Aaron Self-feeding

Once again, the video quality is poor here because I've compressed it for web streaming. Nonetheless, you get the idea. Today we started to introduce some table foods and he is doing much better with self feeding than he did during our initial attempts. He actually ate an entire banana during dinner this evening! I would have restricted his intake but he's had banana baby food without negative reaction and he thoroughly enjoyed feeding the little pieces of banana to himself!

Baby Shower Gift

How fun is this?!?! I copied the design from a site that I found online and will be giving this to a friend for a baby shower that I'm going to soon. :)

On the Move!

Aaron began crawling between Christmas and New Year's. I knew that he'd become proficient quickly at crawling but I was shocked yesterday when I walked into his room after he awoke from a nap to see him standing in his crib!

Holiday Shopping Deals

Greetings!

I've been online shopping and recently came across some great deals that I thought I'd share. I just love it when merchants give away free money!

First off, the best place to find valid coupon codes for merchants is savings.com

Check out buy.com for items at great prices and if you select the "eBillme" payment option, and enter promo code "buy10dec" you'll get $10 off your purchase of $10 or more. I found a gift that I'd been looking for that normally runs about $20-25, but I paid $14.99 through buy.com (no tax or shipping charges) minus my $10 savings with the eBillme code and my final cost for the gift was $4.99!!! The only confusing part was that I had to select the "Place My Order" button before I entered the promo code, but the discount shows up when you get the eBill from eBillme.

At Gap.com, you can get 20% off your entire order by entering promo code "GAP20"

If you're shopping at the store and you want to bring some coupons with you, I found a great website a long time ago that has consistently provided me with coupons that I can print from home, http://www.wow-coupons.com/all-printable-retail-coupons.php

Happy shopping!

Aaron has discovered his feet!

Life has been crazy and busy as usual, which, if I'm truly honest with myself, is the way I like it!  The kids & I are excited for the start of the new school year in just under 2 weeks.  Our new neighbors are moving in this weekend and Alex & Emily are on cloud 9 now that their new friend is in the neighborhood for good (who just so happens to be at the perfect age of 1 yr younger than Alex and 1 yr older than Emily).  Meanwhile, Aaron is doing the usual baby things of growing like a weed, waking a couple of times at night still, and discovering new things (like his feet!).  Tim & I have resumed our battle with the lawn attempting to grow grass in the front.  This attempt has entailed a weekend (or two) of rototilling, raking, seeding, etc.  Testing of our soil revealed that it is highly acidic, so we treated with a dose of lime and are hoping that this will help the new seeds germinate.  I've also been working on creating a perennial garden in the backyard, and although the front of the house lacks lustre and curb appeal, the backyard is quickly becoming a place of play and peaceful enjoyment.

Some video of Aaron...

Summer begins

Summer has officially begun and we finally know for certain that we will not be moving to Ireland for the year.  While we are a little sad that we won't be moving, and frustrated with the prospect of a potential job lay off, we are happy that we can finally plan things for our summer.  It's a little late for planting a vegetable garden now, so it's not likely that we'll have home grown vegetables this year, but we plan to continue work on the exterior of the house (mainly getting the grass established) and small projects around the house.  

Aaron turned 1 month old last week and caring for him will, no doubt, consume much of my time this summer but I hope to be able to spend a lot of time playing with the kids and doing activities as a family.  I took Aaron for his 1 month check up (at 5 weeks) and is now 10 lbs., 9 oz. and 22 1/2 inches long.  He is growing and gaining weight at a steady pace and even offered his first smiles last week!  He still seems to be pretty fussy, constantly wanting to be held, and hasn't gotten into a good routine with his sleeping patterns.  But he did offer me 2 nights last week each with a 4 hr. period of uninterrupted sleep.  During his first couple of weeks, he spit up quite a bit but that has slowed down significantly (which helps a little with the amount of laundry I've had to do!).  We took him to get his 1 month portraits at Sears last week as well and so I'll post them once we have them.

Many of you know by now that our initial plans of moving to Ireland for the year have been trashed and I'm happy that, at least now we can start putting things on our calendar for the summer.  There is so much uncertainty in life, I'm learning, and I am once again being forced against my natural instincts to control and just "go with the flow" of life!  We are now trying to shift our focus on saving for improvements to our home (that we really wanted to complete in 2008 during construction) and filling our calendar with events that will create many family memories for us.