Thursday, November 18, 2010

Seth 10 Months

Dear Seth,

Well my little Sethy Poo, you are 10 months old now. I know I have been a little self absorbed lately and only blogging about coupons and my new job. So this one's for you. I'm a little late as usual, you keep me pretty busy these days. You would NOT cooperate this month when I tried to take your picture with the monkey. You would think I was trying to burn you with a hot poker the way you squirmed and arched your back the whole time. Oh well, better luck next time.


As I briefly mentioned yesterday, you are walking like crazy now. When you want to get from one side of the room to the other, you almost always walk. You only drop down and crawl when you want to get there REALLY fast, and this afternoon you actually took a few fast walking steps first before dropping down and sprinting the rest of the way on your hands and knees. What were you sprinting toward? I'll tell you - the bathroom. You are
obsessed with the bottom drawer where I keep my feminine products. I've had to throw away many a tampon that you've slobbered all over. Thankfully I haven't needed a lot of those lately. One day I also spotted you trucking across the bedroom with one pad in your mouth and another in your hand. Not sure where you were going but you were on a mission with those pads. So anyway, the second you are set free in our bedroom you make a beeline for that drawer and start eating stuff and tossing the rest all over the place. I think we're getting along into your "I-need-to-empty-this-container-immediately" phase. We've strategically placed things around that are safe for you to scatter around. Maybe not completely sanitary, but safe. The tupperware is now in a lower cabinet where you can reach and I spend several evenings a week retrieving plastic bowls and lids from all over the kitchen and putting them away. Today you emptied two of the drawers in your dresser in about 10 seconds flat. We also have a lower drawer where we keep a bunch of "safe" kitchen utensils, like wire whisks, spatulas, wooden spoons, things like that... well last night I glanced down at you and what did you have in your mouth but a MICROPLANE. Um, whoops! And what am I supposed to do, just yank it out of your mouth? Yikes. I managed to extract it from your grip without zesting your mouth, thankfully. And put it away in the correct drawer with the other hazardous and sharp objects. Geez.

Oh! So we did take you for a little checkup at the pediatrician last week. I totally do not know your stats :( I want to say you were about 21 lbs 7 oz and 29.5 inches.... but I can't remember specifically. But that's pretty close. You were fascinated by the big mirror next to the exam table and spent a good amount of time high fiving yourself and yelling. You got a very concerned look on your face when the doctor checked your ears, and were really annoyed about daddy holding you while the nurse took some blood from your toe. But other than that you were very pleased with the whole experience. No shots this time, lucky for you. We talked about the flu shot a little because we were mildly concerned about the puking incidents you'd had after eating eggs. You have since eaten a bit of egg without puking so it's probably nothing, but we decided to just skip it this time. Surprisingly, the doc didn't pressure us about it and just said we might want to get it ourselves since he's probably not going to catch it anywhere else.


What else... oh other fun stuff, the church nursery! We started going to the 5pm service at a church in town and you've been to the nursery 3 weeks in a row now. We put you in with the walkers since you were so close to walking at the time and we didn't want to have to move you right away. You seem to really like it. Plenty of room to cruise around and lots of new toys to play with. Last week while we were signing you in I had you sitting on the counter in front of me and you kept whipping around to see what was going on in the classroom. It was pretty clear you knew where we were and what fun was to be had. I'm excited for you to learn that Jesus loves you.

You've been uncharacteristically fussy this week and today we found out why. Your top two teeth are coming in! Your right tooth is poking right on through and the left one looks like it is not far behind. I'm not sure how I feel about that. When you just had teeth on the bottom you still were pretty baby like but now you're going to be looking so much more like a little boy. *sniff* Where did the time go?


Oh, and one more thing, which is kind of about me I guess. The other day I was trying to juggle some of the shapes from your shape sorter. Really I was just throwing them up in the air and they were going everywhere because I couldn't really do it at all. You were watching me and laughing hysterically. So I got all crafty and made myself three bean bags out of some of your old clothes. And I taught myself to juggle for real. I'm not circus clown material yet by any means but I am proud of my progress just in the past week. I can actually do 5 or 6 tosses before I get out of control and bean bags come raining down around you. I'm determined to be the cool mom who can juggle. Kids eat that up, I'm telling you.



Well my little nugget, it's getting late and I should try to get some sleep. I love you bunches and even though I'm sad to see you grow up so fast, I am already so proud of you and I can't wait to see what you're capable of as you get older.

Love always,

Mama


P.S. We took you to the water park the other day but I have some red-eye fixing to do before I can post most of the pictures. But here's a sneak peek.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Winds of Change

Big happenings today... I resigned from my jobby job. I've accepted a position at CHAS, where I previously worked for 4 years after graduating from WSU. It seems that a new era has begun right on schedule. 4 years of high school, 4 years of college, 4 years at CHAS, 4 years at INHS, and now this. This opportunity actually presented itself about a year ago, and for various reasons ended up falling through. When it came up again I felt like I had to jump on it. CHAS made me a really nice offer - fair salary, same schedule, awesome benefits, the opportunity to work from home occasionally, and most importantly an escape route away from the I.T. support business. Because you know how much I have loved taking calls from the help desk the last 4 years. NOT! So I filled out the application about 2 weeks ago, went in for an interview yesterday, signed the job offer today and gave my notice. PHEW! The last 24 hours have been seriously stressful but I'm finally starting to calm down.

So, on December 1st I will walk out the door of INHS and basically step directly onto a plane to Portland, where I will attend a 2 day training seminar as the new CHAS Business Intelligence Analyst. I know, fancy pants title, huh? We'll just have to wait and see what that really means. For now though my understanding is that it will be everything I love about my current job, and NONE of the things that I hate. Score! And just to be clear, at least 75% of my current job is comprised of the things that I hate. Blech.

And speaking of change... Seth is VERY quickly mastering this whole walking thing. As of today I would say he walks at least as much as he crawls, maybe more. He walks all over the place, it is CRAZY. My BABY can walk. That is so weird.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Rite Aid Rookie Shop

I can't believe coupon has now become a verb in my vocabulary! So I've been "couponing" now for, oh, about a month I guess. It's been a learning experience. I have gotten frustrated a lot because I'll spend some time at home carefully putting together a deal scenario, only to get to the store and have it all fly out the window because I get distracted and put other things in my cart, the store is out of something that I was going to get, etc, etc. But today everything came together, not exactly perfect but I am pretty proud. This is what I bought.


All of the above rang up at $44 and some change. After coupons I ran my debit card for $10.87 and got back $5 in rewards to use on my next shopping trip. So basically $5.87 for ALL of the above. I'm getting better at this! And I have to give Seth a lot of credit, he is so very patient on our bargain hunting adventures. I just wish I could convince him that he should not chew on the shopping cart.

A word of caution about shopping at Rite Aid... if you're paying full price there you are paying too much. Knowing what I do now I would never shop there without matching a sale with a coupon every single time.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Hip Hip Hooray!

So just a quick post here as I promised myself I'd go to bed by 9pm tonight. I've been staying up well past 10:30pm every night lately and it's made the mornings really tough.

I can officially say that Seth is sleeping through the night most nights. He goes to bed really easy right around 7/7:30pm. Before we go to bed we hear him occasionally whimpering a bit but he usually goes back to sleep without needing any help. Once in a great while Eric will go in and replace a pacifier, but that's it. He sleeps good until past 5am now but wakes up then to eat, usually by 6am. But I feed him and he goes back to sleep until at least 7:30, sometimes 8am or later if Eric is lucky.

If you hadn't noticed I have been on hiatus from running since my hip has been bothering me. I have self diagnosed IT(iliotibial) band syndrome. My running friends tell me it's usually because of tightness so I have to let it heal and then make sure I do plenty of stretching to keep that bunch of tissue nice and loose. So I've been "off" for almost two weeks now and I can finally say today it barely hurt when I walked. I'm told after it stops hurting completely I should still wait another week before I start running again. Major setback, boo. After all my research though I am not surprised at all, this is a very common thing to get during pregnancy, which I did, and then have it recur.

So there you have it. That's all I have time for, it is 9:05pm so I'm already late. Night Night.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Seth 42 weeks

Seth my dear,

You are just too cute for words.













Love,
Mama