Moving On

All is well here in our household. I've seemed to arrive at some sort of settled-in feeling and am thoroughly enjoying it. I have a list of basically the same five things I/we do each morning for our morning routine, which mainly involved dishes and cleaning up the house before it gets messy again. I've always been known to try to do too much, but recently I've been realizing that I'd do all these chores at the expense of spending quality time with M. Sure, he'd always be around me and even helping me, but it wasn't quality time that I'd like him to remember. So I've cut my list down to five important things that must get done that day and that's it. And it's working out great. It's much more relaxing and I don't run around like a crazy woman trying to get bits and pieces of things done throughout the day.

In other news, M is now down to one nap :) and I'm loving it! I've been pushing him until 1pm (he could probably go down by 12pm) and he'll sleep at least until 4pm. Or for about three hours in and around that time period. I sit and rock with him while I sing and sometimes he'll fall asleep, but most of the time he'll just suck his thumb and play with my hair. After he's that relaxed, I'll put him down and that's it. We used to watch Baby Einstein before nap to transition him from go.go.go play to bedtime, but this routine seems to be working out just fine. I love sitting and cuddling with him because that's the only time it can happen (he'll sit and read nicely on our laps, but he's still moving, talking, etc.).

Goodwill has awesome secondhand books. I'll pop in every now and then and get 5 to 10 of them for Little Man. Most of the time they are $0.99 and then they have different color tickets that are half off certain weeks. I'm kind of picky about which ones I buy and I'll always wipe them down when we get home, but other than that, I prefer secondhand because new ones will look like that in a matter of a few readings. I haven't counted how many children's books we have, but if I did it would probably take me a while because I'd say we have at least 250, probably more like 300. I just rotate them around the house. My newest thing is baskets, so M now has two book baskets in the living room. I filled his wagon that he got for his birthday with the bigger books that wouldn't fit in the baskets. When we want to read, he'll haul a basket to the middle of the living room floor and we'll go through whatever ones he picks out to read. For all his boyness and brutishness, he's a lover of books...yay!

I have to spend $500 in groceries by March 6th. I think I can do it, but I don't spend nearly that much in a month and a half, so I'm going to stock up on items that'll last the year. Like olive oil, dishwasher detergent, whole chickens, soap, etc. The reason? Our awesome bank (not to be confused with our awesome mortgage company) sent an email saying that they're giving us $10 for every $100 we spend in groceries by the sixth of March. That's a very agreeable 10% back on groceries! Mom gave me a list of things to get for her while we were at Trader Joe's, so she's helping us reach our "goal." (She pays us back).

Oh, and I've been doing Swaybucks for a bit now and earned a $5 gift card to Amazon.com. I'm only 9 swagbucks away from earning another one :). I just set them as my search engine (although they use google, amongst others). So I just search the Internet like I always would and sometimes it'll pop up that I won 1 swagbuck or 5 or 10...those are much more rare! Anyway, can't beat getting something for nothing!

I should end with how very wonderful my husband is. Because he is. We had an awesome Date Night the other night, he makes everything that much more fun (and, we heard, Grams, Gpa, Grandma Rita, Uncle RyRy, and Auntie Yana enjoyed their time with Little Man).