Updated with winner below!

When Tacy was in day care back in New Jersey, we had to send all of her meals with her. Lunch and two snacks. It doesn’t sound like much, but try packing five lunches and ten snacks each week for a two year old whose tastes change with the wind.

I’d steam vegetables and chop them up. I’d peel and slice fruit. I’d pour three sippie cups of milk. I’d make a sandwich that generally went uneaten. The one and only convenience I allowed myself was a cup of Yoplait Kids.

I could always count on her to eat her yogurt. And since Yoplait Kids has been so good to me for the past five-plus years, I’ve kept buying it.

CJ’s a little iffy where it comes to yogurt. She’ll ask for it, eat half the cup, and leave the rest of it on the counter. Even so, that’s better than if she ate a few fistfuls of crackers. Plus I can usually count on Tacy to eat what CJ’s left behind.

When we asked the PBN bloggers if they wanted to try Yoplait Kids, I joked that half of them probably had a six-pack or two in the refrigerator already. We moms are pretty good at figuring out what works, and then sticking to it.

But for those parents who haven’t yet figured out what a great snack yogurt is for kids, hopefully the results of the PBN campaign will convince them. Or maybe the $1.50 off coupon on the Yoplait Kids site. (Go ahead, click!)

Yoplait Kids also sent along some goodies for me to give away. I’ve got a Yoplait Kids cooler and a My First Brain Quest game (way cool - CJ and I have been playing it already), plus a coupon for a free six-pack of Yoplait Kids. You’ve probably seen these same goodies around the blogosphere - this giveaway has been making the rounds recently.

So if you want in, leave me a comment here between now and Sunday at midnight. I’ll announce the winner on Monday.

I’m late!  But I’ve got a winner, thanks to random.org - congratulations, Katie!

While CJ is still in speech therapy, we’ve seen her progress by leaps and bounds this summer.  Not only is she speaking in complete sentences, she’s acquired a newfound love of reading.  Well, she loves it when we read to her, that is.

But she’s also starting to consistently recognize and identify letters, and while she can’t yet put any of those letters together - except for C and J, which she insists spells “Mousie” - she’s on her way.  So it’s really important for me to encourage her, even when it means dropping everything to respond and reinforce.

Not surprisingly, I was really hoping there’d be a spot left for me in the latest PBN DVD campaign, featuring “Meet the Sight Words”.  I’m not usually a fan of kids’ DVDs - give me a Pixar movie instead, please - so that’s a testimonial to the appeal of “Meet the Sight Words” right there.

I actually haven’t watched the DVD with her, but Kyle has.  The two of them sat down to watch together while I kept tapping away at my laptop and listened in.

Not only did both of them sit still through the entire thing, repeating back the words to the screen, but CJ sat through a repeat screening immediately.  She’s asked to see the DVD again since then, and she’s also started talking specifically about “words”.

Kyle said that he really liked the animation, which is no faint compliment.  I cracked up to myself listening to the two of them repeat the words over and over with different inflections.  We’ve all been going around the house doing the same thing ever since.

Which may not be the objective of the DVD, but it’s definitely made an impression on all of us.  And if it’s helping to encourage CJ’s interest in letters and words, then it’s worth popping “Meet the Sight Words” into the player.

Anyone else remember the Hanes pantyhose commercial from the 1970s where the jingle went: “Gentlemen prefer Hanes”? They put the emphasis on the wrong syllable of “prefer” so it sounded to me like they were singing: “Gentlemen ripped her Hanes.” Not very gentlemanly to rip a lady’s pantyhose, if you ask me.

Nowadays, Hanes is about much more than pantyhose - and that’s a good thing because I don’t know anyone under sixty who wears pantyhose. Tee shirts, underwear, socks - for men, women, and children. Search any of the drawers (dresser drawers, I mean) in this house, and you’re bound to find some Hanes products. And thanks to PBN, you’ll find even more Hanes underwear and socks now in Tacy’s and CJ’s dresser drawers.

Besides the luxury of having a few extra pairs of underwear lying around - because tell me, what kid couldn’t use more underwear? - these undies are supposedly wedgie-proof. Neither of my kids have complained of wedgies, but frankly they probably wouldn’t notice. However, *I* notice when their drawers are slipping down and their rear-ends are on display. It’s funny the first few times, but after that? Not so much.

I don’t know how Hanes constructs these waistbands, but they practically adhere to my kids’ bodies. I’m so impressed by how well they stay in place. No more teasing my kids about their exposed cracks; I guess I’ll have to find some other fodder instead.

Plus I like the designs on them and the subtle color details on the waistbands. My mother always bought me plain white underwear, so naturally I want to let my girls have a little color on theirs.

The kids’ socks are awesome too because they’re color-coded based on size. Now I can throw a pile of socks at the girls and let them sort out whose are whose. I love outsourcing household tasks that can’t be messed up.

So while I’m not so fond of the old-style Hanes - the pantyhose or the jingle - I’m definitely a fan of them now. Just wait ’til you get some Hanes on you!