No whip cream, no sprinkles, no cherries, no chocolate shavings, nothing but two scoops of ice cream are allowed on our trips to the ice cream shop.

Imagine Seinfeld's Soup Nazi but only a taller, thinner and much more gorgeous brunette in stilettos yelling "No sprinkles for you!" It may sound harsh to some, but the "two scoops of ice cream and nothing else" rule has served us well for years. It minimizes the "no fair!" bickering in a three-children household and creates for a more enjoyable experience when the children know what to expect. Two scoops and nothing else. Don't even ask.

Until yesterday.

When my child created such a convincing argument that I had no choice but to reward him.

"Two scoops of Mitchell's ice cream is $4.65. One bottle of root beer is $1.69. That brings the total to $6.34."

"Okay. And your point is? "

"My point is that a root beer float is actually only $4.79. That's only 14 cents more then two scoops of ice cream."

"I see."

"So for an extra 14 cents I not only get two scoops of ice cream; but, I also get a root beer, whip cream, chocolate shavings and a cherry on top. That's a great deal, Mom."

The kid earned his root beer float for a well thought out argument and was lucky I had an extra 14 cents in my pocket. The girls dropped to the floor in protest and cried the "no fairs!" I've been trying to avoid. I can feel my powers decreasing. I'm in trouble, aren't I?

"Isn't it kinda ironic that you're announcing this on your blog?" my nearly eight-year-old daughter asked me.

"You don't want me to tell people?"

"No, I do. I do!"

I started my blog when she was just three years old. She has witnessed me writing in the evenings and taking photos during the day. She has listened to my posts read out loud for years and always smiles when someone mentions her in the comments. I'm at that mommy blogging stage where I blog less and less about my children's personal lives because their stories are no longer always mine to tell. I can barely get one post published a week. Isn't it ironic that when I start to mute our lives, my daughter wants to announce her presence to the world from rooftops?

"Tell them, Mama! Tell your friends that I am now a blogger!!!"

It all started the day that I passed down my old Nikon to her.

"I'm already a good writer. I just need to improve my photo skills and I can be a blogger, like you."

"Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Geesh, Mama. We've been blogging in school since kindergarten. I know all the rules."

"There are rules to blogging?"

"Yes! Never say your real name or the place you live - that's what my teacher said is safe when being online." she started. Their blogging at school is answering questions to blog posts their teacher writes. Like "What is your favorite activity?" It's quite comical to check in. "Also, once you put something on the dot com it is there FOREVER, Mama. Forever! You have to make good decisions."

"That's great advice."

"So can I? Can I start a blog? Imagine how awesome it would be when I'm a teenager and I get to read all the things I wrote now."

My second grader knows more about blogging than I did when I started five years ago at the age of thirty. I'm honored to announce that today a blogger was born. Her "About Me" blurb took her twenty minutes to create only because she couldn't decide on what to write about herself. I am 7 years old. I am very talented. I love all animals. I absulotly love baking. I love to write and I just started taking pictures. Her first post took her about an hour to write. "Whoops. I'm glad I caught that spelling mistake." she laughed while constructing her sentences. "Whoops. That was a silly error!" she said and deleted an extra comma. I started to think that passing down my camera was a bad idea. If you have a moment, check out Lola's blog ohkiddos.blogspot.com. It took her seven minutes to come up with the title.

"Isn't it kinda ironic that you're announcing my blog, on your blog? Maybe I will do the same for you!"

Yes, a blogger was born today.

One of my resolutions for 2012 is to take control and get ahead.

I'm starting with organizing and unloading. We've lived in our house for five years and the amount of "stuff" we've accumulated is out right embarrassing.  The kiddos and I recently went through their toys and handed many down to a friend, who was more than happy to reuse them in her own home. I also boxed up many of their play clothes and sent them to an orphanage in Poland. Their nice clothes went to my best friend and a box saved for my sister's future kids.

So. I've been incredibly busy cleaning, tossing, giving and organizing all of our stuff from the ground up. Just last week this storage room in our basement was stuffed with items and not at all walkable. Look at it now:

Impressive, no? A lot of work went into it. We went from a room FILLED with kid's stuff to just a couple of plastic bins on shelves. Now the dog has room to explore a room that was, for years, not walkable.

Motivated by the basement results, I started to tackle my own closet this weekend. Again, it's out right embarrassing how much stuff I have in there but haven't touched in years. I stood in my closet and asked myself "What should I sell?"- a question sellers on eBay ask often enough that their data analyst team created a list of high-demand items sold successfully on eBay.

A peek of my first listing on eBay.

More to come later. I have an entire house full of "stuff" and this is the year that I'm going to take control of it all. Check me out on eBay here.

"I am an eBay Parent Panel Partner. This post is sponsored by eBay. Opinion and experience are my own."