after 3 years of marriage, billy and i have made the decision to create a family blog. so after 8 years of having my very own blog, i bid adieu to my superstartami days.
you can now find my thoughts, as well as billy's at:
http://librumoftime.blogspot.com/
even though i am super excited to have a new little baby in the house, i've not taken the time to post much about this second pregnancy. so i thought i'd take a moment to share.
a few reasons i'm really excited emily will be our next child:
1) outfits i never had the chance to put alice in will finally be put to good use!
2) making bows and hats, and buying "girly" things now seems like it is less frivolous. = )
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| the bow board for alice & emily |
this was the first year (in 5 or so years) that i've worked on my birthday. normally i take the day off and spend it relaxing and doing anything i please, but this year i went in. my students did not make me feel special, and i just felt down all day. billy took me out to the new york pizzeria (my choice) but they failed to meet my expectations = (
our diaper of choice for little alice is pampers, so i keep all the codes so we can get "free" stuff. because i'm signed up with them, every now and again i get diaper offers and updates on promotions they are putting out, but this is the first time i've been offered a freebie.
sadly, i don't have a shutterfly account, so i don't think i'll be able to take advantage of this offer, but i thought i'd share with anyone who might subscribe to them = ) walgreens ran a similar offer, and the photobook we got came out really cute! below is the email:
Your little pirate or princess looks so cute dressed up for Halloween. It’s a treat you’ll want to share with everyone.
i don't know if this is a code just for me, or if it's a generic code, but feel free to use it! if you do use it, let me know how it turns out ; )
Capture every boo-tiful memory with a free 7x9 soft cover photo book * from Shutterfly. Just add your pictures and we’ll create a keepsake 20-page 7x9 photo book for you in minutes. (A $15.99 gift)*
Promo code: GT58-CKN6-5413-VRX875
Offer ends December 6, 2010
okay, so since my newest 'hobby', if you will, is reading random blogs (i find these by clicking the "next blog" link at the top), i am finding amazing photographic inspiration, cool craft ideas, and now freebies!
i never really used the moby wrap that i bought when we had alice, because it was so crazy complicated! so i wanted a new 'body' carrier for the next baby, and when i found this post, i thought "yay!"
i went to this site today, found one that i liked, and sure enough, they really only do charge shipping (and $5 if you get the 'gift set'). granted shipping is $12, but that's a quarter of the listed price, and knowing that i'd have to pay it to get one at full price anyhow, makes it worth it = )
SevenSlings.com has a brand new promotion going where you get 100% off any of their baby slings when you use promo code "milkbands".
This promotion will allow you only one purchase per transaction so please take your time to get the right size and pattern for you! This offer will expire without notice -so don’t delay! These fitted slings are safe for infants to toddlers 35lbs and under!
Go to http://www.sevenslings.com/ , click on “Shop Now”, and select the correct size sling or gift set you would like (be sure to visit the sizing page for instructions on how to select the right size sling for you). Once you have selected the sling or gift set you would like, enter "milkbands" into the promo code box and click “Apply Code”. This will bring your product total from $39.00 to $0 for a pouch sling or from $44.00 to only $5 for a 3-piece gift set - all you are required to pay is the shipping & processing!
Sincerely,happy shopping = ) i'll try to update when i get this and let ya'll know if it's any good ; )
Jenny Pierce
Owner
MilkBands.com
*You may have heard about the Infantino™ “bag sling” recall. The recalled Infantino™ slings are not the same type of baby sling found at sevenslings.com. The recalled slings were “bag slings” and were similar to an elastic closure purse where the baby sits closer to your thighs than your chest. Seven Slings are fitted, non-adjustable “pouch slings” and hold your baby right up close to you on your chest where you can see and kiss your child. There has not been a recall associated with “pouch style slings”.
so, before modern medicine the gender of the baby was decided via old wives tales, grandma's premonitions and other completely reliable methods. while reading a random blog (yes i do that when bored) i stumbled across this link:
http://www.thebump.com/calculators/ChineseGenderChart.aspx
it is a chinese gender chart. i figured it be fun to see what they predict, before i get an 'official' modern medicine prediction. it claims 90% accuracy, so i guess we'll see come november 5th if we are planning to have a little girl, or if we're in the 10% error range ; )
i've been a long time patron & advocate of thrift store shopping, i'll go any time the offer is put on the table and take along anyone interested in coming. but recently (for about the last 3 weeks) i've found that i'm waking up early on saturday morning (about 45 minutes later than my normal wake up time) to go to community garage sales.
it started of course with our own neighborhood having a garage sale (i just had one in july, so i wasn't prepared for another one), so instead i walked around the neighborhood and hit about 15 garage sales. all for under $25! i had to come home, not because i was out of cash, but because i physically could not carry any more! now, i could have gone back out, but it was getting later and most of the "big items" were gone.
the next weekend we went up to the ren faire, but this week, at about 6:55 i woke up without assistance from alice or an alarm so i got up, researched some nearby garage sales, got alice ready (to stay home with daddy) and headed out.
my first stop was the one furthest from our house, and it was part of a community garage sale. i went to about 15 or so garage sales again. the first stop i hit three sales, and found my best deals at the third stop.
i bought a $3 car rug for my nephew coyt:
so, apparently i'm a day late blogging (megan and ivonne both posted yesterday), but this story is in retrospect anyhow, so any day will do = )
tonight when i came home, alice and i checked the mail (she opens the mailbox and i take out the mail), and we had received a domino's advertisement (among others) which made me think about dinner. i'm not a fan of having pizza for dinner, just because it leaves me hungry, and i have trouble finding a suitable vegetable with which to pair it. so instead we opted for pizza hut's chicken alfredo pasta.
i didn't make a side of veggies, because i was a bum, but i did have some grapes beforehand ; )
now looking back: when i had finally come to terms with my morning sickness last month, billy and i were going to order the pasta dish. billy came out and said, "you pick, any of them sound good to me," so i chose lasagna. as soon as i said it billy came back with "except that one!" = ) now, i'm not usually a fan of lasagna, but since i had just recaptured my appetite, billy gave in and we had lasagna. he admitted that he really didn't want the lasagna, but he was banking on my picking either of the other two options.
so now, when i ask him if he wants pasta, he always makes sure to make his opinion known = )
billy has been having issues breathing, and is currently taking some medication to keep the issue in check. so that he is not bound to the medicine for the rest of his life, his doctor wanted him to participate in a sleep test.
so, saturday night at around 8:00, billy headed out to the clinic. this wasn't too bad, seeing as how alice and i tend to go to bed around 8:30 (yes i go to sleep at the same time as my baby) = ) i was feeding alice her last meal, when i realized i really missed billy. so i was talking out loud to alice, and i' said, "wow alice, i really miss your daddy and it's only been.... 15 minutes?!?"
of course, this made for a long evening, even though we went to bed very soon after. alice slept with me (i couldn't bare to sleep alone), but when i turned off the lights, alice feel into a peaceful slumber within 5 minutes. after billy called (to let me know he was all checked in), i turned back on the light and read until my body refused to stay awake.
even after turning the light out once more, the sounds of our house, and my vivid imagination kept me awake. i slept wakefully, wondering each time what had woken me. billy was due to come home sometime between 5 and 8, but when 3am rolled around, i was still just as miserable.
once billy finally came home (at around 5:20), he too had had a miserable night's sleep, attached with adhesive to a machine, then being awoken at 5:00, so that he could drive home.
despite being miserable apart, as soon as he was next to me, i joined alice's world and slept like a baby, until of course, alice decided it was time to get up = ) being slightly sleep deprived on sunday, made me particularly grateful for the long labor day weekend.
i've been waiting for a slow day to post this event, and it's taken me a month to find time (not to mention that now the pressure is on to get things done before i head back to work).
on july first, i flew sarah down to help us finish moving in and organize the garage sale stuff. we were both excited that she would be flying, so that she could drive back up with us for the fourth of july.
when the day finally came around, it was a cool, overcast day, so alice and i headed to hobby about the time she was due to take off from dallas love. about 3/4 of the way there, sarah called me to say that the flight was delayed an hour, because of weather on our end.
i had brought some books to sell to half price books, so i thought i'd look for a place to pull over and look up a location on my phone. but, the closer we got to hobby, the harder it rained. this was right at the time hurricane alex hit the mexican coast, so it wasn't too surprising that we were getting some of the outlying rain.
since i drive a low car, i stay out of the right lane during and after rain storms, but it was coming down so hard, i couldn't even see the lanes. i decided it would be best if we just went to hobby and waited it out.
sadly, there is not much of a resturant on the outside of the security checkpoint, and all of the seats were full, so alice and i waited near the arrival exit.
sarah called again and said they were delayed indefinitely, but when i talked with my mom on the phone, she said they had taken off according to the website. sarah called me about 2 hours later to let me know that they flew down to houston, but could not get permission to land, so they flew back to dallas.
at this point i was starving, because i wanted to eat lunch with sarah, but i had to have something, so alice and i shared a chocolate chip cookie. = )
after 3 hours of carring around alice and her bag, i saw a lady who had checked out a luggage cart, and it had a child seat! best $4 i've spent on a rental ever = )
so, for the remaining part of the delay (another 2 hours) alice and i took some pictures of alice doing various "airport things"
the big fan outside was neat for a little bit, but it wasn't all that cool, and he humidity was awful!
my sweet alice is less than a month from reaching the impressive one year mark. looking back at how active she is, and how much she's grown, i'm still a bit skeptical that this is the same baby i brought home from the hospital.
our original move was scheduled for the week after school let out for the summer. sadly, due to appliance delivery issues, we've spent the month of june still living in two places.
since we still sleep at the apartment, we do our errands and chores around the apartment. the first, a minor, but none-the-less sad change was the closing of the auto shop we had billy's car inspected in last year. in the words of radar "i was only there once, but i really liked it". not too big of a deal, but these things add up.
one day billy came home after making a trip to one of their project sites, and informed me that they had closed cici's! i was shocked.
when we first moved to houston and visited this particular location for the first time, i asked whether or not they served chocolate pizza. his answer was yes, they were one of only two left in houston that served it! (i was so excited since the ones in lubbock & waxahachie stopped serving it years ago). = )
billy and i enjoyed cici's particularly, because they are very child friendly, and so it didn't matter if alice started making a little bit of noise. we would go at 11am, 2pm, 7pm, it didn't matter they were always busy! so naturally i was very sad when he told me this.
i feel someone relieved knowing that the cici's (very close to our house) still serves the chocolate pizza. now, of course i believed billy, but it didn't add up, and seeing is believing. so the next time we drove by, sure enough the sign was gone = (
the third and final closing that has really encouraged me to make this post is one of my 'mini vacation spots,' komart. komart was an asian grocery store we would visit once every 2-3 months to stock up on billy's spicy mustard, my potstickers, and various other interesting souviners we would find.
billy and i bought our house in april, april 13th to be exact. that friday just happened to be the start of the state incentive energy star appliance sale.
so, we went to home depot and ordered our refrigerator and dishwasher, then headed to lowes for our washer and dryer. our washer and dryer came with in a week, on time and perfect!
since we were ordering on the incentive weekend, there was a wait for our refrigerator and the dishwasher would be delivered when the refrigerator came. about 4 days before our refrigerator and dishwasher were due, we measured our kitchen, and found out we wouldn't be able to open the door of the refrigerator we had ordered all the way! (oops) so we had waited a month for a refrigerator only to cancel it at the last minute.
so we went into home depot and cancelled our refrigerator that night. our dishwasher was due to arrive the next monday, but when the delivery driver called billy, he wanted to deliver the refrigerator instead of the dishwasher. something went awry and we didn't get our dishwasher. so we cancelled the order and waited to get our money back.
once we had the money at our disposal, we ordered a new shiny refrigerator from best buy.com. we had to wait another two weeks, and it was due the sunday before memorial day. the delivery service called billy saturday to confirm, and then we waited at the house for the whole four hour window sunday.
billy called them two or three times, and they kept saying it was late but still "out for delivery." at around 8pm billy called the delivery service and they told him it was in the warehouse, never made it to a truck. when billy called back at 10, they said the driver had gone to the address, but couldn't locate our house (after telling us they came by and there was no one home). in any case, they had spliced together our old apartment and our house in a way that made no sense.
so, billy arranged with them to come the following morning. billy met them in the driveway, and they had brought the wrong refrigerator! we ordered one with a silver colored front and sides, this one had black sides. so billy sent it away. we were both unhappy by this time.
later that day, billy called customer service to make sure we would be getting the correct refrigerator. they apologized and fixed the order (and our address).
so the next weekend we waited again, still no refrigerator, though billy had called and called and called after our previous experience. 3 hours after our delivery window had passed, billy finally had the customer service rep. go to the warehouse and check the color agian. wouldn't you know it was the wrong one.
needless to say we cancelled our order with best buy (as well as black listing their appliance department), and again waited for a refund.
after we had the money refunded, we headed to lowes (since they seemed to have no problem delivering the washer & dryer), but by this time, we are moving in less than 2 weeks, and it will take 21 days before it even gets into the store. then, we have to set up a delivery date. = (
since we can't live without a refrigerator, we explored our options (renting, borrowing, buying a 'mini') and finally opted to buy a mini.
when we were at walmart, we found the mini fridges, they had one for $75. billy loaded it into the cart, and wouldn't you know, two checkers & a manager couldn't get it to ring up. by this point i'm laughing, it is just to ironic that we can't even buy a mini refrigerator! = ) finally, the manager did an override, and we checked out to head to the house.
billy set it up, and it's all we've got for now, but at least it'll keep our milk & alice's formula cold!
about two weeks ago, we ordered our new dishwasher from lowes. since it was the state-wide tax free weekend, and samsung was an additional 10% off, we knew we'd have a wait.
our dishwasher arrived in the store last friday, they called billy to let him know the installers would be calling tuesday. they didn't call. so billy tried to call them, and finally on wednesday, i was able to set up an appointment with them for thursday (today).
alice and i waited for them to come. i took a before picture of our dishwasher, which i was super excited to have hauled away.
