Mothering Munchkins

Propping up my eyelids with toothpicks...

2011-09-28T21:27:00.004-05:00

I’m pooped. I should be in bed but tonight is our weekly watering night (thank you, city of San Antonio and your restrictions) and only from 8 to 10pm. So I have to stay up and move the sprinkler around. Avery is at an off-duty job until 10 anyway, so I’m going to try to stay awake until he gets home.

We’re getting our windows replaced in two weeks!!! You have no idea how thrilled I am about this. We have old, single-pane casement windows on our home. Half of them are painted shut, two are cracked, and several don’t have screens. But in two weeks we will have double-pane windows with screens that we can open…and just in time for the nice fall weather!

Today was my grocery shopping day plus coffee at my in-laws. I really enjoy getting out of the house but boy am I exhausted by the end of the day! Or, by 5-o-clock, I should say. The kids watched two VeggieTales videos this evening just so I could pick up the house in peace and get them straight to bed afterwards. Yes, I know I’m a bad mother.

Grocery shopping was successful though. I’ve been gradually trying to incorporate healthier food into our diets while still staying under budget. Things like cutting out high fructose corn syrup, buying more organic produce, and cutting out processed foods. This week I went to three stores and came home with this:

Target: $18 for lunch meat, Coke, Annie's mac n cheese, and ice for the cooler.
Sprouts: $20 for eggs, produce (minus bananas and lettuce), and trail mix.
H.E.B.: $47 for the rest of the produce and everything else pictured.

I haven’t even been couponing much recently because I don’t really have time for it. Plus the coupons for produce and organics are few and far between. Still, I used four coupons for this trip (guac, napkins, mayo, and Oxiclean) plus a $5 off total purchase at Sprouts. I mostly focused on shopping the sales. Aside from the wipes, trail mix, cheese, Triscuits, bread, tortillas, and C-Boost, everything I bought was on sale or I had a coupon for. The mac n cheese, oranges, apples, green onions, milk, and eggs are organic.

Tomorrow we’re having homemade fish sticks for dinner with the cubed potato/sweet potatoes that Jess recommended on Facebook and leftover broccoli. I have to remember to start dinner by 4 though because AWANA starts at 6-o-clock and we’ve been having a hard time getting out the door on time.

Well, that’s all the time we have for today, kids. Remember, God made you special and He loves you very much. Goodbye!

(See? I told you we watch too much VeggieTales!)

Long overdue

2011-09-26T13:36:00.008-05:00

My kids are growing up too fast. I never thought I'd say that because, honestly, seeing them reach new milestones is fun and exciting. But now that they are developing personalities and characters of their own, it's more apparent than ever just how important my influence is in raising them to be strong, confident, and God-honoring individuals. And frankly, that is a terrifying realization.

Shiphrah started Cubbies this year. Memorizing verses is a breeze for her but adjusting to a room full of three and four-year-olds has been a challenge. I think she might actually adjust better if I wasn't in there with her, but I didn't realize that until I had already committed to being a leader.

Kirk is our "problem child" right now. He's becoming increasingly stubborn and obsessive over getting his way. He's actually taken to saying "I don't want to behave!" or "I don't want to be good!" repeatedly when he's upset. We're struggling to come up with a good discipline structure for him. Last night something was bothering him and he cried/yelled/whined/screamed until 2:30 in the morning. Avery practically had to spank him to sleep because he kept yelling his demands "want juice, not water!" "leave door open!" "don't want to behave!" "don't want to go to sleep!" It was a frustrating night, to say the least. Avery finally gave him a vitamin and having that in his mouth calmed him down enough to fall asleep. This morning he was cheerful up until Avery got home from his off-duty job. Then he threw a fit about having to eat lunch and wouldn't stop screaming until we put him to bed for his nap.

Ronnie is your typical toddler...for a boy, anyway. He gets into everything and wants to do everything his big brother and sister do. He wears me out! He's still not sleeping through the night but usually only wakes once and goes back to sleep easily once I nurse him. He's still nursing three to four times a day, mostly after naps and at night. He's probably going to give up his afternoon nap soon but right now I can still get him to nap for about an hour around 3 or 4-o-clock.

I'm surviving, but not really able to focus on anything other than the kids these days. I try to do some extra cooking or cleaning at night after they go to bed but then I'm terribly exhausted the next morning. Still haven't figured out a really good schedule that works for all of us yet.

Trying to get back into blogging a bit though. Mostly for my own benefit...I've missed it. :)

Homemade sandwich rolls

2011-05-27T15:08:00.000-05:00

Being short on bread products forces one to get creative. I had made a loaf of whole wheat bread last night but wanted to try my hand at making sandwich rolls/hamburger buns for lunch today. I recently bought The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook but was disappointed to find that nearly all the recipes called for extra gluten or other ingredients I don't keep on hand. So I went scouring the internet and found a recipe I could adapt to my liking.

Ingredients:
- 1 cup warm water
- 2 eggs
- 1/3 cup and 2 Tbsp oil (I used a combination of canola and olive because that's what I had)
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 cups white bread flour
- 1 cup whole wheat bread flour
- 1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
- 1 egg
- 1 Tbsp water

Directions:
- Add all but the last two (egg and water) ingredients to the bread pan in the order listed (don't forget to put your kneading paddle in first!).
- Select "dough" setting on machine and start.
- When cycle is complete, remove dough from machine and place on a lightly floured surface.
- Divide dough into thirds, and then each piece half, and then each of those pieces in half again (giving you 12 pieces of dough).
- Press ball flat between hands and place on greased or parchment covered cookie sheet, pressing to about a 3 inch circle. (Use two cookie sheets.)
- Let rise in a warm place 30 minutes or so until double in volume.
- Combine beaten egg with water and brush over rolls.
- Bake at 350 degrees for about 10-15 minutes or until lightly brown.

Results:

Delicious homemade sandwich rolls!

Additional tips:
- The recipe originally called for all white flour but I substituted a cup of whole wheat to make it slightly healthier. I'm sure if you used all white they would come out even fluffier.
- I always have bad luck getting my dough to rise just left on the kitchen counter. So I usually preheat my oven to the lowest setting, let it cool down until it's just slightly warm (probably between 100-110 degrees), and then let the rolls rise in there. Otherwise my rise time is always several hours long.
- Freeze whatever rolls you don't use in the first two days...homemade bread goes bad so much faster than store-bought!

Kids and such...

2011-05-23T15:39:00.001-05:00

It seems like every time I try to catch an afternoon nap, Ronnie decides to cut his short. Yesterday I didn't even try for a nap; Ronnie slept two hours. Today he slept 30 minutes. And now I have a monster headache and a grumpy baby. Ugh.

I did figure out a possible reason behind his grumpiness, extra nursing sessions, and nighttime fits: my cycle started today after being absent for nearly three years. That was a bit of a surprise. They say that affects your milk supply, right? Maybe Ronnie's not getting the quantity or quality that he wants.

Despite the Sunday blues, I did have a pretty productive day yesterday. Got a few loads of laundry done, swept and mopped the floors, and did some yard work. Unfortunately the floors don't really look any better because I had to rush when the kids popped awake from their naps. And when we were outside they decided to start dumping buckets of sand onto the grass when I wasn't looking, so we had to cut our outside time short.

Speaking of the kids, I've decided to tackle the fighting problem by immediately taking away whatever they are fighting over. It'll create more tears to deal with but I'm hoping it'll discourage the fighting better than my spanking/scolding has been.

My neighbor just offered to watch the kids while I rest. Hmm...while that's tempting, I think I might just do some de-cluttering and cleaning instead. Being kid-free while doing chores will probably help the headache just as much as resting, I think. On the agenda: finishing the laundry, sweeping and mopping the kitchen, cleaning off the computer desk, and dusting. I'll try to vacuum the bedrooms too since the kids will be gone but I just did that last week so they're not too dirty.

My husband surprised me by mentioning that he has tomorrow off. He had told me that last week and I completely forgot. But then he offered to work an extra shift Thursday to cover for an officer's funeral. So it'll be a normal two-day weekend after all. Still, I'm excited that it starts tomorrow instead of Wednesday.

Sundays

2011-05-22T14:38:00.005-05:00

Sundays are rather depressing for me. The church we're attending has been without a pastor for over six months now and has been steadily declining in health for over two years. We had all but decided to leave at the end of my husband's deacon term when the pastor left suddenly a month later. Since he was the largest part of our decision to leave, we decided to stick it out a bit longer and see if the church could recover. Half a year later and still no closer to finding a new leader for our church. I think we've decided to give the church a full year and then start looking elsewhere. I'm dreading that step though because my husband is rather picky about churches and a few of the things on his list make it very difficult to find a new church. All that to say, I miss being convicted, encouraged, uplifted, and inspired on Sundays. I miss learning something new every week and having that close fellowship of other believers.

Aside from church itself, the pre and post-church experiences are stressful in and of themselves: rushing around to get ready and then rushing home so that Avery can leave for work. And then while most others I know are enjoying relaxing afternoons with their families, I'm fighting the kids to go down for their naps and then collapsing on the couch in exhaustion while the piles of unfolded laundry stare at me. Yuck.

Anyway, sorry for the pity party, I know I just need to look for fulfillment in my personal relationship with God instead of relying on a Sunday morning "high." I've just had a hard time going without that after growing up with it for nearly twenty years.

I'm tired. Ronnie is still giving me a hard time at night and I can't figure out why. He screams at the top of his lungs every time it's time for bed but yet won't let me nurse or rock him to sleep unless I let him scream first. I know he's tired but he just gets so hysterical. And last night after he woke up to nurse around midnight, he threw a major fit after I unlatched him before he wanted to let go (I let him nurse for 20 minutes when he's normally done after 5) and wouldn't calm down until I nursed him again. You'd think he was 3 months old instead of nearly one.

Morning grouchies

2011-05-18T10:29:00.003-05:00

It's 10-o-clock and the bad part of our morning is finally coming to a close. Before I was a mom, I loved mornings. The start of a new day, the peaceful morning air...........yeah, that calm doesn't exist anymore. In fact, it's anything but calm. Avery and I wake up groggy thanks to Ronnie's nighttime antics, Kirk (the 2-year-old) wakes up crying for his daddy, and Shiphrah wakes up whining about wanting a movie/vitamin/breakfast/whatever. I usually end up yelling at the kids in frustration and at my husband for not helping deal with the situation. Ugh, mornings are downright miserable.

I wish there was a way to change that, but I can't think of anything other than getting up before the kids. Kind of hard to do when one of them sleeps with you.

Despite the morning grouchies, I can usually redeem the day by the time the evening rolls around. Yesterday the kids and I hung out in the backyard: playing in their new sandbox and splashing in the baby pool. I also got the rest of the laundry put away and some other chores done after they went to bed.

But then 10-o-clock rolled around and Ronnie decided he didn't want to sleep anymore. I already let him nurse non-stop from about 2am on, so I was determined to get him to go back asleep another way. Yeah......that didn't work out so great. I'm hoping he's just teething and not creating a really bad habit.......

Today is the start of hubby's weekend. He let me sleep in for an extra hour this morning so hopefully I can keep my energy level up the rest of the day.

God is gracious

2011-05-15T15:00:00.001-05:00

It's been so long since I've really blogged, I wonder if anyone is still reading over here. Give me a hollar if you are, so I know whether to just start posting notes on Facebook.

God is gracious and merciful. Every day he shows me more grace than I could ever deserve. That said, life is good and difficult and challenging and frustrating. And that's just in a 30-minute period.

Ronnie, who is 10 months old now, is still waking at least twice every night. Or I should say, on a good night he only wakes twice. Most nights it's at least three or four times. I'm exhausted and when morning comes I nearly always turn on a movie for the munchkins and go back to sleep for another hour or so. This is a bad habit I desperately want to break. Let's face it, it's just not good parenting to let a 10-month-old, 2-year-old, and 3-year-old have free reign of the house for that long. Just this morning my husband realized he had left his boot knife in easy reach for the kids to find. They didn't, thankfully, but it still scared me to think about what could have happened.

We started a vegetable garden for the first time this year. While I'm really excited about it, I'm realizing that tending to the garden and watering our newly established backyard is taking an extra hour every day that I didn't really have to give. Not sure what to do about that, except stay up an hour later at night, which directly affects the exhaustion issue. Speaking of gardens, how worried should I be about birds (cardinals, bluebirds, etc.) hanging out in there? I know they'll eat the caterpillars, but will they also eat my young plants and eventually my tomatoes? Right now they just seem to be playing in the water when I have the drip hose running, but that could change.

We seem to be in a cycle of sickness right now. Two weeks ago Ronnie got some kind of virus where he ran a high fever for six days. Friday the older two started running fevers. Thankfully they never seems as miserable as the baby but it's still hard to know they're feeling poorly.

I'm feeling discouraged and overwhelmed by everything I need to do but haven't gotten to. If I kept a running list it would be pages long. I get things done here and there but it seems like once I get a handle on one area (like the laundry), other things pile up. And when I get to those things, suddenly the laundry has gotten unruly again.

And Ronnie is already awake. The kid will not take decent naps anymore and he's nursing every hour and a half. Growth spurt, maybe? Whatever it is, it's only adding to the regular exhaustion.

But God is merciful. My children are nourished, clothed, and happy. My husband is the best partner I could have ever asked for. The house isn't falling apart and the dishes aren't piled higher than the top of the sink. We enjoyed a good rain last week, the first for us in 2011. God is holding my family in His arms and I am so undeserving.

Picture Post

2011-04-15T15:27:00.000-05:00

Just a few pictures of my growing munchkins...

My beautiful 3 1/2 year old. Still not much hair but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that she'll need her first real haircut by her fourth birthday.

Kirk just turned TWO. He's talking in phrases now and trying to do everything (and more) that his big sister does.

My baby is 9 months old now. He's finally developed a taste for something other than mama's milk, although he spits out anything with much texture (other than cheerios) so I feed him a small bowl of pureed foods once or twice a day.

My handsome husband with his kiddos.

Our beautiful yard that we've been working so hard on for over a month now. Just a few final touches left!

I'm so proud of her!

Tidbits

2011-03-26T12:02:00.000-05:00

It's embarrassing that I haven't blogged since November. Here's a little bit of what has been going on around here:

♥ My little girl turned THREE and is well on her way to being the brightest, most talkative, amd most contrary 3-year-old on the planet.

♥ My middle son turned TWO (I honestly cannot believe he's already that old!) this month and is starting to be interesting in potty training and over the course of a month has gone from speaking only a dozen words to speaking in phrases.

♥ My baby is almost 9 months old, although you wouldn't know it by how much he still nurses (all.night.long). I'm tired but he is the happiest baby on earth and loves following his older siblings around.

♥ We're using our tax refund to re-landscape the backyard. We added a paver patio and put bermuda sod down (yay for grass!). We also paid my FIL to build a shed for us. OH, and I got a new washer/dryer set!!

♥ Because of said landscaping, I am horribly behind in the housekeeping. It's impossible to start a project without letting something else pile up.

♥ I'm (surprisingly) still not pregnant. This is the longest I've gone between pregnancies and it's kind of nice. Probably has something to do with the fact that Ronnie still nurses 10 times a day and doesn't care for solids yet.

♥ Hmm...now I can't think of anything else. Mostly the same old, same old around here. Sorry for being so scarce!

Lists and Schedules

2010-11-22T14:15:00.000-06:00

I've started journaling on a regular basis so I have a hard time wanting to repeat myself in a blog. In my journal I can be as open and honest as I want because no one is reading it (at least until I'm dead and my kids/grandkids are curious) but here I always have to censor myself to a point.

Anyway, things are really wonderful around here. I've settled into my three-kids groove and have most everything under control. (Which, I hate to admit, I love...I'm such a control freak. ) The house stays basically clean (aside from a few piles here and there), the kids are happy and well-fed, and my husband is content. <-- THAT is what I call being a successful homemaker. For a while I was struggling to find a good way to keep track of everything that needed to get done...I was writing notes on the fridge to myself, but I was having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, every day and that was getting annoying. Then Life As Mom (Google her blog, I'm too lazy to link it) released her home organization e-book and I spent the $9 to download it. It's not a perfect fit for me, but it's pretty darn close. She has all sorts of different charts and calendars and lists you can pick between and figure out what works best for you. I'm kind of playing with a few of them right now but I love that I didn't have to format a document myself and I can just print out as many as I need. Totally worth the $9. I'm not one of those people that does well on a schedule (9am, breakfast; 10am, dishes; etc.) but I do really well with lists...just an overall plan for my day. And so far it's been going really well. I still forget things ocassionally, but that's usually when I think of something and then tell myself I'll write it down later (when we all know that thoughts like that fly out of our minds almost immediately).

My oldest is turning three on Friday. It's really crazy how fast time flies. I've been working with her on some basic preschool concepts recently...just colors, shapes, numbers, and letters. She does all right, but I still need to work on my patience. The other day I was trying to get her to differentiate between a triangle, circle, and a square. She could get two out of the three every time but she could never remember the third. Even repeating myself fifteen times in a row could not get that third shape into her head. She's smart; I think she just has a hard time focusing.

Speaking of Shiphrah, she's having her "rest time" on the couch next to me right now and she looks sleepy enough to actually doze off so I'd better stop typing and see if she will.

Nothing much...

2010-11-08T14:47:00.000-06:00

Still pretty congested and snotty over here. And Kirk has broken out in a pimply rash so either it's the dreaded chicken pox (which I think is unlikely because no one they've been around has it, but hubby is paranoid) or just the end of whatever virus is working it's way through them. Hoping it's just the latter because they're still a little young to develop the chicken pox immunity.

Kirk and Ronnie are napping and Shiphrah is reading quietly on the couch. She's been fighting naps again lately so this time we may be done for good. I'm still going to attempt a "quiet time" for her but she rarely falls asleep anywhere but her own bed and I'm not willing to put her in the bedroom because she has a tendency to climb into Kirk's crib and wake him up.

I have a load of laundry going but I'm worry the washing machine is about to bite the dust. The knob is really messed up and I think it's going backwards now. I *think* it's filling for the rinse cycle right now but I need to go and check on it in a few minutes to make sure. If it is broken, I may talk Avery into investing in a new washer/dryer set. We've been buying sets off of Craiglist every time they break but it's getting ridiculous...each set seems to be averaging only about 6 months to a year of good use. Unfortunately we don't have any money saved up for a new set, so I don't know.

I am so sleepy right now. I need to sit down and read my Bible but I'm afraid I'll fall asleep. Maybe I'll eat something first...that usually seems to help.

Getting into a groove

2010-11-05T16:29:00.001-05:00

So sorry for the lack of blog posts recently. But taking care of a husband, three kids under three, two pets, and a 987 sq. ft. house can be a teensy bit time-consuming. However, praise God and knock on wood, I have finally found a groove! It's not perfect by any means and things still get left by the wayside, but I seem to have figured out how to take care of almost everything without leaving kids hungry, laundry unwashed, or an unhappy husband. So may I say again, praise God!

Unfortunately this week we're all sick. Shiphrah started with a runny nose on Monday and despite hoping it was just allergies it turned into a full-blown cold a day later. Then my throat started hurting Tuesday evening and Kirk's nose started running on Wednesday. Now the three of us are a mess of snotty noses, congested sinuses, and yucky coughs. Thankfully little Ronnie seems okay so far and Daddy has mostly avoided the cold as well. I'm hoping we'll be feeling much better by Sunday because we have a friend's birthday party that I'd hate to miss.

Let's see...a few weeks ago I stepped waaay out of my comfort zone and gave a presentation for a local MOPS group. I talked for about half an hour about honoring God and family through frugal living and it went really well. The ladies were all really sweet and some seemed very interested in what I was saying. It was also a great MOPS group and if it weren't across town during rush hour traffic, I'd love to join. I still might because I really need to get plugged in somewhere, but we'll see.

I also turned 27 (gasp!) a week ago. Avery surprised me by taking a half day from work and making reservations at a nice restaurant down on the Riverwalk. His family watched the munchkins and we had a really nice evening to ourselves. He also rode his bike to Wal-Mart that morning to pick me up a dozen roses, which is what he had done for another special occasion about five years ago...the first time he said "I love you." My birthday gift was a very nice set of kitchen knives (since I constantly complain about how fast mine go dull) and my in-laws bought me a set of Corelle dishes. It was a wonderful birthday!

And now it's on to other celebrations. Shiphrah turns THREE (I can't believe it!) on the day after Thanksgiving and we're having a pancake breakfast with some friends and family to celebrate. And of course we have Thanksgiving and then a ski trip with my family for Christmas (so excited about that!).

Well, all three kids are miraculously down for a nap so I'm going to fold some laundry and then read my Bible. Have a great Friday, everyone! ♥

A month in pictures

2010-10-31T18:32:00.000-05:00

(I promise I'm going to start blogging again soon, but in the interim, here is some of what we've been up to!)

Going to see VeggieTales LIVE!

Going bicycling as a family

Hanging out at the zoo

Spending time with Ronnie

Going camping and fishing with Daddy

(We love Daddy!)

Just having a grand old time!

My kids ♥ Veggie Tales!

2010-09-10T23:00:00.004-05:00

Jill over at the Diaper Diaries is having a Veggie Tales giveaway and part of it involved getting the munchkins to sing some Veggie Tales songs. Shiphrah knows a bunch of the songs by heart, but of course she gets shy once she gets in front of the camera. :) Still, if you turn up your volume and listen carefully you can hear my little girl singing parts of the Veggie Tales theme song and several songs from "Rack, Shack, and Benny." (I embedded the video as small as I could, but my layout still makes some of it disappear. So click the video to watch it directly on YouTube if you want to get the whole thing.)

Nuggets

2010-08-27T17:25:00.001-05:00

I have a million and one things to be doing right now (especially since the littlest is finally taking a good nap) but I thought I'd share a few things we've been up to lately:

♥ I've finally gotten into the habit of packing dinners for my husband to take to work every day. This hasn't completely eliminated all the eating out he does, but now he's down to just buying drinks and snacks when he's on his break instead of entire meals. In order to expediate this process and give my husband a variety of dinners (instead of just sandwiches) I've been doing a bit of OAMC/freezer cooking (as it's known in the blog world) lately. Just a little bit after the kids go to bed, but I've successfully made my first stromboli (with ham and cheddar), whipped up a huge batch of potato salad, and made a large batch of pinto beans in the crock pot. Next up are homemade taquitos (I have the meat cooked and shredded, just need to fry the tortillas and roll them with the meat).

♥ Shiphrah is officially daytime potty-trained. Well...at least as far as pee goes. She held her #2 for three days before finally filling her pull-up this morning. Not sure how to convince her to go #2 in the potty. Nighttimes and naptimes will be hard too because she's always peed in her sleep. She does hold her morning pee until we take her to the potty though, so her diaper is only half full in the mornings. We still have to remind her to go pee a lot, but she's finally taking some initiative and telling us some of the time as well. (Unfortunately oftentimes that's every 5 minutes...)

♥ Now that she's using the potty, Shiphrah is also washing her hands constantly which has been causing some really bad excema flare-ups on her wrists. We've stopped the soap use for now...does anyone have any recommendations for some really good sensitive-skin soap?

♥ Kirk is still teething (going on four months now?) but I think we're finally nearing the end of it. He's gradually getting over the clingyness and becoming slightly more independent. He's also added a few extra words to his vocabulary: "ball," "dad-dad," (grandad) "nana," "baba," (baby) and "mama." Add those to "CAT" and "dada" and he can now say a whole SEVEN words. He'll be 18 months old next month.

♥ Ronnie is the typical newborn, but is becoming increasingly vocal and is starting to smile and laugh regularly. It's adorable! He'll be 7 weeks old on Sunday. (And as an aside...TMI warning...why am I the only woman in the world that has PP bleeding for the full 6 weeks?? My poor husband is a saint. )

♥ And a few pictures to wrap this up:

Yes, I'm finally blogging...

2010-08-16T13:58:00.001-05:00

I really shouldn't try to blog while the munchkins are still awake. They always manage to get into something while my back is turned. In fact, right now Shiphrah is "riding" on the rocking chair and Kirk is pulling all the VHS tapes out of their boxes. But since that's a relatively easy thing to clean up, I'm letting him go to town.

Ronnie is napping right now, which is always SUCH an accomplishment for me. He has to be convinced to fall asleep and if he doesn't, he's a real grouch all day long. (I can't believe he's already 5 weeks old!) But he is my first baby that lets me rock him to sleep, which I absolutely LOVE. Newborns are so sweet and cuddly!!

(Random aside: I buy Bolthouse Farms juice for the munchkins because it's real fruit and I feel good about giving it to them. They were on sale last week so I picked up a bunch, including one new flavor that has blueberry juice in it. Well, I quickly learned that blueberry juice going in smells the same as blueberries do coming out. So now I have to smell that on the kids' breath all the time. YUCK.)

I'm slowly getting into a routine around here. I almost hesitate to say that though because I don't want to jinx it. Nighttimes are the biggest struggle now. Ronnie is usually overtired and grumpy so he sits in his swing and screams while I get the other two kids ready for bed. It's frustrating because I like having a bedtime routine for the kids that includes brushing their teeth, cleaning their room, getting PJs on, reading the Bible, praying together, and saying goodnight. That whole process takes about 20 minutes or so (longer when we add a bath) and when Ronnie is upset, I'm tempted to just throw PJs on the kids and put them to bed. It just makes me feel like the worst mother ever when I let my newborn scream.

Ronnie's Birth - my first natural childbirth

2010-07-25T23:20:00.003-05:00

Rewind a few days: I was nearly a week past my due date and, to put it mildly, rather uncomfortable. I weighed upwards of 125 pounds, a good ten pounds heavier than I had been with either of my two previous pregnancies (keep in mind my pre-pregnancy weight is around 90 pounds…I’m a tiny person) and the baby was expected to be at least 9 pounds. I had refused to be induced, but because I was “post-term” I had to see my doctor twice a week for non-stress tests. I had been having irregular contractions for at least two weeks and many times I was nearly sure it was the real thing. And yet, nothing. So on Thursday I decided to head to a local health foods store and pick up some blue and black cohosh, herbs known for inducing labor. I took small doses for the recommended time frame (basically every hour for a whole day) and noticed my contractions grow a bit stronger and more regular, but they stopped when I went to bed that night.

Sunday, July 11th: nine days past my due date I woke up at 4 in the morning with some strong contractions. Nothing like the pre-labor I had been experiencing…these were definitely the real thing. (You’d think I’d remember what they were like, since I’ve had two babies already, but memory tends to fail when it comes to childbirth.) They were about 10-12 minutes apart and painful, but bearable. I walked around the house for a bit, got on Facebook, and took a shower before waking my husband up. (I didn’t really need him at that point, I was just bored and couldn’t sleep so I felt like he shouldn’t either.) I also sent Kim, my doula, a text telling her that today was finally the day. Now, with my previous baby, I labored at home for over 12 hours before going to the hospital so I really didn’t expect this labor to move any faster. Kim came over around 10-o-clock and my contractions were still about 10 minutes apart (but getting more intense). My husband loaded the munchkins into the double stroller and we all took a walk around the block…as far as I could go without passing out (Texas summers are no piece of cake, y’all!). We came back home and my husband wrangled the kids while I labored on the couch and chatted with Kim in between contractions. They weren’t getting any closer together but the intensity was definitely increasing.I started practicing some relaxation techniques to see what worked best. I had downloaded a bunch of relaxing music onto my iPod, but surprisingly that didn’t help at all. What did help was reciting Psalm 23 to myself through each contraction. If I quoted it slowly and methodically, it turned out to be the exact length needed to make it through a contraction.

Around 1-o-clock I laid down to see if I could take a short nap since I had been up since 4. I wasn’t really able to sleep, but I did doze off a few times which helped a lot. By 3-o-clock the contractions were about 8-10 minutes apart but the intensity was taking my breath away. My husband read some Scripture to me through the contractions and I started breathing harder and faster. (Here’s where the timing kind of became a blur to me.) Sometime between 4 and 5-o-clock I started getting a few contractions back-to-back and the rest of them were anywhere from 6 to 10 minutes apart. We called some friends of ours to ask them to head over to the house (they would be watching the kids for us until I had the baby…then the grandparents would be taking over). I ate a few crackers because I had only eaten a corn dog for lunch and then called my sister (who was also headed over). In between all of that, my contractions suddenly intensified incredibly. They went from 6 minutes apart to 2-3 minutes apart in a matter of two or three contractions and I began to moan with each one. I started shaking a bit but I thought it was just because I was so hungry. I asked my husband to get the hospital bag ready and make sure the kids’ stuff was ready to go for later that night and then stood up (I had been reclining on the couch for most of the afternoon…it was the most comfortable position for me) to help him with something. A contraction hit me while I was standing and as I leaned on the table I felt a crazy amount of pressure and my body started shaking a lot more. My sister and friends showed up sometime around then and I told my husband he’d better hurry. (I was pretty sure I was starting to transition at that point.) Since the kids were staying at home, we left the minivan and drove to the hospital in my husband’s truck, which in retrospect was not a good idea…the jerkiness of a manual transmission does not help with contractions much. During the drive my contractions stayed at 2-3 minutes apart but I could feel a definite change in them. Instead of being 45-60 seconds long they were only about 20-30 seconds long but they were twice as painful. Those 2-3 minute breaks in between though were pure bliss. It’s like my whole body was breathing a sigh of relief and relaxing completely after each contraction.

We got to the hospital at 5:55 and headed to the labor and delivery admissions desk. The lady behind the counter started asking all these seemingly random questions (what the heck is pre-admissions for if they still ask you all that stuff when you get there??) and obviously I feel like I’m dying at this point. She asks when my due date is and I practically yell “last week!” at her. She gets this surprised look on her face as I’m moaning through a contraction and says something about needing my social security number. At that point I feel my body start to push (which is the weirdest feeling in the world…it’s like you have no control over what your body is doing) and say something to that effect. The woman’s eyes got HUGE and she says, “I can’t have her pushing right here!” and yells something to people in the triage room. Next thing you know they’re yanking me into triage (my husband and Kim have to stay behind to answer more stupid questions) and having me strip so they can check me. The nurse says I’m at 8 cm and my water bag is bulging and they start frantically trying to figure out what room I’m going to and if they have enough nurses and where the heck the doctor is. (My husband called the after-hours line at my doctor’s office, but apparently there was some miscommunication so the on-call doctor didn’t even get called until we got to the hospital and then it turns out she was at home so she had to drive all the way to the hospital.) As they’re wheeling me out of triage, they grab Kim and my husband and then say something about me being the third pregnancy woman in the last hour to get to the hospital complete or almost complete. It was at that point I truly realized how close I was to delivering. Once they got me to the room they were still messing with paperwork and admissions stuff for the first 10 minutes or so while I laid there trying not to freak out from the pain. My body was pushing with every other contraction but they kept telling me not to push because the doctor wasn’t there yet. Several of the nurses also kept asking me if I “meant to do it without drugs” and then would immediately follow up with “well, you’re doing it!” (No, duh, really?) The breaks between contractions still felt amazing and that was probably the only thing that kept me from going insane. During one of the lulls I told the nurse that “now would be a good time to put in that IV if you’re going to!” (She had previously been fretting about whether she was going to be able to get it in before the birth or not.) In spite of that, she took her sweet time and I think I actually told her to hurry up when I felt a contraction coming. I was shaking uncontrollably and was getting pissed that the nurses wouldn’t let Kim or my husband stand on my left side (they both had to stay on the right for some reason) to give me something to hold on to. One of my nurses was resting her hand on my right knee and I’m pretty sure I rather rudely asked her to stop touching me. (She was the nice one too, so I felt bad about that, but I’m pretty sure she laughed about it.) For some reason, I appreciated the pressure of Kim and my husband squeezing my hand and holding my shoulder but I didn’t want to be touched anywhere from the waist down. Kim kept talking calmly to me and telling me what a great job I was doing (I didn’t think so but I appreciated the encouragement) and my husband prayed out loud over me. During several of the strong, pushing contractions my water broke in two big gushes. At that point the nurses said they could see the baby’s head and commented that I would be nice and stretched out when I started really pushing. (Which I guess was the positive side to the doctor being delayed.)

Finally the doctor arrived and they told me I could really start pushing, which was a huge relief, especially because I finally had someone holding onto my left side (which controlled the shaking) and I could finally start working with my body instead of just letting it do whatever. Pushing was seriously the most painful thing I have ever done in my life. It’s a strange feeling too, because even though you feel everything, you don’t feel like you’re making progress until the baby actually comes out (it feels like you're pushing against a wall). There’s no gradual anything about it. It went really quickly, I think I only had to push four times to get Ronnie’s head out and then another two times to deliver the rest of him, but now I know what women mean when they say “it feels like pooping out a watermelon!” It was odd too because I really didn’t have to push as hard as I thought I would…with my previous births (epidural births) I felt like I was pushing with all my might and this time it was like my body was doing 80% of the pushing and I was just giving an extra “umph” to the process. I yelled more than I ever thought I would (I was actually hoarse afterwards)…I thought it was more like screaming but my husband said I only screamed once, when Ronnie’s head came out.But when it was all said and done, at 6:26 PM, only half an hour after I arrived at the hospital, I had delivered an 8 pound, 14 ounce baby boy without any drugs. (And I only had one tiny tear that didn’t even need stitches!)

The funny thing about a natural childbirth is that you replay the scene in your mind over and over and over again for days afterwards. It gave me lots of time to think of the pros and cons of the whole thing.

Pros: It’s truly an amazing, empowering feeling being able to give birth and feel the whole thing. Although I didn’t necessarily feel like Superwoman after it was all over, my husband was in awe of me and kept telling me how amazing I was. Also, you don’t have to worry about an epidural slowing labor down or not being able to push or the drugs going to your baby…it’s childbirth the way God and nature intended it. Because my body was aware and I was working with it, labor went smoothly and I had minimal tearing at delivery (which was amazing considering the size of the baby and that I had torn much worse with my previous two smaller babies).

Cons: I honestly didn’t intend to wait quite that long before getting to the hospital, but now I know that once the contractions start to speed up a little bit, it’s going to go fast! (It was kind of fun to see the nursing staff running around like chickens with their heads cut off though.) The afterbirth pains were AWFUL. I was so exhausted and in so much pain after I delivered that I could hardly look at my new son. They gave me Nubain in the IV as soon as Ronnie was born but that did nothing for the pain and it wasn’t until they gave me Demerol that I was even able to hold Ronnie. Once the drugs kicked in, I felt 100 times better, but those first 10 minutes after birth were downright miserable.

Sorry this was so long, I just wanted to be sure I remembered every detail!

A new normal.

2010-07-20T15:28:00.000-05:00

We're still adjusting to becoming a family of five, but slowly settling into our new normal. I'm going to start working on Ronnie's birth story soon, but until then, here are a few pictures to tide you over...

Nubain did nothing to help with the afterbirth pains, so I was completely out of it until they gave me some Demeral.

Finally feeling better...Demeral is niiiiiiiice.

BIG boy!

Kirk meeting his little brother (he completely ignored him at the hospital).

Baby Ronnie is here!

2010-07-12T09:51:00.000-05:00

Baby Ronald Johnson (named for his paternal grandfather) was born yesterday at 6:26 pm weighing 8 pounds, 14 ounces and 19.75 inches long.

We're doing great! (Just trying to decide on a middle name. )

P.S. Oh, and no drugs at all.......not sure I will EVER do that again! Ha!

It's Go-Time

2010-07-11T04:53:00.001-05:00

Wow, the internet is really boring at 4:30 in the morning. I started getting hit with some pretty intense contractions about half an hour ago that I definitely couldn't sleep through, so here I am. In fact, I'm 95% sure this is the real deal...FINALLY! The contractions are about 7-10 minutes apart and definitely stronger than anything I've had up to this point. They're starting to bring back some vivid memories of labor with Kirk, but I'm trying to repress those since they're mostly negative. I think focusing on reciting Psalm 23 is really going to help me...it's a good length and a calming passage.

Anyway, I'm going to go take a shower before I call Kim (yay for doulas!) and wake my husband. Pray for me y'all...I'm doing this med-free this time and I'm realizing I'll need all the prayers I can get!!

Discouraged *ETA

2010-07-07T20:46:00.001-05:00

*EDIT*
The doctor's appointment went surprisingly well this morning. My doctor is one of those syrupy-sweet ladies that is very non-confrontational, so I went in expecting a passive-aggressive push to induction. I was completely wrong...and in a good way! She went over the results of the sonogram with me again (after I had to spend 25 minutes on the NST machine) and basically concluded the same thing the sonographer had...the fluid levels were great and everything else looked excellent, so there was really no reason to worry about being past my due date. And then she mentioned that I have an "excellent pelvis" so she really wasn't too concerned about my birthing a semi-large baby! You could have seriously knocked me over with a feather...I was not at all expecting her positivity! Praise God!! I do have to go back on Tuesday (she's not comfortable with me going a whole week without seeing her and having another NST done) but at this point she's okay with me wanting labor to start naturally. Again, praise God and thanks for the prayers, y'all! (P.S. I did head to Sun Harvest this afternoon and pick up some black and blue cohosh and some red raspberry leaf capsules to see if I could get these contractions to pick up...I've been having them on and off all day long again. So far the herbs don't seem to be doing anything, but I am taking a fairly low dose just to be on the safe side. Either way the baby will come when he's ready.)

I had a sonogram and an appointment with the nurse practitioner this afternoon (my doctor is out of town until tomorrow). I knew what to expect going into it (I am now 5 days "overdue") but that didn't help soften the blow any. The sonogram went great. My sonographer is a wonderful, friendly lady who is excellent at her job and very honest. She checked everything and said three common worries weren't an issue at all with me...the umbilical cord flow was excellent, I have more than enough amniotic fluid (13 was the number she gave), and the baby's heartrate was excellent. However, he does measure rather large. She admitted that the measurements weren't precise (I appreciated her honestly at that point) but that he could be as big as 9 pounds 4 ounces right now ("worst case scenario" were her exact words). So I went over to my appointment feeling relieved and cheerful. After all, if the size was the only thing slightly worrisome, they couldn't give me that much trouble, could they?

Ha. Of course they could. Immediately after coming in to see me, the nurse practitioner started talking about inducing me (I told her right off the bat that I had said no to an induction and she actually had the nerve to respond with "oh well I don't think your doctor will let you go much longer." Seriously? She won't let me?? Last time I checked this was still my body!) and how huge the baby was (she mentioned the 9 lbs 4 oz and I said "possibly" to which she responded with "girl, there's no possibly about it!" Grrr...). Anyway, after all that she checked me and did a membrane sweep (or at least she said she was doing one...it definitely didn't hurt like I remembered the last one hurting though and I didn't bleed afterwards like I did last time either) and said I was still about 2 cm, but I had effaced to 90% and the baby was at -2 station. So I've progressed slightly, but not a whole lot. Then she insisted that I needed to do a NST to check the baby (even though I told her the baby's heartrate had always been excellent and he moved way more than 4 times every hour). So I was at that doctor's office for over two hours...not fun.

So I have to see my doctor on Friday morning and I know she will pressure me to induce. I need to weigh the risks of induction versus the risks of a big baby but I really, REALLY want to avoid an induction if at all possible. Prayers for peace and trust in God would be greatly appreciated.

Beginning stages of labor?

2010-07-06T00:03:00.001-05:00

After a sleepless night last night, all day long I have been completely miserable. Contraction after contraction but nothing regular. In fact, halfway through the day I could have sworn the baby was just going to pop out or burst out of my stomach based on all the pressure I was feeling. I keep Googling "painful fetal movement" hoping to find some reason why Baby Boy won't calm down, but apparently there's no reason to worry unless he stops moving...moving like a crazy 8-legged octopus is nothing abnormal. Ha...tell that to my stomach that feels like it's being ripped to pieces from the inside out...maybe he's trying to slice his way out? Methinks he doesn't like being cramped in that small space anymore. So all that to say, it's really hard to tell when I'm having a contraction and when the baby is just trying to force his way out.

It's funny, I thought having done this before it would be easy to know when it was time. But this is completely different than anything I felt with Kirk (hence the reason I'm a little concerned this kid might be a monster) so I keep thinking every other day might be "the day."

So maybe tonight is the night? Ah, who knows. But I'll try and keep y'all updated!

Patiently waiting.

2010-07-03T18:01:00.000-05:00

Or not so patiently. Yesterday was my doctor-assigned "due date" and I was honestly surprised to still be pregnant. With all the contractions I've been having for the past three weeks or so, I really thought this baby boy would make his appearance early. Plus I delivered Kirk early in the morning on my due date, so this is now the longest pregnancy I've ever had.

There wasn't really any progress to speak of at my last doctor's appointment (still at 2 cm) so I have a sonogram and another appointment scheduled for next Wednesday afternoon, if I make it that far. I'm kind of dreading it, just because when you're "past due" (even though they shouldn't call it that until after 42 weeks) they start being paranoid about fluid levels and the baby's size and all. I'm especially worried that they'll say something about the baby's size because I am a lot larger this time (from 85 at the beginning up to 125 pounds on Wednesday!) and it's pretty much all belly. See?

Haha, BEACH BALL! But anyway, I don't really mind still being pregnant...or at least I wouldn't if these darn contractions weren't so annoying. Sleep has been really elusive lately too because my back and hips are starting to give out. But other than that I've really been feeling pretty good, just really large.

My husband has literally been my hero these past few weeks. He did the dishes for me twice in a row (!!!) because my belly makes it really awkward to reach the sink. Plus he took off an extra day from work this week to help get the baby's room ready and do some other household chores. He's also been very gracious when I've been too exhausted to cook meals. He really is the perfect husband. ♥

Anyway, I think I'm going to start timing these contractions to see if they're anything regular. The kids are watching Toy Story 2 and I'm sitting in a SPOTLESS house because some amazing ladies from my church came and cleaned it for me this morning. God is good!!!

OB appointment update

2010-06-23T12:59:00.001-05:00

2 cm dilated and 80% effaced! The doctor seemed to think I wouldn't make it to next week and she thinks labor will be fast (that would be a first!). Here's hoping!! (I'll be 39 weeks on Friday, in case you were wondering.)

Superdad!

2010-06-18T23:25:00.001-05:00

I don't really have much of an update (38 weeks today!) but everyone on Facebook got such a kick out of this picture, I figured I'd post it here in honor of Father's Day.

Introducing........SUPERDAD!

(And lest you think I'm the laziest pregnant mom in the history of the world, he insisted on carrying both of them this way while he mowed. Kirk was crying because he wanted to be with his daddy and then Shiphrah got jealous because she wasn't being carried around like Kirk.)

Needless to say, they were all very stinky and sweaty by the time they came in, but it was so cute while it lasted! ♥

Ready to pop...

2010-06-14T22:54:00.001-05:00

Please excuse the tired, naked face...I haven't felt much like wearing make-up in weeks. Speaking of weeks, I'm just about 37 1/2 weeks along and feel about ready to explode! Some days are better than others...today has been one of those days that I feel like the baby's just going to fall out of me. In fact, some of the pressure and contractions tonight have made me wonder if I should start packing my hospital bag. They're slowing down a bit now though, so I think I'm okay.

That's about it...just wanted to give a quick update. There was no dilation at my last check-up () so I'm trying not to get my hopes up for this next one (Wednesday morning) either. With Kirk though I was dilated 1 cm at 37 weeks, 2 cm at 38, and 3 cm at 39. (I had him on my due date.) So I very well might go all the way, or longer, again.

Counting down the days!

2010-06-08T17:36:00.000-05:00

Just a little over three weeks to go! I have my first cervix check at my doctor's appointment tomorrow and I am SO hoping that I've at least made a little progress. I've been having Braxton Hicks every evening like crazy for the past couple of weeks and have felt a lot of lower pressure so I'm hoping that's my body getting ready. I know I'll survive if I go all the way to my due date or beyond, but I can't wait to hold my baby boy (who is still unnamed) in my arms!

As of tomorrow, we will also be the owners of a 2005 Chrysler Town & Country LX minivan! We have completely depleted our savings account to make this purchase, but we got a really good deal on it so I'm excited! Well, not so sure how excited I am to already be driving a minivan (I'm only 26!) but it's one step closer to being ready for my little boy to come. Now we just have to sell my car to pay off the personal loan we took out temporarily to pay for the minivan (we had several offers on my car before we decided to do that, so it wasn't really that much of a risk). I'll miss my little Echo...it's been my car since just before I turned 17 so it's seen me through long drives to visit my love and trips to and from college. So many life-events have happened in the past nine years, it's kind of bittersweet to lose a piece of history like my first car. Not to be too sentimental over a car or anything.

Well, I need to eat dinner before Kirk wakes up from his nap (he's back to needing a second one lately...not sure why, unless it's because his molars are coming in). Then I need to feed both of the munchkins and see if I can muster up enough energy to make it through the rest of the evening.

5 more weeks...

2010-05-31T21:49:00.001-05:00

...seems like an eternity. I have begun to laugh out loud when people tell me, "well, enjoy being pregnant, soon you will have a newborn and then you'll be exhausted!" It makes me jealous that all these women seemed to enjoy pregnancy so much, whereas I, I feel like I'm dying. Okay, so that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I am miserable. I know in my heart of hearts that this little boy will be so much healthier if he stays inside me a bit longer, but I am so ready to be done! I'm utterly exhausted every single day. Seriously, I slept nearly nine hours last night, took a 45-minute nap today, laid around on the couch all day (well, as much as my toddlers would let me), and I'm still completely worn out. My hips and stomach muscles are totally shot...some days it's nearly impossible to walk; it's literally painful to lay down in bed at night. I can't eat anymore...my stomach has no room and everything sounds disgusting. I'm having contractions constantly...Braxton Hicks, regular ones...they're so random and interspersed that it's impossible to tell them apart anymore. Honestly I'll be surprised (and probably will have gone insane) if I make it another five weeks. I can honestly say this has been the hardest pregnancy out of the three. I think having two other young children automatically qualifies it as tougher, but I've also gained a lot more weight this time (which I think is why my muscles are shot) and feel 10 times larger than the last two. (I'm up to 120...from 83 pre-pregnancy. My first pregnancy I weighed 106 when Shiphrah was born and with Kirk I weighed 116 when he was born.) Oh how I long to hold my baby boy in my arms instead of in my uterus! Sleepless nights are so preferred to this form of torture.

Okay, end whine.

Sorry about that...I really am grateful for the miracle of life that God has blessed me with...and I am thrilled about having another little baby join our family in a few weeks. And I know once I hold my baby boy in my arms, I'll be really glad I did it.

Best Buds

2010-04-27T21:57:00.001-05:00

Even though they are fighting 75% of the time, they really do love each other...

...and they are so cute when they get along.

So burned out

2010-04-22T21:05:00.000-05:00

Somewhere between the weekend and now, all that motivation and energy flew out the window. I still have a long to-do list, but right now I am so exhausted and burned out that even going to bed seems like too much work. I hate feeling like this because inevitably I lose my patience with the kids far too often. This evening I yelled at Shiphrah because she flung her PJ top behind the dresser while I was changing her diaper. Doesn't she know how difficult it is for me and my huge belly to lay on the floor and reach under the dresser to fish things out? Gah, I think I pulled a muscle in my neck doing it too. Speaking of changing diapers, it's looking like more and more of a reality that I will have THREE kids in diapers come July. Every time I talk to Shiphrah about using the big girl potty or going poop in the potty, she looks at me very seriously and says, "no want to poop in potty, Mommy." I suppose it could just click with her one of these days; I guess that's just what I'll have to hope for. I mean, she's not even 2 1/2 yet so it's not like she's delayed or anything, I was just really hoping to have her potty training out of the way by the time #3 came along. Diapers are soooo expensive (my husband refuses to go cloth, so don't bother suggesting that, I've already tried) and I already feel like I'm up to my arms in them all day long with two kids. I can't imagine having three. Do you think God would mind if I prayed that Shiphrah would miraculously show an interest in potty training?

It's Fiesta in San Antonio this week, so my husband is working off-duty gigs at Fiesta on both of his days off this week. They're short gigs (6ish hours) but not having him around in the evenings at all in one week is harder than I thought it would be. I guess I never realized how much I looked forward to those two nights where I'd have his help. Most mornings he gets the kids up and started on their breakfasts while I spend a few extra minutes in bed, but lately that hasn't been relaxing because the kids are loud and whiny in the mornings (we don't have a door on our bedroom so I can't tune them out). So it's like I'm super-tense as soon as I wake up every morning and that's really starting to wear on me. Why can't they wake up happy in the mornings? Anyway, all that to say it feels like forever since I've had a real break. Grocery shopping by myself just isn't cutting it anymore. I think it's been extra-hard lately because I'm adjusting to Shiphrah giving up her nap time, which means no alone time during the day. (I could get her to nap, but when she does she won't go to sleep at night until 10 or 11.) But, only two or three more weeks until our mini-vacation in Austin!!

Anyhoo, I'm going to see if I can't at least put away a little laundry before I crash. This sleepiness is so bizarre though...I guess maybe I didn't sleep as well as I thought I did last night?

The ultimate frustration

2010-04-19T19:11:00.001-05:00

You know what's worse than lacking the energy/motivation to do something? Actually having the motivation/energy and not being able to do it! I had grand plans for this morning. I was going to get up and leave the kids with Avery while I went grocery shopping and then take them over to my neighbors house while I tackled the back bedroom that will eventually be the new baby's room. But even the best plans can be ruined by an unwilling husband. Avery stayed up late last night so he slept in this morning. Which meant I had to postpone grocery shopping until I could take the kids to the neighbor's. By the time I was home again it was time to make lunch and I had to pick the kids up. UGH, so frustrating!! And, of course, the kids are fussy and clingy today so I'm having a hard time even getting little chores done.

So today I was wishing I had the super power of replication. You know, so one of me could play with the kids while the other one did my chores. Only, I really need a bigger and better version of me...one that can reach things and lift heavy objects and rearrange furniture without hurting herself. *Sigh* Anyway, I still hope to get to that bedroom tonight, but it's only 7-o-clock and I'm already feeling drained. Not good.

Just some stories

2010-04-18T23:07:00.001-05:00

After a week or so of extreme exhaustion, I seemed to have had somewhat of a breakthrough today. It was bizarre because I didn't get any more sleep than usual last night and my nap today was a fail (noisy neighbors + noisy dog + noisy kids = ugh). But somehow my body woke up around 6-o-clock this evening and I suddenly felt like conquering the world. So I put away two loads of laundry, washed two more, washed the dishes, and took a shower. Not a lot, I know, but for me it was an accomplishment.

Shiphrah actually took a nap today so she had endless energy all evening long. (Why is it that my 2 1/2 year old seems to need less sleep than I do??) She stayed up with me after I put Kirk to bed at 8:30 and was THRILLED to have some one-on-one time with Mama. Methinks I need to do that more often...she was extra-cheerful and talking my ear off about all sorts of random things. She's at such a cute age...she tells me "stories" that are just run-on sentences full of people's names and random things that happened recently. I wish I could get it on video, it's just too adorable! Anyway, I put her to bed around 10-o-clock, but I could hear her moving around in her room for another 45 minutes or so. Again I have to ask, why does my toddler seem to need less sleep than me?

Kirk is finally settling back into his happy-go-lucky self. He's still a Mama's boy and a bit clingy, but he's much easier to entertain and keep busy these days. I'm hoping all this rain we've been having is washing away all the oak pollen so the kids' allergies (and mine) will finally go away, but we've been able to do without the Zyrtec most days this week. It makes me laugh to see just how different two toddlers can be though. Shiphrah could sit in front of the TV and watch movies all day long if I'd let her (and trust me, she asks constantly) and she's been like that since she was a year old. In fact, at only 7 or 8 months old she would sit through a 30-minute baby video if I needed to keep her in one place. Kirk, on the other hand, will glance at the movie playing every once in a while, but for the most part he completely ignores the TV. He's much happier if I give him a bowl, a few cheerios, and a spoon to play with. In fact, those three things kept him busy for about two hours this evening! Usually he follows me around like my shadow, but if I can give him something new to play with, he'll actually leave me alone long enough for me to get some chores done. I'm going to rapidly run out of "new" things though.

Other than being exhausted most of the time, we had a nice weekend. Saturday morning we had made plans to meet up with Kym (XxFireXboltxX) and her family at the zoo, but the rain prevented that. Instead we met at Jim's for breakfast and hung out all morning. It was a lot of fun and Kym was just as nice as I'd hoped! Kirk and her little boy Andrew had a lot of fun sitting next to each other in high chairs and watching each other throw things on the floor. Shiphrah was a bit of a handful, but she's been a stinker lately anytime we go anywhere. Anyway, hopefully we'll try the zoo again sometime soon, but it was really neat to get to meet a fellow Xangan in real life!

Well, Avery will be home from work any minute so I'll wrap this up. 'Night, all!

On being scarce

2010-04-10T22:16:00.000-05:00

Now that I've entered my third trimester (or thereabouts; I'm 28 weeks along) the exhaustion is hitting me hard again. Between keeping up with my very active toddlers (one of whom is still refusing to walk, even though he can) and trying to keep up with the mounds of laundry and dishes, I am wiped out! Thankfully, aside from seasonal allergies, the kids seem to finally be well, so here's hoping they stay that way for a while!

So yeah, even thinking about sitting down and writing a blog overwhelms me. It's much easier to pop in and out on Facebook and Twitter and write short updates than it is to construct several paragraphs that make sense. So look me up on Facebook or follow me on Twitter if you want more regular updates than what I post on here.

And I thought I could give you more than that, but I guess not. Happy Weekend, everyone!

Happy Easter from the Johnsons!

2010-04-05T19:01:00.000-05:00

Mother of the Year

2010-04-01T12:10:00.001-05:00

You know when everything goes wrong at once and you feel like the worst parent in the world because you can't seem to do anything right? Yeah, that's me right now. Kirk's rash is fading slowly, but he's still shooting snot rockets and feels downright miserable (or at least that's how he's acting). He wants held 24/7, but prefers to be held while the holder is walking around. My 6-month pregnant belly is NOT putting up with that. Shiphrah woke up this morning with a 101.8 fever. Did I mention she had just gotten over the cold she's had for two weeks? I think she probably had the fever yesterday too but I didn't think to check her. Her appetite was awful though...she ate a bowl of cereal, 1/2 a tortilla, a tiny donut, and a few teddy grahams and goldfish crackers all day long. This morning she didn't want breakfast and all she wanted to do was curl up in her little chair with her dog, elephant, and blanket. Then when I went to put Kirk down for his nap (which he is currently fighting) she followed me into the room and wanted to go back to bed too. Poor thing must feel awful.

So yeah, why can't I keep my kids healthy??? I try so hard to get them to eat well...yogurt most mornings, fresh fruit every day, C-boost to drink every day, gummy vitamins, you name it and I've tried it! Short of trying to re-lactate and give them breastmilk (which I don't think would work) I'm not sure what to do anymore.

Needless to say, I'm not feeling like Mother of the Year right now. Shiphrah has been watching too many movies (she's averaging 2 hours a day lately) just because I can't deal with her when Kirk is being fussy and clingy. I also haven't figured out how to teach her to be quiet while he naps...so the TV turns on again then too. I need to just start doing a little learning time with her during his morning nap but I've been so exhausted from all the sickness that I just haven't felt like it.

Thanks to my wonderful mother-in-law and a couple of sisters-in-law, I was able to get some uninterrupted time to clean and do laundry last weekend. So at least the house isn't falling apart at the moment. That's my one accomplishment. Oh, and since Avery has switched back to B-shift at work, our relationship has greatly improved. Night shift sucked, y'all, I have the greatest respect for anyone who can do that long-term.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my finance poll post. Avery and I talked about it again and decided to use all but $1K to pay off the debt (leaving that for an emergency fund). Our Discover card balance is now wiped clean and we should be able to pay the rest of the Mastercard balance within the month. It's so exciting to be almost debt-free again! (Well, other than the mortgage. ) Unfortunately some of the savings had to go towards four new sets of uniforms for Avery...those things are expensive. But the city does pay him a monthly uniform allowance of $50, so I shouldn't complain too much.

Well, I'm off to organize my grocery list. Whenever my husband gets back from running his errands, I need to head out to do mine. Have a great Thursday everybody!

Roseola?

2010-03-29T18:50:00.001-05:00

My best guess is Roseola - he has had cold symptoms for over 2 weeks now and a med-high fever for the past 5 days (103 for 2-3 days). His fever hasn't broken completely though, it was 100 today. He's been on antibiotics for an ear infection since last Monday. The rash showed up suddenly yesterday afternoon but has gotten worse today. It's a raised rash, but it doesn't seem to bother him (like chicken pox or hives would...although he's scratched at it a bit when he doesn't have a shirt on). Any other details you need? Help me out here, moms, what do you think?

Finance Poll

2010-03-27T21:18:00.001-05:00

So today was pretty much awesome. It was exhausting (my son woke up at 7 this morning crying, both kids are still sick AND teething, and Kirk woke up from his afternoon nap absolutely miserable) but it had enough good parts to make it a wonderful day. My mother-in-law (love her!) graciously agreed to bring my 9-year-old sister-in-law over and hang out with the munchkins for a little while so I could finally tackle some chores around the house. Once she got here, she insisted on doing my dishes, so I was free to get laundry and other stuff done. It was sooooo nice!!

Anyhoo, the reason for my post was to do a quick poll on something my husband and I are trying to decide on. In short, we have about $3K of credit card debt that we've been slowly chipping away at for about a year. (It was accrued mostly from Kirk's birth and when Avery was in the Academy and took a huge pay cut for 7 months.) I had hoped to have it all paid off in a year's time, but that hasn't happened at all. (In fact, we've really only brought it down by about $1K in a whole year.) We got a nice big tax refund this year, but stuck it all in savings to put towards the bigger vehicle we will need when Baby #3 comes in June/July. So right now we have $3K in debt and $5K in savings. My question is, should we keep splitting our extra money between the credit card debt and savings or just bite the bullet and pay off all the debt right now? My gut instinct is to wipe the debt clear and then work towards rebuilding the savings account...it really irks me to be paying about $40 a month in interest fees. BUT we may not have much car money to work with by the time July rolls around if we did that.

So what do YOU think? If this was your financial situation how would you handle it?

Barely Surviving

2010-03-22T11:50:00.000-05:00

I've never been one of those super-energetic, go-get-'em kind of women. Little things tend to overwhelm me and I like my life to fit in nice, neat categories. Obviously, motherhood has been a stretching experience for me. I get exhausted easily, I tend to get stressed over the silliest things, and if things don't go my way I get discouraged and depressed very quickly. Add to all of that the fact that I have chronic daily headaches (worsened during pregnancy) and a body that doesn't handle pregnancy changes very well.

This week has been a doozy.

Actually, the past month has been extra-challenging but it all peaked this past week. Let me put it in bullets:
(Okay, nevermind, my bullets aren't working.)
- About a month ago, Shiphrah caught a cold. Not bad, but annoying.
- A week later, Kirk had his weird rash thingy, which resulted in a doctor's appointment that told us nothing.
- Because of the doctor's visit, Kirk came down with a cold. He was miserable.
- A week later, Kirk was better but Shiphrah started getting the sniffles.
- All of that translates to this week: both kids with a horrible, nasty cold.
- (Oh and in between all that Kirk got a couple more teeth. Yay.)

Okay, so that covers the sickness aspect, right? Add to that the personalities of my two munchkins. Let's just say they are not laid-back, in the least. (Not surprising considering their mother isn't exactly chill.) Shiphrah is my stubborn 2-year-old. She can be such a sweetheart when she wants to be. She can be pleasant, polite, helpful, and well-behaved....sometimes. But when she is sick, tired, or just grumpy in general, she is a TERROR. Because of her cold, she has been very emotional and stubborn the past week or so. Thursday through Saturday I swear I could have spanked her every five minutes and still would have needed to spank her some more. Kirk, on the other hand, is very clingy. He's not very independent and prefers to be held or played with all day long. I kept expecting him to grow out of this, but he's a year old and still a Mama's boy. Normally I wouldn't mind this (and it really is endearing) but I am almost 6 months pregnant and carrying around a 20-lb baby is getting increasingly difficult. Plus with his teething and cold, for the past week the only time he is not crying/whining is when I am holding him. With Shiphrah, I can pop in a movie and that will entertain her for however long the movie is. Unfortunately Kirk has no interest in the TV whatsoever, so I can't even use that to get a short break.

Those two factors alone are enough to put me at the end of my rope, right? Well, I'm also 25 weeks pregnant. I don't want you to misunderstand...I love that God has chosen to bless us with so many little ones. I am so grateful that I don't struggle with serious pregnancy complications like some women; I know that's a huge blessing. But my 95-pound, 5-foot frame doesn't carry an extra human very well. My mother insists that pregnancy would be easier if I was in tip-top shape and maybe she's right. Either way, I have started feeling the serious aches and pains of pregnancy earlier and earlier with each one. With Shiphrah I wasn't uncomfortable (other than the morning sickness) until about 35 weeks (granted, she was a lot tinier). With Kirk, I was miserable by 32 weeks. With this little boy, I have been increasingly uncomfortable since 22 weeks. My stomach muscles are pretty much gone (I can't even close a door with my foot without experiencing sharp pains in my abdomen) and bending over is already very painful. Poor Avery has to vacuum the living room now because I can't push the vacuum through our thick-pile carpet without giving myself a bout of painful BH contractions. The baby is pushing on my intestines in a way that gives me bad cramps several times throughout the day (a strange experience I didn't have with the past two). Also, and probably the most frustrating of all the symptoms (and this will be TMI), sex is horribly uncomfortable. Last pregnancy I just dealt with it for the sake of my husband, but this time it's getting so painful we've been making love much less often and it's taking a toll on our relationship. I don't want to go into detail for the sake of privacy, but we could really use some prayer in this area.

Wow, I really didn't intend to spend that much time complaining, but there it is. I have half a mind to delete this whole post, but it really made me feel better to type it out, so I won't. I will end this post with some positive things:

- My husband is back to working afternoons! No more night shift!!! This week he's at in-service, so he's working 7-4, but next week he will return to his normal 2:30 to 10:30 shift. This is such a huge answer to prayer!!!

- Avery has been taking on a few extra off-duty jobs for extra money, and despite my fears, it wasn't that much harder to have him gone an extra day. And we're getting closer to paying off our credit card debt and saving for our minivan!

- We had a wonderful anniversary date on the 10th and I so enjoyed spending one-on-one time with my amazing husband!

- God is gracious and He will continue to show me mercy even when I don't deserve it. Despite my bad attitude and overall grumpiness, He still loves me. (And so does my husband, which is a miracle in and of itself.)

Kirk Turns One!

2010-03-15T22:10:00.000-05:00

Kirk Micah's big day! (We had about 40 friends and family gather at the park around the corner from our house for some pizza, fried chicken, and cupcakes.)

The rainbow cupcakes, before icing.

Swinging at the park with Grandad.

The rainbow cupcakes!

My baby boy is all grown up!

Another Tuesday!

2010-03-09T11:21:00.002-06:00

Thankfully, this one Avery is not working, although he worked at overnight security shift last night so he's still in bed right now. But I'll be waking him up in an hour or two and forcing him to spend time with me. After all, our anniversary is tomorrow, so I need some hubby-time.

I know most people talk about how they can't believe they've been married for so many years and how the time flies and all that jazz, but for me it's slightly different. You see, I have two kids and one on the way...and this is only our third anniversary. (That's what happens when you have a honeymoon pregnancy and then another one 15 months later and then another one 15 months after that!) So Avery and I are technically still newlyweds, although because we started our family so quickly, it feels like we've been married FOREVER. But yes, Saturday, March 10th, 2007 we started our lives as husband and wife...and it's been one of the best things that has ever happened to me!

(And I'm trying really hard not to be too excited about tomorrow, but Avery informed me that he had a few things up his sleeve and y'all, my husband never plans anything!! So I can't help but be excited! I couldn't really think of anything I wanted for an anniversary present, so I told Avery I just wanted a pedicure. Can you believe I've never ever had a professional pedicure before? Manicures, yes, but never my feet! I'm excited. )

Ugh, right now my son is fighting his nap and is SCREAMING bloody murder. I hate that he does this every other day or so!

Speaking of Kirk, he will be turning ONE on Sunday! I cannot believe how fast the past year has gone by. I still think of him as my baby and am constantly surprised when he starts acting like a little boy. With you first baby, you're always looking forward to the next milestone, so you kind of miss the excitement of it all. But with your second (and consecutive) you forget exactly what comes next and every new thing is a surprise. I love it. I really didn't want a big ordeal for Kirk's birthday, but I felt like I was slighting him (second child syndrome) if we didn't at least celebrate. So we're praying that the weather is nice and we've invited friends and family to the park around the corner from our house and we'll order pizza and fried chicken. (Our house isn't conducive to having more than a few people over and unfortunately the backyard doesn't have grass in it yet.) I really didn't want the stress of decorating a cake this year, so I'm just going to make a bunch of rainbow cupcakes and put sprinkles on them. They look fun and festive, don't you think?

And they're relatively easy, which I'm excited about. I just need to make sure to remember to make them on Saturday so I don't have to worry about getting a bunch of stuff done before church on Sunday.

Well, my son is still screaming, so I'd better go check on him one more time. Kid just can't understand that he's tired and needs to sleep!

Tepid Tuesday

2010-03-02T11:05:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling a little down today. Tuesday is normally part of our "weekend," but Avery has decided to take on a few extra off-duty jobs with the city so he's working security at the convention center today from 7-5. Poor guy is bored out of his mind though. He's basically standing in one place for eight hours with nothing to do and no one to talk to. Definitely not his cup of tea. But he's been dying to buy a few extra "toys" (table saw, another knife, a new pair a boots, a lathe, etc.) and he knows we're using all of his extra regular paychecks to pay off the credit cards and save for a minivan, so off-duty was the only way to go. He signed up for five or 6 shifts this month, but after he's discovered how boring it is we'll see how much he wants to do next month. Anyway, I'm missing him dreadfully and can't wait for him to get home.

Kirk broke my heart this morning too. The munchkins have been waking up earlier and earlier every morning now (this morning it was 7:50...they used to sleep until 9), so he's been pretty grumpy in the mornings before his first nap. He basically didn't stop whining except to eat unless I was holding him, so we had lots of cuddle-time this morning. I absolutely love how my little man likes to cuddle so much! Shiphrah never was much of a snuggler and Kirk loves to just sit on my lap and smile at me and lay his head on my chest. Melt. My. Heart! So this morning, since he was already so tired, he was actually starting to doze off in my arms. I was hoping he would actually fall asleep on me (my kids never do that!) but he was too interested in watching Shiphrah and seeing what was going on. So I went to lay him down in his crib. That was twenty minutes ago and he's still whining and fussing. I hate hearing him be so pitiful! *Sigh*

Oh, I think I'm going to have to retire from crock pot cooking until I'm no longer pregnant. The smell is AWFUL. I used to love being able to smell dinner cooking all afternoon, but yesterday was miserable and it made eating dinner nearly impossible. I've been more sensitive to smells this pregnancy than either of my others. Beats the bad nausea, I suppose, but still annoying.

We tried Shiphrah on the potty seat a few days ago with little success. As expected, she's terrified, and can only occasionally be coaxed to sit on it fully-clothed with the promise of two M&Ms. I don't want to go through the trouble of potty-training with a toddler potty only to have her refuse to use any other toilet while we're out (we tried it once and she completely freaked out), so I think we'll just wait a little while until she's more ready. We're going to keep asking her if she wants to sit on the potty at least once a day and after bath time, but that's about it for now. At least when the weather gets warmer, I'll feel better about letting her run around in just a pull-up. I'm horrified at the thought of having THREE kids in diapers, but since she'll only be a little over 2 1/2 when Baby #3 is born, that's looking like a distinct possibility. Oh well, such is the life of a mother of babies.

And I got nothing else.

Random Happenings

2010-03-01T11:11:00.000-06:00

I'm awful at coming up with decent titles for my blogs. Oh well, it's the content that counts, right? Currently my munchkins are playing together in their room. Although "playing together" has recently turned into a lot of fighting over toys and stealing things from each other. *Sigh* I thought that didn't happen until much later. They're only 2 and almost 1 for goodness' sake!

Since Avery will be stuck working nights for at least another two months (we're praying he can transfer back to afternoons at least by the time the baby comes), we've been trying to get into somwhat of a routine. He's been going to bed between 8 and 10 in the mornings so he can be up with us for dinner in the evenings. Since he's home for dinner now, I've been getting into a routine of actually cooking again. :-) (We'd previously been living on freezer meals that I cooked in early-November.) Unfortunately, actually put decent effort into cooking expends a lot of energy on my part, so other things are getting neglected (laundry, primarily). We also got a new dishwasher last week (!!!) so for the first time in over a year, washing dishes isn't so bad! (We got it Scratch 'n' Dent at Lowe's for just under $200 after taxes. It was originally $379 plus tax or something. It was a floor model and was missing a door spring that Avery easily fixed.) I can't tell you how happy having a dishwasher has made me!

Mornings are where we are still really struggling as far as finding a groove. I would love to get up and make breakfast for the family, but the kids don't wake up until about the same time Avery goes to bed and so everything kind of gets blurred in the mornings. Which stinks because I really love having family breakfasts. I could be proactive about it and wake the kids up earlier, but I'm way too addicted to sleep. Plus I've been waking up with nasty sinus headaches every morning, which makes dragging myself out of bed that much harder. Oh well, we'll figure it out.

Shiphrah has been in a toddler bed for a little while now and last night was our first real experience with her playing instead of sleeping. In fact, when I went in to check on Kirk (who randomly started crying around 11), this is where I found her:

(I didn't turn the light on...this was just the camera flash.) Silly girl.

Well, I need to go. Kirk is laying his head down on the floor and whining, which is his way of telling me it's naptime. Then I need to pop a short movie in for Shiph so I can take a shower.

Dinner tonight: Italian chicken and potatoes in the crock pot.

Munchkin Updates

2010-02-26T16:53:00.000-06:00

Shiphrah Grace - 2 years, 3 months old

Still tiny (23 lbs, 30 inches) but growing up every day. Speaking in nearly complete sentences sometimes (mostly phrases though). The other day I was changing pants and she looked at me with a very concerned look and said, "Mommy's knees! Uh oh, what happened?" Haha, for the record there was nothing wrong with my knees, she's just not used to seeing them bare apparently. She's getting a little better at her eating habits...she'll now eat most fruits and some vegetables. Pasta is still iffy and meat is hit or miss, although last night she did eat a good chunk of steak. Silly girl LOVES salads and anything that goes in them, and will even eat lettuce plain if I give her some while I'm fixing a salad. I've gotten her to eat cheese quesadillas and bean & cheese burritos, but only if I let her dip them in Ranch dressing. Oh, and she'll eat anything with ketchup too. We're planning on starting potty training any day now...some days she seems more than ready (grabbing her diaper or telling us before she goes). I'm just dreading the fight I know will happen when I try to make her sit on the scary, tall toilet. (We have a potty seat, but she hates the height.) I just really don't want to resort to a little potty because that means she'll never go when we're away from home. We moved her to a toddler bed almost two weeks ago and she's been doing amazingly well. As long as she has her paci, dog, elephant, and blanket, she's a happy camper. A few times she's gotten out of bed and tried to play during naptime, but mostly she stays in bed once we put her down.

Kirk Micah - 11 months old

Kirk will be one in just over two weeks and I cannot believe how fast the time has flown! I constantly forget just how old he is and then he surprises me with how smart he is. He's very close to walking, or at least standing up on his own, and I expect he'll start right around his first birthday (like his sister did). He babbles constantly and tries to say words like "hi," "Dad," "thank you," "kitty," "Penny" (the cat's name), "Schatzie" (the dog's name), "Shiphrah," and "all done." I say "tries" because he's not really saying them, per say, (except "hi" and "Dad") but if you can interpret the babbles you know he's trying. Kirk hates pretty much every veggie, although he'll eat peas and a slice of cooked carrot or two if you sneak it in his mouth. He likes fruit though, despite the fact that it doesn't agree with his tummy well. (He's having the same diaper issues that Shiphrah had at this age...I have to be really careful how much fruit he eats or he gets really bad diaper rash.) Other than some yogurt and such here and there, he's mostly graduated completely to finger foods. He's a very happy baby, for the most part, although he still yells himself to sleep most nap times and night times. He won't take a paci, except to play with, so I figure the yelling will continue for a few more months at least. He drinks about 8-12 ounces of whole milk a day plus 8 ounces of orange juice and water.

Baby #3

Still unnamed, although we haven't found anything we like better than Gideon so far. I'm 22 weeks along today and starting to really "feel pregnant." The boy is wiggling a lot these days and starting to settle into a routine of wiggling most when I'm trying to fall asleep. I've also started getting a few Braxton Hicks contractions here and there. I have to take the dreaded glucose test at my next appointment (I always fail it) and I'm debating eating next to nothing before I go (and drinking a lot of water) since eating breakfast hasn't helped at all the previous too times. (Officially I have to eat "something" though.) I keep telling them that a tiny person like me will never be able to handle all that sugar at once, but they still insist that the results are accurate. (I've always had trouble handling large amounts of sugar...I can't even eat an orange or a handful of grapes without getting super-dizzy and nauseous. I'm not diabetic though.)

Well, Shiphrah has a poopy diaper and is waiting patiently for me to change it. Unfortunately Kirk is asleep in the nursery, so I have to sneak in there quietly to get a diaper because I have none out here. Here's hoping he stays asleep!

My Little Cowgirl

2010-02-21T18:56:00.001-06:00

We went to the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo last Monday (President's Day) for a fun family outing. Admission is always just $1 on President's Day, so aside from the outrageous parking ($10), it was a relatively inexpensive activity. Well, inexpensive until we happened upon the CUTEST pair of boots for Shiphrah and then had to buy a little cowgirl dress to match.

She loves her Daddy! ♥

A Lovely Valentine's Day

2010-02-19T11:32:00.001-06:00

We don't usually make any "real" plans for Valentine's Day (mainly because it's too hard to find babysitters) but we did go out on a date the week before. For the day-of, I bought Avery some of his favorite candy bars, wrote him a sweet card, and bought him some M&M cookie ice cream sandwiches for a later-in-the-day treat (he LOVES anything with ice cream). I also picked up some little goodies for the munchkins...a little stuffed monkey with candy for Shiphrah and a little toy truck for Kirk. Avery surprised me with some tulips on Saturday morning and then some roses and daisies on Sunday morning (and a sweet card, of course!). He also got Shiphrah a red rose that she wanted to carry around everywhere. I made heart-shaped eggs and pancakes for breakfast (all on my griddle! I love griddles; although they are a PAIN to clean.) After church we went to lunch with Avery's family to celebrate his sister's birthday (the 15th) and then Avery stayed up for an hour or so with me while the munchkins napped. He only got about five hours of sleep that day, but it was well worth the lovely alone time we had.

And the post wouldn't be complete without pictures...

Our lovely breakfast.

The lovely red tulips.

My roses and daisies (which sadly are getting thrown out today).

Shiphrah and her red rose (and monkey from Mama).

Kirk wouldn't pose with his truck (he kept throwing it) so this was the best shot we got.

I ♥ Valentine's Day!!!

Minivans...what is your favorite?

2010-02-12T22:50:00.001-06:00

I posted this as a poll on Facebook and then figured I'd come over here to give it a try. We are growing out of our Toyota Echo as soon as Baby #3 (still nameless, by the way) is born. We have about $1K in savings and $4K in tax refund money to put towards a new (to us) vehicle. We also have the Echo to sell if we need to (worth about $3K or so). After considering several types of vehicles (Suburbans, SUVS, and minivans) we think we have finally settled on getting a minivan (although Avery is none too happy about driving a "mom car" ). Now the question is, which one? Here are our top three choices:

1. Dodge Caravan

2. Honda Odyssey

3. Toyota Sienna

(There's also the Nissan Quest, Chrysler Town & Country, and a couple of others.)

The Dodge is by far the cheapest. (We're paying cash, so minivans in our price range are 4-10 years old.) In fact, we could get a decent one without having to sell the Echo. Which would be nice only because we'd have a back-up vehicle if Avery's ancient truck ever bites the dust. But Hondas and Toyotas tend to last longer and are a bit more reliable. (We're looking at a good $2K or more just for those names though.)

We need the minivan to last us until we outgrow it. Which, at the rate I'm going, could be as soon as four or five years from now. Plus, we have other expenses to save for, including buying Avery a better vehicle (his is a 1995 Nissan pick-up) and eventually buying a new home (down payment) or remodeling our current home.

So what do you think? What's your pick for favorite minivan?

(Also, is there a better time of year to buy a car? Because we can start shopping anytime between now and July. Just wondering if you can find better deals at a certain time of the year.)

The end.

2010-02-11T16:27:00.000-06:00

After a very painful nursing session this morning, I have decided that we are done. Kirk has only been nursing once a day (mornings) for the past month and it's been getting harder and harder to keep him interested. It really only worked if I brought him back to bed with me and we lay there with the lights off. But recently even that has been frustrating, especially since his "nursing" is really just chewing on my nipples for ten minutes. TMI, I know, but I'm surprised I held out this long. When he was born I had planned on going at least a year, if not longer. But with getting pregnant when he was six months old, my supply had dwindled down to almost nothing. I probably would have stopped earlier but he refused bottles and it took him a long time to learn how to drink out of a sippy. Once he got the hang of that, we went from nursing every two hours to about three times a day. From there he quickly grew disinterested and dropped the nap time nursing and then the nighttime nursing. I had been holding on to the morning session, hoping to reach his 11-month birthday (Sunday). Three days short is pretty close though. All together I'm proud of myself for making it this long. Shiphrah was only exclusively nursed until she was five months old and I stopped all together with her about a month later. So eleven months is a record for me. :-) I've always wanted to be one of those mothers that nursed until the child gave it up, but with my body seemingly on a 15-month pregnancy cycle, that seems pretty unlikely.

But hey, my boobs are my own again!!!

A reprieve from rainy weather

2010-02-07T00:13:00.000-06:00

I'm exhausted and really should be in bed, but lately I've been having trouble falling asleep when so many thoughts are whirling around in my head. In fact, I've recently discovered the joy that is Unisom and am afraid that I am rapidly becoming addicted. So, in an attempt to rid my brain of all these thoughts and fall asleep naturally tonight, I thought I'd blog.

The weather has been absolutely breathtaking the past two days. January and February are typically our "rainy months"...or as rainy as South Texas can get. This year it's rained more than it has since the spring of 2007 and I think we're at twice the rainfall levels we usually are this time of year. So needless to say, we're all a little tired of the rain. Yesterday and today we got a nice reprieve from all the rain. It has been sunny and breezy with a high of about 65 degrees. Perfect weather. Yesterday the kids and I got out to go grocery shopping, but other than that we didn't really get to take advantage of the nice day. (It was still really muddy out from all the rain.) Today it had dried out considerably, so I decided to take the kids to the zoo for the afternoon. We have a family pass and since we can also take up to five guests for free each visit, I invited my neighbor Missy and her 1-year-old son to come along (she's also pregnant and due a few weeks after me). Her husband works nights so both of our husbands were sleeping and we like to get the kids out of the house so they don't wake their daddies up.

Now, I knew it was risky going to the zoo on a Saturday, in the afternoon, on such a pretty day, but I was willing to fight the crowds for an hour or two of getting outside and enjoying the weather. As expected, the whole city had also decided to go to the zoo for the afternoon, but there are several overflow parking lots so we parked in a nearby stadium parking lot and walked the quarter mile down to the zoo entrance. (Note I said "down," this will come into play later on in the story.) Once we got inside the zoo, the crowds were actually manageable so we were able to maneuver to my two favorite toddler-friendly areas: the petting zoo (which is really just a bunch of goats, but Shiphrah loves it) and the toddler zone (a lovely mini-zoo specifically for kids under 5, with a little river for the kids to play in when it's warm out and plenty of fenced in open areas for them to run around). We had to wait in line for a few minutes at the petting zoo, but it was worth Shiphrah's excitement at getting to brush the goats (they have a little bucket of animal brushes for the kids to use) and my amusement at watching her carefully select a brush, chase a goat down until she could brush him a few times, and then return to the brush bucket to repeat the process (each goat had to have his own brush). Sorry, no pictures at this point (I can't really take pictures very well and keep up with two kids, haven't learned that trick yet), but here's a few pictures of her with the goats from our last visit during the summer months:

Here she is examining the bucket of brushes...

Very carefully selecting a brush...

And now to find a willing victim.

After the petting zoo we headed over to the toddler zone and let the munchkins play in the grassy lawn for a few minutes. I only got a couple of pictures with my cell phone, but hopefully Missy will share some of hers with me.

Our three munchkins hanging out together (Kirk just wanted to stare at the grass the whole time).

Playing on the alligator teeter-totter together.

Kirk and Micah enjoying some boy-time. (Micah is about 3 months older than Kirk.)

By then it was getting to be naptime and Missy was getting hungry, so we headed out of the zoo and back up the hill to our cars. UP. THE. HILL. Pushing a double stroller. Oh my goodness, I have not exerted myself that much in months!! I felt like such a wimp! But when I told Avery about it later, he couldn't believe I had made it up the hill, so I felt better about myself then. (It's a really steep hill!) So yeah, my legs are already feeling sore and I'm certain I will wake up very uncomfortable in the morning.

Speaking of waking up, I really should get to bed. Thanks for helping put me to sleep, y'all!

In defense of selective vaccination...a comment.

2010-02-06T00:46:00.001-06:00

With the news of the vaccines-autism study being discredited all over the place lately, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone I knew and respected came out and said something that frustrated me. Now, I'm not going to argue whether or not the study should have been discredited or whether it was a good study to begin with (for those who don't know, it was discredited for a possible conflict of interests, although science could never replicate the results anyway), but I am going to take offense at the suggestion that parents who do not follow the government-sanctioned vaccination schedules are idiots who buy into sensationalist theories by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. Here is the comment I left on this person's blog:

Avery and I had a childhood friend who developed seizures after her 2-year-old vaccines. Those seizures eventually killed her when she was 13. Just the fact that things like that CAN happen (the doctors agreed that she did happen to have an adverse reaction to the shots) gives me pause before I say yes unconditionally to all vaccines. I know vaccines have a purpose and I know some are necessary. My kids have had the DPT shots (primarily for the pertussis vaccine), pneumococcal, and meningitis vaccines. However, we have decided that the others are merely superfluous. The MMR vaccine is created using aborted fetuses and none of those three diseases is dangerous for an otherwise healthy child. Chicken pox is also harmless to children (although if my kids haven't had it by their teenage years I will probably suggest they get the shot) and I see no need for my babies to get the Hepatitis B vaccine when they will not be sexually active for many years (and it's efficacy wears off after 6-10 years anyway). We also don't follow the prescribed timing for vaccines either and feel more comfortable spacing them out so the child isn't getting large doses of chemicals injected into their tiny bodies at one time.

I do NOT believe that autism is directly caused by vaccines. I do, however, believe that many childhood ailments, such as autism, ADD, ADHD, extreme allergies, mental illnesses, etc. are caused partly by a combination of several factors: lack of a healthy diet (including overuse of artificial infant formulas), overexposure to chemicals and unnatural substances (through vaccines, hormones additives in foods, hormones in our water, hormonal birth control, etc.), artificial and chemically engineered foods (artificial sweeteners, preservatives, over-processed foods, etc.), and the overall weakness of the body's immune system. For example, some autistic children have found their symptoms drastically reduced when they changed to all-natural diets.

(I'm going to interject here and say that my point in talking about my theories of the causes of childhood ailments was not to say that it's a parent's fault if their child is diagnosed with autism or bi-polar disorder [obviously random genetics have something to do with it too], but to point out that there are quite possibly external factors that might have contributed to those ailments and we as parents shouldn't throw up our hands and say "oh well, so sad.")

Anyway, my point is to say that I (and many others like me) are not believers in the "all vaccines are EVIL" theory. However, every time a doctor tells me I should give my child a measles vaccine, I must consider this: am I willing to to inject my child with harsh chemicals (mercury or aluminum [which has been proven to increase the risk for Alzheimer's btw], and formaldehyde), antibiotics, and a killed measles virus that will lower their immune system for several days making them susceptible to any disease-bearing germ they may come in contact with...all to protect them against a disease that has a 1 in 10,000 chance of killing them IF they contract it?

Please tell me my thought process AT LEAST makes sense to you. Of all people, you should be sympathetic to what it's like to be a concerned parent who wants to do best by their children. You don't believe in being brainwashed by the government or anyone else in telling us what's right for our kids.

(Forgive any typos...it's late and past my bedtime.)

I know we've been over this issue time and time again, but I wish more people (parents and non-parents alike) would be understanding towards views different from their own. I may disagree with you over a certain issue, but I'm not going to call you a moron behind your back and think you're an awful parent for believing what you do! If you have weighed the risks of vaccinating versus not vaccinating and made the decision to get all the vaccines, more power to you, at least you made an informed decision. But telling me I am "willfully ignorant" and following sensationalized myths is liable to get me a little ticked off.

Stream of rambling

2010-02-04T15:00:00.000-06:00

Stomach bugs suck and I cannot emphasize the word SUCK enough. I hate that ever since I started having kids, my immune system has been shot. I catch nearly every stomach bug that goes around and I catch a cold about five or six times a year. No flu yet, and for that I am grateful, but seriously...I used to never get sick! I seem to always catch these stomach bugs right around the 18th week of pregnancy. Had one with Shiphrah, Kirk, and now this baby. Being pregnant and having a stomach bug is extra horrible because my body is telling me I need to "EAT, DRINK, EAT" and my stomach is saying "NOOOOOOOO"! This most recent bug wasn't one of the really bad ones (I only threw up 3-4 times and the "other" stomach issues were minor) but it takes my stomach FOREVER to recover after being sick. I got sick late Thursday night and then tried to eat some chicken noodle soup the next evening. Mega-nausea alert. Tried again for breakfast Saturday morning. Laid out on the couch again. Felt better that evening and took the kids grocery shopping and out to dinner. Sunday morning: home sick from church...stomach NOT happy with the previous night's meal. Ugh. It's like, get better all ready! Thankfully it's now been a week and I'm happy to say that I am 100% recovered. Finally.

Despite feeling awful most of the day Sunday, I had an amazingly energy-full day on Monday. I did several large loads of laundry, swept the floors, and finally finished all of the dishes in the sink (I'm embarrassed to admit that some of them had been there for THREE weeks). Tuesday I felt poorly again...probably just worn out from overdoing it the day before. Wednesday was a little better, but down with a nasty groggy headache most of the day. Today has been good, although I'm still feeling a bit sleepy and wish I could take a nap. (Opted for a shower instead.) It's rainy and dreary around here and that's not helping my alertness either. We're out of bread, eggs, and yogurt, so a trip to the grocery store later is a must. I was hoping the kids and I could get out before 4, but since they fought their naps and just finally went down a little while ago, that's looking unlikely. My dad is in town working at his San Antonio office today, so he's coming over for dinner (not sure what we're doing yet). I'm super-excited about that!

Well, my oldest munchkin apparently is still not sleeping, so I've got to attend to that.

Drum roll please...

2010-01-30T15:09:00.002-06:00

Sorry I didn't blog right after my doctor's appointment on Wednesday, but we had a rather busy day and then I came down with a nasty stomach bug on Thursday night. I'm still recovering, but I figured I couldn't keep y'all waiting any longer.

It's a BOY!!!

Yep, Kirk will have a little brother close in age to rough-house with and poor Shiphrah will have to settle for doing girlie things with Mommy, at least for a few more years. :)

So....boy names. Gideon is probably our top choice right now, but Avery also likes Isaac, Titus, and Silas.

Baby names and other news.

2010-01-22T21:56:00.002-06:00

Both the headaches and morning sickness have been pretty mild lately, so mostly I'm just battling with exhaustion at this point. Which is much better and I pray it stays that way. 17 weeks along today! We have an ultrasound this coming Wednesday that will hopefully tell us if we are having a girl or boy! We have no clue on boy names, but we do have a couple of girl names we like. I love the name Evelyn (it was my grandmother's name...I'm a sucker for family names) and Brianna (pronounced "ana" not "anna"...not sure what spelling I like though). It was funny; usually Avery and I never agree on names, but when I mentioned I like Brianna, he chimed in and said he liked it too! I know a lot of people wait until the baby is born to decide on a name, but I really enjoy the closeness I feel by being able to the baby by name and talk to him or her. So hopefully we can come up with some good boy names pretty quickly. William is one of the names I like, but Avery says only if his middle name can be Wallace. :) If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them. We like Bible names and unique names, but don't care for names that are trendy, unisex, or sound like last names. (Some of my favorite male Bible names are Paul, Philip, and Caleb, but Avery isn't crazy about any of those.)

Anyhoo, that was kind of jumbled. I'm definitely going to bed in a few minutes. Since I've been feeling better, I've been trying to catch up on housework and take advantage of the gorgeous weather we've been having (sunny and in the 70's!). So I took the kids to the park this afternoon for a little while and was pooped by the time we got home (pushing a double stroller is NOT easy). The kitchen is gradually getting cleaner by the day (still a long way to go though), I'm cooking more often now, and all the Christmas decorations are finally put away. So I think I deserve an early bedtime tonight. :)

Oh, before I forget, Avery got some surprising news when he got to work today. Because of a shortage of officers on the shift following his, he's getting moved temporarily. When he graduated they told him that they would only pull for mandatory transfers from the bottom of the class ranking (a motivation for them to get good grades), but apparently it's easier to transfer within sub-stations, so they just pulled Avery and a girl from his junior class to make the move. Basically he'll be working the overnight shift (10 - 6) for the next month (they promise it'll be only a month, but the official special assignment is for 60 days) with his days off being Monday and Tuesday. And, go figure, he starts this new schedule TOMORROW. Did I mention he just found out today? We're not sure how the whole sleeping thing is going to work. The room we're using for our master bedroom doesn't have a door on it and gets really bright during the day. So I think we're going to move Kirk back into Shiphrah's room (their nap schedules are somewhat close now) and make Avery a temporary bed in Kirk's room so he can sleep. I wish we had an extra twin mattress or something though...I don't think he's going to want to sleep on a camping cot for a month. Poor guy, I hate that he's going to be exhausted for an entire month...he doesn't do well on night shifts...he can't seem to sleep well enough during the day.

Well, I'm off to bed. Goodnight, all!

Two outta three ain't bad.

2010-01-17T22:12:00.000-06:00

Thanks for the prayers, y'all! I actually had a really good day yesterday...just a light headache for part of the day! And my queasiness was minimal too!! I'm thinking part of that had to do with the fact that I was out of the house all day and in and out of the fresh air (friend's wedding). Maybe the stuffiness of the house is making my headaches worse. Today I had a pretty ugly headache on and off all day, but it let up enough for me to get a few things done here and there.

Like I said in my last brief post, aside from how I've been feeling, everything really has been going wonderfully around here. Kirk has finally gotten a reprieve from teething, so he's been sleeping much better and his overall mood has improved dramatically. Shiphrah is keeping me on my toes with her need to touch and get into everything. (Which she typically does when I'm holding Kirk...little booger.) She also is establishing herself in her role as Big Sister and loves to boss her little brother around constantly. I want her to interact with him, so I'm torn as to how to teach her to play with him without trying to play for him. You know what I mean?

In other news, Avery got his vacation requests for the year approved this week so we are all set for our mini-getaway in May and his two-week vacation over Christmas! I'm soooo looking forward to our getaway...it'll be the first time since our honeymoon that it will be just the two of us. We haven't decided where we're going or what we'll be doing yet, but I'll probably start looking into that soon. Is it bad that I'm going to be away from my kids on Mother's Day weekend? I didn't realize we were planning it over that weekend, but now I'm feeling a little guilty. Oh well, I guess they'll see me that night anyway.

So life is grand! The only thing that's really been bothering me is my inability to balance everything appropriately. I look at my "occupation" as three-fold: wife, mother, and housekeeper. They're pretty much prioritized in that order too, so when things get tough, the house is what falls apart first. But that irks me to no end because I feel like I should be able to manage. I want to be a "Domestic Goddess" like the book Fascinating Womanhood talks about and be a wonderful wife, mother, and keep my house looking beautiful. I know it's probably just God keeping my pride in check because I would have a HUGE head if I had it all together. But, like my title says, two outta three ain't bad, I guess. I did get about half the dishes in the sink washed this evening before my back started screaming at me...so maybe by tomorrow night I'll have a clean sink again (for the first time in two weeks...sad, isn't it?).

Well, I'm getting sleepy sitting here and I still have to stay up until the laundry finishes in the dryer.

I Resolve...

2010-01-01T22:08:00.001-06:00

I don't usually do New Year's Resolutions...at least, not since high school...but I figured there were some areas in my life that need improvement that would be beneficial to make public. For accountability and all.

In 2010 I resolve too...
- read my Bible and pray more
- soften my tone when I respond to my husband and children
- love my husband more
- supress my negativity and strive to be more positive
- appreciate the little things
- be more laid back and less up tight about everything
- be more merciful, graceful, joyful, and patient

My Christmas Surprise

2009-12-26T09:47:00.000-06:00

The special present my husband has been teasing me about for weeks...

So special and it nearly made me cry!

Just around the corner...

2009-12-22T23:05:00.000-06:00

I can't believe Christmas is on Friday. I have a pile of Christmas presents sitting on the dining room table waiting to be wrapped. I need to finish them if only to reclaim the table...poor hubby hasn't had a seat for three days. I also need to stamp the last five of my Christmas cards so they can go out in the mail tomorrow. The addresses are local, so they should get delivered before Christmas. (The post office is open Christmas Eve, right??) If not, oh well, I ran out of stamps and couldn't get out to the grocery store until today.

Our plans for Christmas are pretty simple. We're staying in town this year, which means Christmas Eve and Christmas at the inlaws. Remind me to take a long nap before Christmas Eve, because it's always a crazy mess of people (30ish?) crammed into one rather small house and Avery's family isn't known for being calm or quiet. I love 'em though; those Johnsons are a fun bunch. Christmas morning we'll open family gifts at home and then head back over to the inlaws for Christmas brunch and more presents. Then Avery will head off to work and the kids and I will hang out with his family all afternoon until Christmas dinner. Saturday we're hoping to head over to the zoo in the morning to spend time with some family friends we haven't seen in a while. (Avery's best friend is home from Montana...he's in the Air Force and is currently training to be in the nuclear missile silos.) Then Sunday my family is coming down here for the day and we'll go out to lunch after church and then have a little Christmas over here. Avery took two hours off of work that day so we won't be so rushed.

Should be fun! Oh, and speaking of gifts, mine is sitting under the tree taunting me right now. This is the first Christmas in 5 or 6 years that Avery has actually bought me a gift and I have no idea what it is. (Gifting is not his talent...he usually just buys me whatever I ask for...or we go shopping for my gift together.) He's been teasing me about it for two weeks now and I'm dying from curiosity. I have a few ideas, but the way he went about buying it really has me baffled. (He made a phone call, had an appointment set up, and then had to go somewhere this morning to get the last part of it.) I'm so excited!! I haven't been surprised by a big gift since I was a kid...the anticipation is so much fun!

Before I go, I wanted to thank all of you who commented on my last post. A lot of you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned needing to go to God first for that intimacy. It is when my spiritual life is suffering the most that I feel loneliest. When I'm spending more time in prayer and quality time in the Word, the lack of fellowship doesn't bother me nearly as much. So that was a good reminder. Also, my husband is my very best friend and I do look to him to fill those needs (after God), and that's how it should be. But like some of you pointed out, there's something special about having a soul sister. I'm sure God will bring someone into my life when the time is right, but until then I am very blessed to have an incredible husband, my best friend Kari, and my wonderful mother-in-law to encourage me. (Oh, and I am planning on getting involved in a MOPS group pretty soon to hopefully meet some new ladies, since our church doesn't have any ministries to mothers.)

Loneliness

2009-12-21T18:36:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been craving human interaction. And not just surface-level, ingenuine small talk. Real, passionate, honest conversation about convictions, struggles, and life in general. I don't know if it's the fault of online social networking or the busyness that's bombarded everyone, but that kind of interaction is so hard to come by these days.

It's especially hard to find that kind of interaction with peers that you can count on for support and encouragement. To establish those kinds of relationships, there has to be a level of commonality and shared life experiences. For instance, my best friend is a newly married woman that I have known since third grade. However, she doesn't have children, she works outside the the home, and has different convictions in some areas of life. While I enjoy her company immensely and she is a great encouragement to me, I still lack that true commonality component that makes me feel understood and motivated.

Finding such commonality is made even more difficult by the fact that my family holds some convictions that are regarded as odd and unusual. While I know there are women out there that ascribe to the same views, they are few and finding them is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Lest you misunderstand, I'm not saying I can't be friends with women who disagree with me or are in different situations in life. I'm merely pointing out that desire we have to connect with someone who wholeheartedly supports our convictions and can be there as encouragement and an accountability partner.

Here are a few of the things that make my family a tough "match":
- we are strong Christians who are passionate in our belief that faith should be central to our lives and should affect every day-to-day action
- we strongly believe that birth control (in any form or fashion) is against God's original plan and that by allowing Him to control our family size we are honoring Him with the ultimate expression of Trust
- we believe that the wife's place is in the home, taking care of her husband and/or children, and that working outside the house (regardless of circumstance) should only be considered as a last resort after much prayer and Spiritual guidance
- we believe that the place for children to receive their education is at home and other forms of schooling are not nearly as beneficial for a child's growth and development
Addendum: We do not judge those who believe otherwise, we just believe that God hasn't yet revealed to them that particular truth. Kind of like the verse in James states - "to those who know to do good and do not do it, to them it is sin." If we were to not follow any of these convictions, we would be sinning, but others whom God has not so convicted are not in sin. (Just, as my husband would jokingly say, "a little misled." )

Anyway, my closest female "ally," so to speak, is my mother-in-law. I love her to death, but obviously we're in different places in life so the support can only go so far.

So basically, other than this being a random conglomeration of everything I've been mulling over in my head lately, I was also curious as to how you ladies go about finding those "soul sisters." Other than your husbands, who can obviously support and encourage you in your daily lives, who else can you go to for that accountability?

Not so hot date night

2009-12-18T17:18:00.002-06:00

Well, I did feel better in time for our date night, but the party was kind of a bust. I guess it would have been a fun party if you're into those kind of things, but not really for me. Here's the thing: it started at 9. We got there at 9:20 and were the FIRST ones there. One of Avery's sergeants and his wife walked in right after us and then one other guy showed up a few minutes later. No one else showed up until well after 10. They didn't serve dinner until 11...by which time I was about to fall over from starvation (um, hello, pregnant woman here!) They had a cash-only bar...and since my husband doesn't drink and I'm pregnant, we didn't bring cash. And they didn't even serve WATER until 11 when the food came out. (!!??!!) And to top it all off, they hired a DJ that was obviously used to the club scene because he played mostly weird techno Tejano music REALLY LOUD. Several people asked him to turn it down several times but he kept turning it back up gradually. And he used strobe lights and other fancy flashing lights to create "atmosphere." And did I mention that this was all in the banquet room of a hotel with hotel food catering? Yeah, weird combination. So my head was pounding by the end of the night from the music and the lights. I stuffed myself once the food came, but it wasn't all that impressive. At least, not worth the $20 a plate. We had to stay until midnight because that's when the newbies were going to do their initiation song (all newbies have to sing at the Christmas party...it's tradition) but of course they were waiting on a few people to show up so it didn't happen until 12:30ish. We finally got out of there around 12:45. UGH. Not my idea of a nice date night. *Sigh* Oh well, I did get to spend several hours of uninterrupted time with my husband. Too bad we couldn't even hear each other over the music.

I can't believe it's only 5-o-clock. I'm already exhausted and the kids don't go to bed for several hours. And once they're in bed I still have laundry to do. Oh, and I was planning on wrapping Christmas presents and addressing Christmas cards. Where am I going to get that kind of energy?

Just a quick rant...

2009-12-17T18:03:00.000-06:00

Excuse me for a few minutes, but I just need to vent really quick. And then I'll be out of your hair, I promise.

Tonight is date night. We haven't had a date night in about a month and I've been looking forward to this one for weeks. It's an entire FIVE hours alone with my husband. (Well, with other people around, but without kids.) Our plans are to browse Lowe's and Home Depot for a couple of hours to pick out hubby's Christmas present (I'm sad there's no surprise, but I just don't trust myself to pick out the table saw that he wants) and then head downtown to his work Christmas party where we will stuff ourselves on delicious food and watch everyone else get drunk. Sounds fun, right? But, of course, I feel downright LOUSY. I have been having the hardest time stomaching anything the past few days and it's wreaking havoc on my body. Just an hour ago I attempted to make myself some tuna and I could barely eat a few bites. (Part of the problem was that we were out of mayonnaise so I had to use Miracle Whip...YUCK!) I have been craving random things (like pizza, french fries, a chicken sandwich from Red Robin, and pancakes from Jim's) and obviously I can't indulge in those very often. As it is my cravings are resulting in a very tight budget. But there's nothing like a good meal that I actually LIKE to help me feel better! Case in point: Tuesday night I desperately needed to get the dishes done and fold about ten loads of laundry but I was feeling awful. Papa John's pizza was (once again) one of the only things I felt like eating. So I ordered a pizza and was able to get all the dishes done and 95% of the laundry put away. AND I cleaned up the dining room table and set out the nativity set. But that evening cost me $15! GAH.

I have an hour and a half until our babysitter gets here. I want to feel better, I want to feel better, I want to feel better!!!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

2009-12-10T22:02:00.002-06:00

Right now my brave hubby is out on the roof in the cold putting Christmas lights on the house. Poor guy...he spends every morning taking care of me and the kids, so even on his days off he can't get much done around the house. So inevitably he ends up working on his projects well into the night. He's amazing, that husband of mine; God has blessed me soooooo much!!

We ordered Papa John's pizza for dinner again tonight. I say "again" because we got it delivered last Thursday night too. Our budget is getting tight with all the eating out (usually twice a week) but there are so few things I can stomach. I get so tired of bean and cheese burritos and hot dogs and peanut butter and jelly all the time. 11 weeks along tomorrow, only 29 left to go!

We had a bit of a disappointment today with hubby's paycheck too. He gets paid every two weeks and his first paycheck of the month is usually bigger. This time though, for whatever reason it was several hundred dollars smaller than usual. We don't live paycheck to paycheck, so it doesn't hurt us any...it just makes it harder to pay down our credit card debt and save for the car we need to buy next year. (Three carseats just won't fit in my little Toyota Echo!) Oh, and one of our credit cards just accrued a late fee...even though we've never had late fees before, OR even a minimum balance due! If I had been paying closer attention I might have been able to catch it, but I was used to just paying it down as I could because it had a $0 minimum payment for at least three years. Plus we've been focusing on paying off our higher interest credit card first, so I hadn't paid anything on this one in over two months. *Sigh* Having back-to-back babies on crappy insurance policies certainly puts a dent in one's wallet! Thankfully now we have awesome insurance and it'll cost us much less to have babies from now on.

It is kind of annoying to see so much of hubby's hard-earned money get deducted from every paycheck. And I don't even mean income taxes or anything. He has deductions of about $800 a month just for his retirement pension and his retirement supplemental health insurance. It's rather ridiculous. I mean, having a pension when you retire is cool, but we won't need the money when we're old and gray...we need it now, when we have kids to feed! Plus he doesn't plan on retiring until he's practically dying, so it'll be kind of pointless to have all that money then. I wish those things were optional instead of mandatory. We could soooo use an extra $800 a month! It's crazy to think that he "earns" a salary of about $45K a year but only sees about $30K of that after everything is said and done. Oh well, maybe I can convince him to retire when he's only 55.

Okay, that was a long rant. Sorry about that. Well, hubby is off the roof, so maybe he'll be coming in soon. Have a good night, everyone!

(This is for you, Traci! Sorry I never let you know the hats got here! We love them!! )

Picture Update

2009-12-07T19:37:00.003-06:00

Blogging has gotten pushed way down on my to-do list, but here's a quick picture update:

My little boy is 9 months old now!

My beautiful daughter turned 2 on Thanksgiving Day!

I love that my kids like playing together!

So, a belated Happy Thanksgiving and an early Merry Christmas to y'all!

Our New Normal

2009-11-17T18:34:00.003-06:00

I know I promised y'all another blog post as soon as things settled down, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. I also meant to post some pictures from our recent escapades, but I haven't uploaded pictures from my camera in several weeks, so that'll have to wait.

Mostly all we've been doing lately is getting settled into our new "normal." I'm about 8ish weeks pregnant, and morning sickness is in full swing. My medication (zofran) is keeping it controlled, but I still feel awful from the moment I wake up in the morning to when I go to bed at night. In addition to the zofran, I also have to eat every few hours, which, as a person that doesn't enjoy food all that much, is rather annoying. Whatever I eat also has to have a high protein content, so I'm rapidly getting tired of eating the same foods over and over again.

Since mornings are hardest for me, I'm very grateful for my husband's 2:30 to 10:30 pm work schedule. It's hard putting the kids to bed by myself at night, but much better than having to get them up, dressed, and fed in the mornings when I feel my worst. Plus, the kids both nap until 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon, so I really only have them by myself for four hours every night, which isn't bad at all.

I'm mostly just taking things one day at a time and looking forward to the day when the sickness eases enough to allow me to handle the kids AND the house.

Well, I'd better go, my 8-month-old has wriggled his way under my computer chair and is fussing at me to pick him up.

Unexpected Blessings

2009-11-09T22:16:00.002-06:00

I know I'm overdue for an update, but life has been crazy, so snippet will have to do.

On the morning of my birthday (October 29th) I received a very unexpected birthday surprise...a positive pregnancy test!!! Since I am still breastfeeding Kirk at least six times a day, it was definitely a surprise, but a happy one!

Since that discovery, I have been cooking up a storm so that my husband won't starve (or gain 50 pounds from eating fast food) when my morning sickness kicks in, and we've been rearranging the house to make it more conducive for three kids. Obviously we have 8 months or so to fix the house, but we wanted to sleep train Kirk so that he would be sleeping through the night by the time I started getting sick and we couldn't do that with he and Shiphrah sharing a room. So we moved him into the master bedroom and moved the master bedroom into our "new" divided living room. It's going to take some getting used to, but I'm grateful the house came with the option to section off the living room into an extra bedroom if we needed it.

The pregnancy was confirmed by a blood test at my doctor's office and I have my first OB appointment and sonogram on December 1st. My morning sickness kicked in on Friday and I'm praising God that it's not that bad yet. As long as I eat everything in sight (especially protein) every hour or so, I can ward off the worst of the nausea. :)

So that's what we've been up to! I promise I'll post a longer update when things settle down a bit.

My Giggling Munchkins

2009-10-27T16:28:00.002-05:00

Here's another video I meant to add the other day and thought y'all might enjoy. :)

An Update in Videos

2009-10-26T16:38:00.002-05:00

I've been a little too swamped to post lately, so here's an update in videos:

Kirk is going on 8 months and is finally showing an interested in people-food. Unfortunately, he prefers crackers and Cheerios to baby food and he'd be more than happy to eat his weight in Cheerios. I suppose that's actually more fortunate than unfortunate because I'll be able to start him on finger foods within the next couple of months.

Shiphrah continues to pick up on anything and everything we say, from excitedly announcing "turd!" when getting her diaper changed to grunting and growling like Mommy when she's frustrated. Here is a video of her growling at her crayons when she was told to pick them up. (You might want to turn up the volume to hear what she's saying.)

The munchkins and I rode up to Houston with my parents this past weekend to spend some time with my grandparents and my sister and her new husband. (Post and pictures to come eventually.) I took a video of Shiphrah running around outside playing with a ball and then saying hello to the fish in the pond. She has taken to saying "ready?" and counting to two when she throws the ball (not sure where she picked that up, although I have been trying to teach her a few numbers).

Adventures in Sewing: Baby Shower Gift

2009-10-21T19:03:00.003-05:00

I realized the other day that I hadn't blogged about my most recent sewing adventure. I recently bought a bunch of clearanced fabric from Hancock Fabrics online and was eager to try it out. Most of my previous fabric had been purchased in the $1 and $2 racks at Wal-Mart and wasn't the best cotton for clothing. This time I made sure that the fabric I was buying was right for apparel.

One of the officer's wives I am good friends with is having a baby any day now so I decided to try my hand at an infant dress. I had a cute, vintage-looking pattern I had been wanting to try and it had all sorts of embellishments I hadn't done before (button holes, ribbon, elastic in the sleeves, a collar, etc.) I made my usual number of goofs (like sewing the button hole on the wrong side...fixed by placing the button over it) but overall it turned out really cute and I was super-proud of myself.

Here is the finished product:

And here is a close-up of the front ribbon embellishment:

The back of the dress:

And the bloomers to match:

I had plans to make a matching hat as well, but time got away from me and I was pressed to even get the dress and bloomers finished.

Fun, fun, fun!!

Freebies: Huggies 'Enjoy the Ride' Rewards Program

2009-10-16T18:09:00.000-05:00

I recently joined the Huggies 'Enjoy the Ride' rewards program and they now have a prize catalog up on their site where you can redeem points for free stuff!

Click HERE to read my article for tips on how to get a free pack of washable markers or crayons without spending a dime!

Going to blog...

2009-10-15T15:36:00.001-05:00

...but life got in the way. I put the munchkins down for a nap over an hour ago and Shiphrah will not go to sleep. And she just yelled and woke Kirk up so I'm going to have to entertain him for half an hour or so and then try to put him back down.

Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for all of you who commented on my last post. Things haven't really gotten any better, but we're trying a few new techniques and she really does seem to respond better when I get on her level and stare at her seriously while correcting her (maybe I make her feel guilty that way?).

I also have a doctor's appointment for the 22nd (that's a whole other long story...don't get me started on Obama's ridiculous assertion that everyone should have health insurance...there aren't enough doctors to treat everyone, people!) so hopefully after some blood work I'll be able to find out why I'm losing weight and am so tired and low on energy all the time. I really hope it's not just the breastfeeding.

Okay, I'm off to rescue my son (who turned 7 months old yesterday, by the way!!!).

Mama Question - Effective Correction

2009-10-10T20:41:00.001-05:00

I have a question for all you mamas of toddlers out there:

How do you refrain from raising your voice at your children?

I'm really struggling with this lately...Shiphrah is entering the "Terrible Twos" and since I also have 7-month-old Kirk to keep up with, staying on top of what Shiph is doing is no easy task. She likes to get into anything and everything, especially when I'm otherwise occupied, and she never responds to a command to stop. In fact, it seems like the only thing that does get her attention is speaking harshly to her or raising my voice (i.e. yelling). However, I never ever wanted to be the type of mom who yelled at her kids and so I'm trying my darndest to stop. Which brings me to the topic at hand again: what is an effective way to correct a toddler's behavior? She doesn't respond well to spankings (we have to spank hard enough to leave a mark if we want a response...she is VERY stubborn) and like I said before, she ignores me unless I raise my voice. Taking things away doesn't seem to bother her either...I can't tell you how many times I have taken away her coloring book and crayons after she drew on the table for the hundredth time. I haven't tried "timeouts" yet because I was worried about her being too young. If I try this, what are the logistics of a timeout at this age? I've heard the "1 minute per year of life" rule, but how do you make them stay in one place? I've heard of using the child's crib, but I worry she would start to associate nap time with a punishment.

Mamas, what do you suggest?

(Prayer for this would be appreciated also...I struggle with losing my temper too easily so I am all too quick to raise my voice when Shiph does something to frustrate me. I'm working on pausing and counting to three before I respond but old habits die hard.)

The Bad, the Good, and the Amazing

2009-10-09T19:28:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to blog lately but life kept getting in the way. It mostly got in the way in a very good way, but some of it has been a bit frustrating too. Instead of "the good, the bad, and the ugly" let's do "the bad, the good, and the amazing" but in reverse so we end on a good note.

The BAD
- Kirk is teething. When Shiphrah got her first tooth, she was at least 8 months old so it didn't seem to bother her much. She whined a little more than usual and woke up a few times at night, but other than that it wasn't a huge deviation from her normal routine. Kirk is not yet 7 months old and he is miserable. Today he woke up from his afternoon nap absolutely hysterical. He cried for about an hour while I held him and patted his back. And it was that pitiful, painful cry that makes every mother want to jump off the nearest bridge. So. SAD.
- I am having some strange health issues. I'm losing weight, which is not a good thing for me (my normal weight is about 98 pounds), and I've gotten down to about 89-90. I eat like crazy and I definitely don't eat healthy foods, so I can only attribute this to Kirk's voracious appetite and the fact that he's still nursing once during the night. It's beginning to worry me though, because I know if I'm not getting adequate nutrition I'm going to start getting sick and the start of the flu season is no time to be struggling with a weak immune system.
- Secondly on the health front, in the past week or so I have had a huge loss of energy. I feel incredibly lethargic, all of my muscles feel weak (believe it or not my arms are actually feeling tired typing out this entry right now), and I feel like I'm in a daze most of the day. Sometimes I feel like a zombie just going through the motions every day. Kind of like when you take a strong sleeping pill or Benadryl right before bed and then wake up the next morning feeling like it hasn't worn off completely. I have a few theories as to what might be causing this: low iron (I'm always borderline anemic), a thyroid problem, or maybe mono (don't know, never had it before). However, to go take the necessary blood tests I need to find a doctor. I have an ob-gyn, but they won't see me because it's been 7 months since I had Kirk. I've never had a primary care physician before and living in a large city and trying to find a doctor feels like playing eenie-meeny-miney-mo or flipping through a phone book and picking the name that sounds the nicest. My mom suggested going to a DO instead of an MD because they focus more on nutrition and natural healing methods, but I'm not sure I want someone telling me to change my entire diet. But if I still feel like this through the weekend I'm definitely calling someone first thing on Monday. 'Cuz this plain sucks. (Oh, and lest someone ask, I'm not pregnant, I checked.)

The GOOD
- Kirk is thisclose to sleeping through the night! Most nights he sleeps about 6 to 8 hours before waking up to nurse and then he sleeps another 3 hours. Last night he slept from 8:30 to 6 and then slept until 8:30! I felt like I could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! 'Course, it didn't help my overall tiredness much, but it still made me happy.
- The munchkins are learning how to play with each other more and more every day. Shiphrah will lay down in front of Kirk and make faces to get him giggling. Then they spend five minutes laughing hysterically at each other. It's so CUTE!
- Kirk is completely mobile. He's not "crawling" so to speak, but he's doing a belly scoot that gets him anywhere he wants to go. Of course, this means I am all too aware of how dirty the floors are because he gets positively nasty after just a few minutes of scooting.

The AMAZING
- My wonderful husband surprised me by asking me out on a date for Thursday evening. He even arranged for a babysitter all by himself! He made tentative plans too, but we ended up changing them because I wanted to spend time with him instead of see a movie. So we went to Chili's and had their "3 course, 2 people, $20" deal. I love Chili's food...cheese fries with Ranch, cajun chicken pasta, a margarita...it was heavenly! After dinner we drove downtown and parked so we could walk the newly renovated stretch of the Riverwalk. It turned out to be a bit more than we bargained for (who knew the Riverwalk was so loooooong!) so our feet were a bit sore after it was all said and done. But I got a piggyback ride from a hot guy () and enjoyed a gorgeous night along a beautiful river. It was a rather expensive date (when you add dinner and babysitting) but so worth it. In fact, Avery wants to make this an every-other-week occasion, which I am SO thrilled about! Don't get me wrong, I love being with my kids, but I miss one-on-one time with my husband. I can count on one hand the number of dates we've had in the past year and I'm so excited about making them regular happenings!!

(Us, back before marriage, kids, and the police force.)

Fair Weather at the Zoo

2009-10-05T14:40:00.010-05:00

Friday morning we headed out to the SA Zoo to hang out with Kelly and her little boy Luke. Avery graciously offered to come along so that I wouldn't be struggling to handle both munchkins by myself. We have a membership, so we can just focus on a few areas of the zoo without having to worry that we "wasted" our money. This time we checked out the bears, monkeys, goats, tried to see the hippo (they are always cleaning their tank right when the zoo opens), and then spent the rest of the time in the little Tots area our zoo has. (Apparently it's the only zoo in the country with a special area for kids under 5 and it is wonderful!! They have several little play areas with lots of toys, picnic benches, several exhibits - groundhogs & tortoises, and a shallow "beach" for the kids to play in the sand and water!) Since our backyard has no grass and is full of doggy doo, we don't get to venture outside to play much. There's a park just a two blocks down from our house, but it comes with a mentally disturbed individual across the street that likes to yell obscenities at anyone who walks by. All that to say, hanging out at the zoo for fun is a nice alternative on beautiful days. And Friday, it was GORGEOUS!

"Umm, what am I supposed to do on this again?"

Hanging out with Daddy.

"Big balls! Big balls!"

"No, Mom, I will not say cheese, that's just silly!"

"Oh, okay, if you insist."

Life Chain 2009

2009-10-04T23:07:00.008-05:00

Our regular church event photographer was out of town this weekend, so I snapped a few shots during the Life Chain this afternoon. Unfortunately I forgot to ask someone to take a picture of me and the kids.

My niece and sister-in-law. The one on the right was adopted as an infant...she was a 26-week-old preemie (1 lb. 3 oz.). Her mother didn't know she was pregnant and after giving birth she tried to have her baby's life support cut off. No one wanted Kate because of the high possibility that she would have permanent physical and mental disabilities. She's a perfectly bright and healthy 8-year-old now.

My brother-in-law, Kaitong, adopted from an orphanage in China when he was 12 or 14 (I can't remember). He has spina bifida and didn't learn to walk until he came to the U.S.

My beautiful sister-in-law and my goofy daughter.

Kirk, who slept most of the time, until all the honking horns rudely awakened him. Still, considering how hot and muggy it was, he was a trooper.

Prayer Request

2009-09-27T18:31:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to post a quick update asking for your prayers. Our family is struggling with some church-related issues and decisions and would love your support as we seek out God's will. I don't want to go into detail because it's rather complicated, but basically we're unsure if we can continue to support the direction our church is going. My husband and I both have year-long commitments though (him as a deacon and me as a Women of the Church leader) so we are torn as to what our next step should be. Please pray for wisdom and guidance, especially for Avery, as he must decide what's best for our family.

Weekly Savings #12

2009-09-26T21:03:00.005-05:00

WALGREENS
- 2 packages of Huggies Snug & Dry diapers: $6.99 each (after two $2/1 mf coupons)
- 1 trial size package of Walgreens diapers: $2.79 (on sale from $3.99)
- 2 Glade scented oil candles: 50 cents each (after sale, two $1.50/1 coupons and a $1 RR)
Used $3 RRs on this transaction.

Total OOP = $17.05
Total Savings = $16.98
(RR Received = $1)

CVS
- 2 12-packs of Mountain Dew: $3 each (on sale 4/$12)
- 2 12-packs of Pepsi: $3 each (on sale 4/$12 with $3 ECBs WYB 4)
- honey roasted peanuts & roasted almonds: $6.20 (after $2/2 CVS coupon)
Used $10.99 in ECBs on this transaction. If I had been smart I would have rolled my ECBs and split this into two transactions, but I had Shiphrah with me and I never think well on my feet when I'm multi-tasking.

Total OOP = $7.29
Total Savings = $19.74
(ECBs Received = $3)

H.E.B.
We had some extra breathing room in our monthly grocery budget, so I spent a bit more than normal on this shopping trip. Still snagged some good deals though.
- 2.32 lbs. bananas: $0.90
- 8 jars Beachnut baby food: $0.64 (after 2FREE, and two $1/3 coupons)
- Cheerios: FREE (after GM voucher)
- HEB potato chips: $2.19
- HEB 25-count paper plates: $1.98
- 3 boxes Gerber organic oatmeal baby cereal: $2.13 (clearanced for 71 cents each)
- HEB 1/2 gallon whole milk: $1.99
- 2 Trop 50 Orange Juice: $4.98 (on sale for $2.99 each plus a yellow $1/2 coupon)
- 2 boxes Kraft Velveeta Shells & Cheese: $1.54 (after $1.50/2 mf coupon)
- 2 cans Old El Paso refried beans: $1.38 (after $0.60/2 mf coupon)
- 2-pack Wholly Guacamole: $2.69 (after $1.50/1 mf coupon) --> this is the BEST tasting store-bought guac EVER!
- Lawry's seasoned pepper: $2.66
- HCF onion powder: $1.13
- Van Camp pork & beans: $1.59
- Pace Picante sauce: $1.74
- HEB American cheese: $1.67
- HCF cat food: $5.88
- Angel Soft 12-double-roll toilet paper: $5.47 (after $0.50/1 mf coupon)
*HEB MEAL DEAL*
- Pre-cooked thick & tasty hamburgers: $8.99
- HEB tortilla chips: FREE
- HEB Cola: FREE

- HEB hamburger buns: FREE
- Kraft deli-sliced Swiss cheese: FREE
- HEB French Onion dip: FREE
*HEB COMBO LOCOS*
- Kraft shredded Parmesan: $3.59
- Barilla pasta: $0.30 (would have been free but I wanted the lasagna noodles)
- Barilla sauce: FREE
- HEB Premium mesquite bacon: $5.89
- Mission home style tortillas: FREE
- HCF shredded cheddar cheese: FREE

Total OOP = $60.92
Total Savings = $33.10

Total Weekly Grocery Spending = $62.69
($12.69 over budget)

Busy as a Bee

2009-09-25T16:28:00.002-05:00

We've been a bit busy lately, hence the lack of substantial posts. Avery had a 3-day weekend this week, with Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday off. It was awesome!! We mostly lounged around the house, not because we were lazy, but because it decided to rain the entire time. Which, because it's so rare in South Texas, was actually very pleasant. Despite the rain, we did go to breakfast at our favorite restaurant, Jim's, and then walk around Bass Pro Shops for an hour or so on Wednesday. Then my parents drove down from Dripping Springs to join us for dinner Wednesday evening (they brought the pizza, I made the salad) and the next night we had dinner with some friends of ours. It also got downright chilly this week...dropping down to the low 60's...so we enjoyed opening up the windows and cuddling under blankets. It's back up in the 80's today, so I'll probably have to break down and turn the AC back on in an hour or so, but it was really nice while it lasted! (I think I was able to keep the AC turned off for at least four days straight.)

The kids are settling into more routines...Kirk has gotten on a pretty strict, two naps per day schedule, and we feel like the worst parents ever if we mess that up (he's a grumpy mess if he misses a nap even by a few minutes). He also wakes up precisely at 3-o-clock every morning, regardless of when we put him to bed at night. The doctor has told us that we can start training him to sleep through the night, but we're not sure how to do that, since letting him fuss wakes Shiphrah up (they're sharing a room for the first half of the night). After his 3-o-clock feeding, he sleeps until 6, and then until about 8. I never realized what a challenge it would be to have only two bedrooms. But we'll manage...at least he's finally sleeping a good 7-hour stretch most nights! We've also started adding another solid food feeding sometime during the day, although getting him to eat remains challenging. He really only eats well when he's hungry, and his nursing schedule continues to be a bit sporadic (sometimes he's ready to eat after 2 1/2 hours and other times it's 4 hours). I don't really care how much solids he eats, but the doctor was rather insistent that we try to get more in his tummy. He's dropped off the infamous "growth curve" and in the past two months has only gained about 14 ounces (he's right at 15 pounds) and didn't grow in height at all. But he looks perfectly chunky and doesn't act hungry, so I don't think anything is wrong. His sister also hasn't gained but about two pounds in the past year and has grown maybe an inch or two, so I'm pretty sure it's just genetics.

Speaking of Shiphrah, she continues to increase her vocabulary...and her independence. I've really been struggling lately with raising my voice at her because she just ignores me otherwise. Plus, when I'm nursing Kirk, it's a little difficult to get up and spank her for getting into something. Yelling seems to get her attention, but I know it's only going to make things harder in the long run. So I'm working on keeping an even temper and correcting her as much as possible. She continues to be incredibly stubborn when it comes to meals. She'll eat a lot of foods, but since she prefers certain things she likes to hold out and see if she'll get them (i.e. strawberries, grapes, and Wheat Thins right now). She still refuses to eat most meat (with the exception of McDonald's hamburgers) and pasta (with the exception of Velveeta shells & cheese). So meals are pretty standard for her...breakfast consists of a banana and either applesauce or yogurt (sometimes grapes or other fruit), lunch is PB&J or a bit of whatever we're having (and by a bit I mean maybe two bites), and dinner is PB&J or a ham sandwich. *Sigh* She'll eat pizza too, but we only have that every other week or so, and she'll eat grilled cheese or cheese quesadillas about 1 out of 4 tries. Any other suggestions for good toddler meals? She likes frozen peas and canned carrots (but the grocery store has been out of no-salt-added carrots for three weeks now) and she loves any kind of cracker. Oh, and she'll eat just about anything dipped in ketchup, but she'll usually use about 10 times more ketchup than she needs. I guess I'm kind of just waiting until she's a bit older and I can start using the "stay at the table until you eat your food" or "if you don't eat this now you'll be having it for the next meal" tricks. Right now though she's so tiny I just feel guilty depriving her of food, you know?

Anyway, not much else to report. Currently Kirk is "crawling" (i.e. using his arms to pull himself wherever he wants to go) all over the living room playing with the toys Shiph left out and Shiphrah is asleep in Kirk's bassinet in our room (she wanted to sleep there instead of on our bed), since Kirk was asleep in the nursery when it was time for her nap. Sunday is the annual meeting at our church and I have to give the Women of the Church update (blerrgggg). Next weekend is the Life Chain and somehow I have to manage both kids and a bunch of signs and stuff too (I'm the coordinator for our church). It should be interesting. Oh, and I also have my friends baby shower next Saturday and an event at our church the Saturday after that. You know, sometimes I enjoy busyness, but not when I'm running on six hours of broken sleep. Ah well, we'll see.

By the way, I love these guys!!!

Sewing Adventures

2009-09-19T21:32:00.004-05:00

I've been on a serious sewing kick lately. In fact, I've been sewing so many evenings that the sewing machine has taken up permanent residency on our dining room table. Now, just so you understand, I love sewing. But sewing and I kind of have a love-hate relationship. I'm a perfectionist, so sewing definitely stretches me in ways I've never been stretched. I also have a tendency to always make at least one mistake on every project. The seam rippers are a beloved tool of mine. I should just quote my mother-in-law and tell everyone that I am being like the Navajo Indians who always intentionally stitched a mistake in every one of their weavings because, they said, nothing is perfect except for God.

Anyhoo, I recently attempted my first project with real sleeves. Everything I had done up to this point was either a skirt or a sleeveless dress. I was rather nervous, to say the least. Still, I took my time (many of my mistakes come from impatience or exhaustion) and here is the result:

Pretty, right? It's a fall/winter dress for Shiphrah. I used a pattern in her size, but it still turned out way too big. But I just adjusted the wrap front part of the dress to fit. And this way I can move the snaps and she can wear it as a top with leggings next winter. (Oh, and by the way, the color is more pink than the picture makes it appear.)

Next I worked on a dress for one of Shiphrah's 2nd cousins (her birthday party is actually tomorrow so I haven't given this to her yet). I didn't much like the pattern I chose after I got started, but it turned out pretty cute. To add a little extra to the dress, I made three yo-yos and added big black buttons as embellishments. This was also my first experience working with elastic. Here it is, followed by a close-up of the embellishments:

Unfortunately, the little girl is rather skinny, so the dress seemed way too big when I finished it. So I had to add a couple of darts to the back, but I didn't cut them so her mom can let them out if she needs too. Hopefully *fingers crossed* it fits her...I think the color will look super-cute on her because she has fiery red hair. :)

And now I'm off to start my next project...a baby girl dress for a friend of mine who's having a little girl at the end of October. I'll be using dress 'A' from this pattern, in case you are curious. I'll let you know how it turns out! :)

Weekly Savings #11

2009-09-18T22:33:00.006-05:00

WALGREENS
Nothing exciting this week, but I had Register Rewards that were expiring so I had to make a trip (it's annoying that RRs are only good for two weeks).
- True North Almond Crisps: $2 (after $1/1 mf coupon) plus $3 RR
- 4 cans Progresso Soup: $3.90 (after 4/$5 sale and $1.10/3 coupon)
- 12-count box of CankerMelts: FREE (after mf coupon)
- pencil case (for Shiph's crayons): $1.99
Used $6 RRs on this transaction.

Total OOP = $1.89
Total Savings = $19.95
RRs received = $3

CVS
Didn't have to hit CVS this week, but it's literally a block down from Walgreens, so I figured why not. :)
- pretty notebook: $1.25 (on sale 50% off)
- 3 bottles of Suave body wash: $4 (after Buy2Get1 mf coupon) plus $2 ECBs
Used $5 ECBs on this transaction.

Total OOP = $0.27
Total Savings = $10.01

ECBs received = $2
[YTD CVS Savings = $300.99]

H.E.B.
Still good on meat and most staples, so the list was short.
- 2 avocados: $1.58 (these aren't cheap, but I love them in my salads)
- green onions: $0.69
- bananas: $0.95
- 3 Roma tomatoes: $0.48
- Romaine lettuce: $1.79
- 1 cucumber: $0.50 (on sale 2/$1)
- 4-pack submarine sandwich rolls: $1.69
- HCF wheat bread: $0.94
- Trop 50 orange juice: $1.99 (after $1/1 mf coupon)
- HEB unsalted butter quarters: $1.99
- HCF country spread: $1.79
- Wholly guacamole: $0.50 (after 2/$4 sale and $1.50/1 mf coupon)
- Johnsons buddies soap bar: FREE plus 1 cent overage (after $1/1 mf coupon)
- Prego spaghetti sauce: $1.19 (after $0.75/1 HEB mf coupon)
- 2 cans HCF canned mushrooms: $1.18
- 2 cans Campbell's cream of mushroom soupon: $1 (after $1/2 coupon)
- Wacky Mac pasta: $0.54 (after $0.75/1 mf coupon)
(I also bought $24 worth of groceries from the Schwans' guy this week...frozen fruit, hash browns, mini cinnamon rolls, and a pie for our church dinner next week.)

Total OOP = $18.79
Total Savings = $6.28

Total Grocery Spending = $46.68
($3.32 under budget)

FALL/WINTER CLOTHES
Shiphrah and Kirk have both been blessed with family and friends who graciously have given them hand-me-downs. Unfortunately at the rate Shiph is growing, it'll be years before some of the clothes fit her and she's starting to get off-sync with sizes vs. seasons (most of the fall/winter clothes we have from her cousin Livi are 24 mos and Shiph is still barely fitting 18 mos clothing). Kirk has a few long-sleeved onesies and jackets for the fall but no pants. So I talked my wonderful hubby into making a trek to the San Marcos outlet mall to visit Children's Place and Old Navy. I wanted to end up with about a week's worth of outfits for each child. Shiphrah mainly needed shirts (she has plenty of jackets and jeans from last year that still fit) and a few Sunday dresses. Here's what I ended up with (and they should be set until April/May...Texas only has two seasons...Summer [April - September] and Fall/Winter/Spring [October - March]):

Shiphrah
4 long-sleeved shirts

1 sweater

2 dresses

1 pair of khaki pants

1 white shrug for Spring

Kirk
1 pair of shoes
2 pairs of pants
2 long-sleeved onesies
1 long sleeve shirt

Total Spent = $94.48

Schedules and Struggles

2009-09-15T15:43:00.004-05:00

I've never been clever with titles, but at least I can say this one is accurate. All about our schedules and our struggles resulting from those schedules. *Sigh* It's been a rough few months.

First of all, none of this would be that big of a deal if I wasn't so tired. Kirk turned 6 months old yesterday (!!!) and still won't sleep more than a 6-hour stretch at night. Which wouldn't be so bad if I was actually asleep during that time...but I'm not, because Avery doesn't get home from work until 11 pm at the absolute earliest. But that will all make more sense when I explain our daily "routine."

Kirk is usually the first to wake up, anytime between 7:00 and 8:30 in the mornings. His nursing "schedule" is all over the place, so sometimes I feed him then, other times he's eaten just an hour or so earlier. When he first wakes up he's usually content to lay there and watch his mobile for a few minutes...sometimes turning on the overhead light will keep him content a few minutes longer. Once he's thoroughly bored and tired of lying in bed, I take him out to the living room, turn on the light, and put him in his jumparoo while I go back to bed and hopefully get a few more minutes of sleep (he's usually content for about 10-15 minutes in there). When he starts fussing again, one of two things happens: every other day or so I nudge Avery awake and he sweetly agrees to get up with Kirk while I get an extra 30 minutes of sleep. Or (usually if Shiphrah is awake and yelling by now) we both get up to get the kids breakfast and such. Either way we're all usually out of bed by around 9:30.

Shiphrah has been a royal grouch most mornings for the past month. I'm not sure if it's her last couple of teeth coming in, the fact that she's sleeping with Kirk for the first part of the night (and he wakes her up around 1 in the morning), or the fact that she never falls asleep at night until 10ish (even though I put her to bed at 8). This does not help our morning moods.

Between 10 and 11, Kirk is ready for his first nap. He goes down in the nursery (which Shiph does not care for since it means only half of the 10 million toys are accessible to her) and usually sleeps for about two hours (he wakes up around noon). During this time Shiphrah whines, and whines, and whines some more. (She's remarkably happier in the afternoons...I don't know if this is because she's clingier when Avery is home or if she's better after her nap.)

After Kirk wakes up, we all eat lunch and Avery gets ready for work (an hour-long process). Sometimes that order is reversed...he gets ready and then we eat. He leaves for work around 2 (shift starts at 2:30) and the munchkins go down for a nap together. (If this is the case, sometimes I get to nap for about an hour or so. A lifesaver!) If Kirk's morning nap was unusually long (like today), he stays up while Shiphrah goes down. If they're both napping, they usually sleep until 4-5ish. If Kirk is awake, he goes down for his second nap around 3:30 or 4. (So I still get about an hour with both of them in bed, except today.)

Once they're both up, my evening is very restricted. Kirk is usually pretty whiny and wants to be able to see my face all the time. Shiphrah runs back and forth between the living room and her room which drives Kirk insane. So more often than not, I put in a video (on better days, just a 30-minute Veggie Tales) to keep them both happy and in one place (and to keep me sane).

Around 7-o-clock I feed both of them dinner. I've just recently started Kirk on a once-a-day mixture of rice cereal and pureed fruit, which helps him sleep a tad longer at night. Every other night is bath time for Shiph and Kirk gets bathed about once a week. Then we clean up the living room (clutter in the living room gets under Avery's skin so I try to have it clean when he gets home) and put pajamas on. Kirk gets nursed one last time, Shiphrah brushes her teeth, and they both go to bed in the nursery between 8 and 8:30.

Then I make myself dinner and relax for about half an hour. Hopefully dinner revitalizes me and I get a bit of a energy boost. I do the dishes, laundry, and whatever other chores need done (occasionally I vacuum right after I put the kids to bed...otherwise I'd wake them up). After chores are done, I work on a project (lately I've been sewing) or chill on the internet. Around 10:30 or 11 I pump breast milk to add to the whole milk I give Shiphrah in the mornings. On a good night (rare these days...have you seen the crime in SA lately??) Avery gets home soon after that and we stay up for an hour so catching up on his day. We're usually in bed by 1 am. Kirk wakes up around then or within the hour, so I get him out of the nursery, nurse him, and put him to sleep in our bassinet. A negative side effect of the 5 to 6-hour sleeping stretch is that he doesn't want to go back to sleep after eating, so he usually tosses and turns and fusses for another hour or so. Which means I don't sleep either. Last night was especially bad and he didn't fall back asleep until 3 or so.

After that, Kirk will sleep anywhere from 2 to 4.5 hours, and then another 2 or so. And then he wakes up and the days repeat themselves.

Get the idea? Can you see why I'm so exhausted?? On a good night I'm getting six hours of very broken sleep. On a bad night (like last night) it was four hours of broken sleep. For a former morning person, my grumpiness and grogginess in the mornings is RIDICULOUS. This morning was especially bad and I found myself wishing my husband had a job where he could call in sick and stay home.

I'm really not complaining (much), because I love my kids and my husband and I love my life. I'm really just petitioning y'all for prayer for my attitude and endurance. I'm running out of steam (last night I was so pooped that I ate my dinner in front of a movie and then mustered up just enough energy to wash the dishes) and this morning my behavior was abominable. So please, if you think about it, offer up an extra prayer for me, I'd really appreciate it.

Oh, and I just wanted to reiterate that I have the best husband in the whole world. He doesn't get much sleep at night either (although he sleeps through Kirk's waking) but he's usually so wonderful about getting out of bed with the kids and giving me a few more minutes to sleep in the mornings. And he's SUPER-understanding about my tiredness and the fact that the laundry stays unfolded for days on end or the floors don't get swept. I LOVE HIM!!!

Weekly Savings #10

2009-09-12T11:49:00.002-05:00

Just HEB this week and no picture (I had to feed a hungry baby so the groceries had to get put away quickly). It was a frustrating trip for several reasons: I went right when all the parents with their freshly-picked-up school kids were there too (crazy kids running through the aisles), the store was very crowded, plus the shelves were very understocked or missing items. So I had to buy the higher-priced sugar, I couldn't find the store brand parmesan cheese, and they didn't have the pasta I was looking for. I did get some pretty good deals though:
- 3 boxes of Pasta Roni: 69 cents each (after $1/3 mf coupon)
- 1.02 lbs of white seedless grapes: $1.01 (on sale for 99 cents/lb)
- 2 16-oz bottles of Coffeemate creamer: $2.04 each (after $1.50/2 mf coupon)
- packet of Betty Crocker bacon/chedder potatoes: 85 cents (after $0.40/1 mf coupon)
- 2 containers of Starbucks ice cream: 99 cents each (after two $2/1 mf coupons)
- 3-pack of Ivory bar soap: 83 cents (after $0.25/1 mf coupon)
- bag Kraft shredded cheddar: FREE (after G1 FREE with purchase of hot dogs HEB coupon)
- 5 jars of Beechnut Homestyle Fruit: FREE (after five G1Free mf coupons)
- A1 Classic Steaksauce Marinade: 34 cents (after $2/1 mf coupon)
- Barilla Whole Grain penne pasta noodles: 75 cents (after $0.50/1 mf coupon)
- Borden whole milk: $2.76 (after $1/1 mf coupon)
- Mitchum deodorant: $2.79 (after $0.75/1 mf coupon)
- Oxiclean laundry stain remover: $2.04 (after $0.75/1 mf coupon)

Total OOP = $37.97
Total savings = $20.43

Total Weekly Grocery Spending = $37.97

($12.03 under $50 weekly budget)

Rain and Babies

2009-09-11T16:29:00.004-05:00

We're finally getting rain in San Antonio this week and it's lovely! I think the newspaper said we got more rain yesterday than we had gotten all year (or something like that). For the past few days I've even been able to open the windows in the morning and feel the cool fall-ish breeze. Of course, that only lasts for a couple of hours, but it's still nice!

Unfortunately all the rain means muddy paws on the dog and cat...which in turn means constantly muddy floors. I think I've swept more times in the past two days (i.e. twice a day) than I usually do in a month.

Shiphrah thinks the rain ("WATER! WATER!!!") is fascinating. It's funny to think that she really hasn't ever seen rain (i.e. been aware of it). We've been in such a drought that I think the last time we got a good rain was when she was only a few months old. She loves watching it but doesn't care for being out in it. Even a few raindrops on her head is rather upsetting for her.

Kirk is turning six months old in a few days. I can't believe how fast the past few months have gone by! He's "thisclose" to crawling already...he's pushing himself up on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth. Which is really fun to watch because Shiphrah never did that; she just went straight from scooting to crawling. He's already pretty adept at getting around by rolling and scooting though so he doesn't seem to eager to figure out how to actually crawl. He's moved his knees a few times (would you call that taking one crawl-step?) but more by accident than anything. Still, I'm sure he'll be completely mobile within the next few weeks.

Shiphrah is regularly using two and three-word phrases to communicate. Like "Daddy outside" and "Kirk sleep" and "hungry chip please." She's also become quite the little snot when it comes to crayons. She loves to color, but even more than she loves to color on paper, she LOVES to color on anything she's not supposed to. Currently our coffee table is covered in black crayon from the literally 10 seconds I turned my back while she was coloring. Thankfully I've discovered magic erasers, which work amazingly on crayon (and lime deposits in the shower, by the way). HEB has their store brand erasers for 75 cents a 2-pack and they are my new favorite cleaning tool. But anyway, because of her obsession with coloring all things not paper she doesn't get to color very often, since it requires my complete attention to watch her. (Seriously, she is SO sneaky!) She gets spanked fairly often now, but because of her stubbornness it doesn't seem to phase her.

Kirk still isn't sleeping through the night, although his "long" stretch has gotten a bit longer. Most nights he'll sleep about a 5 1/2-hour stretch and then two 3-hour stretches. Since he's turning 6-months-old though I'm working on getting him started on solids (pureed fruit mixed with rice cereal) at night so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he'll start sleeping longer soon. Mama needs her sleep! Seriously, with Avery's schedule what it is (getting home around 11:30 most nights) I have been so tired lately. In fact, I've become pretty dependent on a daily nap, a habit I'm trying to break myself of because it severely limits my productivity (an hour or two napping and another hour spent getting over the post-nap grogginess).

Oh, did I mention that the munchkins are napping together? In the same room too! Kirk's schedule has finally adjusted to where he goes down for a morning nap around 10, sleep until noon, and then goes down with Shiphrah around 2 and sleeps until 4:30ish. 'Course oftentimes Shiph is ready for her nap way before then, but we can usually get her to hold out until Daddy leaves for work. Anyway, their coinciding nap schedules gives me a chance to get a few things done or take a nap, depending on how tired I am.

And with that, I need to find something to keep me awake because I'm literally dozing off staring at the computer screen. No nap today, I can do it, I can do it, I can do it!

Going to the Chapel

2009-09-08T23:08:00.008-05:00

We had a busy Labor Day weekend. My sister got married in Austin on Monday, so we drove up to Dripping Springs on Sunday morning to prepare for the festivities. It was a bit stressful because I was involved so much, but it was such a blessing to be a part of Rachel's special day. And Avery was wonderful at being "Mr. Mom" all weekend. :)

Sunday afternoon before the rehearsal we put together the boutonnieres (definitely had to use spellcheck for that one), the mother's corsages, and the bridesmaids' bouquets. We underestimated how long it would all take, so we ended up going back after the rehearsal dinner to finish them. These are the bouquets...giant sunflowers, red gerber daisies, and some yellow filler flowers:

For Monday I had to fix the bride's hair (her hairdresser cancelled on her), my mother's hair, and fix the wedding dress (they found the worst alterations lady ever...apparently she didn't know what a sweetheart top was supposed to look like). And then at the last minute my youngest sister decided she wanted me to fix her hair too. I didn't get to take many pictures, for obvious reasons, but I snapped a few before everything started.

Her cake was gorgeous! And that's her bridal bouquet in the vase in the upper righthand corner of the picture. Her colors were red, orange, and yellow.

The ceremony was outside, but the reception was inside Mercury Hall, which used to be a church. Her color scheme went beautifully with the whitewashed walls and stained glass windows of the old church.

There's me all pretty-fied and ready for the ceremony. :) Since I did three other hairdos I ran out of time for my own hair, so it ended up just being in a bun.

And here's the beautiful bride waiting for the ceremony to start. (Ignore the weird wall-hanging behind her head.)

Okay, I stole a couple pictures from my cousin's Facebook. :)

This is my cousin with my sister and I right after the wedding. Don't we look so bright and cheery? :)

And I didn't have any pictures of the newlyweds, so here's one of their engagement pictures. Aren't they going to have to cutest kids ever?? 'Course, they're both shorter than 5'6" so they'll be very short, cute kids. :)

Weekly Savings #9

2009-09-05T14:40:00.004-05:00

I could have skipped the trip to Walgreens again this week, but their Register Rewards expire about two weeks from printing, so I made a quick trip on Tuesday to use the $5 I had before they were no good.
- Pantene hair wax (for hubby) = $3.34
- 3 2-oz Glade soy candles = $2 (after $3/2 mf & 1 FREE mf coupons)
- Rembrandt canker sore whitening toothpaste = $4 (after $1/1 mf coupon)

Total OOP = $4.37
Total Savings = $14.52
(RRs Received = $6)

I headed out to CVS on Thursday and was excited to find them marking down all their summer merchandise! So I browsed those aisles for a bit and came away with two pairs of cute flip flops and some toys for the munchkins. I started off with $4 in ECBs and I also had a CVS coupon for $4/$20 purchase.
- sidewalk chalk = $1.25 (75% off)
- inflatable baby pool = $3.25 (75% off)
- 2 pairs fashion flip flops = $1.99 each (75% off)
- baby pool float = $2.49 (75% off)
- 64-count Crayola crayons = $2.99 (after $2 ECB reward)
- 2 bottles of Dawn dish washing soap = $0.47 each (after two $0.50/1 mf coupons)
- Glade soy candle = $4.99 (after $2/1 mf coupon + $6.99 ECB reward)
- 4 parfait cups = $0.50 each (75% off)

Total OOP = $17.20
Total Savings = $52.32
(ECBs Received = $8.99)

We still have a pretty stocked freezer and pantry, so my HEB shopping list was short. I also picked up a few extra items I had coupons for and some snack food.
- Hass avocados = $1.58 for 2
- Green onions = $0.69 for one bunch
- Bananas = $1.74 for 3.78 lbs.
- Matchstick carrots (because I always cut myself slicing them) = $1.49
- Greenhouse tomatoes = $1.61 for 0.9 lbs.
- Cucumbers = $0.50 for one
- Romaine lettuce = $1.79
- HEB magic erasers (I've discovered these are the ONLY things that will clean the lime build-up off the shower walls!) = $1
- HEB potato chips = $1.09
- Chock Full O Nuts coffee = $2.87
- HEB extra virgin olive oil = $4.79
- 2 bottles of HEB Quench (i.e. Gatorade) = $0.69 each
- Daisy cottage cheese = $1.84 (after $0.65/1 mf coupon)
- Yoplait fridge 8-pack = $2.97 (after $1/1 HEB yellow coupon)
- HCF (Hill Country Fair) hot dog buns = $0.99
- 100-count Vanity Fair napkins = $1.99
- HCF 18-count extra-large eggs = $1.49
- HCF wheat bread = $0.94
- Austin cheese & peanut butter crackers = $3.00 for two packs (after $1/2 HEB yellow coupon)
- Ken's tomato vinaigrette dressing = $1.26 (after $1/1 mf coupon)
- Ken's lite Caesar dressing = $1.26 (after $1/1 mf coupon)
- Simple Green all-purpose cleaner = $2.59 (after $1/1 mf coupon)
- 2 cans Grands biscuits = $0.45 each (after two $1/1 mf coupons)

Total OOP = $40.50
Total Savings = $12.89

Total Weekly Grocery Spending = $42.50
($17.50 under budget)

[Now that I have a good handle on this, starting next week I will be reducing our budgeted weekly grocery spending to $50.]

Chocolate Crinkle Cookie Recipe

2009-08-29T19:55:00.003-05:00

As I mentioned in my previous post, I used some of the breathing room in our grocery budget to pick up some baking supplies. Since some friends of our invited us over for dinner on Wednesday night, I offered to bring dessert. I had found a recipe that I desperately wanted to try because it looked absolutely delicious. Unfortunately I don't remember where I saw it...someone tweeted about recipes (from Italy?) with a link, I clicked the link and found this recipe. So kudos to the original poster...I'd give due credit if I remembered who you were!

Ingredients:
1 cup Almonds
2 whole Large Eggs
⅓ cups Granulated Sugar
2 cups Chopped Bittersweet Chocolate
2 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter
½ cups All-purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
½ cup Powdered Sugar For Coating
½ cup Granulated Sugar For Coating

Directions:
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Toast the almonds in the oven until light golden brown. Once cool, grind finely and set aside. (I don't have a grinder, so I just smashed them up as finely as I could.)
- Melt the chocolate and butter together over low heat, stirring frequently. Once completely melted, remove from the heat.
- In a separate bowl, combine the eggs and sugar. Beat on medium speed about 5 minutes, or until the mixture is pale and frothy. Slowly pour the chocolate mixture into the eggs mixing well to blend. Add the flour, baking powder and almonds to the chocolate and eggs and mix just until a smooth dough is created. Refrigerate the dough for two hours.
- Reheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and take small pieces about the size of large olives and roll into a ball. Roll each ball first into the granulated sugar, then into the powdered sugar and place on a parchment covered baking sheet. Continue to use up all of the dough in the same manner. Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes or until they expand and begin to crack. Cool to room temperature and serve.

Mine didn't look nearly as pretty as the picture, but they were scrumptious! :)

Weekly Savings #8

2009-08-29T14:40:00.003-05:00

Since I've been so good at stocking up the freezer and pantry lately, this week's grocery list was pretty minimal. And since the drugstore deals weren't phenomenal, I opted to just hit HEB. I hadn't bought baking supplies in a while though, so I used the extra money on that, plus a Brita filter (ours was at least 5 months old).

My total savings at HEB is never very high because they don't have coupon match-ups (most of their in-store yellow coupons are just a scam to get you to pay more, except the meal deals and combo locos) and many of the items I purchase there are store-brand goods (bread, paper plates) or non-coupon items (potatoes, fresh produce, meat). However, this week I had my highest savings to date there so that was pretty exciting. :) Here's a breakdown of the deals I got (not including regularly priced, non-coupon items):
- 2.07 lbs. red seedless grapes: $2.01 (on sale for $0.97/lb.)
- 2.91 lbs. Dole bananas: $1.34 (on sale for $0.46/lb.)
- Borden whole milk: $2.68 (after $1/1 mf coupon)
- 5 lbs. russet potatoes: $1.99 (sale)
- two 4.75 oz. Glade soy candles: $0.99 each (after two $2/1 mf coupons)
- 6 Beachnut Homestyle Stage 3 fruit baby food jars: FREE (after 6 Get-1-Free mf coupons)
- 2 French's mustard: $0.77 each (after two $0.50/1 mf coupons)
- beef shoulder roast: $6.53 (on sale for $1.99/lb.)
- Brita replacement filter: $5.98 (after $2/1 HEB mf coupon)
- Best Mail dill relish: $0.44 (after $0.55/1 mf coupon)
- Jif peanut butter & Smuckers jam: $3.35 and $2.09 (after $1/PB&J mf coupon)
- Meow Mix cat food: $2.99 (after $1/1 mf coupon)

Total OOP: $54.75
Total savings: $24.86

Once I found out about the great baby coupons Target has HERE, I also made a special trip there to stock up on some diapers and such. As I checked out, I was excited to notice the sign that said they are now price-matching other stores' ads! That should make for some really good deals after coupons pretty soon (even if it does mean more prep work for me). Anyway, here's the breakdown of what I got:
- Jumbo pack of Target UP diapers: $6.34 (these weren't on sale, but I've never tried them and have heard great things about them...we'll see if they can beat the pee-machine that is Shiphrah at night)
- Jumbo pack of Huggies: $6.74 (after $1.50/1 store coupon & $1.50/1 mf coupon)
- Jumbo pack of Pampers & small pack of Pampers wipes: $6.49 and $0.72 (after $2/1 mf coupon & $2.50/diapers & wipes store coupon)
- Jumbo pack of Luvs: $6.49 (after $1/1 store coupon)
- Purina One cat food: $2.99 (after $2/1 store coupon & $1/1 mf coupon)
- 2 10-packs of BIC pens: FREE (after $1/2 store coupon & $1/2 mf coupon)
- Huggies wipes refill: $3.99 (after $1.50/1 store coupon & $0.50/1 mf coupon)

Total OOP: $36

Total savings: $16.50

Total Weekly Grocery Spending: $54.75
($5.25 under budget)

(Disclaimer: diapers are not included in weekly grocery budget.)

10 Things I'm Thankful For

2009-08-28T20:46:00.006-05:00

Recently it was brought to my attention that I complain too much. Actually, I already knew that, but it's always nice and convicting to hear someone else say it...even if it is my darling husband. So, in an effort to find joy in the circumstances (which really aren't that bad, being tired just makes them seem bad), here are a few things I'm thankful for:

A healthy family. Seriously, other than a few colds here and there we've had nothing to complain about health-wise.
Two beautiful children. I mean, come on, they're freakin' adorable!
A husband who adores me. He always makes me feel loved and desired. I still get butterflies even though we've been married for 2 1/2 years and together for 4 1/2.
A home of my own. No more apartments, great location, an affordable mortgage, and friendly neighbors.
A cute little house that's easy to clean. Not at all meant to be a thinly veiled complaint...it is SO easy to clean a house that's only 986 square feet! I can do a decent clean of the entire house in an hour or two!
A steady income. God has always blessed us with enough to live on (and now we have some cushion!) and I've never once had to consider going to work.
A secure job for my husband. Unless something drastic happens, Avery is pretty much guaranteed this job for life.
The great state of Texas and the city of San Antonio. What are we, like the third most economic-resiliant city in the country? And come on, Texas is just stinkin' awesome. :)
Amazing friends and family. Seriously, you guys ROCK. And most important...
A God who loves me and will never turn His back on me!!!

I could go on and on, but my tired brain is a bit fuzzy right now and I'm having a hard time forming sentences. So I'm off to finish cleaning the bathroom (I think it's only been cleaned four times since we moved in over a year ago...yikes!) and making the rest of the delicious cookies from Wednesday (recipe and pictures coming soon!).

Menu Planning & More...

2009-08-25T14:04:00.002-05:00

Currently I'm ignoring Shiphrah while she pulls clean laundry out of the basket and attempts to either wear it or mop the floor with it. The dirty floor, I might add. I'm ignoring her because it's easier than telling her no. :) She's tired and ready for her nap but Kirk is asleep in her room and I just know as soon as I put her in her crib she'll yell "KIRK, KIRK!" until he wakes up.

I had an epiphany last night as I was trying to get Kirk to fall back asleep after his bazillionth feeding: he stopped sleeping well around the same time I pulled the pillow out of his bassinet and made him sleep on the uber-thin mattress. I don't know why it took me so long to see the correlation, especially since he naps so much better when he's in his crib in the nursery, but for right now the pillow is going back in the bassinet to see if it will make a difference. (Most nights he's been waking up every 2 to 3 hours, nursing for 5 minutes and falling back asleep.)

And without further ado (in no particular order):

Breakfasts:
- homemade biscuits with jelly
- eggs & bacon
- French toast
- waffles
- egg sandwiches

Lunches:
- hamburgers & ranch style beans
- Mac 'n' Cheese with sausage
- chicken salad sandwiches
- hot dogs & chips
- leftovers
- meatball subs

Dinners:
- smothered burritos & rice

Impromptu Photo Shoot

2009-08-23T18:20:00.004-05:00

I pulled out my camera a few minutes ago to snap some pictures of the kids playing and Shiphrah decided she wanted to pose for pictures with Kirk. My camera is on it's last leg so the lighting is off and the red eye is horrible, but I think I got some cute ones.

Kirk's not quite sure how he feels about this...

My camera could never catch both of them looking at the same time.

Then Shiphrah decided she wanted to roll around next to Kirk.

Time for a Mommy-daughter shot.

One more try...

Here Shiphrah was entertaining Kirk by dancing in front of him.

And then I attempted a picture of all three of us.

Shiphrah started dancing again.

"Mom, no more pictures, PLEASE!"

Weekly Savings - 8/16 thru 8/22

2009-08-21T21:21:00.007-05:00

Four stores this week: CVS and Walgreens on Tuesday and HEB and Wal-Mart on Thursday.

CVS deals were a bit slim this week, but they were running an excellent Pepsi deal (an essential for a sleep-deprived mama) through Tuesday (buy 4/$12 get $4 ECBs, like paying $8 for 4 12-packs). I also had $4 ECBs from my purchases last week so I used those to purchase the sodas. After my purchase, two coupons printed with my receipt, a $2/1 Huggies wipes coupon and a $1/1 shaving cream coupon. I got a 64-count tub of wipes and Barbasol shaving cream (the cheapest they had there), used the coupons that had just printed plus a $0.75/1 Huggies wipes manufacturer's coupon.

Total OOP: $10.32
Total savings: $14.56

ECBs received: $4

[YTD CVS Savings: $234.16]

At Walgreens, on the other hand, the deals were a-hoppin'. :) I started with $4 in Register Rewards from last week's interesting trip. This week I went to a different store and it was so much easier. Here's the breakdown of what I got:

- 2 Super Stack cans of Pringles = $2 ($1/2 manufacturer's coupon + 2/$3 in-ad coupon)
- 4 Velveeta Shells & Cheese cups = FREE (after $1 RR, $1/4 store coupon, + 2 B1G1 coupons)
- Softsoap bodywash = FREE ($3.99 with $4 RR after purchase)
- Tub of Huggies wipes = 79 cents ($2/1 store coupon + $0.50/1 manufacturer's coupon)
- 2 Twix bars and 1 Snickers = 47 cents (49 cents ea. in-ad coupon + $1/2 manufacturer's coupon)

Total OOP: $3.77
Total savings: $14.59

RR received: $5

Shiphrah accompanied me to the stores on Tuesday and Kirk came with me on Thursday. This would have been fine except he was asleep when we got to HEB, so I put his carrier in his stroller and then tried to fit all the groceries in the basket under the stroller and in the reusable bag I brought. My arm was killing me by the time we were done. :) Once again, I didn't take a picture of everything I bought...mainly because it was so hot that I needed to get the cold stuff put away right away, but I did take a picture of all of the items I either had coupons for or got for free with a meal-deal (minus the ice cream, which was melting, and the ranch style beans). Here's the breakdown:

- Mott's applesauce = 79 cents (after $1/1 manufacturer's coupon)
- Velveeta Shells & Cheese = $1.02 each (after $1/2 manufacturer's coupon)
- Blue Bell cookies 'n' cream 1/2 gallon = $3.50 (after $5 sale + $1.50/1 manufacter's coupon)
- Kraft shredded cheese = FREE (after purchase of 2 packages of Oscar Meyer hot dogs)
- Knorr pasta side & Ranch Style beans = FREE (after purchase of Eckrich sausage)

I also picked up yogurt, eggs, bread, honey, salad fixings, bananas, lighter fluid, oregano, brown sugar, hot dogs, sausage, tortillas, italian salad dressing, coffee, and a few other random items.

Total OOP: $50.88
Total savings: $14.36

I also made a quick run to Wal-Mart because I noticed they had their Huggies Pure & Natural diapers for $9.72 (most places have them priced at least $3 or $4 above regular Huggies diapers). So I bought three Jumbo packs and used three $3/1 manufacturer's coupons to make them $6.72 a piece. I also found four jars of Beachnut Homestyle fruit and used four '1 free jar' coupons (most places are sold out of these because of the coupon...so far Wal-Mart is the only place I've been able to find them).

Total OOP: $21.80

Total savings: $12.25

Total Weekly Grocery Spending = $64.97

(And no, my numbers don't match up because diapers are in a different budget category. :) But other than that, all paper products and most personal care items are included in "grocery spending.")

A Lovely Shower

2009-08-18T20:36:00.009-05:00

My middle sister's wedding shower was this past weekend and I was the hostess. I had plans to go all out with cute decorations (the theme was "1950's housewife") and a fun game, but with the two munchkins time got away from me and I ended up procrastinating on most of it until the night before. So opted for a few small decorations (copies of old bridal magazine covers), simple refreshments, and only the costume contest for a game. I stayed up really late the night before finishing the prize for the costume contest - a pink and black dotted apron. It turned out really cute, if I do say so myself. :) I also got up early the next morning to put out the refreshments and finish straightening up the house. Thankfully the kids (and Avery) slept in a bit so I had an hour or so to myself. My sister-in-law came over around 8:30 to fix mine and my sisters' hair to go with our costumes and then my sisters and mom showed up around 9. The rest of the guests came at 10 and it turned out to be a wonderful time! Considering my procrastination and overall tiredness I was very pleased with how it went.

Here's the refreshment table and my few decorations (my mom brought the flowers):

I was also thrilled to have nearly everyone dress up for the costume contest! I was so worried that it would just be me, my SIL, and my sisters dressing up. Everyone looked fantastic!

The beautiful bride.

My mom with Kirk.

The three sisters (I was the glamorous housewife-hostess).

The winner of the costume contest wearing her prize...literally everything she had on was vintage, down to her pantyhose and garters!!

Dinner on a Budget: Beef Stroganoff

2009-08-17T21:17:00.003-05:00

One way to save money on meals is to utilize leftovers. Leftovers can be frozen and served weeks later, taken to work for lunch the next day, or used to create a new meal that will fool your family into thinking they aren't eating leftovers at all!

Grilling steaks one night? Don't just throw those leftovers in the fridge to be forgotten or begrudgingly eaten a few days later (everyone knows that steak reheated isn't very tasty at all), turn them into a delicious meal that the whole family will love.

I am a huge fan of Beef Stroganoff. However, for months I was unable to find a recipe that I loved. They were all either too bland or too complicated. Finally, I stumbled across one at AllRecipes.com that was provided by Campbell's Kitchen. It was perfect! Just the right flavor and it complemented the leftover grilled top sirloin perfectly. I've altered the recipe a bit to make it work with pre-cooked steak, but for the most part it was just right:

Ingredients:
1 lb cooked boneless beef steak (whatever leftovers you have)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 medium onion, chopped (you can substitute onion flakes)
1 (10.75 oz) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 cup sour cream
seasonings as needed
4 cups cooked egg noodles
Chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Directions:
Slice beef into thin strips; set aside.
Heat oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook until tender.
Add soup, paprika, and seasonings as needed. Heat to a boil. Stir in sour cream and beef strips. Heat through. Serve over noodles. Sprinkle with parsley (optional).

Originally posted at Examiner.com.

Menu Planning - Week of Aug 17th

2009-08-17T15:13:00.002-05:00

I didn't do so well on my meal schedule last week, although much of that was through no fault of my own. Both of Avery's nights off we were invited over for dinner by friends and family and then a couple of other things happened that prevented me from cooking several of the meals I had planned (like forgetting to buy tomato puree at the grocery store, ergo no homemade pizza).

So here's this week's tentative menu plan:

Breakfasts:
Eggs & toast (M)
Cereal with milk (T)
Pancakes with syrup (W)
Homemade biscuits with jelly (TH)
Egg sandwiches (F)
Cereal with milk (S)
Leftover pancakes or biscuits (SU)

Lunches:
Chicken salad sandwiches & chicken flavored ramen (M)
Kym's Parmesan chicken strips with broccoli (T)
Grilled ham & cheese sandwiches (W)
Tuna salad sandwiches & beef flavored ramen (TH)
Beef stroganoff with leftover grilled steak & dinner rolls (F)
Hamburgers & French fries (SA)
Lunch out after church (SU)

Dinners:
Dinner at the Martin's? (W)
Grilled steak with mushrooms, dinner rolls, baked potatoes, & peas (TH)

(The rest of the dinners are when Avery is at work so they usually consist of hot dogs, sandwiches, or burritos for Shiphrah and I.)

And with that, I'm going to see if I can't take a short nap. Believe it or not, I went to bed at 8:30 last night and slept until 8:30 this morning. So I'm not sure why I'm so tired now, except that Kirk did wake up every 2 hours (after his one 4-hour stretch) last night.

Weekly Savings - 8/8 thru 8/15

2009-08-15T17:44:00.004-05:00

While there weren't any especially amazing deals this week, I did find a few good buys. Of course, they were all at different stores so I actually went to five different stores this week. I don't usually do that, but Avery was gracious and the stores are all within a 5-minute drive so it's not too much extra gas (that's one of the great things about living in a big city).

I always do the bulk of my grocery shopping at the H.E.B. a few minutes from my house. Their deals run Wednesday-Tuesday though so I usually wait until mid-way through the week to do any shopping. With Avery's days off being Wed/Thurs this works out quite well for me...I usually go during the kids' nap time or take one kid with me and Avery watches the other. (I can take both babies with me, but it's exhausting and takes twice as long...especially when I'm trying to sort through coupons.) Anyway, since I had stocked up on meat last week, my HEB run was mostly made up of coffee, fruit, toilet paper, orange juice, and a few other essentials. My total was $30.73 and I saved $5.86 with coupons/sales. (Sorry, no picture.)

I actually took Kirk with me on that run (wore him in my Mei Tai) but brought him home before heading to Wal-Mart because he was getting too hot (that boy sweats like a little pig and hates being hot). I went to Wal-Mart for just two items: charcoal (we were out and I had a coupon) and Flintstones gummy vitamins (on sale for $5). The charcoal was $7.50 and I had a $4/1 coupon and I had three $1/1 coupons for the vitamins.

Total before coupons/sales: $22.50

Total OOP: $15.60

Total saved: $6.90

Those two trips were on Wednesday. Thursday we packed up the kids and headed out for shopping and lunch as a family. We went to Lowe's first where Avery picked up some sandpaper inserts for his sander (boat project) and then to Target. At Target I got a Jumbo pack of Pampers Sensitive diapers for $6.89 with a $2/1 Target coupon and a $1/1 manufacturer's coupon (it was supposed to be $2/1, but apparently it was coded wrong because it only rang up $1 off), ten boxes of PopTarts for $1.02 each with five $1/2 coupons (and I have submitted my receipt for the $10 Kellogg's Fuel for School rebate), two bottles of Coffeemate creamer for $2.29 each with two $0.50/1 coupons, and two bags of Kraft shredded cheddar cheese for 89 cents each with a Target $1/2 coupon and manufacturer's $1/2 coupon. We also picked up a loaf of bread, a bottle of 7-UP (for the punch for my sister's wedding shower), and a 12-pack of razor refills (I'm not including those though because my husband is picky and buys very expensive products...separate budget category anyway).

Total before coupons/sales: $43.33

Total OOP: $23.24

Total saved: $20.09

After lunch at Chili's, the kids went down for their naps and I headed out to CVS and Walgreens. I had a $5/$25 coupon for CVS that I wanted to use but other than their Huggies ECBs deal (buy 2 packs at 2/$18 get $4 ECBs), I wasn't sure what else I was going to buy to meet the $25 mark. No fear, CVS to the rescue again! I think Bounty is doing away with their Basic 8-packs of paper towels because everyone has them on sale this week. CVS blew away the competition though by pricing them at $1.99 each!!! (That's 25 cents a roll, y'all!) So I picked up four and that easily pushed me past the $25 for the coupon. I used two $1.50/1 Huggies coupons, $1 ECB, and the $5/$25 CVS coupon.

Total before coupons/sales: $57.32

Total OOP: $18.34
Total savings: $38.98

(ECBs received: $4)

[YTD CVS Savings: $195.18]

Finally, I headed over to Walgreens. I could have done without this trip, but we have a brand new store that opened a few minutes away and they mailed us a $3/$10 coupon that I wanted to use. Plus I had heard of a pretty great Huggies wipes deal that I wanted to try. This was my first couponing experience with Walgreens and I was a bit skeptical because I have heard of so many bad experiences with cashiers and such. Well, those fears were well-founded. Although I did score some pretty great deals, I had to convince the cashier to push through several coupons. She couldn't understand the whole free-after-coupon concept and the need to override the price UP so that the coupon would match (another cashier ended up doing it for me) and she was downright grumpy about the whole thing. They were also out of stock of a lot of the items I was looking for, and I hear this is pretty typical of Walgreens in general. (They were stocking when I got there though so at least now I know their stocking day is Thursday.) Anyway, the Campbell's soups were 29 cents each after a 1 @ 79 cents Walgreens coupon and $1/2 manufacturer's coupon, I bought 2 boxes of Bandaids at $1.99 each after a $1/1 manufacturer's coupon ($4 Register Rewards with purchase), one bottle of Women's One A Day for $3.49 and Flintstones vitamins for $2.89 after two $2/1 Walgreens coupons and a $3/2 manufacturer's coupon, and one package of Sharpie Accent highlighters for free after $1/1 manufacturer's coupon. They were all out of the 64-count of Huggies wipes, but I went ahead and got a refill pack because it was still a decent deal. (I say that, but now that I'm looking at the receipt, I think they left off the $2/1 Walgreens coupon, so nevermind, the wipes were $6.24 after a $0.75/1 manufacturer's coupon.)

Total before coupons/sales: $27.61

Total OOP: $15.44

Total saved: $12.17

(Register Rewards received: $4)

Taking out the non-grocery items like the vitamins and diaper products, that brings my total grocery spending for the week to $58.95, just under our $60 weekly budget amount.

And with that, both babies are being very fussy tonight so I think I'm going to put them (and myself!) to bed early tonight.

Cutting Costs 101: The Grocery Budget

2009-08-11T22:45:00.002-05:00

In a day and age where the cost of living is rising and companies are making cuts in personnel and salaries, saving money is essential.

So you've dropped your cable subscription, sold one car, refinanced your house, sold some old clothes on eBay, and now might be thinking, "what else can I do? Everything else is a necessity!"

Have you looked at your grocery spending lately? Yes, it's vital to feed your family and that's definitely not discretionary spending, but do you really need to spend that much? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 2006 the average American family (2.5 people) spent $3,417 per year on food prepared at home. This averages to $285 per month or $66 a week. That may not seem like much at first glance but remember, that is $66 per week on food items: fresh produce, meat, dairy, etc. Don't include your household products or dining out when figuring your average spending.

Once you know how much you spend, analyze your shopping habits and see what can be changed. Depending on how much you spend, you can save up to 50% of your weekly grocery spending just by following some simple guidelines.

Never shop hungry! This may seem like a strange tip, but research shows that individuals will inevitably purchase more than they need when shopping on an empty stomach.

Make a list. Again, seems basic, but this simple step will save tens of dollars in unneeded food products.

Shop the deals. Take the time to peruse your local grocery ads before heading to the store. Find out what's on sale and see if you can't match those deals with coupons to save even more money. As a basic rule, see if you can't avoid buying anything unless it's on sale or you have a coupon (other than your basic items such as milk, eggs, bread, etc.).

Shop at multiple stores. Obviously this needs to be done within reason. If you're spending more on gas than you're saving, cut back on unnecessary trips. However, oftentimes by comparing prices and specials at several different stores, you can save even more. For instance, CVS Pharmacy regularly has milk on sale for $2.69 a gallon, which is much cheaper than you'll get at H.E.B.

Stock up. When you find a really good deal on something, buy as much as you can! Like I mentioned in my previous article, Stocking the Freezer 101, pretty much anything can be frozen and most foods can be frozen indefinitely. Steaks on sale for $2.88 a pound? Buy four, keep one in the fridge to use that week and freeze the rest.

Plan your menu after you shop. Planning a menu in general can help you save money, but believe it or not, you can save even more money by planning your menu after you go grocery shopping. If it helps to have an idea beforehand, check the grocery ads, make a list, and then plan a tentative menu based on the list and what you already have at home.

Avoid over-processed, pre-packaged foods. Sometimes you can find good deals on easy-prep foods, but for the most part you'll save more if you focus on fresh produce, raw meats, basic dairy, bread products, etc. Typically, the fewer the ingredients, the cheaper the product, and it's much healthier as well.

Don't buy what you don't need. Again, this seems simple enough, but even the most seasoned shoppers fall into the trap of buying something extra just because it appears to be a great deal. Remember, if you don't need it you're not saving money by buying it.

Freeze leftovers. If you cook too much in a meal, don't throw it out or give it to the dog, freeze it in single portions and save it for a "leftovers" night. This works especially well if you wait a couple of weeks to serve the leftovers because then it feels like a brand new meal (as opposed to serving it two nights later).

Drink water. Flavored drinks such as soda, juice, and alcoholic beverages are terribly expensive. Drink more water during the day and your grocery bill is sure to drop.

And that's just a few ways to lower your grocery spending. Find out what works for your family and put it into practice!

Cold symptoms on top of exhaustion = NO FUN

2009-08-10T18:34:00.002-05:00

Constant headache, fatigue, dizziness, congestion, sore throat, weakness. All of these apply to me at this moment and most of them have plagued me for the past couple of days.

Kirk seems to go through weekly cycles. One week he'll sleep really well: 5 to 6-hour stretches at night followed by two 3-hour stretches. The next week he'll refuse to sleep any longer than 3 hours at a time and he'll fuss in between eating and falling back asleep. We just wrapped up one of the bad weeks. Last night he did pretty good so I think he's swinging back to the good side. I am dead exhausted though. With Avery's schedule the way it is, I don't get to sleep until midnight or so most nights and then Kirk is wide awake around 8-o-clock the next morning. Which means I get about six hours of broken sleep at night. And with the way Kirk's sleep schedule is, his long stretch is from 8:30 to 1:30, and I'm awake for most of that.

Because of my current state of exhaustion, I feel like I'm just existing. You know, going through each day doing the bare minimum and feeling like I'm in a daze the whole time. It's a terrible way to live. Each day feels like it's a million hours long and each night only serves to give me just enough sleep to survive through another day. I will be so happy when Kirk is sleeping through the night!

In other news, my sister's wedding shower that I'm hosting is this weekend and I've done squat in getting ready for it. I had all these big plans and great ideas for decorating and activities and yet I have the energy for none of it. *Sigh* I'm sorry, Rachel, I promise I'm trying! Oh well, as long as there are refreshments and the house looks decent, I'm going to consider it a success. Oh, and I have to finish the prize for the costume contest...since I promised a prize and already spent nearly $30 on the material.

In my research/planning phase of the shower, I discovered an interesting book that I purchased for a few dollars from Amazon. It's called Fascinating Womanhood and it was written by Helen Andelin in the early 1960's. I am loving it so far! Feminists would probably decry the book as a disservice to women everywhere, but I see it as a breath of fresh air (or old air, as it were) in a world filled with all the wrong ideas about marriage and being a wife. In her introduction, the author states that "To be loved and cherished is a women's heartfelt desire in marriage. This book is written to restore your hope in this desire and to suggest principles to apply in winning a man's genuine love." I'm only about a quarter of the way into the book, but already I am in agreement with everything the author has to say (which is impressive for me) and have been convicted, inspired, and encouraged all at the same time. Personally, I think this book should be required reading for every woman who thinks her marriage is doomed and I definitely think that every married woman in the world would do good to read it. One of the main themes thusfar is accepting and loving your husband for who he is without trying to change him. So important to remember...and something I struggle with on a regular basis.

Well, Kirk needs me so I'd better go.

"Instead of trying to make him over, try making him happy." - Fascinating Womanhood

Menu Planning - 8/9 thru 8/15

2009-08-08T18:07:00.002-05:00

I've been meaning to get back into the habit of planning our meals just so I won't be scrambling come mealtime every day. Keep in mind that Avery works afternoons/evening so that is reflected in the type of meals we have for breakfast and lunch. Dinners are whatever I throw together for Shiphrah and I, so there is less structure and variety to those (except on Avery's days off, obviously).

Breakfasts
SUN: eggs & bacon
MON: waffles with syrup
TUES: cereal with milk
WED: pancakes with syrup (DAY OFF)
THURS: biscuits with jelly (DAY OFF)
FRI: egg sandwiches
SAT: French toast

Lunches
SUN: eat out after church
MON: Italian chicken & potatoes
TUES: lunch with Kelly
WED: grilled cheese sandwiches (DAY OFF)
THURS: tuna salad sandwiches (DAY OFF)
FRI: beef stroganoff
SAT: sister’s bridal shower

Dinners
SUN: burritos
MON: sandwiches
TUES: hot dogs
WED: homemade pizza (DAY OFF)
THURS: grilled steak with mushrooms (DAY OFF)
FRI: burritos
SAT: hot dogs

Cutting Costs 101: Homemade baby wipes

2009-08-07T16:39:00.006-05:00

Ask any parent and they will all say the same thing: babies are expensive! From disposable diapers to pureed baby foods to buying new clothes every three months, costs definitely add up.
Despite the apparent expense, however; there are several ways to effectively lower your baby-related spending. One of these ways is by making your own baby wipes.

For a typical 64-count box of Huggies baby wipes, you'll pay about $2 and they will be gone before you know it. For about 50 cents you can make your own tub of wipes that will last nearly twice as long.

First, buy a package of nice paper towel rolls. I prefer Bounty, but any good-quality brand will work. A 6-pack of double-roll basic Bounty paper towels usually runs about $6. Don't scrimp and buy a cheaper brand though, the wipes won't hold up as well. Cut one roll of paper towels in half using an electric bread knife or a band saw. (You can use a serrated knife but it will be a bit messy.)

Next, mix two cups of water with two tablespoons each of baby shampoo, baby oil, and rubbing alcohol. (You can adjust the amounts as you see fit; I like to use less baby oil and more shampoo.) Find a container with a lid that will hold your half-roll of paper towels. I used a tea bucket from Bill Miller's and cut two slits crosswise in the middle of the lid. Remove the cardboard insert from the middle of the paper towels (you can do this later if it won't come out), place the half-roll in the tub, and pour the water mixture evenly over the roll. Don't worry if there appears to be too much liquid, the roll will soak up whatever is left over.

Seal the container and let it sit for several hours to fully absorb. Feed the first paper towel from the middle of the roll up through the slit in your lid. Use as needed!

(For those of you without babies, this method could easily be modified to make your own cleaning wipes with your favorite cleaning solution!)

Originally posted at Examiner.com.

Stocking the Freezer 101: Meat

2009-08-06T22:05:00.004-05:00

One of the best ways to stay within a monthly budget is by taking advantage of grocery sales and specials. To do this, you must be willing to buy ahead and store or freeze what you won't be able to use within a few days or weeks.

An experienced deal-shopper will be able to practice this on all types of items on her grocery list: paper goods, fruits, vegetables, dairy products, bread products, etc. However, if you are just delving into the world of "buying ahead" for the first time, one of the best (and easiest) items to start with is meat.

According the the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service's fact sheet on safe food handling, most food products can be frozen indefinitely without any risk of spoilage. To retain the best flavor, freeze your raw meat as soon as you buy it and use it within 4 to 12 months. Again, frozen foods remain safe for an indefinite amount of time, so all you are really concerned with is quality of taste.

Meats can be frozen in the supermarket wrapping they are purchased in, but for best flavor retention freeze them in heavy-duty foil, plastic wrap, freezer paper, or freezer bags. Make sure to write the date frozen on the outside of the package as well as the type of meat packaged. It is also handy to freeze the meat in meal-sized amounts so it isn't necessary to thaw two pounds of ground beef if you only plan on using one. Unlike you may have heard, however; it is completely safe to re-freeze meat.

Now that you have a basic idea of what you're going to do, go put it into practice! This week in San Antonio, both H.E.B. Grocery and Sun Harvest are running some excellent deals on meat. Top sirloin steak is only $2.88/lb and boneless skinless chicken breasts are only $1.88/lb at Sun Harvest. H.E.B. has split chicken pieces in a 3-lb bag for only $0.99/lb and whole chickens for $0.79/lb. My freezer is full, what about yours?

This post is a part of LifeasMom's Frugal Friday.

Munchkin Update

2009-08-04T18:14:00.002-05:00

Babies change and grow so quickly it's almost necessary to keep a daily log of their developments. I was reminded of this by Shiphrah today when she and I were able to carry on a mini conversation at the dinner table this evening. It went something like this:
Shiphrah: Daddy? Daddy night-night?
Me: No, Daddy's not sleeping, he's at work.
Shiphrah: Brudder brudder night-night?
Me: Yes, Kirk is sleeping right now.
Shiphrah: (notices a fly buzzing around the table) FLY!! Fly, shoo-doh (sandwich) NO! Bye-bye fly!
Me: (Shiph becomes increasingly bothered by the fly so I get out a flyswatter and kill said fly.) The fly is gone, Shiphrah, eat your food.
Shiphrah: (decides she all of a sudden likes the fly, holds her sandwich out in front of her) Shoo-doh fly eat!

Ah, I love that girl. :) She's really been starting to talk a lot lately...stringing words together and trying to carry on conversations with us. Although she gets SO frustrated when we don't understand what she's trying to say.

She has twelve teeth now with four more coming in. I will be soooo glad when she's done teething...it'll be nice to see what her normal personality is. Still not much hair, but the one ponytail in the back keeps getting longer. She's still growing very slowly, but I just know that one of these days she'll hit a growth spurt and shoot herself onto the growth chart. She's still hovering around 20 pounds and hasn't hit 30 inches yet. She's 20-months-old and is still in 12-18 month clothing, but Mama's not complaining...means less clothes shopping for her!

She still sleeps like a champ (13 hours at night and a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon) and is still the pickiest eater in the world. Her foods of choice are canned carrots, grapes, cheese, and PB&J sandwiches. She'll eat fruit like there's no tomorrow, but only bananas, strawberries, grapes, and watermelon. No luck at potty-training yet but she's pretty good at letting us know when she needs her diaper changed. (Lately she's been telling me that Daddy needs to change her poopy diapers, not me. :) Haha, fine with me!)

She's still stubborn, obstinate, and opinionated. We're working on obedience, but that's going to be a long, tough road. I have a feeling her "Terrible Twos" will be sticking around for several years to come.

And here's our little drama queen posing with her crown. (Sorry about the clothesless state...it's South Texas, y'all, and it's HOT!)
Kirk Micah is nearing 5 months old and is developing quite the personality as well. He's a bright and cheerful little boy as long as someone is paying attention to him. He's really started "talking" as well...he oohs and ahhs and blows bubbles with his mouth constantly. He also seems to have quite the short temper as he can go from grinning one minute to screaming bloody murder the second if I dare set him down and walk away. His little face turns dark red and he looks oh-so angry. He also fusses/cries himself to sleep most naps and nights, as much as Mommy hates listening to his pitiful cries.

He still isn't sleeping through the night, but he usually sleeps about two 4-hour stretches or a 5-hour and a 3-hour stretch which is an improvement from the every-3-hour routine. He takes two to three naps a day, his first around 11 in the morning and his second around 2 in the afternoon. If his second goes long (which it often does) there's not usually a third nap since bedtime is around 8:30.

Kirk is growing out of clothes in a typical baby fashion, which throws this Mama for a loop because she's not used to having to pull out the next size up so fast. He's just under the 50th percentile so he's fitting into most of his 3-6 month clothes. Thankfully we had two other moms give us hand-me-downs from their little boys so we're pretty set for his first year.

No solids for the boy yet...I've given him rice cereal on a few occasions but he's not too keen on it. He likes sucking on fruit, so I'm sure he'll love the pureed foods when I start him on them though. Since he's doing so well on breastmilk though and seems happy to eat every 2 1/2 hours, I'm not in a hurry to add solids. We'll wait until he's 6 months and then only add a feeding or two a day. Shiphrah was too eager to stop nursing and I don't want to run into that problem with Kirk.

Here's my boy on his first day in the jumparoo. He loves it as long as he has his sister to watch while he's in it...he's not much for playing with toys unless there's no other option.

They grow up too fast, don't they? It seems like just yesterday I was headed to the hospital to have Shiphrah. And now I'm a mommy of two!

Weekly Savings - CVS - 8/3/09

2009-08-03T15:01:00.005-05:00

This is certainly the week of great grocery deals! I browsed through the circulars and coupon inserts last night and was thrilled with how much I found! This morning Shiphrah and I headed to CVS and I plan on making trips to Target and Walgreens later this week.

To see which deals you might be interested in, check out your local CVS store circular. They're usually in the Sunday edition of your local paper or you can find them on the CVS website.

CVS is running several great deals this week that I was able to take advantage of in three separate transactions. (If you're new to CVSing you don't have to do separate transactions but I choose to use my ECBs right away in case I don't go back before they expire.)

Transaction #1: Bought two jumbo packs of Pampers diapers on sale for 2 for $20 and 1 roll of CVS quilted paper towels. Used 1 FREE CVS paper towels coupon (they are running a free gift with purchase special this week), 1 FREE voucher coupon from Pampers (received as a gift) and one $2/1 Pampers coupon from the August P&G coupon booklet. Used $1 ECB from previous week's purchase making OOP (out-of-pocket) expense $5.42. Received $5 ECBs after purchase.
Transaction #2: Bought two boxes of Velveeta Shells and Cheese on sale for 2 for $6. Used $5 ECBs from previous transaction making OOP expense $1. Received $3 ECBs after purchase.
Transaction #3: Bought 1 gallon of Oak Farms whole milk on sale for $2.69 and one 10.3 oz bottle of Dawn dishwashing soap on sale for 99 cents. Used $3 ECBs from previous transaction and a $0.25/1 coupon from the August P&G coupon insert for the Dawn making OOP expense $0.44. Received $1 ECB for milk purchase.

So all of this... ...cost me exactly $6.86.

Not bad, huh? How did you do this week?

Edited to add...
I guess I should have included my total savings as well. According to my receipts, I saved a total of $30.95. And before ECBs and coupons my total would have been $31.83, not counting the specials CVS was running (it would have been approximately $35 without the specials).

My [abbreviated] Weekend Vacation

2009-08-02T16:59:00.007-05:00

The weekend didn't go quite as planned, but I had fun regardless. Prior to going, I had promised myself that I'd take a bunch of pictures to make up for the past two year when I was too sick to pick up a camera. I did alright but unfortunately the camera ended up stuck in a cabin for three hours Saturday afternoon while Shiphrah was napping so I didn't get any pictures of the lake, pool, or our UNO and Nerts games.

Upon arriving in Leakey (pronounced "Lake-ee") the kids and I met the family at a tiny Italian restaurant for dinner. Shiphrah ate a bunch of pizza and I ate one piece and then finished off Will's chicken marsala, which was to die for. I mean, what could be better than pasta with a bunch of butter and mushrooms! It was heavenly. Too bad I didn't order it for myself. :)

Friday night's activities included several rounds of volleyball at the camp's gymnasium. Shiphrah really got into cheering for the teams...
Her Grandad was pointing out what was going on and what team her Nana was on and Shiphrah started yelling "Nana! Ball! Nana!!!" It was pretty much awesome. :)

I was planning on letting her stay up late, but by around 10-o-clock she was getting rather grouchy and couldn't understand why no one would let her play volleyball. So I took her back to my parent's private cabin in the hopes of putting her to bed. (They graciously offered to keep her for the night since there's was no way she could have slept in the main cabin with all the kids.) Unfortunately she was quite freaked out by being in a strange place so we ended up heading back to the gym after 20 minutes of unsuccessfully trying to get her to fall asleep. Strike one for the weekend. She went to bed that night at 11:30 when Grandad went to bed with her.

I knew I was in for a challenge with Kirk, but I was optimistically hoping that he would be tuckered out and ready to go to sleep by midnight. No such luck. He ended up nursing for over an hour before he finally fell asleep when the cabin quieted down. Strike two. I slept a few hours before Mom woke me up with Shiphrah around 8-o-clock. Since my dad is an early riser, Shiph had woken up at 6:30. Oh and she had soaked through her pajamas. So I got her dressed, nursed Kirk, and we all went to eat a breakfast of blueberry muffins out at the picnic benches.

Nine-o-clock was softball and Shiphrah spent the next few hours playing with the extra balls and chasing other kids around. Here she is with another little boy. She started doing her silly squat-and-walk thing and he imitated her.
She was pretty much spent by lunchtime, so after lunch she and my mom went back to the cabin to take naps. I attempted to take a nap with Kirk also, but he pretty much refused and screamed for 45 minutes before sleeping for 20. Strike three. At that point I was so physically exhausted that I was shaking and I began to realize that I didn't think I could last through another 24 hours. I walked down to the river with Kirk and then over to the pool where most everyone was hanging out (since the river was too low for tubing the camp opened the pool for our group for about 2 hours). The pool looked incredibly inviting, but since I had Kirk I didn't get a chance to put on a swimsuit so I just got to stare longingly at the water.

At some point after that I was able to hand Kirk off to my dad and I played a couple games of UNO and Nerts with my sisters. I felt a little better after getting to sit down in the AC for an hour or two but I had still decided to head back home after dinner that evening. I wasn't about the try another night with Kirk and then drive home the next day. I don't think it would have been safe.

So I packed up the stuff and we hit the road around 8. I was hoping the kids would sleep the whole way back but Shiph decided she wasn't tired and Kirk started screaming an hour into the drive. So I nursed him in the parking lot of a Shell station for about 10 minutes with Shiphrah whining and telling me, "Kirk no eat! No Kirk eat!" (She's really starting to form phrases and sentences...it's so cute!)

All in all the weekend wasn't a total bust. I enjoyed getting to spend time with my parents and my sisters and it was nice having other people to entertain the munchkins for a bit. It could have been much worse, after all the kids were pretty well behaved considering their lack of routine and overall tired state. Oh, and Shiph discovered that eating watermelon is just about the best thing ever:
Kirk was pretty much an angel as long as someone was holding him and he napped periodically on Grandad's shoulder. Here's my big boy with his Aunt Rachel:
I'm glad I cam home early though. I got to see my husband (who I was missing terribly) and we got to go to church this morning and hear an awesome sermon from the pastor who was my youth pastor years ago when I first started youth group at Wayside Chapel. We also were able to eat lunch and catch up with friends we hadn't been able to hang out with in over a month.