What's Happening?

It's about time for some updates, wouldn't you say? We've had a few things happening around our place, but not too many which we consider a good thing. Now, where to start ...

Janie! This girl is a person all her own. If it's possible for her to be an easy baby and a handful at the same time, that is certainly what she is. She's really happy and learns quickly (she'll even obey the word NO more than 50% of the time and hand things to me the first time I ask, even when it's made it to the mouth already, which I think is pretty good for a 1 year old) but she has more energy than the electric company. Some of her more interesting developments include finally starting to crawl a whole 2 days after her doctor said don't worry about it. We tried to get her to do it for 3+ months just to have her do it when we didn't care any more. How typical! The other thing she's doing that I can't say I'm too fond of is playing on her tummy during bath time. It's not so much the actual being on her belly. It's that she likes to stick her face in the water and blow bubbles while humming. While I have to admit that it's REALLY cute, it sure makes me nervous since she's usually pretty hyper and breathing quickly while she does it. She's choked herself up just a couple of times but has done better at it than I expected. I'm just not sure if I should do anything about it or not worry since she has my full attention while in the tub and so I'll be there instantly for any necessary rescue. I don't give her any reaction though to try not to encourage it. That's the best I can come up with so far.

As for her other adventures, she's doing a much better job pulling up on things so she's finding more opportunities to make messes, or play games if you ask her about it. :o) We have a candy dish with wrapped hard candy that she loves to throw all over the place. She'll put it back too when you hand it to her so it's not too bad. She's discovered more drawers, and in turn, is trying to climb up the drawers. She's started scaling the stairs on her own but pulls up on the railing and tries to climb it too. She doesn't cruise yet - walk while holding on to stuff other than people - so I find it odd that she's already trying to climb things. I'm not a huge fan of that either. But she's pretty fun to watch when she's exploring and trying to find her next opportunity to cause destruction. She loves to dance too. One day we were over at Mark's parents house and his mom decided to show us one thing she likes to do when Janie comes over. She set Janie by the stereo holding onto the coffee table and turned on David Archuletta. Next thing you know, Janie's dancing her little heart out. It was sooooo funny!!! She would walk up to the stereo, push a few buttons which would cause the song to change, and then start dancing again. Wish we had videos of it. We do have one of her playing peek-a-boo with herself in a mirror with our drapes that's pretty cute. And I'm happy to say that she's a little more social with other babies - mainly boys - than she used to be.

Mark is still plugging along in school. Since it was really hard for us to keep up with two full time jobs, a full time school load, a baby going on toddler, house cleaning, and trying to have a life, we decided to have Mark quit his job. It was also so he could focus on finding a job related to what he actually wants to do for a career rather than stay at some dead-end job with no future. So after our first week of being officially poor, it's been kind of nice. The stress level has gone down some and we've been able to get more done at home and enjoy more of our time together. There's an added element of stress in that we're a one-income family a lot earlier than planned, but I really feel it's for the best. The sooner we can get Mark into an entry level job, the sooner I can stay home with my baby and unleash my domestic side like never before. (See, it's all for selfish reasons.)

And I have found a new addiction in the form of money saving websites. The one that started it all is www.utahdealdiva.com which has a ton of different money savers - grocery stuff, toys, free samples, web deals, etc. And it was this website that introduced me to www.grocerysmarts.com which covers a few more states than just Utah. Once you enter your state's code (Utah's is g84cjw) you can pull up a grocery store on their list and it will show you everything that is currently on sale for that week and where you can find any coupons to match up with those sales to make some of them super cheap. It also rates them based on how good of a sale it is - 3 stars is an ok sale, 4 stars is pretty good, and 5 stars is worth stocking up on for food storage. I've tried it twice so far - the first time by price matching at Walmart, and the second by just picking the store with the best deals for stuff we would use and only going there. The price matching trip was only so so - couldn't find a bunch of the products, they were really slow in ringing me up, and they don't do coupons with the price matched items. For the second trip I grabbed my friend Melinda and went to Albertsons. She bought a bag of cereal and a gallon of milk for $8. I got about $109 of stuff for just over $33. I was really excited and Melinda just stared at me like I was nuts. I'm taking this week off cuz our budget is a little tight and we've got plenty of food. But I'm hooked. I'm now a coupon junkie and proud of it. I'm sure a few of my friends are already doing stuff like this, and for those who aren't, you should. The only problem is it drives you to buy more stuff than you normally would. But with a little self restraint, you should be good to go.

Happy shopping!