The Lily Pad

The Bailey Baio Angel Foundation® Stride Rite® and BopStarBaby
invite you to the very first…

“Celebrity Baby Yard Sale”

Saturday, May 30th from 8:00AM – 4:00PM
in the Garden at the Sportsmen’s Lodge Hotel
12825 Ventura Boulevard, Studio City, California
Phone 800.821.8511/818.769.4700

There will be lots of wonderful new and almost-new children’s products – including clothing, accessories, toys, and home décor – all at excellent prices! Proceeds will go toward sustaining children and families affected by life-threatening metabolic disorders (including GA1 and other organic acidemia)! Click here for more information.

Happy May! For the next two weeks we are selling all of our Patricia Ann Designs’ Couture Carseat Covers for 40% off!! Can you believe it?!!

You have through Sunday, May 31st at midnight to place your order!! MSRP is $110 and your 40% off makes your special price just $66!! If you
place your order on line, just use the coupon code “CARSEAT”. Or if you live local to our OC showroom just mention this coupon to get yourself 40% off!!

Infant Carseat Cover: Cocoa Sky Dot with Sky Blue and White Gingham Trim

14 Sweet Weeks of Giveaways from The Lily Pad Blog!

Well, readers, the time has come for our last giveway in this series! It has been fun getting to know some of the product lines featured at PAD Showroom and the moms behind them.

This week’s giveaway is brought to us by PAD Showroom and the Punkybunks Baby Boutique!

Punkybunks Baby Boutique is a place where you will find fabulous items for you and your baby. The boutique features the Punkybunks Collection: stylish diaper bags; must have essentials bags; adorable bibs; fun and feisty toddler aprons; luxurious satin trimmed hooded towels and much more. They also carry organic, earth friendly and SAFE products for the whole family; including Klean Kanteen and Nature’s Baby Organic skin care line.

Hollie White, owner & president says, “We strive to bring you the most unique, hard-to-find, quality products. You will love the assortment of plush blankies with matching accessories; designer socks; leather shoes; gorgeous hair bows and hats; fashionable nursing shawls; comfy baby clothes and many more fun things that you just can’t live without.”

Hollie started the Punkybunks online boutique and loves that she can run her business while still staying home to raise her adorable kids. If you’re dying to know where in the world she came up with the cute name (I was sure curious!), be sure to read about it on her About Us page.
This week a luck reader will win a $25 gift certificate to Punkybunks!

How to Enter to Win the Gift Certificate:

1. Click to enter via our entry form (*mandatory*)– no comment here necessary.

2. Tweet or blog about this giveaway and post a comment with the link to the tweet or blog post.

3. Follow us on Twitter and leave a comment telling us.

4. Subscribe by RSS or email to our blog and leave a comment telling us.

5. Put this code for our cute button on your blog and leave a comment with a link to your url:

Giveaway ends Saturday, May 9th, 2009 at midnight, PST.

Good Luck!

Congratulations to Jill Myrick, winner of last week's Cade Christian giveaway; you will be contacted soon!

*This giveaway is now closed!*

This week's giveaway is brought to us by Creative Clips and the PAD showroom!

From New York to London, Patricia Ann Designs' products are are a hit with celebrity kids!

This is the last post in a series; read our little journey in Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them!

So How to Ditch the Paci?

This is Part 2 in a series ~ if you missed it, be sure to read my daughter's pacifier addiction in Part 1!

The picture above is evidence as to why I started thinking it was time to drop the pacifier from naptime, which would then basically eliminate it, except in emergencies. Lately it seems that if I give it to her when I want her to go to sleep, she gets real happy, and plays with it more than being lulled to sleep by her own sucking like before.

I noticed this about a month ago, when I drove to a friend's house a little over an hour away. I figured if I'd give Chiquita the paci in the car, she'd sleep the whole way there. Nope, just talked and played with it. I realized through observation that if she fell asleep in the car on her own without it, she tended to fall into a deeper sleep.

Since her nap has not been as long lately as it has been before, I started thinking maybe that observation would hold true during her nap, too. Maybe if she fell asleep without it at naptime, like she does at bedtime, she'd sleep better. Maybe she's accidently outgrowing her paci.

So I asked my friends on Twitter if they had any suggestions. Unfortunately for me, most of them applied to slightly older toddlers, but they were such great ideas, I wanted to reprint them here.

@SarahInMI

We used “The Pacifier Fairy” {click to read her story- I absolutely love this idea for an older kid!}. The first few days were rough, but it got better – we did it cold turkey. Rip it off like a bandaid!

@Fussypants

Paci Love

I was thoroughly against the pacifier before my daughter, Chiquita, was born. But when the nurse suggested we try one in the hospital to calm her down a little, I figured it was worth a try. And, well, let's just say it stuck. She loved it. I laugh a little internally inside when I hear people muse about babies that wouldn't take a paci, only because it's funny how different babies can be! Ours was addicted to hers from the beginning. So I decided to just relax, and go with it.

Let me start by listing a few benefits to the paci for us:

• It's soothing (and part of Dr. Karp's 5 S's for soothing is sucking).
• It's incredibly helpful in public places (i.e. airplane, baseball games) or when traveling and schedules are thrown off.
• Relieved me from having to nurse at take-off and landing every time we flew (especially since nursing was more schedule oriented for us and flying didn't always come at “mealtime”).
• It makes putting her down for a nap/to bed much easier in new places.
  

One of my all-time favorite baby/toddler accesories is this awesome reusable placemat. We take it everywhere (and we probably eat out more than we should so it's gotten it's fair share of use).