That's Life 7/18/11

So much going on, where do I begin?

L finally recovered from his tonsil surgery. He's back to normal except he's no longer drinking his prescription formula. Mostly that's good, but it's also scary because that means we have to replace 900 calories from formula with actual food. And he's still quite a picky eater. So meal time is even harder than ever.

We succeeded in moving our speech appointments to a later time for the start of kindergarten and full school days. Amazing, miraculous achievement! So far, I'm enjoying our new schedule.

We had L's birthday party. Once again it was at Peter Piper Pizza and again they did a super awesome job. Everything went smoothly and I actually had time to talk to the other moms. And it ended up being a great group, really pleased how it turned out. :-)

As usual, I have tons of things I want to post about but I'm lousy at the follow through. We'll see if I can get some new posts up this week. Fingers crossed!

What have you been up to? Let me know in the comments. How's your summer going?!

Washcloths instead of Paper Towels {Works for Me}

We've been pinching pennies lately {like pretty much everyone, right?} and here's how we've been saving money on paper towels. It basically started on Mother's Day when my husband asked what I wanted and I mentioned dish towels, because I'd been running through them faster, using them to dry wet surfaces instead of paper towels.

My husband, genius that he is, bought 2 packages of 12 washcloths. This turned out to be a great idea. Here's why:

-They're cheap! We got ours at Kohl's and each set of 12 was about $4--3 cloths for a dollar, (33 cents each) doesn't get much cheaper than that!

-They're absorbent. They work as well as a paper towel, if not better.

-They're white, so I can throw them in any load of laundry. I don't care if they get discolored in a red or dark load (which they don't, because I use Color Catchers), nor do I care if they get stained by food or 409.

Since I throw them in whatever wash I'm doing that day, we always have clean washcloths. They are stuffed in a kitchen drawer (I'm not much for folding). My husband uses 3 each night when he 409s the counters and table and I use them throughout the day to soak up messes or clean/dry a counter. I'd say we save a bunch of paper towels (and therefore money) this way.

Cheap and easy. {Oh and green, saving those trees!} That's how I like it!

This post will be linked to Works For Me Wednesday at We Are THAT Family.

How do you save on paper products?

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4th of July recap

In the past, I've not gotten too excited about the 4th of July. I had a wonderful 4th of July tradition growing up--the annual block party--so much fun! But as an adult, and especially here in Phoenix where it's Too Darn Hot to do anything, we haven't really celebrated Independence Day.

Then when I was in Walmart recently, I thought about buying 4th of July shirts for the kids. Usually, I've been against this because hey, they've already got red and blue clothes. I think this year was different for 2 reasons. 1) With L's tonsil surgery, I needed to look forward to something coming up after the whole ordeal would be over. And 2) my parents live here now and I knew we'd be going over to their place to watch fireworks on July 3rd.

As I was looking at the kids' shirts, I saw they had matching adult shirts. And CHEAP! The kids' sizes were $3 and the adults' were $3.50. And of course Hubby and I can wear our shirts in future years. I was sold! Here are our 4 matching shirts (girls in red, boys in blue) we wore to the "party" on July 3rd: On an earlier whim, I bought 2 4th of July hats from the dollar area of Target. I was only going to get one but remembered my kids don't share, and bought 2. Then the day before the celebration I went back to Target for the flags (3 for $1).

I was "in charge" of desserts for party night. There were tons of ideas around the web for fun patriotic desserts, but L wanted cupcakes, so that's what we did. These are gluten free yellow cupcakes (Betty Crocker) with cream cheese frosting (also Betty Crocker), with blue and red sprinkles (applied by L) and I bought the package of cupcake wrappers and festive pics from Walmart for $1.88 (for 24). Easy peasy.

The celebration at my parents' was lots of fun. My sister was also in town for a visit so the more the merrier. We did typical picnic foods (burgers and brats) but indoors. We had bubbles and glow sticks and planned to go on their patio when the sun went down, but there was a lightning storm! We were afraid the fireworks show would be canceled. Anyway, we played inside with the glow sticks and the kids had a great time and finally, the fireworks began. It was a great show and a super easy (and cool!) place to watch it. We ventured to the patio for just a minute when we thought the lightning had died down, but both kids thought it was too loud, so inside was athe best place to watch from. This is a picture of the kids watching the fireworks through the window (if you click to enlarge, you should see their silhouettes):

We celebrated on the 3rd because that's when the fireworks were scheduled, but I thought that worked super well. On Monday the 4th, we relaxed and got things ready for the week ahead.

As long as my parents live in this house and the church keeps putting on the fireworks show, this should make a great tradition.

Oh and I should mention I was worried about the kids being up late. Turns out T is a night owl like me, she had tons of energy late into the night (relatively speaking--the fireworks started at 8:45). We left right after the fireworks ended and I made it my goal to have the kids in bed by 10:00. I came pretty close. Staying up late is another reason I'm glad we celebrated on Sunday night and not Monday.

How was your 4th of July?

Birthday Brouhaha {Two Parties on the Same Day}

I have to blog about this because I can't think about anything else. Okay so L has been out of the loop for the last almost 2 weeks from getting his tonsils out. Meanwhile, he had his birthday (more on that in another post) so we had to plan a party for once he's feeling better. This coming Saturday would be ideal, but of course it's 4th of July weekend and we were afraid lots of people would be out of town. So we chose July 9 and finally things calmed down enough around here for me to send the e-vite on Monday evening. {Why did I do an e-vite over putting invitations in the mail, you ask? I thought it would be easy and that it would be a nice way to track RSVPs. Hindsight and all that.} Right away we got 2 "yes" replies from kids in L's class. Then we got a few "no" replies, with explanations that the families would be out of town. Then, the mom of twins, good friends of L's, replies "no" and says "sorry, that's the day of the twins' party." Dun dun dun.

So I panic. Should we reschedule? Maybe the party isn't at the same time? Maybe it's just a family affair? I decide to email the mom. Sure enough, the party is basically at the same time (can't be in two places at once) and she's invited ALL of the whole class (I had originally only invited a handful, we can't afford a huge party).

Anyway, I did a bunch of fact-gathering and calculating to figure out whether or not to reschedule but in the end, my husband was not on board. Forget it, it's too late, it's too hard to change, who cares. Okay, now I can breathe--the decision is made. We'll invite more kids, the others from school I'd not originally invited and all our friends from other places (like speech or last year's school), it's fine. I figured we'd still get some kids from his class.

If your child got 2 party invites for the same day, how would you choose?

If it were me, and my son was equally good friends with each host, I think we'd go to the party we were invited to first. {In this case, turns out our e-vite went out before the twins' paper invitations arrived BUT the mom had been talking about the date for some time, and I hadn't heard about it because L hadn't been at school. Or because I'm not in the clique....} But if my child was a close friend to one host and a mere acquaintance of the other, we'd probably choose the close friend's party. All other things being equal, maybe we like one location better than the other. Or who knows.

But I'm not getting any "yes" replies from classmates. None! Of the two original "yes" replies, one switched over to "no" saying something suddenly came up. Yeah, we all know what that something was. Tacky! I thought maybe some kids who aren't in the summer program would choose our party, having received our invite first and not having heard about the other party around the school yard. But no. Now I feel like there's a mommy clique and we're not in it. {Yeah writing that I think I'm paranoid.} But people seem content to let L have a party without guests.

One mom called me yesterday morning--did I know the other party is at the same time? Yes, I said, it's an unfortunate coincidence. She explained that she's known the twins for 3 years blah bla bla--I said don't worry about it, it's fine, L has other friends. OOOPS! Is she spreading the word that it's okay to skip L's party because he has other friends?! That's not at all what I meant. I meant it was okay for her to choose the other party, because she is closer to the other family. And because she had already chosen, she shouldn't feel bad. I didn't mean nobody should choose our party. Ugh. Again, maybe I'm paranoid, but as more kids reply "no," the more I feel like there is a clique and we're not in it.

So now I'm wishing we had rescheduled. And I wish we had put the invites in the mail, or at least didn't use e-vite because checking for RSVPs is like a crazy obsession. And, grrrr, I wish the twins' mom, who had the date picked out a long time ago, had just gotten her invites in the mail sooner so none of this would've happened.

On the bright side, those "other friends" are coming through for us and joining our party. Hallelujah. The party won't be a total bust. But I'm darn sure L will look around and wonder where's everyone from school?

Any thoughts on mommy cliques? Am I crazy? I just want my kid to have a party full of his friends. I feel like a failure as a mom that I didn't orchestrate his party better! I just want him to be happy!!!!

What would you do if you planned a party, only to find out someone else's party was at the same time?

Now that's what's-done-is-done, how would you make the best of it? I'd love to hear!

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I Love Cheap Books

My new favorite thing is buying books at Goodwill.

Here's the backstory: my local Borders store went out of business due to the whole bankruptcy thing. That makes me sad for so many reasons. But my favorite thing to do at Borders was buy cheap books. Usually all I would do there was browse the bargain aisles and the dollar bins. After finishing one of my $1 Borders finds recently {see my review here}, I wondered where I could get my next cheap book fix.

Obviously, the library has FREE books. I like the library, really I do. I just got the latest Maeve Binchy novel, Minding Frankie, from the library. Loved it! But there's the whole due date thing. I can renew online even, but you can't renew a book that has a hold on it. And returning books is a pain. And I just love owning books. It's an obsession really.

So with vacation coming up (this was about a month ago), I thought I'd try Goodwill. I've shopped Goodwill before but never really spent any time in their book section. I couldn't believe I found a book I'd been thinking of getting from the library: My Sister's Keeper. It was $2.99, which I thought was a lot for a used paperback, but while I was browsing, a voice over the loudspeaker informed me that all green price stickers were half off that day. I looked at the book in my hands and it had a green sticker. Thus it was a mere $1.49 and I was sold. At the time I also saw 2 Maeve Binchy paperbacks ($1.49 each) but I passed them up--I was being super frugal that day.

Having finished My Sister's Keeper, I decided to head back to Goodwill and try for the Maeve Binchy's. Alas, they were gone. {Lesson learned, strike while the iron is hot!} But while I was browsing, I found and could not pass up 3 classics: The Hobbit, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Count of Monte Cristo. {Bonus: The Count became a Father's Day gift for Hubby.} Each book was $1.49. LOVE.

So there you have it, my new obsession, buying books at Goodwill. I know that it is more expensive than garage sales* (but without driving all over town) and of course the library (but without due dates), but it Works For Me.

This post will be linked to Works For Me Wednesday and Things I Love Thursday. For obvious reasons.

Where do you go to find cheap books?

*I rarely shop garage sales for two reasons. 1) IBS. Shopping in people's yards and garages doesn't provide me with quick access to restrooms. 2) I rarely carry cash. Recently though, a house on my street had a sale. It was super close to my own bathroom and it was a rare occasion when I had cash. So I wandered over and took a look around. Paperbacks for 25 cents and hardcovers for a dollar. I bought 13 books! Which doesn't help my clutter problem. Maybe it's best I stick with Goodwill. ;-)

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Recovery Day 4

On Friday, L had surgery to remove his tonsils and adenoids, and to put tubes in his ears. Recovery so far has been awful. If you were to ask me if your child should have the same surgery, I'd say "Don't Do It!" Of course, that's not how it works. In the words of the surgeon, L's adenoids and tonsils were HUGE and blocking his airway.

Surgery itself went okay. It was at a hospital we'd never been to before {and not a children's hospital} but they were kind and on time {although they build in so much waiting time}. There was a chance we wouldn't be able to join him in recovery, which was a horrible thought, but in the end, we were able to go back to the recovery area. Good thing, too, because L was DISTRAUGHT. He would wake up and SCREAM. Finally, the nurse took the hint and pushed morphine in his IV.

Although he puked twice, there were signs that first day that L was healing well--he ate jello and yogurt and even shredded cheese. He slept soundly Friday night. Saturday morning was tough but he seemed better in the afternoon. Then Saturday night, he called for us several times. Sunday was tough, getting him to eat or drink (and by eat, I'm talking soft foods like ice cream) was like pulling teeth. He dry-heaved twice, yet I wasn't too concerned because he wasn't losing what he'd comsumed.

All this time, L was constantly on the couch. No energy. Looking like death. HEART-BREAKING.

Again last night we went to bed early in case he woke up frequently. Sure enough, he called us a million times, for wet diapers mostly, till at 1am we heard him puking. This one was for real. Since it was the middle of the night and we all wanted to sleep, we gave him a Zofran. Suddenly he was happy as a stinkin' clam and Hubby and I are looking at each other like "has he been nauseous This Whole Time?" The good news is, L was feeling better and drinking tons of water. The bad news is, he wasn't at all interested in sleeping. Eventually, I told Hubby to get as much sleep as he could before work, I'd stay in L's room. I ended up getting less than 2 hours of sleep. I let L "get up" {I'm not sure he'd slept at all} about 6:30 and then Hubby took over and I got an extra hour of sleep in my own bed (as opposed to L's floor). Worst night since the infant days!

Now he's taking Zofran regularly and he's eaten some ice cream and fruit so far today. And he's on his second nap, so he's likely to be nocturnal again tonight. :-( But it's nice to see him movig around again, and looking a little less like death. I'm hoping the worst is over.

I'll keep you posted.

Has your child ever been through something like this? Any words of wisdom?

Top 10 Tuesday--Summer Camp!

To my regular readers, I hope you didn't miss me too much. We were on vacation and I barely touched the internet (not including checking email on my phone). Now we are back and it's the first week of our regular summer schedule which includes, drum roll please........ summer camp twice a week--the first time ever I will regularly be child-free!!!! That's right, T and L will both be at camp from 8:30 to 1 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Whatever shall I do with myself?! Today was the first day and I think I'm gonna like camp days, heehee. :-)

And since it's Tuesday, I present to you (in no particular order) the Top Ten Best Things about the kids going to Camp:

1. Alone time. Obviously. Alone time for mommy is such a rare and precious thing. Prior to this momentous day, my alone time has been limited to one or two solo errands per weekend.

2. Shopping alone. Okay, I've shopped sans kids before (weekend errands, remember?), and I didn't plan to do it today. I had planned to do nothing but watch a chick flick, but the number of things I needed from Target kept adding up, and if I didn't do it this morning, I'd have to do it with kids, and nobody wants that. So I went to Target after drop-off and it was glorious. The store was practically empty and it was particularly lovely to be on my own.

3. Watching whatever I want. Again, it's not that I never get to watch what I want, but when I do, it's usually a tv show at the computer. I haven't watched a movie by myself in the living room in I don't know how long. So for my first camp day, I decided to watch an entire chick flick. I was bummed to have to go to Target first, but I did manage a whole movie. Sadly I chose a dud: Dear John. Did not like it at all. :-(

4. Camp gets the kids outside. We live in Phoenix where summers are HOT. It's like other people's winter--you just don't want to go out in it if you don't have to. By enrolling the kids in camp, it ensures they play outside at least twice a week, taking the burden off of me. They play in sprinklers and stuff first thing in the morning.

5. Zen mommy. My hope is that relaxing and/or being productive while the kids are away will restore my spirit so I can be more patient. It's too soon to tell. T threw a major tantrum before her nap that kind of destroyed today's zen, but I did keep my cool during said tantrum so that's a good sign.

6. Productivity. I let myself off the hook today, in honor of celebrating the first day of camp, but on future camp days, I'm hoping the child-free time will help me get stuff done, be it regular (neglected) housework or extra de-cluttering. Fingers crossed!

7. Friends. I love that L gets to keep hanging out with his friends and I'm hoping T will make some new ones (she really has no friends of her own yet).

8. Getting T ready for school. This is the school T will attend in the fall (with the same kids if not teachers) and I think this is a great way for her to get acclimated--with fewer kids and extra playtime.

9. It frees up naptime. On camp days when I've spent the morning either relaxing or getting things done, I'm hoping I'll have the energy and patience to be there during T's naptime (instead of my current habit of relaxing/hiding) and maybe even do crafts with L while T sleeps.

10. Other perks for mommy. Today, because I was crunched for time to finish the movie, I ate lunch in the living room. Without setting a bad example for the kids. And I can eat wheat--like frozen pizza or (Thursday's treat perhaps?) doughnuts--because L isn't around to be tempted. And just generally doing whatever the heck I want. Boo-yah!

The tricky part will be not eating everything in the pantry while the kids are gone!!!

Will you have any child-free time this summer?

For more Top Ten fun, head to Oh Amanda.

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