Unprofessional Parenting

Some well meaning relative gave my son a giant book of Curious George stickers for his birthday. Since I was very sick all weekend my son pretty much ran the house and I emerged from my fog this morning to find our coffee table cleverly decorated with troublesome monkey smiling back at me. Being my experimental self I decided to run a search and find out the easiest way to get rid of the stickers without wrecking my table. As always, test any of these solutions on an inconspicuous area of your furniture before going whole hog - just in case.

Here’s what I found:

Goo Gone:  Final Grade  A! This was the winner. I suspected this would be the case but sometimes this stuff isn’t handy so I tried a few other things as well.  This was by far the easiest though. I sprayed it on, left it for a minute or two and was able to pull up the stickers as well as the adhesive. A quick wipe afterward with a damp cloth and all was forgiven!

Skin So Soft: Final Grade C-. I thought this was an odd recommendation but gave it a shot anyway. I left it to soak a few minutes and came back to check. If all you are worried about is a small bit of adhesive from a tag then this does actually make it easier to pull off. I still had to do that thumb-nail scraping thing though and given the number of stickers on my table this would have still taken way too long.

Baby Oil: Final Grade C-. Like the lotion this would work well for a very small amount of adhesive. Trying to get the actual stickers off was still a challenge though and did still involve scraping.

WD 40: Okay, I didn’t have this one handy this time but it’s worth a mention. I know it works relatively well on adhesive but I can’t testify to how well it would remove an actual sticker. My guess is it would work better than the lotion or the oil though so it it probably worth a try.

Good luck. I’m so very glad to have that monkey off my table!

A few weeks ago my son had a slight cold.  It didn’t develop into anything major (thank goodness) but the congestion that was left over from it was hanging on for a couple of weeks afterward.  In an effort to clear the last of it up I decided to get a little drastic.  He’s not quite two yet so I was advised against using any cold remedy designed for kids. I did a ton of reading and found frustratingly conflicting advice about dealing with it.  Half of what I read said to decrease milk intake - the old theory that milk and dairy contribute to mucus.  There’s a new thought though that milk consumption has nothing to do with mucus so it’s pointless to cut it from the diet.  Whatever.  I needed to take action.

I decided to reduce the milk and see what happened.  The first couple of days I just replaced one meal serving of milk with juice or water.  No change.  I then spent an entire day in at my office and then went to dinner with my son in the evening.  Here’s how it played out - for lunch we met a friend at a restaurant and I ordered him orange juice instead of milk.  He drank the whole cup and seemed okay with it.  At dinner he was slightly cranky and demanding milk.  It was a Japanese food restaurant and they didn’t have any.  I tried him with water but he wasn’t having it. In a panic I asked them for juice. The first response was they didn’t have that either.  Then they dug up a personal size can of pineapple juice and brought it out.  All seemed well - until the next day.

I had over-juiced.  Poop time was a mess. It only got worse from there. The congestion did clear up quickly but the diarrhea situation was even less pleasant to deal with.  I checked my pediatrician’s website and it informed me that milk can make diarrhea worse so we should cut down on milk . . . and juice. That meant he would be mostly on Pedialyte and water for a few days.  Sigh.

It actually took almost a week to completely clear up.  It would get better then come back. Once, about four days in when I thought he was better, we happened to meet someone at a Mexican restaurant where he insisted on beans and rice (his favorite).  That was a major setback - and really dumb on my part.

Lesson learned. In fact, I learned two lessons 1) Don’t over-juice under any circumstances, and 2) Japanese and Thai food restaurants often don’t have milk or juice - this doesn’t mean we can’t go there but I need to make sure my son is in a good enough mood to not throw a fit about having water with his veggie tempura.  Fascinating.

Here’s another great mess story with some excellent tips for carpet.

My son located an unopened bottle of baby shampoo recently (it was in the top drawer of the changing table which he can barely reach and definitely can’t see into). I think he stood on his toes and reached in until he was able to grasp something with his little paw and it just happened to be an unopened bottle of shampoo.

Miraculously, he was able to take off the cap and take off that foil seal inside (which is incredible because I usually need a knife to get those things off). He plopped himself down in the living room and I came running from the kitchen when I heard “wash bear,” “bath for bear.” He had set his bear on the carpet and proceeded to dump the entire bottle of shampoo on him. In his defense, the bear was pretty dirty so I like to think it was a well thought out plan to clean the bear and not just a moment of total insanity.

I quickly discovered that shampoo isn’t so easy to remove from carpet. It just suds, and suds, and suds, and it never comes out. If you happen to have one of those fancy carpet steamers with suction this wouldn’t be a problem, but I don’t so it was going to more complicated than that. Here is what my all powerful research skills located:

• White vinegar: Pour generously on the carpet and it will kill the suds. Then you can proceed to clean it up as a normal stain. Our carpet is very light so I did this without worrying much about the color but if you’ve got dark colored carpet I would suggest a test spot just in case.
• Liquid fabric softener: I didn’t try this one myself but I read it will do the same thing as vinegar - cut the suds so you can actually clean.
• Water & shop vac: If you’ve got some time on your hands you can add a little water at a time to the soap and suck it up with a shop vac. Keep repeating and eventually all the soap will be gone.

Hopefully this won’t ever happen to you - it’s a total pain - but just in case it does keep this in mind!

As the first entrant in our What a Mess category let me fill in the background of this post.

The other day my son got his hands on a Sharpie pen and tattooed just about everything in our house. Not much escaped the graffiti parade – the floor, the couch, his toys, our dining room table and chairs, himself, etc., etc., etc.

It only lasted a couple of minutes but I’m convinced it was a concerted effort to begin a new “speed art” trend. My parenting magazine advised me to calmly explain to him that “we only draw on paper” – so I wouldn’t crush his artistic vision. I’m willing to bet that buying him some more “artistic vision” would be cheaper than replacing all our furniture (and walls). At any rate, it prompted me to do some internet searching of cleaning materials for permanent marker on a variety of artistic mediums.

Here is what I found:

Wood tables/chairs

· Toothpaste: Put it on, let it dry and scrub off with a dry towel or old toothbrush.

Results: This actually worked on my table. So far no weird side effects. Just don’t let the kid see you doing it – it looks like fun to them so it could potentially lead to disaster.

· Insect Repellent: I didn’t try this but the story goes that you can spray it on and the marker drips right off.

· Spray on sunscreen: Another that I didn’t try but the story is the same as insect repellent.

Couches

· Rubbing alcohol: This will get marker off your couch but I have dark brown leather and it will also fade the color so test on an inconspicuous area first.

Kids

· Scrubbing: This will work and if you catch it and soap it quickly it will be relatively easy. Product does depend on kid cooperation which might make it difficult.

· Baby oil: Apparently if you put a little baby oil on a cotton ball it will take the marker off. I scrubbed so I didn’t have to try this one myself but it sounds good.

Linoleum/tile

· Toothpaste: Word is that it works here too.

· Rubbing alcohol: Test first to be sure it doesn’t fade linoleum.

· Magic eraser: I love these things. I’ve used it on linoleum and walls for just about everything. A great product to have around.

This just about covers what I had to clean. Obviously, consider that any of these might fade fabric or do weird things to your furniture so always test it in an inconspicuous area before applying to your tabletops.

Now, if anyone has any tips for getting permanent marker off a yellow lab – they would be much appreciated.