Flanagan Clan

I feel much sadness in writing this, but in February I will be closing down most of my online business. With the coming of the new baby, I had intended to wait until May or June and take a long babymoon, but with the CPSIA legislation going into effect on February 10th, the reality is that I cannot afford to be in business. It’s either have all my products tested, or risk fines up to $100,000 and 2 years in prison for failing to follow the new guidelines. If you haven’t heard about the legislation, or don’t realize the gravity of the situation, I’d love for you to see this website as an example of what sort of costs I would incur to have products tested and certified under the new guidelines.

The one thing that I will continue to do on a limited basis will be embroidery customs. As far as I am aware, they aren’t regulated since I’ll only be embellishing items that belong to other people. However, I will not be making and selling new merchandise. Furthermore, I’m having a sale on all exsisting merchandise (embroidery slots not included), so if anyone is interested, you can save 10% with the checkout code, “CPSIA”. It’s good for both my main site and my hyena cart.

In all honesty, though, my energy levels have been at an all time low since December, so in a way I’m finding this to be a relief. I will miss the fun I had creating new products, but right now all I want to do is focus all that energy on preparing for a new arrival. I still have dreams of opening a shop up someday, but right now I have 3 1/2 little ones to take care of, and there’s more than enough to keep me busy here at home!

I finally got around to getting a video of Ethan walking last night. His Pj’s were a little too large and were making him fall, but you can see despite the tripping over his pj feet that he can in fact actually walk now (and sure is awfully cute!).

OK, here we go again… I am hosting another contest to guess the date, weight and gender of our baby on the way.

If you would like to play, leave me a comment with a guess as to the date that our baby will arrive along with his/her birth weight, and what you think the gender of the baby will be. The person who has the closest guess will receive a $15 gift card to your choice of Starbucks or Jamba Juice. We will be finding out the gender of this baby in early March (I don’t have an appointment set yet, but I think it might be the 9th of March), so all guesses must be in the day before my ultrasound.

In the month of February I will also be offering another gender guessing contest on my hyena cart, and you are more than welcome to also enter that contest once I put it up, but if you win both I will offer one of the prizes up to a runner up.

Here are the details:

My due date is July 26th, 2009. All boys have been born at 36 1/2 weeks, although Ethan tried to come earlier at 35 weeks and labor was stalled.  Patrick weighed 5 lbs, 4 oz at birth, Samuel weighed 6 lb, 3 oz at birth, and Ethan was 5 lb, 14 oz. Also, we did not try any gender-swaying methods to increase our odds of having a baby girl. We decided to let God be in charge, and that He would give us what He thought was best.

I think that’s it! Happy guessing!!!

Today I went in for my second doctors appointment. I had to bring the boys with me because my mom ended up having to work and couldn’t watch them for me. I think things would have been fine if I just had the two older boys, but Ethan has developed a very strong personality and a determined spirit, and he fussed the entire time. There was no quieting him. The doctor took a while to find the heartbeat, which is not abnormal at this early stage of the pregnancy, however having Ethan fuss in the background only made things more stressful. He finally found the heartbeat though, and everything else seems to be going fine, so we’ll be back in 4 weeks for another routine appointment, hopefully without Ethan (sorry, bud!). Sammy and Patrick seemed to have a good time, though, and Patrick was very excited to hear the new baby’s heartbeat. I wouldn’t mind bringing them again with me.

Before I left I asked for a new prenatal vitamin prescription. With my past two pregnancies I had a chewable prenatal vitamin that I was taking, since I have trouble swallowing pills. Well, I found out that my vitamins are no longer being made! The nurse sent me home with several different new samples today and when I got around to taking a peak at the new vitamins I realized they were all HUGE! I have no idea how I’m going to manage to get any of these vitamins to go down my throat. I might just stick with my Flintstone vitamins and extra supplements, like folic acid and calcium. There is no way I’m going to get these down.

Oh, and one last thing- I found out I’ve gained 8 lbs so far this pregnancy, and 5 of them were in the last month. This whole ravenously hungry thing is really helping me pack on the pounds this time, despite all the mornings of nausea and vomiting. I guess this includes whatever I gained from Christmas, but still, no more worrying about gaining weight this time. Yay!

…that are just starting out and beginning to purchase furniture for their new apartment/house.

If you are planning to have children anytime soon, do not buy an expensive or really nice family dining room table. Chances are, one day your four year old will find a permenant marker accidentally placed in his pile of washable markers and trace his hand on the table. No amount of scrubbing with the magic eraser or clorox bleach pen will get the mark off.

I encourage you to instead purchase something from IKEA or, even better, find someone to give you their old one (like we thankfully did), and save your money until the kids are old enough to know how to take care of the furniture.

The same goes for coffee tables, family room couches, and furniture for the children’s bedrooms :o)

The one thing I will say, though, is that Patrick is very creative. I’m sure that by the time we pitch the table, it will no doubt look a lot worse than it does right now. I’m so glad we decided not to purchase a new table when we bought the house 2 1/2 years ago…