But anyhoo, between having a new baby and dealing with Sophie’s delays, I didn’t have time to coupon as well as I would have liked.  Oh, I still did my very best, but I had to give up the old coupon binder for awhile.  I still carefully planned my grocery trips every week and clipped what I needed, but  I just felt like the opportunities to save just weren’t there.  And since the sales just weren’t there, our grocery and household items budget went up by quite a bit in 2011.  It was discouraging!

Now that Jonah is older and Sophie is back on track, I have more time to devote to my coupons again.  So, if the stores will just cooperate, I want to slash my budget again!  SO far in 2012 I’ve done pretty well.  I’ve got my binder back up and running, and a recent mega-event sale at Kroger really got me on a great savings path!  Today I hit both CVS and Rite Aid for a couple small deals, which reminded me that:

So, I think I am going to try to start posting my shopping trips again. I shall try to revive the “See Jenny Shop” page, and hopefully I’ll have something good to put there! To get me going, here’s what I got at CVS today:

I likes me some Suave! CVS had a deal, buy $12 worth and get $4 extra care bucks.  And the Zarbees cough syrup was free after ECBs.

2 Suave Professionals shampoo/conditioner $4

3 Suave body wash $6

1 Suave deodorant $1

2 Suave kids shampoo/conditioner $3

Zarbees cough syrup $6

total = $20

coupons:

$1/2 Suave Professionals

$1/2 Suave Kids

Buy 2 get one free Suave body wash -$2

8 extra care bucks

=$8.40 including tax, got back 4 ECB for the Suave and 6 ECB for the Zarbees, so 10 total for next time!  Let’s just hope there are some decent deals next week so I can keep regaling you with pictures of my shampoo and my brother’s lady deodorant!

I think he is trying to kill me.

I don’t know why he would want to do such a thing, since clearly my continued presence on this earth is to his benefit, but the child will not sleep.  As a matter of fact, for the past couple of weeks, he’s been waking up so very so sad at about midnight or 12:15…and then again sometime on or before 2:30, and then usually about 5.

I suppose since he is so young, he probably isn’t clued into the fact that I am a terrible sleeper and that his nocturnal nursing parties are keeeeeling me.  But really.

I’mabboutadie.

Since he and Joshua share a room, we haven’t been able to Ferber him in awhile.   Joshua bunked with Sophie for several months last year while we were trying it out, and I fear we’re going to have to put him back in her room again soon.  But the Ferbering has never seemed to stick with Jonah.  Blargh.

Well, Sophie started sleeping really well when she was about 15 months old…and Jonah is 13 months…so hopefully I’ve got at least eight weeks of fight left in me!  Until then, there’s coffee and Mountain Dew, right?

And at least he’s a cute little killer!

But seriously I’M DYING HERE.

Kate, who is much hipper and also much better at understanding three-year-old-ese, informed me that my interpretation was wrong. Pretty sure there was some eye-rolling going on.

Can you tell what he’s saying?

Can I just tell you how much I love my iPad?  It’s pretty awesome.  And super-convenient to tote around.  And it can do SO many things.  But what I honestly love about it the most are the portable, fun, and never-ending learning opportunities that it’s apps provide for my kids.

The photo above is from an awesome app called Faces iMake. (I made it myself! Aren’t I creative!?) It’s only $1.99 and is well worth that and more for the creativity and fun it will bring into your home.  With this app, you make silly faces out of everyday things – choose face parts from the toy, music, tools, food, and candy categories.  Easily change the size of objects with two fingers, rotate them, add “layers”, color  - the possibilities are endless!  And, this app can be adapted for therapy easily as well.  Learning what group or category objects went was something Sophie and I worked hard on and this app would be a great exercise for learning that skill and a great reward to play when the hard work is done!v  But it’s also just a really fun way to play with your kids or to keep them occupied with something that is good for their brain!

This next app was one of the very first I discovered and it is dear to my heart.  I think it’s a must for any parent of young kids who has an iPhone or an iPad.  It’s called “I Like Books” from Grasshopper Apps and it is 37, yes THIRTY-SEVEN beautiful picture books in one app. And it’s only 99 cents!  The books range from “I love Mom” to “I like colors”.  The pictures are gorgeous real photos and the narration is bright and cheerful.  You can turn the narration off if you want to read the books yourself, or you can even record your own narration in your own voice and change the text if you want to.  These books are so awesome for vocabulary and so much more.  Sophie loves reading them by herself even though we’ve had them for months.  There are so many of them they never get old. A GREAT value!

Finally, I had to mention this great freebie app – Easy Bake Cupcakes. Hasbro cleverly designed this to sell their Easy Bake Ultimate Oven, but it is a GREAT app.  My kids l-o-v-e it, it’s very creative, and if you want to use it for speech therapy, super for following multi-step directions.  With this app you choose what kind of cupcake you want to make, mix the batter, fill your pan, bake the cupcakes, remove them from the oven, then choose from lots of frostings, toppings, and decorations. THEN of course you get to eat them – and start over for more fun. I highly recommend it!

Those are some of my current favorite apps for kids.  The value far outweighs the cost on these!  What are some of your favorites?   Let’s share!

__________________

I received a code to try Faces iMake for free. But look people, I cannot be bought for $1.99.   So the opinions are all my own, and it is a great app!  :)

She’s smart, she’s kind, she’s funny, she’s spirited, she’s strong. She’s loved.

She’s also confident. As she got ready for her school program in December, she looked in the mirror and said “I think I’m going to be the prettiest polar bear on stage.” My husband cringed at the lack of humility; I silently thanked God for her self-assurance. And I prayed that confidence would remain in her always.

Last week, a little girl – younger than Kate, I’d guess around six – stopped Kate in the hallway and said, “Kate, have you gotten fatter?”

I don’t know what Kate’s response was at the time, but I do know that when I got home that evening, she met me at the door and told me what had happened. She was brokenhearted.

“I don’t think I’m fat,” she said. “But the other girls on my basketball team have skinnier legs than I do.”

Then she demonstrated to me how the circumference of her legs increased when she sat down on a chair.

She cried. I wanted to cry and/or bang some six-year-old heads together.

I assured her she wasn’t fat (and even if she was, so effing what?), that she was perfect and that her body was strong and functional and did all the things she wanted it to do. She can run and jump and swim and dance.

Eventually she calmed down, and while she hasn’t brought it up again, I worry that a seed of doubt was planted in her mind, that a piece of the confidence I admire so much was chipped away.

We, as parents, have the responsibility not only to know how to respond to our children when harsh words are thrown their way, but also to make sure that they’re not the ones making comments on the appearance or abilities of others.

How do we do that?

Beats me.

But I’m going to try to figure it out, so that I’m better prepared when (because really, it’s not an if) it happens again.

If you’re interested in this topic and free today at noon, join me in a chat at TheMotherhood.com, to learn about empowering girls. I’ll be back to tell you what I learned – and then maybe we’ll all have a better way to deal than to bang six-year-old heads together.

From her website:
Rachel Simmons is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, and The Curse of the Good Girl: Raising Authentic Girls with Courage and Confidence. As an educator, Rachel works internationally to develop strategies to reduce bullying and empower girls.

The talk will be focused on helping our daughters to discover and embrace the best parts of their authentic selves. It’s a topic I’m passionate about, and I’m sure you are too.

The conversation will take place on Tuesday, January 31 at 12:00 p.m. EST, on TheMotherhood.com.

Hope to “see” you there!

And then sometimes things are just a timeless blur. Time is ticking, the world is turning, but somehow things don’t seem to change. Preschool drop-off, pick-up, clean house, make dinner, little league game, swim practice, homework, bedtime routine, nurse the baby 4,000 times in the middle of the night, alarm goes off way before you’re ready, rinse and repeat.

Things are a bit blurry for me right now. Every day is a slightly modified version of the day before, til the weekend comes and provides a little variety and clarity.

Every day there is lots of joy, but there is also lots of exhaustion. And not a teeny bit of confusion. But along with the early-onset dementia, there are baby kisses and crazy dances from the big kids and family wii bowling tournaments, and if it’s a blur, at least the colors that whirl by as time flashes before my eyes are mostly bright. For that, I am thankful.

Insert life-changing advice here:

******

I’ve been on a bit of a reading kick lately. I have always loved to read, but I seem to go in spurts where I read a lot of books… or stick to reading Facebook and Twitter before bed. Anyway, a few days ago I finished a book that I loved so much I had to share it with you!

Lost and Found: Unexpected Revelations About Food and Money, by Geneen Roth.

Geneen Roth is the author of a number of books about the psychology behind emotional eating and relationships with food, but this is the first of her books that I’ve read. In it, she describes the transformation of her and her husband’s lives after they their entire life savings was stolen by Bernie Madoff.

The Amazon description says it better than I can:

Geneen Roth, who received big kudos from Oprah for her messaging on eating disorders and spirituality, is back this spring with Lost and Found, a new book that explores how emotional issues with money mirror those with food and dieting.When Geneen Roth and her husband lost their life savings, Roth joined the millions of Americans dealing with financial turbulence, uncertainty, and abrupt reversals in their expectations. The resulting shock was the catalyst for her to explore, in workshops and in her own life, how women’s habits and behaviors around money-as with food-can lead to exactly the situations they most want to avoid.Roth identified her own unconscious choices-binge shopping followed by periods of budgetary self-deprivation, “treating” herself in ways that ultimately failed to sustain, and using money as a substitute for love-among others. As she examined the deep sources of these habits, she faced the hard truth about where her “self-protective” financial decisions had led. As in all her books, Roth relates her personal experience with irreverent humor and hard- won wisdom. Here, she offers provocative and radical strategies for transforming how we feel and behave about the resources that should, and ultimately can, sustain and support our lives.

Like I said, I loved this book. I found it really insightful and it made me think a lot about my own issues with food and money and how they might be connected. I’m anxious to read the rest of Roth’s books, particularly “Women Food and God” and “When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair.” (I actually don’t know anything about that second one, but with a title like that it’s got to be a winner.)

What have you been reading lately? Anything you recommend?

Grandma has a “life alert” button on her wrist that she can easily press, but she had for some reason not even been able to do so, probably due to confusion (which is unusual for her). (There goes THAT great idea.)  She had knocked her phone off the hook and hadn’t been able to use it either.

Anna called 911 and Grandma was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where it was determined that she has some sort of internal bleeding that started all this distress. Praise the Lord she did not break any bones, praise the Lord Anna found her when she did!!

Now she is getting all sorts of tests.  Last night they were giving her blood as well.  My mom stayed the night with her in the hospital.  Please pray for our Grandma, and while you do, please read what I wrote about her a couple years ago, and be reminded what a special and wonderful woman she is, and how we love her so.  Thank you.

A Remarkable Woman
originally published September 14, 2009

Yesterday was Grandparents Day. Emily and I saw Maria tweeting about how she was writing about her grandparents, and we thought this was the perfect time to introduce you to our grandma.

There is a lot we could say about our grandma. Like, how when Em’s dad was helping her clean out her house recently (where she’s lived since 1969), he found over 50 plastic rings you get off the top of a milk jug, that she was keeping around, you know, just in case. Or that she watches waaaaay too much cable news, or has been convinced for as long as we can remember, that she is going to win the Publisher’s Clearinghouse (seriously? Stop getting her hopes up, you jerks!)

But while those things are evidence of her quirkiness, they are not really indicative of who our grandma is.

She is quiet, she is very shy. Recently when my mom and I were talking about how my Sophie doesn’t really like big groups or parties, Grandma laughed, and said, “Well she gets that from me!”

My grandmother is certainly old-fashioned and conservative, and yet she is the most independent woman I know. She married at twenty, and had two kids in 11 months (that gives me heart palpitations!). She moved from her home in Kentucky to Ohio with her husband and two toddlers so he could take a job at Frigidaire and give their kids a better life than they had. She kept house for twenty-four years, and then, our grandpa died suddenly. He had a heart attack at age forty-four. Her two kids were grown, and she was alone, about to become a grandmother, supposed to be enjoying an empty nest. Who could have imagined?

Fortunately, Grandma had gotten her driver’s license a couple of months before Grandpa died. Up until that time, he’d done their grocery shopping every Friday after work, because she didn’t drive.

When speaking of Emily’s parents wedding, which took place just three weeks later, my grandma told my mom, “I never wanted to break down so bad in my life.”

But she didn’t. She got a job at Elder-Beerman, a local department store, and worked there for the next twenty years until she retired. I think she retired because she was 65 and that’s what people DO when they are 65. She could have worked longer, it seemed. But she devoted time to being a grandma. She was the best hide-n-seek player EVER, and really, still is. I have never seen her run out of patience with a child. She mowed her lawn, cleaned her own gutters (and has been scolded for doing the latter as recently as this spring!), and every Sunday, cooked an amazing lunch for her entire extended family. Emily, her sister, Anna, and I owe our closeness I think, in large part to Grandma and her Sunday dinners. To say the majority of our childhood bonding happened there over biscuits, meatloaf, hide-n-seek, and rummy games would not be an exaggeration.

Now our grandma, though thinner and a little more white-haired, still opens her house to us every Sunday, though we don’t make it nearly as often. But we do see her as much as we can, because, well, she is the best cook in the entire world, and because our children adore her. They love her never-ending supply of desserts, coddling, and energy for hide-n-seek.

And we love watching them love her.