I visited some of my retail partners last week and had a blast catching up with them.  It was incredible to see where they displayed the BabbaCover.  I especially loved visiting Stacey at Peek-a-Boutique!  She is such a fun and sweet person.  Check out her hilarious signs in her store.  (I LOVE these funny signs I've been spotting.  They make me laugh.)  If any of you see some fun signs out there, send me a pic!

When I started this company, I didn't realize how many amazing people I would meet.  Creative women, mompreneurs, intelligent business people, hilarious characters...and yet everyone has a sense of depth and heart. 

It's definitely a tough market out there right now with the economy pinch.  Believe me.  I get it. I'm a mompreneur on a startup budget.  I'm working on getting more efficiencies in our operations without sacrificing the quality.  During times like these though, true characters come out.  As the sign says, "$5 charge for whining".  This isn't meant for the kiddos.  Instead of focusing on the downside, I'm going to surround myself around inspirational people who focus on the vision.  I have met some incredible people that I would like to introduce you to.  They helped me rethink motherhood, entrepreneurship, and life.  More to come...

I've been struggling lately to keep it all together!  I caught a cold from Kayla (my 3rd one this season!), but there are no breaks for being a mom.  No matter what, babies/kids wake up at the crack of dawn demanding breakfast.  Kayla's thing lately is "jelly stix!!", which are toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut in stick form - hence the "jelly stix" name.  Laundry doesn't stop piling up.  Dinners have to be made.  Diapers need to be changed, etc. etc.  All you parents out there know exactly what I'm talking about!  There IS no "sick day" for all the mommy duties.  Of course, we love it, but we just need to be sick sometimes, too.

Same goes for being a mompreneur. Every day that is lost, things don't progress.  I don't have to call anyone to say that "I'm sick" with a raspy voice to be convincing, but the flip side is that things don't get done.

I'm working late tonight to make up for the 'sick mode' I've been in for the last week.  I don't do it that often, but it's a trade off for usually keeping great hours to be with Kayla most of the day.  As I was preparing my presentation, I got THE BEST email from my hubby.  It just said, "Dadda daughter picnic! Miss you!" with the attached picture.

Dadda put her picnic table outside on the porch to enjoy dinner in the 70 degree weather together.  We live in Chicago, so 70 degree weather is a HUGE CELEBRATION, especially in March.  He said before she sat down, she said, "FUN!  Where mommy?"  My heart melted.  Talk about motivation to bust out my presentation for the meeting to rush home and join them.  Signing off...to go to a picnic...

This past weekend was full of sugar babies...literally.  We visited a friend who just had a baby boy.  He was the cutest!  Then, we walked around the city of Chicago.  It was a bit cold outside, so instead of going to the zoo, we stopped by a cute cupcake bakery cafe.  Check out this sign that they had in their window.  I thought it was so funny and original!  Kayla was a bit wired after the chocolate covered cupcake treat.  Can you imagine if she was given espresso and a free puppy?  :)  I love little things like this that makes you laugh unexpectedly. 

Pregnancy & Newborn magazine is one of my favorites!  I would always read it in the doctor's office while I waited.  The one thing I would always flip to is the section where it gave me the Best List of everything out there that new moms needed.  So, I was ecstatic when we found out that Pregnancy & Newborn magazine put the BabbaCover on its "A-list" in its February 2009 issue!!  Woohoo!  It's great to know that all the testers, editors, parents, and consumers love the BabbaCover as much as we do!

A huge thanks to the Pregnancy & Newborn crew!

Before I gave birth, I wanted the gender neutral colors.  I registered for green and yellow.  I wanted to be more practical even though I knew I was having a baby girl.  After Kayla popped out, I covered her in PINK.  It's funny how that happens.

I designed my first Beep Beep in green for that same reason - to allow other parents to be more practical.  However, I got SO many requests to make Beep Beep in PINK!  Store owners and consumers directly emailed me and made numerous suggestions.  So, here it is!!! 

  I searched so many different lots of PINK dye to find the right shade.  This pink is not TOO pink.  My team thought I was crazy when I kept returning samples and passionately pointing out the difference between pinks that you could only see in the right shade of sun light.  Regardless, I finally found it!  It's available online here and at all of our amazing retailers.

When you email me your suggestions and call me with thoughts, I'm totally taking notes!  Keep them coming! :)

 I'm starting to take Thursdays off to focus on Kayla alone.  It has been quite a juggling act launching the company, keeping up with all the orders, and still being the wannabe super mom.  One of the main reasons why I started BabbaCo was to have the flexibility to spend more time with Kayla.  So, I decided to set aside Thursdays for Kayla and Mommy days.  No running around packaging BabbaCover, talking on the phone in the car, or replying to emails while she's awake.  Thursdays will be for museums, watching Elmo together, and playing in the snow.  I loved it today!!  This is how it started..."watering plants" was the first activity...not by choice!!

It’s a new year…and I’m another year older!  I’m a New Year's Day baby.  Actually, I was the first baby born at the Somerset County hospital, so my parents received all these gifts like free dinners, manicures (even for my dad!) and FREE DIAPERS for a year!  Does this happen anymore?  I searched for New Year’s babies and there were definitely news stories about 2009’s little munchkins.  One mom who was a 1983 New Year’s baby herself gave birth to a 2009 New Year’s baby at 12:16am!

No mention of prizes or gifts though.  So, now that I have a baby products company I will continue the tradition of celebrating New Year babies with free BabbaCovers!  If you know of any New Year babies, email me at jessicakim@babbaco.com and I’ll send a free BabbaCover to the first 9 babies of 2009!  CONGRATS to all of you out there!  Hope this year brings great cheer, good fortune, and blessings all around!

This stuff is amazing!  (and I am NOT getting paid from this company!)  I just wanted to share the product that completely made Kayla stop sucking her thumb in ONE day!

Kayla was a good sleeper from the time she was an infant.  She took after her Dadda in that way - slept like a rock.  Every baby needs some kind of soothing method though.  My friend, who is an infant physical therapist and developmental counselor, suggested that I teach Kayla how to suck her thumb as her soothing method.  So, we did.  It worked wonders!  We would put her down to sleep, the blankie in one hand, and the thumb would automatically pop in.  She fell asleep and would soothe herself if she woke up in the middle of the night.

The downside came at about 14 months when sucking her thumb became a HABIT!  Any time we were in the car, the thumb would be in.  When she would watch a video, the thumb would be in.  We started to get concerned.  I read up on methods to stop the thumb sucking like overt praise, distraction, taking away the trigger object (in our case, her blankie), etc.  Nothing worked.  So, I read reviews and found MAVALA Stop. 

I applied a tiny itty bitty dot to the joint part of her thumb.  I didn't want to put it on her nail b/c toddlers eat with their fingers still and I didn't want to impact her taste.  When the thumb went in, she looked at me with disgust and I said, "EWWWWWeeeee, right?  Kayla, it's yucky!  Yuck yuck yuck!"  She tried one other time that day, and she immediately took it out of her mouth.  In just ONE day of applying a tiny itty bitty dot, it worked!

I shared this with my older sister, who has a daughter one year older than Kayla.  She's about 3 now.  My cutie patootie and smartie niece also loved sucking her thumb.  She had one more year of sucking expertise than Kayla.  I had some doubts, but Mavala Stop worked on HER in ONE day, too!  :)

So, I thought I would share this with you guys!  You all share great tips and stories with me, so I'm sharing one of mine with you! :)  Again, I'm not getting paid by this product.  I WISH they were paying me for this review!!!  As a newer company, I could use it.  haha  I'm kidding.  I think the best reviews come from those who have no other motive other than sharing what they experienced.  You never know what you can believe out there now!  I'm just a mom sharing with other moms and dads. :) 

(For those who don't have a thumb sucker, but you have a pacifier junky, you can use the SuperNanny method of the "Pacifier Fairy" who floats away with pacifiers one night.   I don't have any experience with this, so I haven't met this fairy.)

I've been getting tons of emails from all of you requesting to hear more about the mompreneur experience.  I share similar things with each email response, so I thought a better way to share is by blogging about it.  This is the journey of a mom starting up a business wth a toddler by her side. 

sdlfart vihdfgi347129 dghdsfjkldfjogiod ffijofjodfjo (uh...THAT was literally Kayla, my 21-month-old daughter, saying hello by slamming on the keyboard.  It's much better than pulling OFF the keyboard keys like she usually does when I'm not looking.  Once I went a whole week without the "N" key because I couldn't find it on the floor!)

So, the 2 questions I get asked the most so far are:  When did you start this?  How did you come up with the BabbaCover idea?

I started BabbaCo in concept 3 years ago.  I didn't even have a baby yet!  In college, I had a baked goods company that I started out of my dorm room (literally!).  I started baking my special custom treats for my friends and started selling them at the Quick Mart across the street.  They kept selling out, so I produced more and eventually started a business.  In less than 18 months, we were in 320 locations and I had a full manufacturing process, 13 employees, and investors!  I started it as a 19-year-old student WITH braces (yes, I got braces very late in life) and grew up fast through the experience.  After years of running nonstop, I was worn out and knew it was time for me to move on.

I KNEW that the next time I started a business, it would be for something that I truly loved, enjoyed, and believed in because it requires all of my commitment, heart, and soul.  When Kayla was born, I started creating products that just made my life easier.  I quit my corporate job at Kraft Foods in November 2007 (almost one year ago!).  A lot has happened this year!  Do you want to hear more details?  Email me your specific questions and I'll share, but I won't bore you now. :)

The creation of the BabbaCover was inspired by my own frustration.  Kayla was a blankie gal.  She self-named it "Dee Dee" (no idea where that came from) and we had to drag it everywhere!  We live in Chicago where the winters are brutal.  It is just bitter cold!  Covering the infant car seat all day and night, the blankie kept falling off, I couldn't see what she was doing, and I almost dropped the entire carrier b/c the blanket was satin and slippery. 

My frustration opened my eyes to every parent around me struggling with the same thing!  So, I designed the product and started using it on Kayla.  The BabbaCover was born!  No more fumbling with blankets!  We especially used it when we went out to eat at restaurants.  Pre-BabbaCover, I used a waiter's apron (!!!!) to cover Kayla, so she could take a nap.  No more of that. 

Thanks to everyone for emailing me and being part of this journey.  Keep sending us your pictures and testimonies about the product!  I can't tell you how much it energizes me.

Check back for more insider stories...

Check out this baby beating to BabbaCo!  It's so cute, we had to make it a BabbaCo video.  Send in your babies saying BABBACO! :)

After agonizing over the winner with our objective panel of 'judges', we finally picked 1 winner and 2 runner-ups. We feel that these pictures capture some special BabbaCo Moments that bring back memories for ALL parents universally. They remind us why we love our little bubbas so much!

The winner receives a free BabbaCover of style choice(!). The runner-ups receive $20 off on www.babbaco.com.

Thanks to everyone for sharing their precious photos! You'll definitely see your little one's face on our BabbaCo Blog!

The WINNER!! We call this "brotherly love". It made us all feel that warm feeling of true love between siblings, cousins, friends, etc. THIS is a Babba Moment caught on camera.

RUNNER-UPs:

Is this baby real? She completely looks like a precious doll! We all had moments where we wanted to dress our little ones up like dolls. THIS picture captured that Babba Moment.

Don't we all want to feel how this baby looks? We all want our babies to be full, content, and rested. THIS is a Babba Moment of that serene state. *sigh. Her facial expression, her curled up arms, her leg rolls...we love it!

Thanks...
Jessica