We let Jaxson finger paint yesterday (after we made sure that everything was covered in paper and he was naked). 

At first he was really good at just dipping the paint brush in the paint and dabbing it on to the paper (no mess!!!).

And then he got some on his hands accidently and wiped it on his face and chest (only a little messy) but continued to paint with his paint brush on the paper.

But then things went down hill and he realized he could paint his hands (getting very messy quickly).  I let him do this for a while because it is called “finger painting” after all.

But then he started to take advantage of me and my kindness of letting him paint his hands and he started to paint his chest and that was the end of finger painting.  We headed straight to the tub. 

Regardless of the mess, Jaxson had a blast and I might even let him try it again (maybe–lol).

Today we are heading to Michigan to spend Thanksgiving with Grandma Karls.  And we are driving!!!  EEK. 

Cross your fingers that this road trip turns out well.  We were originally gonna leave around 5pm and drive through the night but we have reconsidered this strategy because when we do this WE never get to sleep.  Jaxson ends up sleeping the entire trip (which is great for him) but WE don’t get to sleep at all (since we both need to stay awake to keep each other awake).  And so when we get there, Jaxson is wide awake and ready to go and we are exhausted and ready to go to bed–but can’t because Jaxson wants to play and continue on with the day.  So new plan–we are gonna leave around 2pm.  This means alot of awake time in the car for Jaxson but hopefully he will be fine since he is now old enough (and forward-facing)to watch Elmo DVD’s for part of it and do other fun things like color and read books the rest of the time.   I really hope this works because then we all should be able to get some descent sleep tonight! 

Can’t wait to stuff my face full of Turkey Day food!!!  and then go burn off some calories on Black Friday fighting off the crowds.  YAY!!!!

This past weekend we put up our Christmas decorations because we would normally put them up over Thanksgiving weekend but we will be out of town.  So we put them up a bit early.  We did it when Jaxson was napping and when he woke up he was very surprised.  He came out of his room, saw the tree, stopped dead in his tracks and said “wow–tree!!!  and then kept pointing to all the round ornaments and saying “ball? ball?” and then seeing the star shaped ornaments and saying “star–ooooh–star”.  After trying to grab at every ornament and being told “NO” a million times,  he finally understood that the tree is not for touching and just for looking.  Whew.  So far so good.  Hopefully this “no touching” will continue until after x-mas (crossing fingers).   

We then put the train around the bottom of the tree and knew that this was going to be Jaxson’s favorite thing.  Which it is.  He turns it on and off all day long.  He loves to hear the choo choo blow its horn.  Every morning since we put it up, he has been waking up, saying “choo choo” (instead of mama or dada) from his crib and when we go into his room to free him from his crib, he walks straight to the train, turns it on and sits there for about 15 minutes watching it and drinking his milk.  He loves it. 

Christmas is my favorite time of year and I can’t wait to share it with Jaxson.  Last year he was only 7 months so he really did not get it.  He really could have cared less about anything other than wrapping paper (he wanted to eat it) but this year I can already see the excitement on his face when we drive past a house who has their christmas lights up or when we walk past the christmas section in Target.  His eyes just light up.  However as much he likes all the lights and decorations at x-mas time, I am thinking he will be less than thrilled to sit on Santa’s lap this year but he might just surprise me (but probably not).

Today was Jaxson last day at daycare.  Well actually yesterday was because he does not go to daycare on friday–but today we went and cleaned out his basket and said goodbye to all the teachers.  I almost shed a tear because when we pulled up in the parking lot, Jaxson said “school–yay” and then we went in grabbed his stuff and he did not want to leave.  He wanted to play with the kids.  We literally had to carry him out because he did not want to leave.  But in the process of carrying him out, he waved bye bye and blew everyone a kiss.  It was a sad day and I know for sure he will miss going.  I know that eventually we will back, but I hope it will be sooner rather than later.  Plus he was the only boy in his class of 8 so his chances of finding the girl of his dreams in daycare were really high!!!  We need to keep his odds high since all of his non daycare friends are boys!  Daycare was the only place that we knew any girls!

I am going to let you all in on a little secret obsession that I have.  CVS.  I love this store.  And I mean LOVE this store.

I am actually addicted. 

Every week I get the Sunday paper and immediately grab for the CVS ad.  I see what is on sale, what purchases will give me ECB’s (extra care bucks) and what is gonna be free.  For those who don’t know what ECB’s are…well basically it is free CVS money that you get when you buy certain items.   

I have been playing the “CVS game” for about 3 months now.  And I call it a game because it is not something I do because I am trying to save money–I do it to see how much stuff I can get free.  Believe me, I don’t need 7 bottles of mouthwash, 12 bottles of shampoo, 11 razors, 10 deodorants, etc…all of which are being stored away in my linen closet right now from my many weeks of playing the game. 

So I have told some close friends about my obsession and they have shown some interest and asked many questions so I am going to pass on my CVS purchases from this week and maybe motivate you to play the CVS game. 

The key to the CVS game is to keep every single coupon you ever get–or look online at coupons.com or other various coupon website.  You never know when you might need a coupon for Zantac…

Also you need to use your ECB’s wisely–so you want to use your ECB’s on items that will give you ECB’s back in return.  You basically just want to roll them over every week. 

So this week I bought:

2 boxes of General Mills Cereal (2/$6 and earn $2ECB’s)

1 bottle of Scope ($3.49 and earn $2ECB’s)

2 Glade sense and sprays ($2/12 and earn $4 ECB’s)

2 Trident layer gums ($1 each)

These are the coupons I used:

1-$1 off 2 boxes of cereal from sunday paper

1-$1 off Scope from sunday paper

2-$3 off sense and spray from CVS.com

2-$2 off sense and spray peelies from the package

1-$.75 off trident gum

1-buy one get one trident gum

1-$5 off $15 CVS purchase (from coupon machine in the store)

and then after all these coupons I only had to use $2 ECB (from last week)

and so I paid $2.37 out of pocket for all the stuff listed above.

and I ended up earning $8 ECB’s to use next week. 

And this is the game that I play every single week!  It is seriously a challenge to see how much stuff I can get for as little as possible out of pocket.

But the best part of my “CVS game” is seeing how much I have saved for the year.

So far since starting this game 3 months ago, I have only spent $35.20 out of pocket and have saved $386.05.  That is a 90% savings.  And I have an entire linen closet full of stuff.  Crazy!!!!

I LOVE CVS!!!!

This story is too funny that I just had to share. 

Yesterday Jaxson was taking a shower with Jeremy while I was in the office working.  Well, I hear Jeremy yell “Shay!!!!”.  So as I am running to the bathroom I start to hear Jaxson crying.  I am thinking the worst things–like Jaxson slipped and hit his head.  I open the bathroom door and I see Jeremy holding Jaxson, who is bawling.  I then look down and see poop.  Apparently Jaxson pooped in the shower while Jeremy was washing his face.  And when Jeremy opened his eyes he saw the poop and Jaxson started to cry.  Clearly pooping in the shower freaked out Jaxson and Jeremy because then Jeremy called for me to come and clean it up.  I removed the poo from the shower floor and then grabbed the sobbing Jaxson and told him it was okay and that it was not a big deal.  And that maybe next time he could go poo-poo in the potty.  After he calmed down he kept saying “poo-poo potty?”  and I would say “yup–poop goes in the potty” and he would respond “yup–okay”. 

I am still giggling at the whole situation and how Jeremy was clinging to Jaxson and Jaxson was clinging to Jeremy and they were just staring at the poop!  So funny.

The whole time change thing really threw Jaxson thru a loop.  He just could not get his body adjusted to sleeping in.  He adjusted fine with going to bed at normal time but 6am would roll around and Jaxson would be up and ready to go.  Urgh.  So annoying.  We tried everything to get him to sleep in–changing his bedtime, turning up the temperature in the house, making his room extra dark, etc…but nothing worked.  Well, this weekend must have triggered something because for the past 3 days he has been sleeping well past 7am and actually one morning he slept until 830 (just like before the stupid time change).  I actually had myself convinced that Jaxson was just an 11 hour sleeper and that the 6am wakeup was going to be our new normal.  But luckily I was wrong.  Jaxson is not an 11 hour sleeper–he is definitely a 12+ sleeper and that is good because mommy is not a 6am riser.   So yay for finally getting back to normal–well at least until x-mas and we head to Wisconsin and switch time zones and have to deal with it all over again.

This weekend we headed to philly with Sarah, Greg and Charlie for a wedding and had a blast.   A friend from college let us stay at her house while we were in town and I don’t think she knew what she was getting into by having  all of us stay at her house (four adults and two toddlers) but since she has a five bedroom house about 20 minutes from the wedding festivities we figured we would take advantage.  

We got there on friday just in time to put the kids to bed and to pop open a box of wine (lol).  Wine was needed because the drive was insane.  I think we hit traffic in every possible big city–DC, Baltimore and Philly.  We were so ready to be done driving by the time we got there. 

After staying up too late catching up and then waking up too early with Jaxson, I realized that I am old and need more than 6 hours of sleep.  So everyone in the house napped on Saturday while the kids napped.  This recharged us for the wedding. 

After everyone was up, we got ready and headed to the church.  We were concerned about the wedding and Jaxson.  We had no idea what to expect of Jaxson and just hoped and prayed that he would sit quietly eating his snacks and coloring. 

Well, he was very excited for all the bridesmaid to walk down the aisle.  He clapped for each of them and then said “more”.  When the bride walked down the aisle, he got a big grin on his face and said “yay!!!!” and clapped.  He was clearly excited to see the pretty girls. 

So far so good.  Well then there was a soloist and when she was done singing, Jaxson clapped and said “yay” except it was silent.  We decided to take Jaxson out of the service because we realized that there would be alot of those little cheers from Jaxson since he does that at the end of every song–no matter where we are (in the car, in a restaurant, on tv).  So rather than have the bride’s wedding video be full of “yays” and claps from Jaxson, Jeremy took him out and let me enjoy the wedding.  Plus after they left I realized that it was going to be a full catholic mass and there is no way Jaxson would have lasted for the whole service anyway.  We would have run out of snacks–lol. 

Now off to Citizen’s Bank Park (the phillies stadium) for the reception.  So awesome.  The cocktail hour was on the club level and included fries and chicken fingers (perfect cocktail hour foods for Jaxson).  Plus they let you go out on to the balcony and check out the actual park.  The field was all torn up though because they are redo-ing the grass but it was still so cool. 

The bride and groom had their pictures taken on top of the dugout (probably because the field was all dirt) and i think those are gonna make for some awesome wedding pictures.  Very much the bride and groom’s style. 

Then the actual reception was in the diamond club (which is a club located behind home plate).  And we were able to go outside and hang out in the stadium again if we wanted. 

For dinner they served baseball type food–hot dogs, brats, philly cheese steaks, pretzels.  It was the perfect wedding to take a kid to because it was all food that you know they were gonna eat!  Jaxson ate his dinner and then headed to the dance floor to show off some of his moves.  He was dancing with some adorable little girls and was having so much fun. 

We thought he was going to be able to make until about 9 and that we were going to be able to hangout a bit longer but right when the actual dancing started he got all crabby and tired and was ready to go home and it was only 8.  So we said goodbye to the bride and groom and headed out but not before we got a picture with the philly phanatic.

We got back and put Jaxson to bed and we continued to stay up and hang out.  i think i forgot about the night before and how tired I was the next morning, but I was up until midnight again.  Luckily Jaxson slept in a bit longer and I got 7 hours of sleep. 

On our drive back to DC we were gonna stop at the Rocky steps and have Jaxson attempt to run up them, but in trying to get there, Jaxson fell asleep and we decided it was best to just continue on home and not wake him up.  So no Rocky steps for us.  Guess we will have to make another trip to philly soon (michelle–you up for visitors again?). 

If exhaustion is any indicator of how fun our weekend was, well then we had a fantastic weekend because we were uber exhausted.  Jaxson was so tired from the whole weekend that on sunday he went to bed at 7 and slept until 830!  yay.  he has not been sleeping like that since the time change–so crossing fingers that he keeps that up. 

Congrats to Mandy and Mike on their marriage and Thank you Michelle for letting us invade your house.

Today at daycare Jaxson apparently got in a fight…with a girl.  He was playing with a toy and she decided she wanted it so she went over and attempted to grab it away from Jaxson.  Well Jaxson apparently held his ground and would not let go.  So the little girl clawed him–in the face!  And so now Jaxson has little scrapes all over his face.

Then after he got home he was playing and fell off the couch on a pile of legos and somehow managed to cut his lip–bad.  And so he has a fat lip.

My poor baby looks like he has been put through the wringer. 

 What is next? 

A black eye.  Nah–he had one of those a few weeks ago–he got in a fight with his crib and his crib won. 

A bruised face.  Nope–he had one of those this weekend after he ran straight into the corner of our desk.

A bump on the head.  No–that was about a month ago when he went down the slide at a playground and forgot to use his feet to catch himself and he fell back and hit his head. 

I swear every time he gets hurt we are standing right there trying to catch him as he does the damage to his body but we are just not quick enough.  Today when he fell off the couch, I caught him, but I only caught his legs so his head was still free game.  When he ran into the desk–I was standing next to him and he just turned around right into it.  And when he got his black eye–well, we are not sure how that happened.  We actually thought he was asleep because it was like 9pm and had been in his crib for 2 hours, when out of nowhere we hear him screaming.  We run in and see blood.  He ended up cutting his eyelid somehow and that resulted in the black eye–but we have no idea how he managed to do that.  That remains a mystery. 

I think Jaxson is just accident prone and in order to prevent any more injuries, I will need to wrap him up in bubble wrap.  

Plus he usually gets hurt right before we have big plans.  Like the bruised cheek–we had a photoshoot for our x-mas cards the day after it happened and so his bruise needs to be photoshopped out.    And we are heading to philly this weekend for a wedding so Jaxson is gonna look mighty handsome in his sweater vest  and scraped face and fat lip. 

so cross fingers that this weekend in philly goes well and that jaxson does not get hurt running up the Rocky steps (okay maybe he will be walking up them–but I most definitely will be running up them).

Having jeremy here with me all day every day is great…except when i need to work.  Because then i want to be doing whatever he is doing.  i hear him rumbling around in the fridge and i immediately want to know what he is about to eat because maybe i want to eat it too.  I hear him laughing at the  TV in another room and I wanna know what is so funny.    He goes to run some errands and i want to go too.  This is so bad for me because I need to work.  My job is production based so I need to meet my production goals.   He is doing a really good job of letting me be and letting me work.  but I am not doing a good job of ignoring the fact that he is home.  I need to focus!! (but it is so hard when i know that jeremy is doing things that i want to be doing)

FOCUS SHAY FOCUS!!!