And now for a Serious Topic

My very sweet hubby posted pictures of our little one a few days ago to let everyone know she was here. I'm so thankful to have him and the rest of my family here to help with little one and the baby while I recover. We are all doing well. I am resting a lot, and Olivia has been sleeping between 3-4 hours at a time. I have also been able to list a few things each day and reopened my stores a few days ago. I already have a few orders to pack and am getting back into the swing of things slowly. I feel very blessed with the family God has given me.

My hubby also mentioned that I had some complications that we weren't expecting, and this is actually the topic I'd like to touch on today.  My complication was that a few hours after the delivery I started hemorrhaging and they had a difficult time getting it to stop. It happened so quickly that my they were unable to take me out of the hospital room and my family had to listen to what was going on behind a closed curtain. Thankfully my hubby was there to hold my hand.  I ended having to get a blood transfusion of several pints and had to be closely monitored for several days.

Why am I telling you this?

Because for me it made a lot of things much more clear. Life is short and for me, being able to be a stay at home mom is a top priority, if only for a few years until both of my kiddos are in school. This is a dream of mine since my son was born 3 years ago. My hubby has not on board with this dream of mine all of this time, he didn't think that I would be able to sell enough to make up for my teaching salary. However, since we have come home from the hospital he is backing me one hundred percent. I'm very excited to sit down together and make a plan so that dream can come true one day soon.

I also thought about what would have happened to my family had they not been able to get the bleeding stopped.  There were a lot of things left unsaid and unplanned because you don't think of things like this happening to you.  My hubby has no idea how to access any of my online accounts, how to close my selling accounts, etc.  What would he do with all of my stuff?  If I left it for my children, who would run it until they were old enough to? If I had been too sick to run things for more than a few weeks like I had planned, I didn't have anyone trained to ship, list, etc for me.

It's not something that I want to think about, but something that I need to think about.
What would your family do if something happened to you?

My first plan is to train my step daughter and my hubby how to pack and ship items for me.
Then I would like to make a business notebook for my family that tells them:
where my items are stored "listed and unlisted"
where I sell things, and what the passwords are
how to put my account on vacation or how to close my accounts
bank information
tax information


Do you have a back up plan for your business?
Suggestions for something I missed?

Another blog post I've read about preparing for the unexpected
http://www.fruziescollectibles.com/staying-business/
http://www.fruziescollectibles.com/staying-business-physically/

She's Here!

Welcome the newest addition to the family.

Olivia Grace

Born March 20th 

8 lbs 12 oz

20" long 

Melissa had some serious complications and is taking some extra time to recover, but everyone is home now and doing much better. 

Does it ever end . . .

A quick recap of my last 9 months of pregnancy:
Months 1-5 morning sickness
Months 5-10 back/walking issues
Month 7 failed glucose test/borderline diabetic
Month 8 RSV
Month 9-10 Quarantined from family due to everyone having influenza A except me, hubby is at his mom's and little one is with my parents, and yes, we all have had our flu shots.

there are days I think it will never end!

So, while I have the whole house to my self for the next 5 days, I decided to list as many items as I can with what I have in the house- since it is blizzarding outside and there are 8-10" of snow outside my front door. I have also washed 10 loads of laundry in an attempt to disinfect the house. I have also clorox wiped the phone, remotes, door handles and anything else I could think of that might be contaminated.

So far today I have listed rubber stamps, clothing, some books I cleaned off a shelf. Tomorrow my plan is to  go thru little one's toys to see what I can downsize and sell, finish putting the baby's clothes away- a friend at school just gave me 3 huge totes of clothes so I now need to put away all of the 0-3 month clothes and just put the newborn clothes in the drawers for now. My son only wore newborns for 1 day, since he was almost 10 pounds when he was born. Our new little one will be born sooner and my belly is way smaller than it was last time, so I am guessing she will fit into newborns for a longer period of time.

Sales have been steady but usually small amounts, I'm usually selling up to 20 items a week, which is still way better than last year. I'm hoping to sneak in a few more sales before I close up everything for maternity leave on March 15th.

I don't usually do a lot of auctions, but I decided after looking at the completeds to try my rubber stamps at auction for now to try and get some fast money out of them. So far I already have 2 bids on the stamps a listed just a few minutes ago. Yay!  My mom has a ton of stamps she never uses/never used, so maybe while she is helping with the baby I can get her to bring some and I can list them. I took my photos of the stamps while sitting in my warm cozy bed, so they are very easy to list and ship- something I'm going to need for a while. If you have any rubber stamps around your house, be sure to check them, if they are PSX they are worth some money!

Hopefully the next post you see from me will be a photo of beautiful baby girl.

counting down  . . .