It’s a four-fer-one deal! (#4 added while my kid was screaming and I needed a break.)

1) SquidSoap.

We use only organic/natural soaps in our house so I took this soap to my classroom where the kids wash their hands multiple times each day. I explained that they had to pump the soap themselves in order to get “inked” by the squid (I usually squirt it into their hands) and that they had to wash until the ink spot was gone. Most of them were very excited to try it, but one cried because he didn’t want ink on his hand. At least half of them had a hard time pushing the pump hard enough to get the soap out so they needed me to push down on their hand. By the sixth child, the rubber ring surrounding the ink pad had fallen off. I didn’t notice any difference when we were pumping it with dry hands, but when used wet the ink began to run all over everything. It came off easily, but the pump still needs some kind of a redesign. The whole concept behind SquidSoap is that the kids need to wash for 20 seconds in order to get the ink off and I love the concept. It really bothered some of my students that “the ink wouldn’t come off!” Obviously they didn’t get the point. They had both used water that was too cold and rinsed off the soap too early. Once we talked about it some more they did seem to understand that the reason it hadn’t come off was because their hands weren’t actually clean. All in all, a great concept with mediocre to good execution.

2) Disapproving Rabbits by Sharon Stiteler

This is a book full of adorable pictures of very disapproving bunnies accompanied by entertaining captions. It’s based on the blog of the same name. It’s certainly not my cup of tea but the pictures are cute (the boy though so too, and learned the word “bunny” this week) and if you’re a rabbit person it just might be up your alley!

3) Dry Cleaner’s Secret

This product is intended to greatly extend the time between visits to the dry cleaner and therefore save you a ton of money. From the site…Dry Cleaner’s Secret cleaning cloths freshen your clothing and remove small spots at a fraction of the cost of professional dry cleaning. Save money by safely cleaning all your clothes in your dryer in just 20 minutes with our at-home dry cleaning kit. Your clothes will be left with a nice , fresh scent and ready to wear, we guarantee it! I won’t buy clothing that needs to be dry cleaned so it wasn’t much use to me. I gave it to a friend whose husband wears suits regularly so they could tryit. Her comments…It’s easy to use. You just spot clean with the little wipe-y thing and then toss it all into the dryer. As long as the stain was fairly fresh and not major it worked just fine and did save us money. Well, actually, we would have just used water or a commercial stain remover in between trips to the cleaner but this was a little better than that. I’d still rather they make suits washable. Why don’t they? You can get a free sample from their site if you’d like to try if out.

4) The Hair Colour Mix Book

This is just a plain cool book! It’s hard cover and only $16 which is a steal of a deal if this is something you’d use. It’s jam packed with recipes to mix your own hair colour using drugstore colours just like the pros would in the salon and comes with great pictures of real people (instead of tufts of fake hair, which is nice) so that you can see what the colour looks like “on.” Being pregnant, I didn’t actually try out the colours but I have marked a few I’d like to try in the future when I’m no longer pregnant or nursing.

NOT A REVIEW: How long is it supposed to take for these F****ing molars to come in? Seriously – enough is enough. Even the highest doses of drugs don’t do a thing for him. And, to make things even better, he hasn’t really eaten in almost a week and had the shits for two days. I need a vacation.

Updated to add: What kind of kid functions on 4 hours of sleep? Mine! He’s happily eating breakfast and I feel like I’m going to keel over at any second. What do you do when your kid just will not sleep? (And you know it’s due to pain and he’s as doped up as he’s going to get.)