Congratulations to Stacy H., you are the winner of our first Heart Notes giveaway. Please email us with your full name and mailing address [customerservice@sweetknee.com] to claim your prize.

Don’t miss out on your chance to win our next giveaway. To subscribe to our Newsletter, Heart Notes, enter email address in the box below.. and then click on the subscribe button.

Thank you to all of you for Staying Sweet! We are so happy to have all of our new customers, and we’re over the moon to have so many long time loyal sweethearts too!

Best wishes and the Sweet life,

Kristy

Your comments may not show up immediately, please know that we will read each and every one.

Be sure to read down to the end of our blog today to enter for your chance to win a prize worth over $50.00 on Valentine’s Day….just in case you need a little more heart in your day!

Today we’re welcoming a very special guest blogger to share her expertise on the emotional aspects of eczema. Jennifer from The Eczema Company is here and we hope you will comment with your questions and thoughts. We’ll make sure that she sees them all. We want to get a conversation going and hope you’ll join in too. Jennifer’s bio and beautiful picture are featured below her post. -Best wishes and the Sweet life, Mama Sweet -Kristy

Eczema is a chronic illness that affects 10-20% of children in North America. The severity ranges from mild dry skin to extreme head-to-toe, red, inflamed skin. My son had the more severe form of eczema, but now that we’ve identified his key triggers (food allergies, detergents, and heat), his skin is 95% better. We count our blessings everyday for his miraculous turn around. And, as one mother who has been through the worst eczema can offer, I understand how truly gut wrenching and emotional this skin condition can be on the child and the rest of the family.

Something I heard early on is “what works for one child’s eczema, may not work for another.” I repeat this phrase constantly to remind myself and to others as it really captures what a challenge eczema is how frustrating it can be. It is NEVER easy. It keeps our children (and us) awake for hours at night as we cover their hands and try to comfort them doing anything in our power to distract from the itchiness and the overwhelming desire to scratch. It has us researching for hours about treatment options and new moisturizers to try. It has us racking our brains for any possible indication as to what may have triggered the last flare-up. We wonder if our children will be bullied because their skin looks different. We wonder if all the painful creams, different treatments, and nights without sleep will cause lasting damage to our little ones. Will they grow up to be happy and healthy or will they suffer with this condition forever? If they don’t grow out of it, how will they cope without us there to prepare their food free from allergies and to carefully monitor their skin? This is the emotional side of eczema and it’s a beast.

What I’ve discovered is that our children really are resilient. They may throw fits when we try a new cream that stings or smells different, but know that it will pass. Just put that cream aside and find another to try (expensive, I know – you should see the closet full of cream that didn’t work for my son.) Our children will still love us and with a little bit of encouragement or bargaining (smile) they will trust us again and it’s on to try a new cream. Our children will get past their difficulties and will become stronger due to these struggles early on. I have lately come across some really great examples of successful, very self motivating, young adults who suffered greatly with severe eczema as children. Most of them still have it, but have learned to manage it and to my upmost relief, they still love their parents. (Phew! There is hope!) They understand now that all the treatments, medications, wet wrapping, and moisturizing sessions were given by their parents because their parents loved them unconditionally and never wanted to give up hope for health, happy children.

In the meantime, before our children grow into outstanding young adults, books can help them understand their skin condition. For my son, books really helped him see that he wasn’t alone. Other children have eczema too. This seemed to be quite a relief for him. I’ve posted some eczema children’s books on my blog here.

For parents, support groups can really help us deal with our emotions. There are tons of great online eczema parent resources on FaceBook. Join a group and read through all the stories and you’ll see you’re not alone. I have found the parents to be so encouraging to one another. It really is uplifting and absolutely essential when you feel you’ve hit rock bottom or when you’re just confused about a treatment option. There aren’t a lot of offline support groups available exclusively for eczema, but there are some that also deal with food allergies and asthma. Look on FAAN’s support group website for a group near you.

Eczema is difficult and can put our emotions through the ringer. It is a constant battle for our children as well. Be as patient as possible and find a support system. Remember that we must take care of ourselves if we have any hope of providing the best care for our children.

Bio:  Jennifer is a work-at-home mother of two. One with eczema, food allergies, and asthma.

One with mild eczema. She blogs about her family’s battles with allergies, eczema, and asthma at

It’s an Itchy Little World. Jennifer is the founder of The Eczema Company, which offers specialty clothing

and natural skin care for children with eczema.

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Coming  on Valentine’s Day, our first issue of Sweet Knee Heart Notes…a few little Heart Notes as well as loyal customer promotions and giveaways to help you get clean and stay sweet! As we mentioned before there will be a big prize worth over $50.00, so don’t miss out! 

Sign up here to receive our Sweet Knee Heart Notes, they’ll be coming to your mailbox once or twice a month, and you won’t want to miss the first one – it’s a really sweet deal.

<3 Mama Sweet -Kristy

enter email address in the box below.. and then click on the subscribe button.

Because so many of you are new to Sweet Knee, and I am so glad that you’re here, I wanted to drop a few lines to tell you about myself and Sweet Knee. My name is Kristy and I am the Mama behind the brand. Sweet Knee was a nickname that my son earned as a crawler for his unique ability to bruise his left knee even with leg warmers and knee pads. The other leg was always extended straight out to the side in a crab like fashion! My husband and I used to kiss that knee and call it his Sweet Knee…and the name stuck.

Here’s our brief company backstory:

Our son developed a pretty disturbing rash in the hospital within 24 hours of his birth. I was breastfeeding him exclusively and so I was told that it was probably due to something I was eating, but I didn’t buy that. His little bottom looked as though it had been placed in boiling water, and the pediatrician prescribed a steroid cream. (I was slightly beyond horrified).

I noticed when I brought him home and stopped using the disposable diapers used in the hospital, that the rash began to heal, but not completely. My son had what I later discerned was a chemical reaction to the materials used in the diapers. In the meantime, my mother, who has been in the skin care industry for 45 years, told me to get in the kitchen and do something. So I did, and that is how our first product, Bun Glaze, was created. I used the plants from my garden along with some of the ingredients from my “medicine” (natural ingredients) cabinet. Within 24 hours, the rash disappeared. My son went from looking like a burn victim, to a healthy little boy in less than a day.

I began the company with a notebook, those natural ingredients, a kitchen; and some water color paints that I used to design the labels. My husband was my cheerleader and the one who told me that this was too good not to share with others. So, we built a 500 square foot lab that we outgrew within the first 2 years. We now have 1000 square feet (which is super small compared to all of those other natural companies out there). We actually make our products ourselves, that way we control the quality and make sure that the individual ingredients are of the highest quality and that no corners are cut along the way.

About our ingredients:

We proudly list every single ingredient on our product pages, and we have customers who talk endlessly to their friends about their favorite Sweet Knee products. Some of them jump in and answer customer service questions before I find a chance to check Facebook or Twitter. We love all of our customers for their passion and loyalty. We also love your babies and children and want the best for them. That is why we do not use some pretty familiar ingredients like lavender and tea tree because the NIH found a correlation with some potential hormonal abnormalities. See more information here.

We have not changed our formulations, and are loyal to the farmers that we purchase from. That close relationship allows us to make sure that you are getting the quality that you are paying for and that our product integrity is maintained. The only significant change in our ingredients was to our Oatmeal Cookie Bath in 2011 when we were able to locate a farmer that can provide organic, gluten free oats (previously we had only been able to purchase organic oats). This was such a huge success story for us, because so many of our customers wanted gluten free and organic. Now all of our products are gluten free and made of certified organic ingredients.

Our Cleansers:

We do not use surfactants, the bubbling agents in soaps, because we do not believe that detergents belong on babies. So we offer three cleansing options so that you can find the combination that works best for you.

Oatmeal Cookie Bath is our all over cleanser, for super sensitive skin due to eczema, rashes, and chicken pox; and also is our recommendation for newborn skin. The product is a powder and contains calendula, marshmallow and german chamomile to soothe and calm the skin. A reusable muslin bag is included and can be used as a bath cloth, and to squeeze and release the plants and oats. We recommend this product also as a facial cleanser for baby and mama.

Bubbly Soap is dispensed as a foam and comes in a mild calendula scent. This is great for zone cleansing, and one pump is generally enough for any baby. To zone cleanse, just use Bubbly Soap on the parts that truly get dirty (hands, feet, in between legs, and hair). This is how we should all be bathing, but those bubble baths and body washes that we all grew up with made us think that we need soap on every part of our body.

Hulababy Bar is our solid bar soap, also in the castille tradition (natural soap). We love this one for zone cleansing and for diaper rash and eczema. The men in your life will likely swipe this one, so be careful not to leave it in plain site.

Our Skin and Diaper Care:

Bun Glaze is the one that started it all and is labeled as our diaper ointment alternative. Alternative? Yes, alternative, because there are no medicinal or barrier ingredients like zinc or titanium. The product actually works because of the botanicals we use. The consistency is probably different than what you are used to with other natural diaper creams. Bun Glaze dispenses like a glaze, out of an air-free container, that squeezes out every last drop. No unsanitary jars or tubes here, you can even persuade squimish dads to change diapers because they won’t have to smear on grainy or greasy products, the Bun Glaze goes right into place. The other equally great uses include dry facial cheeks, eczema, bug and ant bites, stings, minor cuts and burns, dry skin and heels, alternative to lotion (especially in winter and for super sensitive skin) and lip softener (but our customers expand on this all the time). The results are pretty surprising to most everyone who tries Bun Glaze for the first time.

Rubbit Oil is our massage oil, bath oil and lotion alternative. We do not recommend lotions because they are water based and even the natural ones contain harsh stabilizers. Rubbit Oil is very light-weight and has a lovely mandarin and calendula scent, that is like summer, but won’t hide your babies own natural scent. This one is also great for mamas with swollen ankles and water retention.

Why we do not manufacture lotions: Lotions contain stabilizers (such as cetearyl alcohol) and emulsifiers (such as glyceryl oleate) that keep them shelf stable. These ingredients can be eye, skin and lung irritants and there are data gaps that make them questionable ingredients for use on babies. Because lotions are used frequently and all over the largest organ (our beautiful skin), we prefer to skip this type of product and exchange it with a more natural product. We recommend instead using Bun Glaze or Rubbit Oil in place of lotion. We have customers who use one individually, or a combination of the two depending on the season and preference for the texture/scent of each.

Our get Moody Essential Blends

Giggle is great for uplifting even the crankiest of babes/adults. We love this one for the car and for mixing into vinegar and water for household cleaning. This is made of mandarin, sweet orange and sweet marjoram, yum!

Snooze is great for calming down and getting ready for sleep without the use of lavender. This is great for the long trips, crib linens and during tense times when your shoulders feel glued to your neck. You’ll love the combination of clary sage and  geranium blossoms.

Breathe is perfect for colds, flu and sinus headaches. This is the one we go to for just about anything that ails you. You’ll love the eucalyptus, lemon and ginger.

I’d love to answer all of your questions. You can use our contact page on the site, or write to us on facebook or twitter. We’d love to get to know you and help to meet your needs.

Best wishes and the Sweet Life,

Kristy

President and Mama of Sweet Knee

All million of our blog readers (giggle, all three of you) might be wondering why the delay in posting. I try to reach out to you all here once a month, and also to exercise the exclamation mark key on my keyboard. This post has been postponed for two months. I’ve been avoiding it, not knowing what in the world to say about this topic.

I love to give gifts. This is the time of the year that most everyone gets in that spirit. So I’m thinking this is the time to let you know what’s been going on with our Giving Blankets. The Giving Blanket is a project, or mission if you will, to provide one for one to children in need of a little extra love. For every one we sell, we give one to a baby who deserves better than their current circumstances. We’ve sent blankets to babies in orphanages mainly, some as far away as Bulgaria. Some have been given to babies locally too.

Some of you know that we sold out of our original muslin blankets a few months ago. I wanted to have a Giving Blanket that was hand made, and full of the love of a mother. So, I asked Sweet Knee customers to write in if they were crafty and wanted to create a signature blanket to become the new Giving Blanket.

One mother wrote in very eagerly and sent us a design concept within hours of our Facebook post. We loved the hand quilted design with a cross-stitched heart (our logo) in the corner. This mom was a customer of ours, and very much needed some extra income. She had three children and one on the way and it just seemed like a win win match.

We paid the mom up front so that she could purchase all of the materials and quilt the blankets in time for the Thanksgiving season. The first deadline went by, and then the second. No blankets. (I wanted to be patient, as I can’t imagine being pregnant with a fourth child, and worrying about providing for them.) Her baby was born, healthy and perfect. Then we received a tracking number and were so excited.

The package was never mailed, as tracking info was never updated. We then received a second tracking number, same thing. A label was made, but a package was never sent.

So, I emailed the mom, and called her, and no response. She’s apparently not available to talk. Yes, I had that gut feeling, a woman’s intuition that this wasn’t working out as planned some time ago. But I still gave her the benefit of the doubt and rationalized it all.

In the meantime, I have had all kinds of emotions, but mostly sadness. First, I love to give, and if I can help someone, I usually do. Second, I feel betrayed and used, and also a little bit dumb for being so gullible. But most importantly, I feel sad for the babies that won’t be getting their blankets.

Swaddling my infant son is one of my fondest memories. My favorite blanket was hand made with little trains and tracks on it. I knew that when I was swaddling him, he had a full tummy, he had just had skin to skin with me, and that he had a clean bottom. His needs were met and he was in a safe place.

I’m a praying woman, so I’ve been praying for this person, and asking myself a lot of questions. I also talked it over with my Sunday School class. My class is a very eclectic group of all ages and backgrounds. Among them, there is a professor, a nurse, a lawyer, a few grandparents, some realtors, and on and on. There is great counsel amongst them for sure!

The lawyer was one of the first to speak up. He said that he knew that I understood the law and what my options were through the courts. But then he said, I bet you’re going to  see your ministry grow from this situation.

Before I left church yesterday, I had a half dozen people offer to provide blankets. I have no doubt that there are going to be many more children blessed than would have been had this incident not happened. I have a strong faith. I also hope that this mom will contact me and help make good on her commitment in one form or another. We’ll see.

This set of blankets that I’m now collecting instead of our normal one to one giving will be going to Fostering Hope in Conway, SC. One of our Sweet Knee diehard customers, Brittany, suggested this great organization. They provide goods and services to children in 5 counties in eastern South Carolina.

I would like to encourage you to consider donating blankets, new or gently used. We’d be glad to deliver them to Fostering Hope, or we’d love to hear about you delivering some to children closer to you. Every baby deserves that feeling of safety and security that my son and your children have had.

I get knocked down, but I get up again. Your never gonna keep me down….-Chumbawamba (TubThumping Song).

Revelation 2:19 NIV I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.

It’s all in how you look at things. Picture of the most beautiful Amelia and the little man Sweet Knee.

This gorgeous baby is none other than Little Man Sweet Knee. He just so happens to be five years old today. Woohoo and hip hip hurray for the one who made me a mom, and changed my whole Modus Operandi!

I’m a planner by nature, and I had mapped my whole life out by the time I was 25. I had just finished graduate school and thought I would find and marry my husband and have two children by my early 30’s. That’s not at all what happened.

I approached my pregnancy the same way that I approach most things, I planned. I had a very detailed birth plan and ate all the right things and exercised and rested and nested too. I wanted a natural birth and because I was 35 by the time he was born I wanted to have another baby soon after. That’s not at all what happened.

I have a wonderful little family, a kind and loving husband, and a full of life, smart and funny little boy. He’s five today, did I mention? These things didn’t come in my timeframe or within the constraints of a birth plan. But, these wonderful people that I get to love and spend my life with are also much more than I could have ever imagined.

My career path has changed drastically, you can read more about that in previous posts. I never could have dreamed up Sweet Knee the company, or more importantly Sweet Knee the greatest little man this side of anywhere! Necessity was definitely the Mother of Invention in this case.

On this grand occasion, I have a few exciting things to share! We are going to be offering shipping to Canada by the end of this week. We’re also going to be offering a FedEx shipping option.

In really great news, we’re going to be adding hand crafted, Sweet Knee inspired items to our site in the next few weeks. Two of our favorite artists are working on some handmade items to add to our Get Dressed and Swaddled part of the site. You’ll also notice that our current items are all 50-60% off to make room for the new and oh so Sweet things to come. This discount is below our cost, and a really great way to stock up for the baby to come or shower gifts on your list.

Also, in honor of Little Man Sweet Knee’s birthday, we’re sending out free travel sizes with all orders this week (through 9/24/2011).

Stop, drop and sniff for lavender in your bathroom. Go ahead, I’ll wait………  Whether you use more traditional products, or those with fewer and all natural ingredients, you’ll discover that lots of them contain lavender. Women are naturally drawn to the scent of lavender, it almost universally makes us take in a deep breath and smile.  If you’re a label reader like me, you’ve probably noticed that there isn’t even one of the tiny little lavender flower petal in our products. So, where’s the lavender ma’am? Here’s the thing, it just didn’t seem like the right thing to do. We know that it would have sold lots of products based on the scent alone, because lavender is naturally appealing to most women. We left it out on purpose. We also left out the much beloved tea tree oil for similar reasons.

We use lots of familiar ingredients, you can find them all straight out of nature without man-made fillers and preservatives. Lots of cute but powerfully healing flower petals like calendula (a little marigold), sunflowers, orange blossoms and geraniums. Even some yummy cocoa butter and gluten free oats made it into our formulations.

The reason we left out lavender and tea tree is a study out of the research triangle area (Durham, Chapel Hill, Raleigh) where some  leading scientists found a correlation in the use of lavender with abnormal hormone development (breast development) in young boys. All of the boys were using personal care products containing lavender and/or lavender with tea tree oil during the study. When asked to stop using these products, all of the boys were relieved of the Gynecomastia. (Report from NIH here.) “The results of our laboratory studies confirm that pure lavender and tea tree oils can mimic the actions of estrogens and inhibit the effects of androgens,” said Korach. “This combinatorial activity makes them somewhat unique as endocrine disruptors.” -NIH

So why are these ingredients in your baby products? Because, they’ve been used for a very long time; their estrogen containing properties make them naturally attractive to moms (who mostly purchase baby products); and once an ingredient is used in a certain way for many years, it tends to keep getting used. So why was it okay for your great-grandmother to use lavender on you grandma? Times have changed and she probably used just a little if any lavender on you. She probably didn’t use it on you every day and consistently over time. There were also fewer environmental toxins and fewer antibiotics in our food supply. Who really knows how all of these things work together to contribute to abnormal hormone development. But take a look around our playgrounds and in schools and you’ll notice what pediatricians have said for at least the past decade: our children are going through puberty much earlier. Long before they are emotionally and socially ready.

We are constantly watching and reading the latest research on the plants that we use to make Sweet Knee. We promise to change and grow as a company as knowledge and research change. We pride ourselves on using the ingredients that your great-grandmother would have used and would recognize if she were reading our labels. But, we promise that we won’t use something that might have worked in her generation when we have knowledge that it may do harm.

Please let us know your thoughts on this subject, and keep comments relevant to the subject of this post. Ready to become a Sweet Knee Contributor? Submit your idea to us on our contact page and your ideas could show up here for the world to see!  -Kristy

Update 8/8/2011 12 noon ET: The Winner, randomly selected by little man Sweet Knee from his black cowboy hat (couldn’t find the space helmet) is…..insert drumroll…… Belle Windham. Congratulations Belle! Please email us at customerservice@sweetknee.com with your mailing address and whether you would prefer oatmeal cookie bath, bubbly soap or hulababy bar for your prize.

You may have seen this little four word statement on our new site: Get Clean. Stay Sweet.

That is our tagline, our concise way of saying that it really is as simple to get clean as you want it to be. Once you’ve spent any time at all on our site, or on our Facebook and Twitter pages, you’ll know that we take ingredients very seriously. You can read all  of the information about what’s in our products on the product pages of our site. A very short read, because we just use what nature gives us, none of those man-made ingredients. We just put them together in a way that your great grandmother would have done.

How to “Get Clean”:

There are three “Get Clean” products in our line. I’ll discuss them a little bit here and give you some news on how to win one of them at the end of this post.

Bubbly Soap is a natural castille soap, meaning that it is made of botanical oils, including the traditional olive oil. You won’t find a bubble bath or any other surfactant/detergent based product in our line. We don’t recommend sitting in a tub of manmade chemistry stuff.

We have two sizes, a travel size and a tub size. Both come with a foamer bottle so that you can get just the right amount and not waste it. You won’t need very much, just a pump will cover everything that needs covering.

Want a bigger size? Okay! The new liter size will be available for purchase on August 10, 2011. (Just next week). If you’re happy and you know it, comment on this post (please).

Hulababy Bar is also a natural castille soap, but in bar form. This one adds a punch of moisture that is unbelievable. This is the one we like to use for baby butts. For any baby with irritated, or really sensitive skin. This is the one soap you’ll want in your arsenal. We even have grown (see the great grandmother pictured below) adults using it for their sensitive scalps and hair. Here is a quote from that great grandmother.

“Finally…”something works”!!!!

To anyone who has dry, itchy, flaky scalp, the Hula Baby Bar is a godsend.  I’ve had scalp problems my entire adult life, never entirely rid of itch or flaking, no matter what I used (and believe me I have tried everything). I’ve been using this soap for about 5 weeks and I can’t believe the difference.  The buildup is minimal, if at all. After about 4 shampoos, the buildup was gone completely – though it did come back, it was nothing like it had been and with each washing was less. The point is, this soap really works, no more itching and definitely no more embarrassing flaking. It’s an amazing product that’s definitely being tested on my hair – dry, itchy, flaky, and color treated. I can’t believe the difference it’s caused.  You have a customer for life.  I’m gonna be a great gramma next month, you’re never too old to learn new things… Thank you Sweet Knee for a terrific product!”

Sincerely,

F.Coons

Riverside,Ca.

(Ms. Coons, congratulations to you on your new great grand-daughter!)

Oatmeal Cookie Bath This is one of my favorite Sweet Knee Products and even if you follow a gluten free lifestyle, this will work for you. Our oats are certified organic and gluten free. Not gluten free? No worries, this just means that there is no cross-contamination with other crops, and you won’t even know the difference.

Oatmeal Cookie Bath, OCB for short, is an alternative to soap for our super duper sensitive souls. We never recommend putting soap on even the dirtiest faces. The facial area is thinner and more delicate and so we recommend using this on every face, and all over on newborn skin and those super duper sensitive souls mentioned earlier.

OCB is what I mix with our Bun Glaze to cleanse my face or to exfoliate in the shower. Moms, you’ll also love this one for itchy pregnant belly and dry winter skin.

How to win one of these Get Clean products:

Visit the Bubbly Soap, Oatmeal Cookie Bath, and or Hulababy Bar pages of our site and leave a review by clicking on the “extra info” tab and following the instructions to create an account. Then go to our facebook page and let us know that you left a review. You can visit our facebook page by clicking on the facebook button at the top right corner of our website. Winner will be announced on Monday, August 8th at noon ET.

(We’ve added a box at checkout for you to enter the July discount code. What code?  Keep reading to the end.)

We like to give around here. When we started Sweet Knee, we planted a tree for every Sweet Tote that we sold. Literally! The sales were few back then, and we love digging in the dirt too. We happen to have a large parcel of land that needed some trees and so it was a win win situation.

We’ve grown a little bit over the past few years and so we decided we needed to leave the regular tree planting to someone else. So we switched gears a little bit.

Now we have a new focus. One that is a little more directly related to babies. We have The Giving Blanket. We always had a favorite blanket when our little guy was in the swaddling stage. It was nice and airy and perfect for here at the beach. So we started purchasing those blankets wholesale and hand dyeing them in bright vibrant colors and giving them to babies in need.

This month a big box of them is being hand delivered to babies in an orphanage who are in great need of a little loving. Hopefully we’ll have pictures for you sometime in the near future. The way this works is that for each one we sell, we give one to a baby who either is in need of some TLC to get well, or for a baby who is awaiting their permanent home. Don’t you love the vibrant colors?

The great thing about these blankets is that they are just shy of 4 ft x 4 ft. That is big enough for an almost five year old to cuddle up with his mama and listen to stories. I know, because we just did that a few minutes ago.

We are going to have a sale on these blankets, because we know of some very deserving babies who could use some warmth. The sale will run now through 7/31/2011

When you purchase The Giving Blanket before 7/31/2011 we will also send you a $10.00 gift card to use on the site (no expiration date).

P.S. Don’t need a blanket right now? That’s okay, we want to give you a gift too. Just use code 7312011-15 for 15% off of your order* before 7/31 and treat yourself to something Sweet!

Get Clean and Stay Sweet,

Kristy

*exclusive of all other sales and specials

This week someone told me to share more of myself with you. After all, a company is about people, not logos. So here it goes, a dozen random facts that I think you should know. The picture on the left is of Mama and Papa Sweet [otherwise known as Kristy (me) and Brent] on our wedding day. The next is a picture of me after 6 years of marriage and 4 1/2 years of parenting little Sweet Knee himself ….I look different now I guess that happens!

So here are the dozen random facts. I hope you enjoy them!

1. I spent a summer hiking and staying in hostels in South America after finishing graduate school. There is a resulting heavy influence of Ecuadorian culture in my home because of that trip. The Andes Mountains are lovely and the open air market was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

2. My dance teacher when I was 5 told me that hard things were so easy for me, and easy things were challenging for me. (I never forgot it, and I think this deserves a blog post all of its own.)

3. Before Sweet Knee, I was the Autism Program Coordinator for a school system in NC. I spent a dozen years working my way from classroom teacher, child therapist, curriculum developer, to my final position as Autism Program Coordinator.

4. Working with children on the autism spectrum and most especially their parents was humbling, rewarding, fascinating and provided me with some great hallmark moments. I have a book in my head, that hasn’t made its way into print.

5. I can dance, even now; but I cannot play a sport or ride a bike. (gasp) I have rhythm, but no eye-hand coordination. I used to spend outside time on a boat, or at the beach, not on a field. Though I’m making up for it with little man.

6. I recently discovered that I have Quaker roots on my mother’s side of the family. So far, I’ve traced back to the early 1700′s.

7. I would love to have another baby; but having one miracle baby is all that my body can do. Hopefully one day another baby will enter our home. I don’t know how or when, but it would be a true blessing.

8. I met my husband, Brent, married him 9 months later, and then got pregnant against all odds six months later. I blame our mutual friend ;0  (my assistant at the time, who was friends with my husband). Brenda set us up on a blind date and that was all she wrote. Brent and I even lived in two different states at the time.

9. I pray over Sweet Knee products when I’m making them. I prayed over the first batch of Bun Glaze that I made my son (before we even started the company); and I just never stopped. Hopefully that isn’t a problem for people. I hope you will consider it a blessing, even if that isn’t your cup of tea.

10. I drew all of the Sweet Knee characters in bed one night in between feedings for little Sweet Knee. (To read more about Sweet Knee the boy, see our very first post.)

11. I want to author children’s books using my experiences in working with children.

12. My secret wish is that this blog will become a forum for you and I to learn and grow as the most important people in our children’s lives. So I hope that you will feel compelled to post a comment, and maybe even feel the need to write a guest blog for us (email us if you’re interested). Let’s make it a conversation!

From time to time, depending on how much you like them, we’ll be asking others to guest post here at Sweet Knee. One of the first people that I thought to ask about coming to post is Amy West of Just West of Crunchy. Amy has a great deal on her plate, including blogging, advocating and mothering is high on that list. So I was delighted when she agreed to chat with us. First you’ll see Amy’s responses to our Sweet Knee Questionnaire. We’ve also asked her to take on the topic of Parenting Advice and the enormous aisle of parenting books at the bookstore. (She’s tough, she can handle it.)

Sweetest advice (given or received): My husband, Josh, works at an
insurance company and his department coworkers had a baby shower for
us.  Each of them wrote down a piece of advice or tidbit about
parenting (many of them were new parents, themselves).  I still think
of that as one of my favorite shower “gifts” – the advice was great
and it was such a sweet and sincere thing to do.

Sweetest indulgence: Museums. Oh, how I love a good museum! And
sweets. I love those, too.

Sweetest place on Earth: Italy!

Sweetest word: My daughter’s name.

Sweetest childhood memory (yourself or your child): Wow, this is a
tough one. Picking just one moment in either of those time frames
would be too hard, I think. The most recent sweet moment was when our
daughter danced in her first dance recital a few weeks ago. Talk about
mama pride! And little tiny tutus are definitely something I’d call
sweet.

Sweetest Sweet Knee product: Bubbly Soap, for sure!! I will have
Bubbly Soap long after there are babies in this house, because it will
always be an instant way to remember baby baths and that sweet smell.
I love that the soap isn’t scented too much – it’s just enough to mix
with that intoxicating “new baby smell.” I love it!

Need some guidance? We’ve got guidance.

Parenting advice is offered by the truckload: TV segments, books, and
entire websites are devoted to the subject.  Some of them are good.
Some of them make me think book bans might be a good idea, after all.
(Ezzo, I’m looking at you. Cut that Babywise crap out!)

There are some basic things which we must do as parents: feed the
kids, clothe them, give them a place to live, etc-.  We also need to
enable them to participate in society in a meaningful way. That’s a
lot more basic than it sounds.

Our kids are growing up in a world where the lines have practically
disappeared.  Content is king and it’s everywhere.  Some of
it is meaningful, a lot of it is marketing, and much of it is
worthless.  Teaching them the skills they need to sort through this
constant onslaught of information is essential.

Part of teaching those skills – much of teaching those skills
- comes from modeling the behaviors we hope our kids will one day
adopt for themselves.  That means taking the time to sort through the
bloated claims and ridiculous advice, to find the truth and the
meaningful bits.  It also means doing a fair amount of research along
the way, because getting to the truth isn’t always easy.

For us, that means allowing some things that we aren’t necessarily
comfortable with.  I’m not comfortable with our daughter seeing the ridiculous toy ads on TV.  I’m not comfortable

with Disney princesses being slapped on every other toy on the
shelf, not to mention the generic imitations. I’m not
comfortable with her being around kids that clearly exhibit
values (or lack thereof) that don’t mesh with ours.

But you know what? Those things are out there.  They’re not
going away, and as she gets older, her exposure to them is only going
to increase.  So rather than shelter her, or pretend that we can avoid
these things for the whole of her childhood, we have to deal with
them.

Granted, we decide for her, too.  She’s only two-and-a-half and that
means our decisions still trump her learning experiences sometimes.
But when we can, more and more often, we let her decide. We let her
form her own opinion and start limbering up the brain pathways that
will allow her to do the heavy-duty critical thinking she’ll need to
navigate the world successfully as an adult.

This also means setting an example.  This girl’s got an opinionated
mama. That’s a character fault as much as a strength, frankly.  It’s
vitally important to me that she see her mom as someone who’s also a
person, with interests and opinions and
independent thoughts.  That she sees me express these
thoughts and uncover truths (and share them with others!) is such an
empowering thing, for both of us.

We might not always agree, but I hope that one day, we will be able to
stand toe-to-toe and debate the issues that are important to us – and
the ones that are utterly trivial, too.

I don’t want to ever set the example of “I’m doing this because the
expert so-and-so says it’s good.”  I want her to see me take in the
information and draw my own conclusion, so that I can tell her, “I’m

doing this because _______; so-and-so says it’s good, too.”

At the end of the day, some of those parenting authors might have
really insightful, important advice to share.  Some of the princess
toys might be fun to play with.  So take the parenting advice and chew
on it. Use what’s worthwhile and ditch the rest.  Let the girls play
with the princess toys, as long as they come with talks about their
pros and cons.  Take all this advice, or leave it; just know
why you’re doing whatever you choose.

That’s what I hope for my own daughter, and it’s the example I try to
model for her.  We might not fit the mold,  but is the mold really all
that great?  Think about it.

Check Amy out over at Just West of Crunchy.