Bzz Agent Review: Children's Claritin

I'm currently reviewing Children's Claritin for Bzz Agent. K- has pretty moderate seasonal allergies. This requires her to take a children's allergy medication from mid-March until mid-June. Prior to K- being 2, our pediatrician wanted K- to take nothing more than Dimetapp. It worked okay, but K-'s allergies were in need of a bit more high-potency. When K- reached the magical age of two, our pediatrician put her on Zyrtec. K- has been taking Zyrtec ever since.

Some time back, I received an e-mail from Bzz Agent about this review of Children's Claritin. My friend has always sung the praises of Children's Claritin with her children, so I figured, why not?

I should tell you that K- loves it. She said that it is tasty and easy to take. The Zyrtec is a liquid. The Children's Claritin that they sent along is in chewable tablet form.

Now, I admit that I looked at the price of this at Giant Eagle recently. It was $10.99 for a 10 pack. I admit that to me that seems a little steep, but I also admit that I don't know how many 1 teaspoon doses of Zyrtec are in the bottle that we use. The Zyrtec was $9.99. Walgreen's advertised Children's Claritin on sale this week. When I went to purchase it, there was a coupon for $2.00 off on the shelf and it was the bonus 25 pack. I paid $12.99 for 25 doses of Claritin. I call that a deal. (I had coupons, but I forgot about them!)

Now to the nitty gritty, I gave the Children's Claritin the ultimate test. I decided to wait to try it until the pollen was horribly high. You know what? It worked like a charm. Truly. You would have never known.

Now, I should back peddle and tell you what type of symptoms K- suffers from when she has allergies. Her allergy attacks produce a severely runny nose. Her runny nose drains to her stomach, giving her stomach aches that can result in vomiting or diarrhea. (Gross, but true.) Her eyes will swell and do nothing but water. She'll also have an allergy cough. If not properly tended to, all of this will go straight into a wonderful sinus infection. Often, that sinus infection will also decide to involve the ears and infect those, too. That means antibiotics, fevers, missed school/activities, sick kid, worried mommy and it is not worth it. I find that simply giving K- allergy medication during those few months in the springtime, as the pediatrician directs me to, it buys quality of kid life for my allergy suffering kiddo.

So what do I think of Children's Claritin? Good stuff! I admit that I like having the option to toggle back and forth, but since Claritin is what K- seems to like the best, we'll stick with that as long as I can find it on sale. We do have a bottle of Zyrtec that she will need to finish off, so as to not waste.

Some facts they would like you to know about Children's Claritin?
1. It has a great grape taste that K- thinks is completely awesome!
2. It is a pill vs. a liquid, so K- and other kids feel like they have a bit more control in their medicine taking. That and if it falls on the floor, it doesn't do so with a splash.
3. #1 Pediatrician Recommended non-drowsy brand. Though good to note that I do give it to K- before bed and it has never caused a problem.
4. Recommended for children 2 and up.
5. One dose lasts the whole day and doesn't make the kids jittery.
6. Two million school days are lost due to seasonal and indoor allergies. 4 out of 10 school children are affected by allergies. Yikes!

So, I have coupons! To the first 5 people who send their address to my e-mail, I will send a $3.00 off coupon for Children's Claritin. The coupon is off of a 4 oz syrup or a 10 count or larger box o' chewables goodness. Coupons are good through June 30, 2009.

Any feedback to give on Children's Claritin-- good, bad or otherwise? Pop it on into comments. The Bzz Agent people will be by to read all about it!

Apparently, I've been living under a rock.

Okay, I just found out today that Bloggy Giveaways was closed indefinitely as of April 6. I didn't pop in there often, but did find the Bloggy Giveaways Carnival to be great fun. The next one was scheduled for this next week. I just popped in to double check on the specifics. The specifics were that she was done, wasn't finding it fun anymore and wanted to go back to her passion.

I get that, but I'm going to miss it. I was able to meet fun people and win cool stuff!

So sad.

Busy work week

It's the time of year where new merchandise pours in the door faster than I can get it displayed. That means that I'm on the floor much of the time armed with a variety of tools and normally have a tornadic mess in my wake. Can I tell you how much people are drawn to my mess? It seems as though people go into hunter-gatherer mode and like my lovely 5 year old, they truly get underfoot. Since I display during regular business hours (the time that I'm on schedule), I can see where I might be underfoot for them.

So my week of display also provided time of eavesdropping and customer conversation. Here's what I heard:

"I can make that! It would be easy!"
"Let me see that. You know, I'm going to go home and make this same thing."
"What is this? This is just dumb."
"Don't you dare buy that! You just go home and make that same thing."
"What are you going to drill into?" "The wall." "You mean there isn't enough hanging up around here already?!" "Well, it's what they pay me to do." [I'd lost my humor with the sarcastic bunch she was with long before and it was hovering around 5 PM. We close at 6 PM and I was tired.]
"Hello! Let us know if there is anything that we can help you with." "Well, [insert snotty tone] I AM HERE TO LOOK AT JEWELRY!" "Yes, well, when there is something that you need help with, let me know."
[A customer's daughter was returning something that she had purchased a few weeks earlier.] "What is the reason for return?" "Oh, my mom needs the money, I think. She really loved the bag and showed it to everyone then decided to take it back." Translation: She got the face time with the bag and returned it. No one knows about the return and thinks that she spent big money on a flashy bag.
"I was in about two years or so ago and was looking for these little birds that you had." "I'm sorry sir, we don't have those birds any longer." "But they were the perfect gift!" (I did tell him where I thought he could get them, but a gallery carrying the same things for years is somewhat rare.)
"Would you like to have this gift wrapped?" [Asking about a candle holder that a customer was purchasing.] "Yes, and include the ones that she is purchasing as well." "All right. What occasion should I wrap them for?" "Oh, they are her for her birthday." [The girl was purchasing two on her own and her friend was purchasing a single one. So, I was left wrapping the whole grouping as a gift to the girl when A. She knew what they were and B. She bought 2/3 of said gift for herself! What a waste of materials!]

So, I displayed piles of purses, a ton of teapots, a wall of cutting boards, aprons and other kitchenwares, garden stakes, mirrors, all the while eavesdropping on customers as they trotted through.

We're listening. Even though it looks like we're not, we are. Just know that!

Works for Me Wednesday: Good Egg or Bad Egg?

Did you know that a bad egg will float in water and a good egg will sink? An egg develops gases under the shell as it gets older. The older it gets, the more gases are trapped. If your egg floats, ditch it.

After Easter, my husband has decided that he likes to have some hard boiled/cooked eggs on hand. K- has decided that she likes them, too. Now, since I'm a little food phobic regarding dates, freshness, goodness and so forth, we looked up how long hard boiled/cooked eggs are good for. They are good for one week. To make certain that we eat them in time (You never do remember when exactly you cooked them, right?) I date the eggs with a Sharpie marker before I cook them. Cook them for your specified time of doneness and refrigerate! No more do you have to wonder when the eggs were cooked!

Want to know more about eggs? Just click here!

A Cautionary Line Drying Tale

Yes, this is a second post for today. There is a nice, long photo post below. Don't forget to read it. But, here is my cautionary tale.

When you line dry your clothes, give them a shake. When my daughter got dressed this morning, she told me there was something in her pants. "Mom, it is getting bigger." "Mommy, it kind of hurts." At that point, I ran over, yanked her pants down and found a very large, very alive fuzzy Carpenter bee walking up the inside of K-'s leg.

I yelled.

She panicked.

Thank God Hubs was home. He yelled too, I guess to keep with the theme, grabbed the bee and got it off of K-. We did catch the bee and it flew away when we released it. Hubs has informed me that I have some reprogramming to do. I have him borrowing books from work.

Eeek. I didn't mean to scare her with my environmentally friendly clothes drying. Ugh.

Read on my friends. There's good stuff in the post below.

We've done a lot of stuff.

No Tales today. Catching up on weekend stuff!

First, I'd like to dedicate this post to Mother Nature. She has covered our cars and our windows with a lovely yellowy-green dust. We have some beautiful spring flowers as a result, though. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, let us review the happenings of the last few days.

We trotted on down to Amish Country on Friday. Hubs had a HUGE program on Saturday that required him to have a pot of coffee brewing at 3:30 AM (we don't drink coffee, so we had to borrow a pot-- he was making it for his volunteers), up at 4 AM and out the door by 4:30 AM. Remember, he is not a truck driver, but a park naturalist. This isn't typical, but he had an enormous fishing derby for 300 + children scheduled to begin registration at 8 AM. We live 25 minutes or so from his place of employment (which was not the site of the program) and he had to get a hustle on. But can I tell you something? Hubs gets very nervous about enormous programs such as this. Oh, he does a fantastic job, but he worries himself to death. I suggested a breakaway trip to Amish Country just to get him out of the house. Seriously, the boy would have lost his mind otherwise. (Yes, he has thanked me profusely for taking the family trip.) We didn't go down with the aim of spending much money. In fact, we skipped some of our usual haunts in hopes to cut down on some of that. We just wanted to burn some time outside of sitting around at home. (In the end, Hubs said that 500 people showed up to his program.)

So we cruised down, stopped by my favorite bulk food store, then ran for a bite of lunch. We worked on our sign project while we were down there, and even involved Daddy! We stopped in at the Chocolate Factory (K-'s only request), picked up some chocolate covered coffee beans and K- chose a Strawberry Cow Tale. (The kid loves Cow Tales.) We trotted around and got back around 3:30 PM. When we got home, K- played outside with E- and the girls ran between the two houses. I planted some bulbs that my friend Heather dropped off (she was being overrun by Iris' and Daffodils) and started the festival of sneezing my head off. My allergies were beginning to kick in to high gear.

Saturday, Hubs was out early, which left K- and I to toodle around the AM on our own. We ran out for our building clinic at Lowe's, then had the last day of swimming lessons. K- did a great job! Mark's mom and dad took us out to lunch, then we trotted on home for mommy to rest (I was beginning the more rapid downhill descent) and for K- to play with the new toy that Grandma and Grandpa got her for completing her swimming lessons. What did they buy? Why yes! Grandma unknowingly purchased K- Tanner, the pooping Barbie dog! You want to know something? K- played with Tanner for 5 hours straight-- seriously! So in my house, we give Tanner a two thumbs up!

Saturday night, I gave up and went to bed at 8:30 PM. I ran a temp of 100. Nothing severe, but enough to make me feel yuckier. Hubs came in, looked at the bed that was strewn with tissues, a variety of Advil products, cough drops and a bottle of water and chose to go to sleep on the couch. He knew it was serious when I was sleeping with the Sam's Club bulk size bottle of Advil. I called my friend, reported that church wasn't going to happen and fell asleep. I did sleep intermittently and my dear sweet Hubs decided to come in and check on me at 4 AM. He was trying to have full on conversation with me and bless him, all I could do was grunt back. Apparently, he couldn't sleep! Ugh!

Sunday came with my staying in my pajamas all day. I ate a handful of cookies and 3/4 of a cheap, little Totino's cheese pizza. (I forced myself to eat what I did. I wasn't nauseated, I was just not hungry at all.) Hubs mowed the yard and as the first mowing of the year, it took 2 1/2 hours because things needed tidied from the winter (to rid the yard of the rest of the leaves), move all the play stuff, weed-eat and all that while K- watched The Karate Kid on the ABC Family Channel with me. The rest of the day was crap TV because apparently low as you go cable, our preference since we really don't watch that much TV, has infomercials on nearly every channel ALL. DAY. SUNDAY. I watched infomercials for Bare Escentuals make-up, the Monster Steamer with Clean Blast!, a little rechargeable flick sweeper, the hot pocket maker, the Bullet food processor and blender, the halogen light cooker thingy and the Worx GT trimmer and edger (I want one of those.) Wow. One heck of a TV day here, yes-sir-ee!

Hubs escaped with K- and took her to the vintage toy store, Sam's Club and our local food discounter. They brought me back a 1978 Smurf figure holding a handful of flowers (because those flowers won't wilt), a package of Chocolate Chip Soft Batch Cookies and the Cheese Totino's Pizza. (I'm a cheap date, what can I say?) The mama being sick kind of freaks both Hubs and K- out. He said that she kept asking to go home. We come to find out later that she wanted to stay home and keep an eye on me. How sweet! But, Hubs announced last night that, "When the Mama is sick, the whole place falls apart." It's good to know that I'm needed!

I started feeling human about 7 PM on Sunday night. All that really means is that the yucky stuff was over in 24 hours. I've got a bit of hang-over residual from the allergy/sinus thingy that I had, but I worked all day on Monday (with Advil Cold and Sinus in hand.)

So here I am on Monday night, updating you on all kinds of fun stuff. Pardon the picture post.
We have a robin that has decided to make her nest in one of my flower pots on our fence. It had one egg for a couple of days. Guess what we found today? There are 4 in there! Aren't those just an amazing color?

K- decided to show me a "trick" that she could do. She jumped from one slide to another and literally jumped through the end of her slide. Poor kid! She scratched up her leg, but required no band aids. She was so upset and all she did was cry and say, "My slide!" Our plan to replace our aging swing set is for next year, but we may need to bump that up a bit. Daddy tried to repair it the best he could. Some plastic cement and packaging tape and voila! You get this:

A sad sack little slide, but the kids test drove it this evening and it is holding. My sister suggested watching the newspaper ads for a used wooden play set. She has a truck and a hauling trailer, so getting it home wouldn't be a problem. After all, they were the same fine folks who helped us move K-'s bedroom furniture a year and a half ago. A bedroom full of lightly used Arhaus solid maple furniture for $400.00! All we had to do was move it in 11 degree weather! ARGH! Sister-dear and her partner are good at doing the hoof and haul. Right now we'll let LeAnne bake that baby to done, though. That's more important than a new play set.Look what was blooming when I got home from work today! It's our crab apple on the tree lawn.

Some beautiful tulips that I couldn't resist taking photos of. My neighbor's Lilac that is getting ready to fully bloom. Have I ever mentioned my severe allergy to Lilacs? Instant migraine.
But hey! The Purple Plum is absolutely in full bloom and look at those leaves! Hubs and I hung the birdhouse that K- made him for Easter. I just love this little birdhouse that she built at Lowe's!

So it brings me to now. I'm feeling better. Hooray!

Hi Pollen!

But really, high pollen.
11.5 out of 12.
I'm allergic.
Went to bed Saturday at 8:30 PM.
Ran a low grade fever.
A sinus infection or head cold, I think.
Stayed in bed all Sunday.
Missed church.
I never stay in bed sick.
I hardly ever miss church.
I've felt like dirt, though it is NOT swine flu.
Feeling better, but K- is hoping to keep me home today.
Will she be successful?