shameless

I had a doc appointment an hour away today. Betsy decided to drive me down so she could hit up Starbucks and Panera Bread (we have neither in the booming megalopolis population 15,000 we call home).

Of course we know this is a bad idea since we are trying to lose 40 lbs each.  But hey, it's a rare treat.

Andy always says 'If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly bear".  So I was.  I blew almost my entire daily caloric intake on the Mac n Cheese.  Seriously. 980 calories.  I mowed down that shit like I knew the apocalypse was coming.

Betsy chose a wiser pasta side to go with her half sandwich, but they forgot to include the snazzy plastic-ware for her to eat it with.  I was supposed to give her mine when I was done but I was so caught up in gooey cheesy bliss she couldn't wait. Literally, I was scraping the sauce from the sides of my carton.

So she ate hers with her hands.  And it didn't even cross my mind that there was anything wrong with that.

Meet Brady

Ah, Brady. Our little feral child.  Andy is convinced we could release him into the wild and he would survive on his own. I'm convinced there is truth to that and this is why he always quickly bonds with animals.

This kid has tons of personality, the sweetest little face with big round blue eyes and wild tangled rats nest hair no matter how short we cut it.

Brady got a bit of a raw deal. He was born when Drew was just 13 months old, just walking.  You know how they say women are super fertile after they have a baby? It's true. I was on low dose birth control and Brady was conceived the VERY FIRST TIME Andy and I 'knocked boots' (heehee that saying is so crude but it just cracks me up) after Drew was born. But he has not suffered any horrendous fate.  In fact, he's just the kid to handle such a careful balance of attention.

Brady is a much moodier kid than Drew was when he was 2.  He turned 2 this month and since about 18 months he has been screaming like a banshee any time someone hugs him, takes a toy from him, gives a toy to him, or does not pick him up when the thought crosses HIS mind, never mind whether he has asked or gestured for someone to do so.

But in the last 2 months he has become extremely affectionate, where he was not from about 16-22 months. Not at all. Now he just comes over and snuggles occasionally throughout the day. And boy oh boy does he LOVE that little sister we just gave him. And he has always adored his big brother. 

Everyone who meets this little guy is just head over heels for him.

Bradyisms:  Where Grew?  Where Daddy? Where Grew? Where Daddy? A WOBOT! A PUPPY! Where Grew? Where Daddy? A wobot, momma! A wobot!

Raising little helpers

What's this? A Dyson vaccuum?  Geez my kids have nicer equipment than I do. 

So Drew has always LOVED to play with brooms, sweepers, and vaccuums everywhere we go, since before he could even walk. I'm pretty sure when he meets the president someday and he asks "what do you want to be when you grow up little boy?" Drew will reply "a school custodian!".  And that's perfectly fine with me.

Granted, the kid isn't all that interested in 'cleaning' or even picking up his toys (watch the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan to know what it's like here when I ask him to do that) but a girl can dream that if she supplies him with all the right tools, he will learn to love it. (read: get really good at it)

Now to buy him a shop vac to suck up all the sand that I dumped in the sunroom for the kids to play with during Brady's birthday party.  Over a week ago. That is still there, just not so much in a nice pile on the drop cloth in the sunroom. More like spread out across the entire room and into the kitchen and den.

Anything for the kids, right? Even if it means my right eyeball pulses and tries to lurch out of its socket every time I step on sand.

a moment on the lips...

a lifetime on the hips.  Ugh. I really hate that saying.  Now that I am in my thirties (well into them) and have had 3 kids, that stupid saying rings so true to me.

But never fear! Betsy and I have started using the app Lose It! this weekend.  I have an IPhone and she has a Droid.  There are tons of apps like it but I like the layout of this particular one the best.  You can scan your grocery items when you are preparing a meal and all of the nutrition info gets stored so I can track what I eat. It calculated how many calories I need to eat to meet my particular goal.

We can also track all of our walks and nursing and any other form of exercise. 

This thing is great--I have to see the damage I've done all day every time I log anything, which is constantly throughout the day so it really holds me accountable.  Or prisoner.  Whichever word works for you.

Best part?  You can add friends (they cannot see your weight, just your loss goal) so that they can motivate you with uplifting messages (get off the couch, fatty!  drop the m&m's, chunkster!).

So my goal is to lose 42 pounds by October.  Wish me luck!

By the way, I hate "a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips".  I much prefer "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels" even though it's a freakin lie.  Even skinny bitches will whoop up on some cheesecake now and then without a thought to how fatty it is.

Clutching her heart and making a sign of the cross....

I mentioned before that a lot of parenting blogs are wartorn, covered in bloodshed from wounds cast by egomaniacal narrowminded parents who think their way of raising kids is the only way to raise a kid.

First, I feel sorry for people who have time to argue with strangers on the interwebs.
Wait, on second thought, maybe I envy them for having that much spare time.

Second, they really need to just get over themselves.

There's a new post over on Baby Sideburns wherein the author calls her kids 'little douchebags'.  She often refers to them with names such as this in jest and it often starts a whole new war on how awful parents must be to call their kids names.

You show me a parent who has never once thought their toddler was a psychotic maniac at times and I'll show you a liar. 

But it's all in good fun, she obviously loves her children but is not afraid to be honest and offer a little comic relief to those of us who understand the frustrations that go with parenting. Especially parenting toddlers.

So I say if this kind of talk offends your sensibilities #1 lighten up and #2 unsubscribe from any blogs authored by parents with a similar (refreshing) sense of humor and honesty.

Crackers and Air

I have so far successfully kept Drew and Brady alive for 3 and 2 years, respectively.  Until very recently, they subsisted mostly on crackers and air.  I know that I am not alone in this--other mommies are with me on the ease of throwing some goldfish in a snack trap to take in the stroller. Or in the diaper bag to have at a waiting room. Or in a car. Or at a park.  I think you follow me here so I'll stop revealing how horribly I fed my kids. Anyway I hated meal times because I would cook and cook all these lovely well-rounded meals and they wouldn't get touched.

Drew decided around 18 months that he no longer enjoyed green foods (read: hated all things that grow in the ground, on trees, on vines, or on farms.) Brady being so close in age to Drew and learning to eat solids around this same time began mimicking his refusals.  I could only ever get them to eat Gerber purees and not a wholesome variety of those.  Oh and Brady would eat a banana every day for 2 weeks before growing sick of them and taking a week off.

I am so jealous of my friends whose kids love snacking on fruits and/or veggies. Or just a fruit and/or a veggie. I would take anything over the Gerber purees.  Betsy's daughter eats plates and plates of raw veggies.  We were preparing crock pot meals and I was chopping a red onion and she tried to steal a chunk of that from the counter. Yuck, but whatever floats your boat, kid. Better than nothing but mac'n cheese.

So I finally got fed up with the boys' refusal to eat wholesome meals and I stopped buying crackers of any kind. We never buy chips or cookies (except animal crackers) so I really didn't make any sacrifices there.

What ensued was a battle of wills. An epic battle.  Wars were waged. Food was thrown. There may have been some swearing. There was definitely some screaming. But never mind my behavior.  The boys were forced to sit in their high chairs with only fruits to eat until they caved.  They were not given snacks.  They were only fed fruits and once they ate those I would give them cereal or a sandwich, whatever was appropriate.

So after a week of this, continuing on the no-snack trend, my kids finally got hungry enough to eat fruit without me forcing them.

Were they starving? Nah. Probably not. And even if they were, they aren't anymore.

 I won this battle, but I haven't won the war. Every day is a fight for control and I have yet to begin the down and dirty vegetable boot camp.

Meet Drew

Drew is my first born. He just turned 3 in March, and I swear to the Almighty God in Heaven he has not stopped crying at the drop of a hat since the moment he blew out his candles.  Is this a three year old thing?  I hope to heaven it ends soon.  It's painfully annoying, and I truly hate to feel "annoyed" by my kids.

On the flip side, the kid is the most huggable, lovable thing since Care Bears.  He always tells me he likes my pretty dress (when I'm wearing a bathrobe) or my pretty shirt (when I'm wearing a worn out old nursing shirt).  He just has this way of making everyone around him feel awesome.  I really like this kid.

Most recent awesome quote......

Me: (singing) "Mommy needs COOOOFFFFeeeeeee!!!"

Drew: (singing a precise mimic of my tone) "Drew needs CHOOOOCCCCCClaaaaaaaaate!"


And the kid really does. Poor thing, Andy and I never give the kids candy except the 'candy' holidays.

Coupon craze doesn't have to be crazy...

Scaling down to a single income household definitely meant we would be making sacrifices.  It has not always been easy, but it is a lot easier than I thought it would be.  We definitely don't go out on enough date nights, mostly because hiring a babysitter for 3 kids would leave us about enough money to pick up a dollar menu item at Mickey D's and cruise the 2 mile strand of Smithfield for about 30 minutes. Because more than that would use too much of the diamond laced fuel that our gas hogs like to burn.

But as long as I'm being honest, 3 kids leaves us zero energy most nights. We get a kick out of sitting on the porch off our bedroom and people watching, finding awful Zombie movies on Netflix, and looking up funny videos on YouTube when we dont have the means or the energy for a date night. 

I am what my father-in-law calls 'cheap'. His more gentle-mannered wife calls me 'frugal'.  I taught Andy early on that sometimes the store brand tastes the same as the name brand. Now Andy is cheaper than me--he recently picked up Food Lion brand 'doritos' instead of the real deal to take to a cookout at his sister's home.  Those do NOT taste the same.

I've never subscribed to a newspaper since I get my news online normally so I've never been a coupon clipper.  And seeing one or two eps of Extreme Couponers further turned me off.  Who has the time for all that? Or the pantry space, for that matter. 

But my new good mommy friend Betsy, who happens to have just moved a half block away, has inspired me to look for deals using the abundant resources on the web.  There are many blogs that put together weekly deals from the major chains.  They make it so simple--you can even select the deals you like, print some coupons linked right there, and print your shopping list.  Our favorite is SouthernSavers.com. 

If you have never tried it, just check out the site.  I have already saved a ton of money on diapers, household necessities like tp, paper towels, and dish soap, and most recently I experienced the euphoria of major grocery savings in Harris Teeter during Triple Coupon Week. Better than drugs, or so I would imagine.

Don't be intimidated.  Start small, like I did.  So here's my first bit of awesome advice if you just want to test the waters:

CVS: if you have not signed up for the Extra Care card, do it right now. Below is a deal I have done 3 times in the 5 weeks or so since I took Betsy's deal hunting advice.

Diaper Deal: Spend $30 on Huggies diapers and get $10 extracare bucks back.
Jumbo Packs are $10 each on sale right now. Wipes are $5.99 on sale right now.
I bought 3 packs of diapers and 2 bags of wipes refills, with tax it was just over $42.
I used $10 extracare bucks I earned on another deal last week.
I used a $1 and $1.50 Huggies coupon from last Sunday's paper.
I also used a $2 Huggies coupon I found in a case I bought at Target last week.
My total was then just under $30, but you get the Extracare bucks based on the retail total, they do not punish you for using coupons.
I received my $10 extracare bucks to use the next time I shop PLUS there is a $10 mail in rebate on the Kimberly Clark website if you spend $35 on Huggies products, so I'll get that too. 

It feels good to be able to save so much money on the things I have to buy all the time anyway, so I hope someone will read this who was unaware of this deal and be on the lookout for future deals.  Drugstore deals turn around on Sundays, but this is the 3rd time CVS has had this Huggies deal in the past 2 months.  If you know someone who needs diapers, share this with them. And check Southern Savers every week for deals in your stores.

Multitasking Mommy

I started a blog over a year ago just to keep track of my little projects and things I was able to do once I quit working and came home.  I never shared it, I didn't really write it for anyone else's entertainment.  I quit blogging when I became pregnant with my third child because I just wanted to sop up every remaining moment with just my two boys.

Since then I have been following a number of parenting blogs because most of the time I gain real knowledge and challenge my mind with the discussions I encounter.  Of course, I have also witnessed more than my fair share of the so-called 'mommy wars' and was initially really disturbed by them.  But now, I have desensitized myself to them. 

The way I see it, we parents are in this thing together. We don't have to do everything the same way; there is no single prescribed method of raising children and developing a strong family and turning our wee ones into good solid citizens.  We each have to do what feels right for our own families.  So I really don't read the bull-headed posts from the narrow-minded folks who name call and criticize parents who do things different from them.  They will always speak their mind but I probably will not justify their behavior with a response.  But I will always read what they have to say because sometimes even if the delivery sucks (we're all guilty at times) something might just broaden my own perspective.

As I was saying, I would love to be able to share some of my thoughts and experiences as a parent from my perspective. I find my mommy and daddy friends to be a bountiful resource and learn new ideas every day and it would make me feel awesome if someone, anyone, found something I had to say useful.  Yes, I sometimes frequently do need to feel validated.

So let me see if I can briefly summarize who I am.  I grew up in Savannah GA, left for NC to attend college and graduate school at East Carolina University, and have made my permanent home in a tiny little town called Smithfield North Carolina.  I will always prefer the south, it is home. Southerners are generally friendly and relaxed and it does me wonders to be surrounded by people far less uptight than I.  My husband Andy is the funniest guy I know, and he was immediately the most amazing and involved father I have ever known, from the moment our first son Drew arrived.  Now we have Drew (3), Brady (2) and Poppy Jane (5 months).  I take care of the children and our home, Andy commutes to Durham to be a network geek during the day, and the kids try their damndest to see just how many times I will wipe down the kitchen counter and pick up toys in any 2 hour window.  One of the greatest things that has happened to me since we made our home in Smithfield is that through Drew's Early Learning Center, I have met some of the most incredible families, most of whom live right here in my neighborhood (yes, Smithfield is that small) and I now find myself immersed in this comfy little window of my life consumed with playdates, mommy nights, and family get-togethers.

And I love every minute of it.