Tot Clock = More Sleep

I wanted to write a review of a product that I love. As I’ve mentioned before, my children are early risers. Michael rarely sleeps past 6:30 in the morning and Ava has never learned to go back to sleep after the sun rises. Right now, after the time change that’s about 6:15, but by the middle of the summer it tends to be in the early 5:00 hour.

Meet the Tot Clock

I decided to try a Tot Clock with Michael. This product is wonderful. Fundamentally it has a clock face that changes colors. It’s standard color is yellow. That’s the “awake color”. You then set a bedtime and a wake-up time. For us, bedtime is 7:40 pm and wake-up time is 7:00 am. At bedtime the clock face turns blue and it stays blue until the time you’ve set as the wake-up time. Then it turns yellow again. Michael knows that he can’t leave his room or call for us until the light turns yellow. It has a nap timer too. So I’ve set his nap timer for an hour and a half. I push a button to turn it on (and turn the light blue) when I leave his room. If he wakes up before the hour and a half he knows he has to wait until the light turns yellow before nap time is over. It has worked beautifully. I love this clock. Michael never calls for us before 7am any more.

There was a flaw in my plan to get more sleep though. It didn’t really do me any good to keep Michael in his room until 7am when Ava was still waking up at 6:15. So I decided to try a Tot Clock for her too. She’s a little young for it, but she loved Michael’s clock and seemed to get the concept. But when I went to order the second Tot Clock for Ava they were out of stock and wouldn’t be getting more in until May.

I didn’t want to wait that long so I tried a similar product I found on Amazon. I hated it. It was difficult to set and didn’t have nearly as many features. Most importantly, it didn’t have a nap feature. Ava was completely confused by the fact that her light didn’t turn green (this clock’s default color was green) letting her know nap time was over. Then I got an email that Tot Clock had some used clocks in stock. I ordered one immediately. Ava was delighted to have one just like her brother’s clock and I shipped the other one back to Amazon. Actually, there is one difference between Ava's clock and Michael's clock. Michael's clock has the standard face plate: the moon and stars. We ordered one with butterflies and flowers for Ava because I knew she would like it and it would make this clock "hers". The company has a ton of optional face plates to choose from.

So now we have two Tot Clocks. They’re working perfectly. We now set our alarm for 6:50 so that we can wake up and pull on clothes before the kids start calling, “Mama, Dada, my clock is yellow!” at 7am. Sure, 45 minutes of extra sleep doesn't sound like all that much, but remember that before now Ava rose with the sun. In the middle of the summer I'm hoping this clock will be getting me almost two hours of extra sleep every day. Besides, the predictability is nice.

I also think it is helping Ava learn to go back to sleep after surfacing. I’ll hear her wake up and fuss a little, but then she’ll fall back asleep for a while. She rarely did that before the clock.

It has a ton of features we’re not using. It will tell a bedtime story, play music and white noise, and function as an alarm clock (who on earth would actually want to wake their toddler up in the morning on purpose?). It has a built in time-out timer (turns red) and activity timer (turns green). If any of this sounds interesting to you check it out. I highly recommend it.

(One drawback: the blue night-time setting is very bright in a small room even on its dimmest setting. You can turn the night-time light off all together, but Ava protested that option. We've ended up turning the clock away from her bed at night and partially covering it with a baby blanket to reduce the extra light in her room.)

Selling baby things - or not?

I decided to bring in a little extra money and declutter the house and garage at the same time. This seems like the perfect time to do a little craigslisting and maybe pay for a month of therapy.

First I decided to list the double stroller. I truly don’t remember the last time we used it. I wrote an amazing, detailed ad for craigslist. I spent at least half an hour working on the ad. In the process of writing the ad I remembered exactly how cool our double stroller is. And I remembered that spring and summer are right around the corner. I started to think about how I could take the kids on long walks, carry all the drinks and snacks in the stroller, and then push them when they were too tired to walk home. So I didn’t post the ad for the stroller on craigslist after all. I did save the ad though. It will be all ready when I am finally prepared to let the stroller go.

Then I decided to list the cloth diapers. We used Fuzzi Bunz cloth diapers with both kids. Now they are pretty much both potty trained. We haven’t used a cloth diaper in months. We use 4 pull-ups a day – two at nap time and two overnight. So, I pulled out all the cloth diaper stuff, sorted it and separated it into three lots of 8 diapers each. I took pictures. I wrote the ad. Then I started remembering how nice cloth diapers are and how expensive the pull-ups are. Ava walked by and desperately wanted to put on a pink one. I started talking to my husband about how perhaps we should start using cloth again for naps. Well, I did list one of the lots of diapers, but at the moment I’m hanging on to the other two. Still deciding. Money is tight right now and pull-ups aren’t cheap. Perhaps I should switch back to cloth for naps.

I still have some wraps I used when the babies are little that I haven’t listed yet, and even I can’t think of a way to use them with a two and three year old so I’m hoping I’ll get those successfully listed without changing my mind. And there’s the single stroller and matching pumpkin seat/carseat base. Again, not much use for those any more. But so far, this project isn’t exactly leading where I’d hoped.

Nutriiveda – First Thoughts and Impressions (and a little extra information)

Ok. First item of business. They are a little sneaky. Not a lot sneaky, but a little. Let me explain. Apparently, when you order your $80.00, 2 can package you are actually approving an autoship program. They do make that very clear in their confirmation email, but a lot of people don’t read those confirmation emails. So, if you do nothing, they will continue to charge your credit card and send you another shipment each month. They include the number to call to change that right in their email though so the issue is easy to fix. I just figured I’d give you fair warning.

Second small issue. The checkout process told me there would be a $7.95 shipping and handling fee. Ok. I was expecting that. It did not warn me that my state was one of the states where they also need to charge tax. So my total was $95.14 instead of the $87.95 I was expecting.

You receive two cans that have 15, 2-scoop servings each. The serving they recommend therapeutically for children is 2 scoops a day, so you’re talking a 30 day supply. That’s essentially an extra $100 dollars a month. This is not an inexpensive experiment by any means.

I did call their number. They answered with no wait and the person I spoke with was polite and helpful. She explained where the extra charge came from (taxes) and told me that if I wanted to postpone a shipment (or cancel the autoship entirely) I just needed to call at least three days before my scheduled ship date. I decided not to postpone just yet. I want to see how things go over the next three weeks or so. If I want to continue, and we’re successful at getting 2 scoops into Ava per day we’d need a monthly supply.

They also have a rewards program. They give you 10% of your product order in “Loyalty Rewards Dollars”. So for each shipment you earn 8 reward dollars. When you have enough to cover an entire order you can redeem them for a “free” product. So, essentially, it’s buy 10 and get the next one free (not counting shipping and tax). You only earn the rewards if you stay enrolled in the autoship program. So, it isn’t exactly an overwhelming deal, but if you do end up deciding you want to try it long term, there’s a bonus coming down the line. Oh, and you have to call to redeem them. They won’t do it automatically.

So, the product is nicely packaged and arrived promptly. I ordered it at 9pm on the 27th and it arrived in the mail on the 31st. They recommend you start with one scoop a day and work your way up to two. I was mixing up Ava’s yogurt/Omega-3 supplement nightly “treat” anyway, so I thought I’d just mix it in. After opening the container and looking at the size of the scoop I actually only added about 1/3 scoop to the yogurt (about half a container of yogurt). It took a couple of minutes of stirring before I felt like it had blended well. It takes some time for the mix to actually dissolve. She ate it just like she normally does. I couldn’t tell that she even noticed it was different. Michael actually had some mixed into his yogurt as well and didn’t seem to notice.

The next morning I mixed in half a scoop with about 4 ounces of yogurt and again, Ava didn’t seem to notice. So getting it into her doesn’t seem like it will be a problem. At least not when mixed in at those ratios. Ava only has yogurt twice a day though and I haven’t tried mixing a whole scoop in yet. I’m not sure that it would still be unnoticeable at that amount. We’ll see.

Now I just have to wait and see if I feel like it’s making a $100/month difference for her. We’ll see.

As an aside, I tried it myself. I mixed two scoops in to about 11 ounces of non-fat milk. This is the recommended amount for an adult meal replacement shake. Now, admittedly, I’m a picky eater. Truly. I am. But I only managed to drink about half of it and poured the rest down the sink. I didn’t like it. I wanted to. I really did. But, at least in milk, I felt it had a really chalky aftertaste. If I can think of something else to mix it with perhaps I’ll try it again. (I don’t like yogurt, so that’s out.) So that was my opinion. Then again, for our purposes, my opinion doesn’t matter. Ava needs to eat it and she will when it is mixed into yogurt.

Bottom Line(s):
Ava ate it without noticing when mixed in with yogurt. She’ll even eat both the Omega-3 supplement and the Nutriiveda supplement mixed in at the same time.

Their shipping is prompt and their customer service is polite and helpful.

Remember to cancel the autoship if you don't want it.

I personally think it tastes awful. (We’re using vanilla.)

Time will tell about whether it seems to help therapeutically for us.

Oh, and as a bonus, I found a more detailed web page testimonial on Nutriiveda for Apraxia.