Learning New Things

Jonah’s vocabulary has just been exploding lately… phrases combined with subtle little sounds and gestures that just leave us in stitches… like frumpling up his eyebrows, smooching out his lips, shaking his head no and say “umm, I don’t really need to go night night right now” or the little lip smack and sigh followed by an exasperated little “you know that!” cause obviously… I should know these things. Everything is “I love” right now too. “I love our furniture”… “Oh I really love grapes.”  “I love my bed (talking about our bed)… it’s all comfurbal.”

That’s the other thing he’s been working on trying to figure out… what comfortable means. He had a flap book out that has touch and feel parts on it, like this padded angel. He was poking it and say “oh, it’s all comfurbal” So I try to tell him that comfortable is something that feels nice to sit or lay down on… so then he sits on the brick fireplace hearth “It’s all comfurbal?” hehe not so much kid, but you’ll get it eventually.

I have a video that I’ll have to load up from tonight too… his first attempts at trying to tell us about a song he sang in Sunday School today. Our church just did “Promotion Sunday” (where the kids all move up to the next level class) a month or two ago. He’s no longer in the “baby hall” where all they do is play for 2 hours. His new Sunday School class actually has tables and chairs, they do art projects, sing songs, learn Bible studies and all that. In fact, if I can remember to, I’ve been intending to scan his first Sunday School art projects and post them here. Ironically, they learned about the story of Jonah and the whale. hehe Anyway, he’s been telling us for weeks now about “sing songs, and guitars” after church… so that’s how we know they have a music time… but tonight he was going around smacking his fist on his hand saying “Stand on rock” and then with prompting we asked him what else he sang about and he said “Fall down” and he wiggled his way to a squat and popped back up. So my video clip is of him doing the 2 of those together plus doing random flips all over the place. He was WOUND UP tonight. He actually worked up a sweat before bed! haha

Carly’s learning new things too, she’s rolling all over the place, and sometimes it looks like she’s actually rolling with a purpose. We’re sitting up now from time to time… not right after eating or bad things will happen, and not when she’s tired cause she’ll stiffen her legs and fall over… but if she’s happy, and especially if she’s busy watching brother… she can sit up for as much as a minute at a time without support from me. She’s also started “talking” to Jonah. They both take turns shrieking as loud and as high pitched as they can, giggling in between. Worse than a couple of parakeets I tell ya! Oye! It’s cute though.

Hard to believe she’s already 5 months old! We started her on her first “baby food” last night… mashed up avocado and milk. With the price of pre-packaged baby foods these days, I’m thinking I’m going to try making the majority of her baby food meals myself. The avocado thing is what most moms, who make their own baby food, start with… that and mashed up bananas, because they both have a lot of good vitamins, healthy fat content for brain development and such. She seemed to like it last night, so tonight I gave her a little larger serving size (about 3 tsp + milk) and that seemed to be just about right. She was getting a little tired of it right near the end, but did end up eating it all. Now if I could just get her to take the dang bottle! She just chews it and plays with it… not really drinking anything. :-\ Oh well. I’m learning to cope with it. So I guess we’re ALL learning new things!

Good news also to share, Jason got a promotion this week! We’re on such an ancient cell phone plan (one they don’t even offer anymore cause it’s TX calling only, no mobile to mobile, no family talk, no free texts… nada) so we’re both excited about getting iphones in a month or two (after we save up for the phones themselves, the pay raise increase will pay the extra monthly service charges.) We don’t generally blow pay increases so “frivolously” but we have both been wanting to upgrade for a very long time, our phones are both having some battery life issues recently, and on so many occasions, we’ll be talking and Jason will ask me something and I say “I don’t know, let me get out my iphone so I can tell you” hehe. So this was actually a planned budget move… planned for whenever the next pay increase came. There’s also talk of a possible performance bonus coming that’ll get us the savings for the phone sooner… and maybe a decent Christmas tree since I “blew” all the money I made, painting Audrey’s kitchen, on Christmas gifts, a clearanced patio furniture set, and a portable outdoor fire pit, instead of buying myself the new tree I’ve wanted for 3-4 years now. We’ll see though. I’m just thankful that Jason’s finally getting some recognition for all the hard work he’s been putting in.

Oh no! Elmo, here we come!

As you all know, from a previous post on the subject, I have tried to keep cartoon character infatuation at bay, in order to keep the more expensive/lower quality “licensed character” items out of our house. Well, I’m here to admit that I’m bringing this soon-to-be Elmo infatuation on myself, and I’m even asking for your help to do it!

We’re about to start potty training soon, and as I started reading the library books I checked out on the matter… most techniques seem to encourage the use of a few teaching tools, to help make potty training into a big deal. They say to have a potty weekend where that’s the focus of everyone’s attention, all weekend long… kind of a “coming of age” thing for the trainee. They say to start off by helping your kid “teach” a doll how to potty, then let them read books and watch dvds about pottying. Then start hourly potty-sits and give rewards or stickers on a chart for good tries and even the smallest of sucesses. By the end of the weekend, the kid should pretty well have it down, and to celebrate that, some say you should have a potty party to invite a few friends and family over to congratulate them on their potty success.

So after reading all that, I’m starting to feel a little overwhelmed. I did sit down and start a shopping list of supplies that to get the ball rolling. A potty book, a dvd, a potty doll of some sort, and a progress chart w/ stickers. Once I started researching what was out there, I discovered a major money pitfall… most of the stuff is geared for either a boy or a girl. I have one of each, and I don’t want to have to buy this stuff twice, cause it’s expensive! So, I needed to find something gender neutral.

I first found a pretty cool potty monkey doll that came with a book for the kids and one for the adult. But being that I had already checked the adult book out from the library, I really wished it had come with a dvd instead. Then I found a a wide variety of potty bear items, but no cohesive set, which I feel would make it easier for Jonah to understand the relationship between what the character is doing in the book/dvd and what we’re trying to get the doll to do. Then I stumbled across Elmo. There is a complete line of Elmo potty training products out there, and since Jonah’s never really watched much Sesame Street, Elmo will be new to him.

I was going to put a big Amazon.com order together with everything we’ll need for potty weekend, but then I decided that I might have friends who might have some of the stuff on my shopping list that might be wanting to sell/get rid of it. So let me know if you have any of the following to offer up for borrowing/buying/giving away!

Potty Time Elmo Doll -OR-  A Plain 1-2′ Elmo Plush Doll that we can teach to sit on Jonah’s Potty Chair

Potty Time With Elmo Little Sound Book

Elmo’s Potty Time DVD

Potty Book Coloring & Activities With Elmo (Let me know if you know where I can find this new in stores anywhere… I imagine if you own it, it’s already been colored and the progress chart used up)

Anyone’s leftover Elmo Party Supplies to make a VERY small (like maybe just us if that all we can get) Potty Party with (preferably ones that don’t say happy birthday on them, like the Hooray for Elmo or Elmo Loves You supplies, but beggars can’t be choosers right? hehe)

Garage Sale w00t!

I have been super super SUPER busy these past 2 weeks with the garage sale at my parent’s house, but my efforts were well rewarded. I made about $225, which will be a great start on bedding for the nursery and Jonah’s big boy bed room.

Other news: Jason will be coming home in a couple of days and we’ll get to see him Saturday morning. I think the current plan is to meet at my grandparents’ house at the farm because we’re having 2 family reunions up there this weeked. I think I’ll have Jason bring our christmas cookie cutters and sprinkles so we can make cookies with jonah to take to the reunions.

Jonah’s been sleeping in a big boy bed every night and only fell out the first night when we didn’t have a rail for the bed. Now he won’t get out of the bed until I take the rail down, so it’s almost like a crib I guess. I am nervous about what’ll happen when we get home because we don’t have a rail for his bed there. Jonah’s vocabulary and understanding seems to be jumping by leaps and bounds too.

Baby’s doing good, and I’m starting to feel her.. I mean… it (we don’t find out until next Friday, but I’m thinking it’s a girl) moving every once in a while. I’m worried that living with my parent’s for most of the past month has adversely effected my weight gain too. My OB won’t be happy with how much I’ve gained I’m sure!

I’m just thankful *knock on wood* that Jonah and I have managed to stay sickness free this holiday season so far. Jason’s had a couple of colds, but we’ve been healthy other than that.

My Time Has Come

I guess I couldn’t expect to NEVER have a claim on my car insurance.  I am probably pretty lucky that my first claim didn’t come until I was 26, but still… how do you explain away hitting not one, but TWO parked cars?!  

The best explaination I have, of what happened, is that I was turning left around the corner on our street and some checks that I had intended to go deposit slid from my console and across the passenger seat. I reached to grab them (still with my foot on the break from going around the corner) and I guess, in trying to keep the wheel straight while I leaned to the right, I over corrected because I continued to go left. I looked up and found myself sliding down the driver side of my neighbor’s red car and then coming to a stop in the back of their black car (which was parked just a little further away from the curb.) *sigh* This is no way to start out our Thanksgiving weekend. I guess all I can say is I’m thankful that I was still on my breaks and that it wasn’t a high speed impact, just a small bump. It definitely did some damage though.

the damage I did to the driver side of the red car

my angle of impact, down the red, into the black

the black car I came to a stop on

note my headlight pieces on the ground

my busted headlight

the black and red paint on my wheel well

The claims adjustor should be contacting me within 24-48 hours. We at least have full coverage on the van (we only carry liability on Jason’s truck) so this should be taken care of… we’ll still have to pay our deductible though.

Needing Side Money

With the new baby on the way, and foundation and plumbing repairs that need to be paid for, we need to find a way to bring in some side income. I am pretty crafty, so I am thinking I should attempt to sell my services. If you are interested in buying some of my crafts or using my services, PLEASE email me at amandapace7@hotmail.com because we could certainly use the business! I can’t just go out and get a job because the day care cost would eat away most of the money I made, so I really need to do something from home. Here are a few of the ideas I’ve had of things I might be able to do for you:

• Photo Cards – Christmas Cards, Baby Announcements & Party Invitations that you can have printed.
• Photography – I can even come take the pictures for you, for above mentioned cards with my nice new camera!
• Digital Scrapbook Pages – that you can either print out or save on the computer.
• Traditional Scrabooking – any level of assitance you need, from taking your photos and putting it all together myself, to just creating “crop and drop” pages where all you have to do is add the pictures and journaling.
• Miniature Scrapbooks/Brag Books – great Christmas gift idea for grandparents!
• Handmade Greeting Cards
• Unique Christmas Stockings
• Random Sewing Tasks – curtains, pillows, and other crafty things.
• Halloween Costumes - to some extent (I obviously won’t have time to make a really elaborate costume before Halloween gets here.)
• Anything else crafty that you think I might be able to help you with!
• Design/decorating/home improvement advice. I can also actually DO a lot of woodworking and home improvement projects. I can’t do a lot of painting right now because the fumes wouldn’t be good for the baby, but there’s still a giant realm of possibilites out there!

Please keep me in mind while you’re preparing for the holiday season! I’d love to contribute a little money to our family funds!

In the meantime, I’ll be working on creating a library of graphics that I can use for my digital crafts (like the scrapbooking and photo cards). I have recreated this set from the Shabby Princess website today (to avoid copyright infringement) and would love to start making some one some christmas cards!

I can use these elements to make a unique Christmas card for you and your family this year!

Update: Here is another set I recreated today:

The second set I have recreated for you to choose from if you would like me to make a card.

Room for Rent

My Little Brother

   My younger brother (I can’t call him my little brother since he’s so much taller than me now) is starting back at UTD this coming semester and apparently the housing department has screwed him over. He was on a waiting list, but they didn’t bother to tell him until today that he was not going to get a room. School starts next week! Since we only live about 15 minutes from the school, he asked if he could stay here until he finds a person looking for a room mate to move in with. 

   I have known for a while that it might be a possibility, but just got word today that it’s official. He’ll be moving in sometime after we get back from our trip on Sunday night. I had to spend a couple of hours tonight clearing out the guest bedroom closet so he’d have a place to put his stuff. Not a huge deal though. I have several rubbermaid tubs in there with seasonal junk that I took out of the dresser for him, and then I took the clear plastic boxes off the shelving unit I had in the closet, stacked them in the corner of the closet, and then pulled the empty shelves out of the closet so there’d be room for hanging clothes and he’d have the shelves for other misc. stuff. Maybe a little overkill since he claims he’s going to move out asap… like less than a month. 

Our Newly Readied Guest Room

   Quite honestly though, I’d actually love for him to live here for the whole semester. He’s paying rent but getting free utilities (I figure we’d have them on with or without him here anyway) so the little financial boost there would help us out for sure. My mind is already playing out what I’d do with the extra $$$ because there are several things that we’ve wanted for quite a while, but they’re pricey and we just don’t have that much play money to save up for things like that. With one month rent, plus the bit I have in savings already, I could get the DSLR camera that I’ve wanted for so long. Another month would put a Dyson within our budget… and anything beyond that would be icing on the cake. I figure, we have 4 bedrooms, and we’re a family of 3 right now… so why not? He’ll get off cheaper than he would in an apartment in the long run, and it’d be helping us out financially in a really nice way. If only I could convince him that it’s not THAT weird to live with your sister and her family for a semester or two, and that a 15 minute drive to school is not THAT huge of a deal.

Great Value

Tonight's Ingredients

“We look like we’re from a freakin’ Wal-Mart commercial”, he says. We’ll just say that Jason doesn’t really appreciate the fact that when buying groceries for our family, I still go with Wal-Mart’s generic brands, Great Value or Sam’s Choice, whenever possible. He’s making a special dinner for me tonight, and upon getting out all of the ingredients he looks over and makes this snobby comment. Why yes, as a matter of fact, we DO look like a Wal-Mart commercial because money is tight on one income and I make due with “sub par” ingredients so that I/WE can afford for me to stay home with our son! :-p So yes, 7 of the 14 ingredients in tonight’s meal are Great Value, and as far as I’m aware, Great Value doesn’t make green onions, beer, saffron rice, or the 3 spices I have there, or I probably would have bought them from Great Value too! About the only thing I WON’T buy from Great Value is their grated parmesan cheese… yuck!