience is I like cradling the mug and waiting for it to come to the perfect temperature and like taking little sips. And then it's finally at the right temperature, so I don't feel that maybe a warmer I don't know, but it's not super appealing to me, but there might be someone in your life. Who is looking for this? Julie recommended thes, and I had to look them up because I didn't know what they were. A rocket eBook Erase a ble notebooks. They're pretty cool and putting

the link up on the show pay just to something else you could get for, like the person who has everything, particularly somebody who is is either an artist or has to do a lot of like sketching on the ghost stuff for their work. It's special, I don't know. It's some kind of polymer. You have to use a special pen with it, and then it gets automatically turned into PDFs and scannable notes that you can save to Evernote or whatever you like to use. And then you just wipe the page clean with a damp paper towel and you can use it over and over again. It's one of those things that from the outside I'm like, Okay, that sounds like it could be kind of a fun kind of party trick thing, But several people responded in the threat on our Facebook group to say, like, yes, this the rocket book changed my life. Yeah, I feel like this is a product that I've been after for 20 years, and now I've kind of given up on it. I finally have moved enough to Computer Dog chased the car because I caught the car like I used to always. We've talked about this. I always had paper calendars and I was like, I like my paper calendars and Amy finally got under my skin and in my

DNA and also between the podcast and my other work and stuff, I just got to a point where I was missing stuff because it was in my calendar, and now everything goes in my phone. I feel like I missed my window for this, but maybe not Carly says Amy. And I know you and I could talk about this before I say this. Please, Amy, let's not let this podcast derail at this point, but I am going to bring this up. Seduced on stars. The seven day she says, I got a seven day free trial toe. Watch it. Ah ha. So it is. We were talking about the vow, which was the HBO version, and now there's another whole documentary about Nexium. OnStar's called Seduced, and when I saw that this was coming out. I'm like, Okay, I'm not watching another one. And then a friend of ours, who I really respect was like, No, no, no, no. It's better. You don't understand. You may, if you're like me already have stars and your cable package and just not even know it. That was what I discovered. Like, Oh, I have stars, so I watched it. But you can also get a seven day free trial if you liked the vow, but found it a little lacking, as I did by the end. Then

you should actually I'm shocked. I'm saying this watch seduced also because it fills in all these blanks. I'm telling you, it's just there are certain topics. And we've discussed this aim and I offline for which I have. There is no association point, you know, like I could probably watch 16 Mawr documentaries about Nexium. I'm fascinated by certain topics, and there will never be enough podcasts for me about the weird things people get into around like cults. And I mean, I haven't endless. I have an insatiable appetite for such content. So if someone wants to make 5th, 6th, 7th next time, documentaries I'm here for it. That's all I'm saying. Or just start another cult. We can learn about that one. Yeah, Or if you'd like to just start a cult or, ah, high control group of any kind. Please make a podcast while you're doing it because I can't get enough. We have a bookshop. It's up on bookshop dot or GIF. You go there and you to search. What fresh hell you confined our bookstore And on there is

every guest we've ever had on the show, but also just books that we like. I have throw them on the list in any way. Lawrence. Right, Going clear. It's a book about Scientology. It's like 600 pages long. It's like one of my top five books I ever read. I loved it so much. If this stuff interests you, it's just unpacking of the crazy. That's really, really gratifying. And while you're there, go down the Lawrence Wright rabbit hole. He's got, like, six books that air Justus Good. Have you read them all in me? I have read more than one I'm trying to think about. The other ones are about. There's one about O. J. The Run of its life. There's one about maybe Jean Monet, like all the like things. You're like, Oh, all the things they've made successful documentaries about. He's written like a slightly intellectual research book about And let me tell you, I just can't get enough. I want to talk about something that I didn't know that we needed to talk about. But so many women on our Facebook page talked about it that I feel like I have to talk about it. Wow, big lead up. Where we going? Amy, I'm gonna call it the Diva Cup just to keep things sufficiently vague because some people have this on with their kids around it in the house and stuff. I kind

of know what those are. I kind of know what? Therefore, Martina said that her cup has been a game changer for the monthly flow, that she has less cramps. It's easier on the environment. She start her daughter to use one. They're not an easy item to suggest to friends, even though I love mine and like same thing, it was like the rocket book notebook times 10 people were like yes, yes, amazing, amazing. This is not the Christmas gift. Probably. You probably aren't going to wrap this one up and put it under the tree. But I was sort of like, Oh, those Yeah, those were pretty fringe like I like the environment, but not that much. But everybody there were many, many people in our Facebook group was like, You don't understand what a game changer thesis and somebody suggested a quiz that you could take. Put a cup in it dot com slash quiz that you could go to that and you can figure out which cup might be right for you. And I'm telling you if, like, 10 people hadn't said no, no, no, this really is the thing you can't live without. Then I might not have mentioned it, but from what I hear, guys, this is something we need to look into. I'm down. Yeah, good for you, right? I mean

, I don't use one, but I would definitely look into it. That's like a oldie thing of mine that I'm like a certain technology. I passed me by, but this might be worth examining a little bit more. Christina says that you're supposed to use camomile tea bags like lie down and just put them on your eyes. Did this one because I was having a real like the skin around my eyes was getting really, really irritated, and the camomile tea bags actually helped calm it down. Let's move on to boredom busters, Amy. Okay, this is something I learned about on the podcast table. Topic cards. You heard about it from me. And Stephanie likes him, too. I love them. I can't say enough about them. It's like a little box of questions, and we do one every night at the dinner table. I have one guy who is a Hoover. We call him. He's a vacuum cleaner eater. He'll sit down and like junk and then literally three minutes later, can I be excused after eating four helpings of food in two seconds? And so we've been trying toe work, keeping him at the table longer and slowing down. And we've always done best part of your day worst part of your day. But you, as the kids have gotten older, that's

fallen away a little bit, But this is a nice next step, so it's just a box of cards and has topics on it. Last night ours was what things are better old than knew. That was the question eso I talked about how I wore my mom's wedding dress at my wedding, and, you know, it's just a story I'd never told the kids before. What do they care? What? I got married And but, you know, we had one that, like it's just simple kind of fun questions, but they're pretty interesting and insightful. I like to bring these sometimes, like if you're going over to somebody's house for dinner, somebody's hosting you for I don't know, like weekend or whatever. Like these air a great sort of bottle of wine alternative to bring with you because they're really inexpensive and everybody's like, Oh, what's this? And then they'll come back to you later, Like those were really fun. They're great. Lillian has in this category, the game spot it, which I think I've seen. It's like cards, and you've got to find the things on the card, she says. Great family time. Easy for anyone to play. Even teens get into it for loud restaurants and boring moments. Yeah, I see people. It's like a car thing Sometimes I think, And then Melissa says Per plexus Puzzle

ball. Never heard of it. It keeps feel fairly quiet. They take a long time. We have family tournament so everyone gets in on the action. I put the link up and the show page at what? Fresh hell podcast dot com. It's like a ball about the size of a soccer ball that you hold. And it's just like one of those puzzles where you have to get the tiny little ball bearing down the slide and into the whole kind of thing. But that time's taken to like an incredible level of complexity. Not sure how I would feel about that looks like a great kids of all ages. Kids of all ages love it, all right. We'll be right back. When your kids sleep better, you sleep better. That's why Purple has launched their new kid mattress, kid pillow, mattress protector and kid friendly sheet sets, all with the right match of comfort and durability. Purple mattresses are seriously comfortable, thanks to their innovative comfort grid. The kid mattress and purple kid pillow are made with a softer, smaller version of that comfort grid toe offer the best support for small sleepers, their software. You want them firm where you need them and keep you cool at night

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life you imagined. I'm wearing my husband's crisp white Oxford tucked into my favorite jeans because I find it so fashion forward with this simple necklace and this statement belt buckle. Then you had kids. I'm wearing my husband's kids to shirt from 1989 without abroad because I'm once again behind. I'm laundry. The life you imagined. I don't like to plan my weekends, but it's like to take each day as it comes and meet each possibility for adventure. Sometimes it's fun to just take a drive to a nearby town and spend the day exploring. Then you had kids. If we get up no later than 5 a.m. we could get Spencer to the hockey rink by six, and then we'll get some fast food breakfast for the other two because Isabella needs to be a Girl Scouts no later than eight. Then if you pick up Spencer, I could get Owen to his 10 AM soccer in time while you shop for presents for the afternoon round of birthday parties. Life you imagined? One thing I've learned to focus on is me time. Whether that's relaxing over a smoothie in the paper for an hour. Each morning we're

taking it comes stroll in the woods. I just understand that if I don't put myself first, I'm no good to anyone else. Then you had kids. Mommy is using the bathroom. Can you give me a minute? This is Ben. The life you imagined. Then you had kids from the What fresh hell. Podcast. Amy, we're back. What's next? What else have we got? Well, we have some improbable kid favorites. Love it, you know, because we we do because happy kids happy mom. So let's talk about the things that make kids happy that you might not have thought about, Lauren says. A dollar store helium balloon with a long string. My four year old and one year old have played with this balloon every single day since the first week of September. How is it still inflated? After all of this time? I think it might be one of those weird, like space age silver ones. Those could hold whatever's inside them. A chemical, I agree. A single balloon, even regular balloons

. Every once in a while you blow one of those up and throw it in the middle of, you know, the mix. Even my big kits will still play. Keep the balloon off the floor for a while. Kayla leveled this up and she said, Actually, anything from the dollar store is good. I bought a pack of sponges, and it has brought me at least an hour of time of happy toddler. Love it. Love it, Tammy says. Add water. We've heard this advice before, guys. Right? My kids were nine and 12, and this still works. Kid A isn't a bad mood or board bath time. Sprinkler water table hose, water guns, hot tub, swimming pool jumping in puddles. Foot soak popsicles washed the dog. We got it. It's water. Yeah, and I think that's a fun one. It's a good piece of advice. L. A. Has some good ones here. Make a disco bath, make a color bath with every toy you confined in that color. We've talked about Lego baths on this show. Legos hold up very well in the bathtub, she says. Sometimes I can even secretly look at my phone or finish a drink at the temperature. It was intended to be Ellis a glow stick baths also work, which is interesting, but I do have a cautionary tale

about you know, those glow sticks that you get at the Fourth of July or whatever. My birthday party, which you were actually at. We had glow sticks and stuff because it was outside in the summertime and we let the kids are run around with them. That was a really fun party. It was a really fun party until the next morning, when the finish was coming off of my dining room table and it was like what happened? It was a glow stick that it started to leak. And then, you know, one of the kids at the party was like, this glow stick is broken and just put it in the dining room table where it away the entire finish of the dining room table in like, four hours. So be very careful of those things when they break. All right, take the good with the bad. Take the happy with sad. There's always the downside. I love this one, though. Lisa She bought a roulette wheel from my Kia like one of those like t Spin the wheel and she put chores on it and she made it into a chore chart. My kids love spinning the wheel and then actually do the chore. Happily, I think this is genius. That is a really fun idea. We have spinning wheel that Amy and I use in our live shows to

topic wheel. You know, we spin it and then we just I'm looking at it right now. I mean, it's so it's forlorn over in my corner over there. Don't worry, spinning wheel spinning wheel. You'll be back again someday, but I have to hide. The reason it's in my office is because my office is one of the places I have deemed off limits to my kids, and it's really the only place. But I will say, I don't know what this thing costs. Not a lot, right under 50 bucks, I think. And yeah, it's very satisfying. It's like Click, click, just it's got the spokes, you know, they go around and around and around, and at some point in getting ready for the show, I had left it somewhere central, and I came in and the kids were just going bonkers spinning. It was like, Okay, you're gonna break it. Have to put it away. But I thought it'd be a fun thing to have anything like they make ours this huge Artists would probably like, you know, 2.5 ft tall. Yeah, this is a table top one, the one you could do like table topics. You could dio whose turn is it to talk first to dinner

tonight. There's lots of fun stuff you could do with a wheel. Or even you know what you could Dio. I saw a bunch of ideas on Pinterest about how to keep kids active right now. So I've been pinning some of those two are Pinterest board in any way. You could put like five jumping jacks, hop like a frog. You could put that on there and get a little one you know, doing some activities when it's 42 degrees in January. Yeah, and you can also put yes, no on it and let it decide There's lots of fun stuff. We're all spinning wheel all the time. Alexa, this is a tribute to you. She says No Ni na og his her super awesome secret thing. We're trying to be Danish babies this winter and warm drinks are super important because I have two toddlers. I need something they would actually drink and wouldn't be a sugar bomb. She, Alexa, just like I don't really want to do the hot cocoa mix. My mom, who is no need to the kids, came up with no Ni na og. It's steamed milk with vanilla and cinnamon. Both of her kids who are 14 months old in almost three drink all they can get of known inaug. That's awesome. And I'm going to give a dende um, as well, which is? I

have a kid who is having some trouble sleeping at night, and we got some melatonin gummies, which are fine, But I was worried about him becoming kind of reliant on them acclimated. Yet psychologically, they don't do that much, you know? So I was just worried, like now we go away. We don't have them. He'll think he can't sleep. My mom's old trick was like warm milk at bedtime. This was like your bedtime potion. The sleeping potion. Heat up milk at night with a little vanilla little cinnamon, and then it's like this is your bedtime drink you could always have. It's a magical it's magical. And, yes, it to Danish babying. Of course, I've heard it called Bambino Chino so he could call whatever you like. A good name. As you all know, branding maybe with a little rhyme in it is always something I'm behind. Yep, that's Amy's jam. I have one that I was reminded about by the wheel, which is very random, but we have a little wooden board and it says someone's in the dog house and there's a little dog house. And then it's all the members of the family are the dogs

. And then when someone's in the dog house, you can put them in the doghouse. My kids were really into it when they were little, and it solved a lot of dilemmas, and you have to do it. It's a loving exercise. It's not like you're in the doghouse, and then we all shun you. It's like you put somebody like Daddy forgot to bring milk from the store so you can't put him in the doghouse and or, you know, your brother hits you and then ran away. He's going in the dog house, and then sometimes you get to be like, not the dog, but it was a nice, neutral arbiter of conflict. That was kind of fun. I'm not gonna lie. There was definitely a phase where it became. I'm putting you in the doghouse. No, and it got a little out of control at a certain point, but we got through it. It sounds like it's in a good way. It could be a diffuser of tension, right? The wrong party could be like, That's right, you're in the doghouse and they punished. Just like Okay, that's it. It's satisfying and yet whimsical enough not to be actually painful. It's kind of great. Lillian who? I know. She has a son

who's a gymnast. She has a something called Big Blue, and she put a picture up on the page. It's a five by 5 ft crash pat. You know something you could just like flop onto, she says. They use it all the time as an extra mattress for sleepovers. I've huddled under it during scary tornado warnings, and the dogs use. It is a bed has a zip off washable cover. This would be a great thing again, like long winter afternoons, your kids can jump off the furniture onto this big blue pad and, you know, do it safely. We just inherited off of our by nothing. Page Thio, beanbags And you forget how great a beanbag is. You could carry it anywhere you flopped down anywhere you want. I mean, a beanbag. I'm all about it, Ramona says. And I totally did this outdoor toys brought indoors, she says. When her twins were toddlers, they set up a little Tikes slide in their living room. It was there for years. We had this. We live in an apartment in New York City and my son got a little Tikes like indoor slide for his first birthday

. And like we're the envy of the play group. The kids wanted to come to our house because we had a slide in our house and you just have to. It's just a season. It was in the middle of my living room for a season, and it brought us hours of happy play. Yeah, I think that's one of those things you have to figure out for yourself. Like, how much are the pillow cases on the chairs pressing you versus saving you Time and the Seasons thing is really good thing to remember there that maybe for three years, I remember when I had a 43 and two year old that I just thought, you know, my house is just gonna look like a train station for a couple of years, and I would occasionally be extremely jealous when I would go to people's homes and it would look like no one really lived there. You know, it's like a hotel room look, and I crave that. But I have come to accept that that's not the home I live in. I live in a home that is kind of bonkers with a bunch of bonkers people, and so it's OK. It's OK to do what you need to do

to make that work. I will add to this that my son, he's a recreational gymnasts. He's not going to the Olympics, but he's pretty good. He bought with his first community money, something called an air track, and it is a mattress that is inflatable, so it has a little bit of bounce to it and they're expensive. I think they're like make close to 100 $50. They're quite expensive, but we've had it for four years and he can tumble on it, and we do bring it inside during the winter. It's a pain because it's huge and you have tow. It doesn't like inflating that you have leaving inflated. So it's kind of like having a raft in your house that you always have to prop somewhere. But it does. It gets us through some winter days. I'm thinking of the friend of mine who has, like, the most beautiful, elegant, gorgeous home. The first time I met her is when are now almost 18 year olds were, like, four. I picked up my son at her house. She had a bouncy castle like an indoor bounce house in her living room. Because she had three little boys. Her entire living room was a bouncy castle

, and that was just how she ruled for a couple of years. So I think he's like blow up inflatable. The kids conflict things are worth making room for, especially in 2020. It's harder when they get older, because now my kid is good enough of gymnastics that he can really like flipping balance and do stuff. But now he's instead of careening into the yard He's like careening into the bookshelf, so you have to kind of make some adjustments around. You can't just bring stuff inside and be like it works. You've got to really check your surroundings. You know you don't necessarily want people swinging into your China. Here's a good, super secret thing from Tiffany, she says. Alexa has a meditation station who knew my five year old daughter doesn't nap anymore, But there's so those days you know, the ones where she could use one. We turn on the meditation station and I tell her if she can't fall asleep in 15 minutes, we'll come get her. But it works every time. Also, Sometimes she turns it on while she's just playing. And there's something hilariously cute about a five year old. Listening to Indian flutes that is hilariously

cute is the right term. I love that right, Anna says. And this is one of the most useful products in my personal history. Although I don't have one right, it's seasons. I don't have one right now, and I don't need it. The yoga ball. When I had a very, very fussy newborn, I would spend hours on sitting in front of the TV on a yoga ball and just a little bit of bounce I could give. And I finally rigged up a sling, so I wasn't holding him in my arms because I would get too tired. But I would just sit watching TV, watching movies and just gently bouncing on the yoga ball, and that would calm him down. And it was incredible. And then my kids, you know, as they got older, it became their play thing, you know, rolling around it, trying to balance on it and just fun. I'm curious. Did somebody tell you to try that, or did you discover it in desperation? Because that's how I found it. In total desperation I had it around is like a prenatal like Get your hips ready for childbirth kind of thing. And then, like in total desperation, I started bouncing on it. Correct me, too. And he stopped

crying. Well, I think we had the exact same experience. I had it around till, like, limber up or whatever. It was a yoga ball. It was for yoga, E r. People still into yoga balls. I feel like I never see them anymore, but I keep feeling like women everywhere. I made this individual discovery that this yoga ball you had around for some kind of weird birth reason becomes like, the thing that saves your first three months. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it absolutely, absolutely worked for May. So ladies use those yoga balls. I mean, I feel like we came up with so many super secret things. So many. Like I said, I'm gonna put the links toe all of these up on our show page. What? Fresh hell podcast dot com by the money Amazon. Buy them from a local store. There's some great Christmas presents in here. I'm going to town or holiday gift lists are complete. What a gift. No, I'm in the Christmas spirit now, guys, come check out the rest of this threat at facebook dot com forward slash What Fresh hell. Cast and find the group. And that's where all these great suggestions are. You confined us pretty much anywhere

on social media by googling What fresh hell Podcast we are on Twitter. Pinterest, YouTube. Tick tock were everywhere. A lot of the things come join us and until then, we'll talk to you next week. Thanks, guys.

Super-Secret Amazing Things We Want You To Know About
Super-Secret Amazing Things We Want You To Know About
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