Obsession of the week: Coupons!

The other day I was inspired by this post from a fellow LHS alumni, so I started poking around to see what other deals I could find for my little
family. My eyes have been opened to a whole WORLD of coupons. The
number of sites and blogs dedicated to this is completely overwhelming,
but this week I have scored some majorly good deals and I am hooked.
Ironic, because one of my all time favorite movie quotes is from Orange
County when Catherine O'Hara is telling Colin Hanks about how she almost
married her tennis instructor, Damian, and if she had they'd be "living
in a condo clipping coupons and eating lunch meat." Anyway, I digress.
The point is I guess in the past I have just been too proud (and lazy)
to clip coupons. Really it seemed like $.25 or $.75 here and there just
wasn't worth the effort. Come to find out it adds up fast if you are
careful and don't buy stuff you wouldn't otherwise buy JUST because you
have a coupon.

So here's what I got this week that I'm most proud of.

4 cans of Eric's (Edge) shaving cream for $1.99
Regularly ~$2.50 each = saved $8

2 x 100oz Tide Free & Gentle for 15.98
Regularly ~$14.50 each = saved $13

Needless to say, we are set on shaving cream and laundry detergent for
awhile and I have $21 in my pocket to spend on... Starbucks! Which is
good because I'm totally addicted to their Passion Tea Lemonade.

Seth 37 Weeks

Dear Seth,

You are 37 weeks old today.  I've really been slacking on my weekly letters AND pictures.  It's just been so busy lately and I've been exhausted.

Sleep: last night I'm not 100% sure but I think you slept EIGHT hours in a row.  EIGHT.  It was glorious.  Letting you cry a little bit has really paid off.  The downside is I think you're sleeping better so when you wake up early in the morning you are ready to go!  The last few days you've been bright eyed and bushy tailed before 7am.  It doesn't bother me too much since I have to be up for work anyway, but I'm sure your daddy could use another hour.

Eat:  So due to the above we have been able to drop one feeding at night most nights.  Yay!  So you usually nurse 3x a day now and we try to creatively mix breast milk in with your solid food as much as possible.  You don't have a bottle in the morning at all anymore so I could probably stop pumping at work, but it's nice to keep my stock up just in case. 

Mischief:  Yesterday you plucked the letter H off the keyboard of a laptop, swallowed it, and then up-chucked it (along with most of your dinner).  Auntie Natalie got to deal with that one.  You are a pro crawler now and don't seem too interested in taking the next "step" haha.  If we hold your hands and try to get you to walk towards us you just lower down onto your knees as if to say "guys, this is what I'm doing now, don't rush me."  I'm not sure if this is true of all babies but you sure seem to have a destructive streak.  Daddy builds these elaborate towers out of books and blocks and other various stackable toys, and as soon as you see it you speed crawl over and knock it down.  And no, just knocking it down isn't enough, you have to completely level it and then use one hand to paw at the pile of rubble until it's spread out across the room as much as possible. 

You've got the sniffles again this week.  I can't imagine how horrible it would be to not be able to blow my nose but as usual it doesn't seem to bother you too much.  I try to help you out but you are absolutely against having your nose suctioned or even wiped.  I used to always wonder how "those moms" could let their child run around with snot all over their face, but now I understand.

Once again I thought I would have nothing to say and ended up writing a novel.  And I could probably go on, you are just so fascinating and changing all the time.  I can't wait to see what's in store for you this week!

Love, Mama

Decaf... And tears

I've been virtually caffeine free now for over A WEEK and I think I'm through the worst of the withdrawl. Score! I had been drinking regular coffee again ever since I went back to work, and it had really gotten out of hand. Whenever I would get one of my wicked migraines I would drink a TON of coffee hoping to take the edge off. So I was up to like 3 cups a day or more. Lately I've been contemplating making the switch back to decaf since Seth has been such a little pill at night and was showing NO SIGN of improvement no matter what we did. According to my research you should be able to have up to 5 cups of coffee without affecting your little one, so this may be only temporary. We'll see.

As for the tears… I've been letting Seth cry a little bit. I hate hearing it but I have to admit it works better than anything else we've tried. Against my better judgement we had really gotten into the bad bad habit of rocking him to sleep for almost every nap and bed time. For naps I think both of us - actually all THREE of us - were kind of enjoying the rocking. Eric and I really don't mind rocking in the chair with sleeping Seth in our arms. It's nice and relaxing and it's one opportunity we have to snuggle when he's not squirming to get down or reaching for something. During the day, it's nice. At night, multiple times a night, not so nice. Besides, both of us have fallen asleep in the chair holding him and that is just a recipe for a bump on the noggin if I ever heard one.

So he cries. For the last 3 days or so I've been roughly following the advice of Dr. Ferber and doing a progressive waiting method, starting with 3 minutes, then 5, then 7. About half the time he falls asleep before the 5 minutes is up, and I've never had to go in a 3rd time so far. Last night at bedtime he cried for less than a minute. A big change is that I do not pick him up at all when I go in and I only stay for about a minute or less. This has just been implemented at the start of a nap or at bed time. I'm not doing any timings in the wee hours yet because I'm still trying to catch enough z's to get through the work day, so he has been getting a feeding if it's been 5 or 6 hours. But in just a few days it seems we have already significantly decreased the number of other wake ups during the night which I think is helpful for daddy. I think I'll stick with this routine for awhile and see how it goes before I make any other drastic changes.

Puke part 2

Sorry to keep you on pins and needles, Eric and I were heading out the door to the Spokane County Fair this morning, yay! More on that later. I'm so behind on blogging, OMG! I still haven't even written about Seaside yet. Puke blogging is just so much more interesting and worthy of my time.

Anyway, after Seth was asleep for like 5 minutes and I was thanking my lucky stars, he wakes up and pukes again. On my bed. Somehow it also gets all over his head and his arm. This one could probably technically be classified as spit up, it was pretty much all breast milk. But it had that puke smell. Ick! I was at the end of my rope. I called Eric at work (or maybe he called me?) near tears. I still hadn't completely cleaned up the first puke mess, Seth was all gooey, and by now it was way past his bedtime. Do you even understand how hard it is to get pukey pajamas off an 8 month old without getting it all over yourself and everything around you? I don't think you do. Not to mention the bewilderment I was starting to feel. I mean, why in the world was my precious little angel puking his little guts out?

My night in shining armor came home from work. He cleaned up 99.9% of the puke and changed the sheets on our bed while I called the pediatrician and my mom. Get this - our pediatrician does not have a doctor on call for parents to talk to. Their answering machine message says something about how most insurances have a 24 hour nurse hotline, blah blah blah, "please call back during business hours because we really do want to answer your pediatric questions." Um, what? FAIL! Guess who might be shopping for a new pediatrician? I also could not find anything on my insurance card or insurance company website about any such 24 hour hotline. Meanwhile Seth is just crawling around in the living room in just a diaper, happy as a clam. We took his temperature and it was normal and he did not seem to be upset in the least about the events of the evening. I consulted with my own personal nurse hotline aka my mom and we decided not to worry too much about it unless things got worse. Eric went back to work and I managed to get Seth to sleep without any further ado.

A little later I was laying in bed thinking I was sure I remembered reading something on my company intranet about a nurse hotline available for employees. I found the number and gave them a call just for giggles. Here's a little play by play of that conversation:

Nurse hotline: Hello, how can I help you?

Me: I just had a question for the nurse, my 8 month old son was throwing up a bit tonight for no apparent reason.

Nurse hotline: Um, is this an emergency?

Me: Um, no, not really I guess. I mean, I don't think so...

Nurse hotline: Well does he have a pediatrician?

Me: Yes, their answering machine message says to call the nurse hotline.

Nurse hotline: Well here's the thing. If this isn't an emergency then it's going to be tomorrow before anyone calls you back.

Me: Well that's stupid. If this was an emergency I'm pretty sure I would have called 911.

Nurse hotline: I don't know what to tell you ma'am, I'm just an answering service.

Me: Forget it. *click*

Can you even believe that crap????? I am so annoyed. I immediately e-mailed my HR department and told them what I thought of their so-called "24 hour nurse hotline."

So much for making a long story short. This morning Seth was fine and he hasn't shown any signs of illness or other abnormal behavior except for the record FIVE poopy diapers today. FIVE. We haven't had that many in one day since he was a newborn.

And for the record I have since decided that puke is definitely worse than poop. At least poop is usually in a diaper and not all unpredictable and all over the place.

To puke or not to puke...part 1

PUKE! I have to be honest, ever since Eric and I contemplated becoming parents, I have been DREADING this day (er, yesterday). I have a really hard time with puke, even my own. It could be even worse than poop in my book, but it's really a toss up. So I've been scared about kid puke and having to clean it up, getting it on me, etc. Well last night was my puke initiation apparently. I was getting ready to put Seth to bed and we were having our usual pre bedtime nursing session. When I let down Seth came up coughing and sputtering like he tends to do from time to time. However, this time he didn't just cough, he coughed and gagged, and evicted the ENTIRE contents of his stomach down onto his pajamas, my leg, my arm, and the chair. He'd had a big dinner, green beans, egg, peach banana with some yogurt, mmmm. All over both of us. Of course like most people, Seth doesn't seem to enjoy puking so he was sobbing and crying and trying to bury his head in my chest, with throw up dribbling down his chin. I just sat there frozen like a deer in the headlights.

To make a long story short, I managed to compose myself (sort of), gave us both a bath and got us dressed again. Then he threw up again all over his fresh pajamas, but this time I managed to avoid the shrapnel. So we got yet another pair of pjs on, and laid down in my bed to see if we could get some food down. He nursed a little bit and then fell asleep so I thought I was home free. Not so much.

To be continued....

Random

I have the worst migraine headache this afternoon. I'm thinking about going in to Urgent Care since my regular doctor's office is closed. But wouldn't you know it, I have to wait for Seth to wake up from his nap and today he's decided he wants to sleep longer than the 30 minutes that has been his norm all week.

As much as I hate Wal*Mart, I went there this week to get a new belt for our vacuum (and on that same note - having a broken vacuum when your baby is crawling = gross). Anyway, Wal*Mart's Earth's Best baby food is far cheaper than anywhere else I have seen.

We have been feeding Seth (solids) just at breakfast and dinner, but starting today I'm going to add lunch and see if I can't stuff him full at every meal. I swear he is starving when he wakes up at night, but nursing him during the day is like pulling teeth he is so distracted.

I'm also going to try making breast milk yogurt.

Seth 34 Weeks

Dear Seth,

You are now 34 weeks old and getting to be quite the handful. I mean, you always have been I guess, but these days you are really keeping me on my toes. Your lurching crawl has turned into a full blown coordinated CRAWL and you speed across the room lickity split when you want something, e.g. Max, a newspaper, my shoe, etc.

Now that you've sort of mastered the art of moving around, you've turned your attention to other skills. You clap now, all the time. You don't quite make a sound yet because usually your left fist is pretty much closed, but I know exactly what you're doing. You clap with GLEE when you're happy, and smile and laugh at the same time. You still also love watching other people clap. Yay, clapping is so fun! You are babbling a LOT more now too and have added a bunch of sounds to your vocabulary, mostly "da", "ya", and "la". There have been a few more but they all blur together so it's hard to pinpoint the individual syllables.

Last week while we were on vacation you bit me, twice, in the you-know-what. I was NOT happy about that and I let you know it. It hasn't actually happened since, so either you got the message or you've decided your other annoying habit is much more fun. Lately during the day, you start to eat and then you pull off and squish my boob with all your might with both hands. Milk squirts everywhere, and the first few times it was so funny I couldn't help but laugh. Which I'm sure is why you do it constantly now. It's not funny anymore, it hurts and it's wasteful, so I need you to stop it.

Eating solid foods is going pretty swimmingly. I'm pretty willy nilly about feeding you different foods and haven't kept a real detailed list of what you have had and haven't had or your likes and dislikes. As far as I can tell, you just aren't that into it. There are definitely things that you open your mouth more willingly for than others, and a couple of things you flat out refuse. But so far I haven't noticed you get really excited about anything in particular. If I HAD to name your top three favorites I would probably say Zucchini, Pears, and the Gerber Sweet Potato rice puffs. When you like something you hold your arms out and rock back and forth watching and waiting for the next bite. If it's not something you like but you're just tolerating then you're twisting and turning in the high chair trying to keep tabs on what the cats are up to. If you really don't like it then you fuss and arch your back like you're trying to escape, and eventually you stop opening your mouth. I have found that although initially you didn't seem to like peas at all, if I mix them with enough rice cereal you will eat them without making any faces.

Sleep still has its ups and downs. Naps are ok for the most part, still totally inconsistent in terms of length, but I'm learning not to stress too much about it. Night sleep on the other hand - I'm getting motivated to work on. You're still getting fed right before you go down at night around 7ish, then one other time, and then again when I get up in the morning around 5ish (but you go back to bed). So my preference obviously would be to eliminate that middle feeding because I'm sure it would feel glorious to get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night or at least most nights. You sometimes will go 5 or 6 hours during the day without getting a really good meal so I know this is possible. I just have to be strong. And daddy has to be on board, and maybe he needs to take a couple of days off work since he'll most likely be the one dealing with you at least part of the time. My guess is that it will only take a few nights and you'll get the idea. We'll see. It's hard to really know what you're capable of since you've gotten so mobile. Even if you aren't waking up just to eat, you still wake up and immediately sit or stand up and I'm pretty sure you don't know how to get down yet without falling.

Anyway... I do have a monkey picture that I took yesterday, on time.... but it's on my computer downstairs and I don't feel like going down there to get it posted. So you'll just have to check it out tomorrow!

Love,
Mama