Annie's walkin'

Annie is doing more than just tentative steps - she's figured out that walking is the easiest way to get from here to there! It's so funny to see such a tiny little thing up walking around like a normal person.

This is Annie making her way...

"Hi Mommy!"

"I'm gonna to Mommy!"

"Forget Mommy, what's that thing in her hand?"

"Gimme the camera!"

Ah, yes, a whole new world...

Big Changes for the Young girls...

Yep - big change this past weekend for Grace and Annemarie Young. They have...da da da-da-a-a-a... flipped to other side of the backseat!

Annie's birthday is next week (can she really be almost 1???) and so we promoted her from the carrier (you know, cuz her legs were hanging out like 4 inches and she was reminding me of the scene from the Wizard of Oz...)
So, of course I had to take pics of my biggie grown up baby who looks like Edith Ann in her newly acquired car seat!


How cute is she???

Grace has now been graduated to the booster. Ack! No shoulder straps that she knew how to unbuckle anyway and constantly did. She's definitely a kid now. My first trip to the baby-sitter resulted in 3 stops to pull over, buckle her back up and finally

"Grace, if you unbuckle that belt one.more.time..."

Fortunately, we've done well since that first ride.

Here she is in the truck, looking fairly unhappy because she's not the one taking the pictures...

Humph!

Give me that!

Arrrgggh!!

That girl just loves my camera...Oh, the freedom of no shoulder straps...Ahhhhh....

Just a good weekend

Had a pretty good weekend last weekend, Grace is definitely feeling better from the fever/chills/flu she had for SEVEN days last week. We ended the week going out to dinner and a movie - Clint and my date of choice! Friday's had more coupons out - hooray! Just in time, so we met friends at Fridays and then headed over to see the worst movie EVER. Blech - do NOT see Watchmen, it was horrid. It was Clint's turn to pick the movie as I picked the last one - Slumdog Millionaire - Academy Award winner, thank you very much. Even Clint said it wasn't what he thought it would be. At one point, our exact sentiments were echoed (loudly) by the people behind us:

Wife: "Why are we watching this???"

Husband: "Don't look at me, you picked it out!"

Pretty sure Clint and I had that exact conversation at some point - except Clint was trying to be funny...

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Grace & Annie got to spend the night with Grandma & Grandpa and thankfully they were well behaved and asleep by 8:00! Woohoo - no naps sure does pay off at bedtime, although the afternoons get a little long - soon to be remedied by the nicer weather, I'm sure. Grace also had a big day in that Grandma and Grandpa took her on a field all by herself to the Howie Hoop Shoot. They brought her an HCS Eagles T-shirt, and I wanted to take a picture, but couldn't get the thing on her. They brought it to her to wear to the Hoop Shoot, but "it was too big." <--her words.

On Monday morning I was getting dressed for work and she came and told me that she tried her new T-shirt on, but "it's still to big." big sigh, crinkled nose. I had to chuckle - what was she expecting? Grace has such a good vocabulary and conversation skills, that I constantly forget that she's only 3 and still learning concepts. Things like this remind me that she is still learning concepts like time and growth. Lately she keeps saying the word "yesterday" for what she means as "before." i.e. "My birthday was yesterday!" or - to a friend of ours who we had dinner with about 6 months ago - "I went to your house yesterday!", "I went to Grandpa's school yesterday."

"My shirt didn't fit yesterday..."

I was wracking my brain trying to figure out a simple way to explain the difference between "yesterday" and "before" so that she could understand, but I've decided that she'll get it soon enough - for now, I just correct her - no explanation necessary.

I'm branchin' out...

I've sort of had the idea to do a blog about my deals separate from the family blog -before Christmas I was sending out emails with coupon links of deals I was doing for the week or deals that I thought my "mommy" friends would like, but I've had a hard time getting back into the swing of that - so I thought, rather than sending out the emails - I'd post them on the blog, that way people can look and click what they want and that way it will keep all the coupon crazies out of the blog about the girls and life at home. Although the following pic sort of encompasses the both together:
This is Grace hugging about 7 little bottles of body wash - she had set them all up in a line on the table and wanted me to take a picture! After supper last night, Clint was clearing the dishes off the table and he picked up the box of Honey Nut Cheerios (for Annie!) and was bringing it in to the kitchen when Grace started yelling "No, no, no, no! Mommy needs that for her pictures!"

I said to Clint, "I'll bet she thinks that's what people are supposed to do, now. Buy groceries, take a picture of them, and put them away!" I laughed so hard. Sigh. That's when I knew I had most likely gone a little overboard. But hey, it's an interesting sport and the coupon deals/blog are keeping me busy at work.

So - if you're interested in the coupon links and deals - that blog is here. I just called it Weekly Deals - I know that a lot of the coupon blogs that are full blown businesses got started this way - posting for their friends/family, but I'm not really into that. I just wanted to keep them separate and journal them - so no fancy gimmicks or slogans for me! Or I linked it on the side of my page - under the Blog Buddies.

Or you can type in http://couponpsycho.blogspot.com/ <-- sometimes that's how I feel - especially on weeks like this one. Like I'm completely out of my mind. But, I generally feel like that so, what's one more thing, eh?

Boy do I feel out of it...

Maybe it's just me, and I know that I didn't really read a lot of self-help, intellectual books even before I had kids, but if I had been able to start my graduate work then maybe I would be a bit more "well-read." - My boss, who I think very highly of, and I lead two very different lives. She has not had kids, has a Ph.D. in Educational Technology and has an extremely impressive resume educationally speaking. She is very classy, career-minded and driven, which I can be - in spurts that are becoming increasingly farther and farther apart. Anyway - she stopped by my office this afternoon after going down to the library. And I asked her what she was reading and the following conversation ensued:

Boss - "I just rented a book from the library."

Me - "Oh yeah, what'cha readin'?" (aren't I professional?)

Boss - "Blink. I've heard it's very good - it's about split second decisions and the power of thinking without thinking."

Me - "Oh." (mildly interested)

Boss - "Have you read it?"

Me - "No. Have you read Dora Saves the Snow Princess?"

February is over? Already??

Wow! It seemed like February flew by...which is fine, because February usually tends to dra-a-a-ag on for me - which numerically speaking, is odd. Something about the last stretch of winter really gets to me usually. But, not this year - yay! Maybe it's because I'm not pregnant like last year...or getting pregnant like 4 years ago...who knows? But I'm glad we're into March - Annie's birthday month! Woohoo - 1 year, baby! And last night - 3/2 - she took her first independent, all of her own accord, no help from anybody steps! It wasn't the kind where I'm on the floor with her, set her out a few paces and tell her to come to me. I watched this all out of the corner of my eye. I was on the floor with Grace, putting her jammies on, and Annie was on the other side of the room and I saw her prop her little hands on her toy, get her little feet steady, put her little hands out in front of her and straighten up. Then she looked over at us and just walked over - about 5 or 6 steps just as steady as you please! Simple as that. So sweet, I was proud of her.

Well, I need to recap the NYR's for February. I know one that's not good....but let's see here:

R#1 - Wear makeup every day. Check. Even on the Saturday when I had to work. I've got a little way around this one: the key is eyeliner and mascara in my desk. You can pretty much see me faithfully applying every morning around 8:07 while I'm waiting for my computer to boot up. But - I did it.

R#2 - Contacts/Eyeglasses/appointment with my allergist. Check. Check. Check. I have 3 months worth of contacts in my possession, I was told however that I should wait till July to get my eyeglasses, as that's when my insurance will roll to the new fiscal year. Our plan is contact OR glasses coverage - and well, since I'm wearing makeup - I'm vain. So, I would have done it, if I could have!
The appointment with my allergist went well, I even scheduled allergy testing for February 26, so I could have checked that off my list - however I didn't pay attention to the doctor's instructions and I had to reschedule the whole blasted thing for late March...apparently allergy meds screw up allergy testing.

R#3 - $100-125.00 per paycheck grocery budget. CHECK. AND a gold star. Total spent for February (3 trips): 272.39. Total saved: 298.83. Check me out for doubling our money. And well, we've moved up Whole Milk Transfer Day - it is no longer March 25 - it was more like February 25th. We have been weaning Annie off the formula - because she was spitting up all the time anyway - and she is doing GREAT on whole milk. The spit ups are definitely down to once a week and usually she is just gagging when she doesn't like the taste of something. So - I'm down to merely buying diapers for one baby, rather than diapers for two and formula for one. THAT SHOULD HELP.

R#4 - Making my meals at home and having a date with Hubs. 3/4 CHECK. The biggest idea behind this particular resolution is of course, cost-cutting, rather than domesticating myself. We did take our date this month - on Valentine's Day of course - or should I say the day before V-day - so that I could use...da dum - a coupon on dinner - we went to TGIF's and used a B1G1 free entree coupon - woohoo - 2 dinners, appetizer and drinks +tip cost us 27.00 at Fridays - then we went to the movies and I kicked myself for not having my Glen Oaks ID card (Meleia & Andrew got discounts just because they were wearing Ferris State Sweatshirts!) and spent about 30 dollars on popcorn (for CLINT! --I was stuffed, but you can't separate Clint and movie popcorn) and movie. So - for just under $60.00 not too bad for our date. Plus we saw a great movie - Slumdog Millionaire and had a nice time being out without the kids, with our friends.
I give us 3/4 CHECK because we did eat out at the end of the month - I was sent gift cards to Wendy's for doing some volunteer work (total surprise!) and we did go out to eat - but we didn't pay for it! So, perhaps my resolution should be revamped from "Making my meals at home except for having a date night" to "Not paying for dinner out except for date night." - Although, I still have to dock us a little bit because we got a Little Caesar's pizza this weekend. DOH! But - we did just get one (Clint likes to get 2 so we have leftovers the next day) and no crazy bread - so that's progress.

R#5 - Argh. Did "No S"'s (even with the salad plates!) very well for the first two weeks of February and then I apparently forgot I was on a plan. Thank goodness for new months. No CHECK for me this month - CHECK MINUS even.

March Revamps:

Go back to "No S", actually do the arm weight training, keep up with the salad plates and keep doing the stairs at work - affectionately termed: "The Elevator Embargo" <--ha ha. I'd like to add something in with the March goals, rather than just - "hey, now I'm going to do all the stuff I said I was going to do in February" - I'm debating on a daily calorie limit. I'll have to discuss that with hubs.

So - I get 3.75/5 - 75% for my NYR's - that's a C.

Just average this month on my rezzos...hoping March is better on all counts!

Just call us Ma -n- Pa

I've been very inspired lately by all these blogs that I read of frugal, Christian SAHM's who take all these shortcuts and do a lot of things by hand, that I have paid out the wazoo for in the store - simply because of the convenience. I am a working mother, so I know I'm somewhat justified in buying into the convenience of a lot of items, but well - when you're trying to get your grocery budget down, convenience runs up the bill! Before Grace was born, I had tremendously, unrealistically high hopes of doing cloth diapers. That so did not happen. Not even once. I don't think either one of my girls ever made it into a cloth diaper even one time. But I have a lot of nice burp rags, puke picker uppers thanks to our small group at the time, who outfitted us with items necessary to do cloth diapers. And, I'm sure that cloth diapers totally work - but not for this girl. I overshot BIG time on that dream. But I am finding out, as I read different things and find different ideas on-line, that there are some little, less time consuming things that Hubs and I can do on a weekend where we have nothing else to do and it is FRIGID out. This weekend consisted of creating homemade versions of things we normally pay for at the store -regularly.


First off, we have bagels. I heart bagels. And we never buy them because they are EXPENSIVE if you want to get the tasty ones. 3.00 for 6 bagels? Unless you get a sale and you can get them for 2.00. I rarely find a bagel coupon. Mom used to make homemade English muffins and I have tried my hand at that, successfully, I might add. And Clint got it into his head that he wanted to try making bagels. Looked up a recipe on-line and voila - 40 beautiful and tasty bagels that I figured cost us about 4.00 when adding all of the ingredient costs. He made a double batch of honey wheat, one batch of poppyseed, garlic, onion flavored and, my personal favorite, a batch of sesame seed. NUMMERS. They are so good! They aren't a huge bagel, they are just the right size. So- that's about the net cost of .10 a bagel that tastes better than the store bought ones that will run you .50 cents each. Way to go, Hubby!


The next thing we made this weekend turned out to be a SWEET deal. I had read about Moms who drastically reduce the cost of wipies (another convenience item!) by making their own. I bought some cheap-o paper towels and two trial size bottles of baby wash and baby oil a couple weekends ago and we gave it a shot. It works! Although, I don't recommend using cheapies because they tear fairly easily and you go through a lot when you have a morning *ahem* blow-out. So, I was exceedingly excited to take advantage of Meijer's Bounty Basic 10/$10 deal this past week, as I also has 1.00/2 coupons to match up. I had four coupons, so we're talking 8 rolls of towels, 4 bucks and a lot of wipies. Well- when we got to Meijers, they also had the Bounty Extra Soft, 2-ply - (soooo much better than the Basic 1-ply) 10/$10 as well. I was stoked! And they make GREAT wipies! One roll made 1 and 1/2 tubs of wipies. I totalled the cost of the baby wash, baby oil and paper towel and came out to roughly .75 to make a tub and a half. Compared to 3.99 Huggies wipies I bought at Rite Aid. Woohoo! I figure a tub and a half will last us about 4-6 weeks, so we're looking at the next 8 months of wipies running us about 6.00. And it didn't take that long to do! What have I been doing paying so much these past three years?!? Ah, the convenience factor strikes again.

The last thing isn't a huge major deal, but I took a picture of it because it was so pretty and seriously the best salsa I've ever eaten. The only thing that would have made it better would be to add some jalapenos to it. It was so-o-o-o-o-o-0 good. Black beans, corn, tomatoes, red onions and avocado with italian seasoning...I didn't make one meal for Clint and I this weekend, but we ate all the salsa up! I don't think we saved anything on the salsa, the totals were about the same, and especially since I got a ton of free salsa a while back, the total probably cost us about as much as a normally priced jar of salsa would have, but the taste...oh, baby, the taste - was so much better.

Okay - I have a confession to make. Clint made all of these things! Ha ha - but, I did a TON of dishes. That boy can create, but he uses EVERY stinking dish in the house! So, my part in all of our Little House on the Prairie weekend was cleaning up and giving him the ideas. Not too bad a deal at all. And hey, when you have no entertainment budget, what else are you going to do during the Long Winter, but make baby wipes and bagels?

Next up - more English muffins, pizza crusts to freeze and Clint wants to start making bread as well.