Floor Pooper

Filed Under Diapers/Potty, Fifteen Months, Firsts | 5 Comments

Just like it sounds. Today, I told Bailey we were going to go in her room and change her diaper. She walked in her room with me and she took off her diaper. I turned around to the changing table, to get a cloth diaper ready so I didn’t have to hold her squirming body down on the changing table any longer than necessary… and of course right as I turned back to pick her up, she was squatting on the floor, pooping. She left a little doody right in the middle of the floor. Then she stood up and walked over to her toy box to play. Nice.

Believe it or not, this is the first time B has EVER pooped or peed on the floor. She goes diaper-less quite a bit and it finally happened. Quite intentionally, too. I’m not sure what to think. But it was definitely gross.

Prayers for Stellan

Filed Under Prayers | 3 Comments

Please say a prayer for this family and their unborn baby, Stellan. He is dealing with heart problems and time is running out for the doctors to find a solution. The mom is just amazing and full of faith- I don’t know that I would have that same attitude if my child’s life was hanging in the balance- I would like to say I would but honestly… anyway the story is incredible and if you have a minute please go check out their blog! Leave them a comment to encourage them, and stop to pray for Stellan.

And bring a kleenex when you head over to their blog.

Wordless Wednesday- Building a Tower

Filed Under Fifteen Months, Toys, Wordless Wednesday | 9 Comments

Skin Care Product Reviews

Filed Under Avon, Me, This Rocks | Leave a Comment

I finally decided to be an adult, and I have started actually washing my face at night, and using a night cream and an eye cream. I can already tell the difference in my skin. It kind of makes me wonder why I didn’t do this all along. The stuff I have been using, is the Avon Anew Retroactive line. The products are all very affordable, especially compared to other department store skincare products or other home sales companies such as Arb*nne and M@ry K@y.

Here is what I do at night:
1. I use the Anew Retroactive 2 in 1 Cleanser to wash my face.
2. I put the Anew Rejuvenate Eye Cream (night) on my eyes.
3. I put the Anew Retroactive Youth Extending Night Cream on the rest of my face.

In the morning, all I do is use the Anew Rejuvenate Eye Cream (day) on my eyes before my makeup. I don’t use a day cream on the rest of my face because I use a primer instead.

I never thought I would be a skin care junkie, but I enjoy using this stuff. It makes me feel great about my skin, and I like that i can actually tell the difference. So I know it’s not a waste of my time, or my money.

Another thing I discovered recently is Clearskin Immediate Response Spot Treatment. If you are looking for an acne treatment, this is a topical cream that you can use as prevention or after you feel a zit coming up. My friend Faith says that it works better than any other stuff she has tried. I also have to tell you, she used to use Arb*nne. The reason I am posting about it again right now is because it’s on sale for 99 cents with the purchase of any other Clearskin product.

Check out my website for more info, and use the code REPFS for free shipping!

My Hair

Filed Under Avon, Hair | 1 Comment

A friend commented to me today that she noticed my hair cut/color and liked it. I get my hair done by this girl. If you want her contact info, just ask!

I also found a picture of a haircut I like on this blog. Do you think I could pull this off, only little bit longer than in the picture? I like having short hair but last time Jonathon told me I looked like a mushroom

Also, a new Avon recommendation. Forget using random pimple cream. A friend of mine has been using the Avon Clearskin Immediate Response Spot Treatment and says it’s the best thing she’s tried. It’s only $4.99– And in the past she has also used both Arb*nne and M@ry K@y.

My Dad’s 63rd Birthday

Filed Under Birthdays, Fourteen Months | 1 Comment

My dad’s birthday was actually like two weeks ago and I am just now getting around to posting pictures. I can’t believe my daddy is 63. I know that’s not old but sometimes when I look at him I really notice how much older his face looks than it used to. And for me, an only child and daddy’s girl, it’s hard to see your hero getting older. We had our crazy fights when I was in junior high/high school but he is still a great dad and just a good person all around. I can’t imagine life without him and now birthdays are not only a celebration of life but also a reminder that we won’t be here forever.

Enough of that. It’s late and I’m sentimental and I just wanted to post some birthday pictures! We had a fun celebration for him at our house. It was just family and we opened a few presents (Bailey helped) and we ate cake (she still doesn’t really like it). He got some golf stuff and Cardinals stuff, which is the usual for him. Bailey is really starting to understand bringing presents to someone and then helping them to open. She is also figuring out that cards are boring and the presents are the good stuff! Now, I appreciate cards. As a kid? The boring thing you had to get through before you got your toy/clothes/cd/etc.

Here are a few pics from that day. You can click to enlarge them. I trimmed Bailey’s bangs the day before, so if you look closely you can kind of tell that they are less scraggly.

Good news about taxes

Filed Under Money, This Rocks | 5 Comments

We are getting almost $2000 more back! There was an error with claiming Bailey as a dependent (as in, Turbotax politely did NOT accept her information and I didn’t realize it because it still showed her name on the “dependent list.” Fortunately, we figured out what went wrong and my 1040X amended form will be going in the mail on Monday. Cross your fingers that we get the money back soon. That would be a huge help in paying some of these bills that we always seem to have. Also, then we get the $300 economic stimulus for B too (that’s how we noticed something was amiss, we got no kid money with it).

Things I Love Thursday- Little People Books

Filed Under Books, This Rocks | 5 Comments

This isn’t a blog carnival that I always do, but sometimes I have something I really love that I want to share with my five readers. So, here’s my “thing” for Things I Love Thursday.

Fisher Price Little People Board Books. We have been lucky enough to get Bailey a decent collection of Little People stuff at yard sales. Well about two months ago my mom got B a Little People Our Town book at Sam’s.

She absolutely fell in love with it. There are so many little things to “find” on each page, like frogs and bunnies and trees and balloons. It is the greatest vocabulary builder. Bailey can point out so many things now after working on this book with her. She is now 15 months old but I think these books would be great for any baby/kid up to like age 2 or 3.

I decided to look for more of these books, and retail is around $10 each. There are a bunch of different titles, including Fuzzy Farm and Things That Go. I was lucky and found 3 books NEW on eB@y for $10 plus shipping. Each book has over 40 flaps to lift- and they are REALLY sturdy. Bailey hasn’t ripped or bent a single one yet. And you know how kids that age are with books, especially flappy books. She would rather read these books than anything else. If you have a kid around this age I seriously recommend these!

For more Things People Love, check out The Diaper Diaries.

Wordless Wednesday- Straight From the Tub (finally)

Filed Under Fifteen Months, Wordless Wednesday | 6 Comments

Still having issues with Wordpress posting my pictures- story for another day- but anyway here are the cute ones of B after her bath the other night. She is trying to stop crying in this first one

And apparently it’s a lot of fun to read when you’re naked! Who would have known?

Clean Carpet

Filed Under Home Sweet Home | 3 Comments

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Here is my Tuesday Toot. I can’t really take ALL the credit for this, but I scheduled our carpet cleaning and got the carpets cleaned today. Including the oh-so-nasty downstairs carpet. We had it deep cleaned and pet odor treated and sanitized, which killed 99.9% of the germs and bacteria. NOW I feel like Bailey can play on that floor. So we are going to turn that room into a play area for her. We are going to get a big fun rug for the middle of the floor and bring her big toys down there. The ones that are cluttering up our living room and leaving not much room for anything else. Jonathon said he would set up a laptop for me down there. And there is a recliner and a tv. So this should be a very good thing.

I have been saying I wanted that carpet clean for three years now. Seriously. Then we were going to replace it. Then we didn’t have the extra money… really we still don’t… That’s why it’s such a big deal to me.

(If you are local and you want the name of the company, contact me. They have a special, 5 rooms and a hall for $40. What ran the price up was all the extras we had done to the downstairs.)

Straight From the Tub

Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Well at some point I will get these pics posted… only been trying to all day but something is wonky with Wordpress today. Also, Bailey slammed her head into my mouth while she was throwing a fit, and she busted my lip open. It’s pretty.

Book Meme

Filed Under Books | 1 Comment

I got this from Kasey and because I am a bookworm nerd I thought I would see how many of these I had actually read. Here’s the deal-

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE – Mine are Red.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling -
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible – Um, some of it.
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare – has anyone read all of them? I’ve read Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Taming of the Shrew, Romeo and Juliet…
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – I actually had to read part of this once for a class and thought I was going to die of boredom.
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck – boring book about wandering in dust.
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy – Does seeing the movie count?
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres – saw the movie
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan -
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel -
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov -
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker -
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce -
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath -
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad -
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery – had this as a kid!
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams -
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

*I also read a pamphlet about Phentermine 37.5 mg today, and finished a chick lit book. If those count for anything.

Some new communications skills

Filed Under Fifteen Months, Talking | 4 Comments

Bailey is fifteen months old now. Her vocabulary is growing slowly but surely. If she says something consistently and means the same thing with it, I count it as a word. Even if the pronunciation is a little bit off

She has recently added:

Um-vvv (movie)
Eye
Muh (mouth)
Guh (grampa or grammy)
Puh Puh (please, this started because we were saying “PUH PUH” trying to show her how to make the P sound)
Dih (This)

Obviously she leaves the end off of most words, and always has. I am guessing that will come with time. She seems to have it all in her head and understands whatever we say to her, she just can’t or won’t make it come out of her mouth. I always read blogs/talk to friends whose kids the same age have been saying full words for months now, and I worry that she’s behind. Then I remember she walked at ten months and I try to remind myself that she can’t do everything. She has probably been focused on physical development. I am just looking forward to her being able to tell me what she wants.

Here are a few other fun things she has started doing lately:

She can smile/show her teeth on command- I will have to get a picture because the face she makes is so funny.

Blowing kisses is now with an open hand instead of a flinging fist

During a funny moment we taught her “You tooted… What does a toot say?” And she makes a farting/raspberry noise with her mouth! I know that’s just charming to teach a little girl… but hey, it’s good for a few laughs.

Ni-Night Muffie

Filed Under Fifteen Months, Sleep | 2 Comments

Every night/nap before we put Bailey to bed we sing the “Ni-night Muffie Song”

Ni night, Muffie
Ni night, Muffie
Ni night, Muffie
It’s time to go to sleep.

Thursday Thirteen, because it’s been a while

Filed Under Future, Thursday Thirteen | 4 Comments

I haven’t done this meme in a long time. And after my negative post last night (which I am glad I password protected) I think I need to write something positive. Here are some things I am looking forward to:

1. Meeting my friend Cara for lunch at this great Mexican restaurant

2. Delivering my Avon orders and getting some cash!

3. Seeing my friend Faith tomorrow- shopping and eating at Chevy’s

4. Going out to breakfast with Jonathon tomorrow (he’s off work) and then maybe going to Grant’s Farm or the Magic House or something with both him and Bailey.

5. Picking up my stuff that I left for custom picture framing and hopefully having our bedroom more “decorated” looking.

6. Nothing at all planned for Sunday- relaxing, hopefully!

7. Getting our carpet cleaned next Tuesday. It really needs it. I had it scheduled for this week, but someone (ahem, Jonathon) didn’t get the downstairs cleaned.

8. In two weeks, I am taking my mom to a Stampin Up card making class for her birthday.

9. In September, we are going to Disney World!!! I have been reading these boards obsessively lately.

10. I also turn 28 in September. Not that I am excited about getting another year older, but I love celebrating my birthday. I hope I still love celebrating it when I am even older.

11. For lack of anything else in the reasonably near future… I am looking forward to Halloween! We already have Bailey’s costume, but I’m not going to tell you what she’s dressing up as. It’s cute, and surprisingly, it’s not super-girly. Just for fun, here’s a pic from last year when she was Tinkerbell.

12. I am signing Bailey up for a few Parents as Teachers classes this fall. One of them is an eight week motor skills type class. We are also doing some singing and another gym class. (If you aren’t enrolled in PAT and you have a child under three, call your school district. It’s a great program. If you are in Missouri, I guarantee they have it because they get state funding and it’s a mandatory program. We have parent educator visits at our house every three months, but they also have lots of free one-time classes and fairly inexpensive multi-week classes.

13. Cooler weather? It’s been in the 90s here and I have been avoiding outside. Yuck.