The [boring] life of a SAHM

DH is on board! For the most part....He is okay with the idea of it now but a few other things are bothering him. One being that in Oklahoma you don't have to report to the state, you don't have to tell them you're homeschooling and you don't have to have proof that you're homeschooling (although we probably WILL keep records, just in case.) Joshs boss homeschools his children so he talked to him & got a list of all Oklahomas "laws" or "requirements" for homeschooling. Josh just can't wrap his head around it all.

We plan on purchasing Heart of Dakota: Little hands to Heaven for "Pre-K" this August. Until then he is still kind of HS'ing during the Summer. I was referred to "The letter of the week" program but after looking it over decided he just wasn't ready for it. He would have to know his alphabet since the program focuses on the sounds the letters make and not just learning the letters. But, I looked around on the site and came across a letter of the week prepatory course! It's 26 weeks long and teaches shapes, numbers, colors, the alphabet, vocab words and each week has a theme.

We just started on Monday. The theme was "Cows" Here is a little look into what we did/will be doing:

Monday
-Introduce the cow theme. Talk about cows and the sound they make.
-Print off cow color sheets, color cows, cut them out & paste them to the farm sceneTeac
http://kiddyhouse.com/Farm/Cows/ & http://kiddyhouse.com/Farm/Cows/
-Vocabulary word- Calf: baby cow
-Read a poem about cows (the program gives 3 or 4 different ones.)
-Read a book about cows (again-program gives a list of books about cows)
-This wasnt in the program but we decided to drive around looking for cows and when we found some we let him take pictures of them with his camera.:)

Tuesday
-introduce weekly shape: SQUARE
-gather 3-5 square objects, discuss them with child
-walk through your home looking for squares (Braxton loved doing this! He would get so excited when he would find one!)
-cut squares out of playdough or cookie dough...bake the cookies!
-put a square on your learning poster (pic coming on Friday!)

Wednesday
-Give child a printout of the letter A to color
-Teach your child to trace the letter A using his finger. You can trace in pudding, finger paint or a shallow tray filled with rice, beans, etc.
-Point out the letter A in signs, cereal boxes, etc
-Post the letter A on your learning poster.

Thursday
-Show your child 1 object to count, or eat 1 cracker, 1 cheerio, etc
-Show your child the written symbol (numeral) for 1 and put it on your poster.
-Show matching index card for the number 1 to child.
-Draw 1 square on a piece of paper & count it with your child.
-Walk around the house counting 1 of many different objects

Friday
Nursery Rhyme: Hey diddle diddle
-Build a cow with squares. You will need some white and black paper. Cut out one 4" square of white for the body, one 2" square of white for the head, about nine 1" squares of white to make the legs and tail, three or four 1" squares of black for the cows spots, and three or more 1/2" squares for the eye, ears, etc. in black. Help your child glue the cow together on another sheet of paper (of a different color).

*Each day continue to read books about cows.


--------------

It's been a lot of fun so far & Braxton seems to enjoy it. Hopefully by the end of the summer he will know 1-20, all his shapes, colors, and be able to recognize the letters of the alphabet. He already knows MOST of his colors, and several "simple" shapes, but this program teaches the more difficult ones as well. I think every Friday I will post a pic of his learning poster (which he is SOOO proud of! He has to show it to anyone that comes over!)


I'm very happy with the decision I've made but I'm starting to get tons of negative feedback. Basically no one in my family think I am "smart enough" to do it, or think that homeschooling means the kids will get no socialization. (which is further from the truth) I even had someone tell me the other day that homeschooled children aren't as smart as kids that go to a public school. (Which also isn't true, HS children can be just as smart if not smarter.)

I kind of knew I was going to get a lot of debate/heat over this but I didn't expect it so bad from my family. Then again they have questioned pretty much every choice I have made (cloth diapering, babyled weaning, etc) but once they saw how easy & AWESOME they both were they loved it! Hoping I can prove them wrong this time too!

Daddy was playing peek a boo with her:)

She's trying to pull up on EVERTHING! She gets to her knees but isn't quite strong enough to pull herself to her feet.

Playing in her new playroom (transformed Braxtons room to the toy room since his bed is in our room.)

Crawling

Okay all you moms of girls, here is the time to stock up on babylegs. We LOVE them around here so I'm always watching out for their sales. There are several going on right now.

SUPERSOFT BABYLEGS (Addie doesnt have any but I've ordered them as gifts & they are sooo soft, omg!)
They are on sale for $5 each right now. Use code: SUPERSOFT for buy one get one. This applies to all of them in your cart. I just got SIX pairs for $15!!! They are originally $15 a pair so its six for the price of one!

BABYSOCKS:
Get a two pack for $5. (Normally $10)

CLEARANCE:
Make sure to check out their sale items for babylegs at $5 a pair!

MEMORIAL DAY SALE:
Save $10 off $40 CODE: TEN
Save $25 off $75 CODE: 20FIVE
Save $40 off $100 CODE: FORTY

15% OFF: SWEET


I don't think you can combine promo codes, but you could always try! I know nothing worked with the supersoft promo code but I didn't try combining codes with the others. Surely with all these codes you can find something you like at a great price!

Happy shopping!

http://s905.photobucket.com/albums/ac259/khills7/
What I've been working on lately.

Adding more photos tomorrow of things I've been sewing.

I've been thinking about homeschooling for quite awhile. I think Public schools are just getting worse and worse each year. DH doesn't like the idea of homeschool & has his doubts about how I will manage it. I gave in for awhile and filled out an application for the 3 year old program the school offers.

However, tragic stories about public schools keep popping up on the news and its pretty hard to say "Oh, that wouldn't happen to my child, it will be okay." It could happen to anyone. This one story in particular is what REALLY made me change me mind, it just pushed me over the edge:

http://www.kfor.com/news/local/kfor-news-suicide-due-to-bullying,0,2703559.story

Devastating.

So I am now looking into homeschooling. I found a great Christian based homeschool curriculum called Heart of Dakota. They have a 3-4 year old curriculum for about $40 so I think I will try it out. It goes all the way up to age 15 I believe.

I'll let you know how it goes (that is if I can talk DH into it!)

I love it!♥

Well...I always wanted a big family...3-4 kids.

That is, until today.....


My cousin watches a 22 month old boy, today she had to take her DD to the doctor so I was asked to watch him from 9:30 to 1:30. So I did. Now, I am no longer babysitting the 2 year old girl so it was just Braxton, Addie & the boy (Blake.)

The first 45 minutes was fine. He was still in the shy phase and just sat around sheepishly looking around. However the more comfortable he got the more crazy things got.

Addie didn't sleep for over 4 hours (she usually naps every 1.5 hours) because everytime I would get her *almost* asleep, Blake would bring a noisy toy in and start playing quite loudly. & she is fully awake again. *Repeat, over and over and over again.* It's now 3 pm and he is still here and Addie has got *maybe* 15 minutes of uninterrupted sleep. She is cranky, I am cranky. Braxton & Blake are running around being loud little boys.

Blake is in the stage where he is in.to.EVERYTHING. He's climbing into cabinets, playing in the toilet, putting anything and everything in his mouth, climbed in to the dryer once, made a complete mess of my house and will not, will not, will noooooot, listen to a word I say. You're probably thinking..."oh you're just not watching him good enough." but TRUST ME, I am watching him as GOOD as I can with a 7.5 month old cranky baby around. Who knows what he could have got in to if I wasn't watching him well,....my house is sooo not child friendly! Time to babyproof (yes I still haven't gotten around to that)

Okay, so I am not trying to rant...just trying to paint you a picture of what my hectic day was like. Which leads me to this point:

I don't think I want anymore kids. Two is good, I guess. Braxton never went through the above "phase" luckily. Hopefully Addie won't either. It's tiring...stressful...overwhelming. So I say-quit while I'm ahead! Life is good, I love my two kids and I think I am happy with just that...two GREAT kids! :)

Addie turned 7 months old yesterday and crawled for the first time!

She has been getting up on her hands and knees and rocking back and forth for quite awhile now. She was getting soooo frustrated because she couldn't just take off, I could tell she wanted to crawl. I was thinking all this over yesterday as I watched her rocking back and forth. I knew it wouldn't be too much longer...I walked into the kitchen & came back just in time to see her move on leg forward, one arm forward, one leg forward *Fell down* so it wasn't much but she CRAWLED! Then she did a once more a few hours later! I'm sure by next week she'll be crawling all over the place!

I've been using Swagbucks for about 2-3 months now. You've probably never heard of it, right? I found it in January after lurking the boards of diaperswappers....I thought it was another one of those "gimmicks" but everyone seemed sooo in love with it so I thought I'd give it a try.

Swagbucks is a search engine. You search for stuff, some searches rewards you with "Swag bucks" (points that add up that you can spend in their swagstore.) You can also get swagbucks by having their free toolbar and by participating in contests/their blog/swaghunts.

I won't do all of the explaining here-just wanted to get the word out that Swagbucks is INCREDIBLE!!

Wanna know what I do with my swagbucks? I buy Amazon gift cards. (or should I say E-cards?) When you redeem them they just send you the "code" to use at check out. Between January and March, I've redeemed SIX $5 giftcards. Thats thirty bucks I made for searching things...searching things I normally would have "googled."

Here is their blog:
http://blog.swagbucks.com/

Main Swagbucks page:
http://swagbucks.com/?cmd-home

They've also got a twitter & facebook page, I believe those can be found on the blog or main page.

Check it out! :)

In one day Addie:

-cut her very first tooth!

AND

-started crawling backwards! (When Braxton started crawling backwards it was just a matter of weeks before he was crawling all over the place-forward-of course, he was officially crawling at 7 months...Addie is 6.5 months. Am I scared? Yes. Nervous? Yes. Excited? YES!)

This explains why Addiebug's been soooo cranky!

Braxtons cake made by my cousin Lindsey

The decorations, except the punch hadn't been set out yet so just imagine 2 punch bowls filled with red punch in front of the spiderman, lol. Cupcakes & rice cripie treats made by Lindsey & I.

Braxton didn't get much sleep the night before the party so he was really cranky...which means he cried most of the time. Probably didnt help that his 7 y.o. cousin brent was opening all of his presents.

My cute "Spidey" birthday boy!

Exhausted after the party--& all the toys. (well most-he still has some from family who couldnt make it to the party)

opening presents


Pinata!

opening gifts

These are in no particular order. Overall the party was a huge hit. We got tons of compliments on the decorations. I don't think you can see all of them so I'll just explain them: you can see the food table, we also had 4 5 other tables with red/blue/spiderman table cloths, each table had red & blue confetti as well as spiderman confetti and spiderman/enemy cut outs. The ceilings were too tall to hang streamers across the room so we have streamers along the walls as well as spiderman confetti taped to the walls with double sided tape. We had other hangings like a spiderman happy birthday banner & 3 other spiderman hanging things. We also had a spiderman pinata & tons of red & blue balloons all over the room. Then my favorite-we had spiderwebs (the kind you can buy at halloween) strung across doorways and tables and on some chairs, with plastic spiders in them. We also froze some spiders in ice and then put the ice in the punch (no one choked on a spider btw) ;)

Braxton was really cranky because Lindsey & I were up late the night before making all the goodies, she had her daughter as well as another little boy with her so there was no getting Braxton to sleep when he had kids to play with!

Only thing that didn't go well is opening the gifts. Last year Braxtons cousin Brent kept trying to open his gifts for him so I knew to watch out for that again this year and I even told my mom, grandma & DH to watch for it & stop it if they saw it happening. Well, not even 2 gifts in & it happens. Brent is grabbing Braxtons gifts, tearing them open & throwing them to the side before Braxton can even see them. There were FOUR of us telling him to stop it and let Braxton open his own gifts...he would stop for a minute and then just start doing it again. The worst part? His mom was just watching...didn't say a WORD. I was soooooo upset. Then after all the gifts were opened Brent tried to take them all out of their packages, we told him no and I had DH take them all to the car. I told Braxton to choose one toy that he could open now and that daddy was gonna take the rest of them to the car. He chose a train & Brent grabbed a car out of one of the bags & ran away. We never got it back.

No idea what I'm going to next year but now 2 years in a row almost ALL of the "present opening" pics are of BRENT opening presents. *sigh*

Other than that Braxton had a great birthday, he fell asleep on the car ride home & then stayed asleep about 4 hours. He woke up & played with all his new toys. :)

His real birthday wasn't until Monday the 29th though. So we slept in, went to the park, played outside alot and then got a sitter for Addie and took Braxton to a movie. (How to train your dragon=CUTE!!!) It was a good day =)

The kids both had check up appointments today.

Braxton:
Braxton did okay. I was terrified I was going to have one of those screaming kids that wouldn't let the dr near him. Luckily the only time he threw a fit was when he was called back. Josh had Addie & I was trying to walk Braxton back. He kept screaming & crying 'NOOOOO! LET DADDY DO IT. DADDY! TAKE ME! NOOOO" *sigh* so Josh had to come back out & we traded, then he was fine. They weighed & measured him. 46 lbs, 43 inches. The nurse tried to get him to read an eye chart but he wasn't interested..she said most 3 year olds won't do it anyways. She checked his hearing & eyes. He was being stubborn though..or scared. The nurse put a thing up to his hear and told him to tell her or daddy when/if he heard anything. She kept asking do you hear it? and he would say no but I know he could hear it. He just freaks out and gets quiet when he's scared.

Adelyn:
All the normal stuff, she was weighed & measured also. 18 lbs 8 oz & 26 inches. Shes in the 50% for height, 80% for weight....so basically shes short & fat? ;) Anyways, checked her ears, her eyes, etc etc. Here are her stats:


birth: 7 lbs 13 oz, 19 3/4 in
1 month: 9 lbs 5 oz, 22.5 in
2 months: 11 lbs 15 oz, 23 1/4 in
4 months: 15 lbs 4 oz, 24 3/4 in
6 months: 18 lbs 8 oz, 26 in

I of course got the "solids" talk and my babyled weaning views were basically shot down but oh well! She had never even heard of it so its not like I expected her to understand.

Addie got shots today too. Poor thing. She does really good though & doesn't cry too much. After they were done though & I was getting her dressed I laid her down on the table to put her pants on-got them on-look at her and guess what? She's almost completely asleep! She's been sleeping the past 2 hours.

So it went pretty well...Braxton goes back next year for booster shots (Oh how fun THAT will be!) and Addie goes back in 3 months but doesnt have to have shots! Yay! :)

Infantino has issued a recall on their SlingRider & Wendy Bellissimo slings. We have one of these we used on Addie when she was a newborn but then she outgrew it and we moved on to the peanut shell! Soo scary and so sad!

The only good thing is they are offering exchanges. To see if you're sling is part of the recall see:

http://service.infantino.com/SlingRider.html

From there you can determine if your sling has been included in the recall and can get more info on how to return your sling for another product. (Thats the part I love!)

You can choose between one of their Wrap & Tie Carriers, A shopping cart cover or a 3 in 1 play gym PLUS they include a free jittery pal elephant as well. I was thinking of getting the wrap & tie but I'm not sure if I'll like it...and I wouldn't want another toy...our house is flooded with toys, a swing, bouncer, jumperoo...plus we saved all of the "big" toys Braxton had so we're good there. No use for a shopping cart cover either...I think I am going to try the carrier.

so anyways, if you have a sling make sure you check & see if its been included in the recall!!

2nd-The kids are sick. I have no idea how but they're both so miserable it breaks my heart. Braxton has been sleeping most of the day, when he does wake up his little eyes look so pitiful. He's whiny and cranky and clingy when he's sick. Addie has been really sleepy too...it's just getting her to stop fighting sleep that is the problem. This whole day has just run together. This is how its gone: Wake up, diaper change, feed her, tummy time (didnt last long..she was screaming after a few minutes, try to play, more screaming, check temp, give tylenol, try to get her to sleep, after 20 minutes of fighting she finally falls asleep only to wake up 20 mins later-now repeat over and over and OVER again. It's quite tiring...and of course they both had to get sick during Braxtons birthday week when I will have looooots to do. Ohwell. At least Josh has a 4 day weekend this week. ;)

Addie got up on her hands & knees today! I'm somewhat shocked! She was just playing in the floor, I look over and she is on her hands & knees! She went back to her belly then back up....this went on 2-3 more times. The whole time I'm going "Omg, Omg, Omg"

Crawling is just around the corner! I know it is! Braxton started crawling at 7 months. I'm sooooo not ready for the crawling stage. I've got so much baby proofing to do...right now the house is SO not child friendly. (Braxton KNOWS not to get into or touch certain things that are "mommys" or things that will hurt him.) Right now the dining room table is taken over by a huge pile of fabric, my sewing machine, cups full of needles/straight pins/scissors/etc. I've got a table in the living room that has a bin full of yarn, scissors, tapestry needlesm etc underneath it...Braxton has legos all over the floor of his bedroom. Sigh. I can fix the craft problems and start putting dangerous things out of reach but I'm really going to have to work with Braxton to make sure he keeps small toys away from Addie.

So my goal for this week: BABYPROOF!

We started BLW tonight. Addie is just a week shy of 6 months and has shown an interest in our food and meets all the milestones, so why not? ;)

We had porkchops, potatoes, cauliflower & broccoli. She LOVED the broccoli. At first she pushed all the meats & potatoes away & focused on the steamed veggies. After 15 mins or so she tried some potato and put it down, then moved on to meat. She had a hard time figuring out how to get the meat in her mouth, she would bring it up to her mouth & then lean backwards. She finally figured out she shouldn't lean backwards & got in her mouth & continued to suck on the meat for a while. At one point while eating broccoli she bit of a piece, tried to swallow and gagged (totally normal!) so she gagged it up, sucked on it a bit more and then spit it out!

We had so much fun watching her & she was so excited to be eating with us. So much better than doing purees in my opinion (we did purees with DS & it was just blech...he hated it & we hated it. No fun)

She didn't actually swallow anything which is normal, babies normally start actually eating around 8 months, right now its all about learning to eat, exploration & fun! :)

Enjoy the pics!

Nope, not talking about the fact that it's DH & I's anniversary again. No, it's something better! (Sorry honey!)


I've recently started using Big Sexy Hair products. This is the stuff my hair dresser uses on me everytime I go in for a cut/color/shampoo & style...speaking of-I need to get my hair done soon!

Anyways, these 2 products below are FAB! Big Sexy Spray & Play volumizing hairspray and Big Sexy Root Pump. Ahhhh!

I have thin, flat hair...always have and I always hated it. No amount of teasing/tousling/hairspray would get my hair nice & fluffy. This stuff changes ALL that! It's like magic. Seriously. I spray a little root lifter on my roots, blowdry, style, top it off with hairspray and voila' Big Sexy Hair. ;) (Or as my hairdresser says- "I'm gonna give you Big Sexy Texas Hair!" Haha-she likes to style it a little bigger than I like though.) ;)

Braxton is too funny.

We were all 4 laying in bed last night (Me, DH, Brax & Addie), ready to go to sleep. I had just finished feeding Addie and Braxton said he wanted to "snuggle" with me. So I passed Addie to DH & Braxton layed next to me and put his head on my arm. Then he said:

"Me not eat your boobs, mommy!"



LOL. DH & I had been pretty cranky all night and were in horrible moods but we couldn't help but laugh at this. He's so silly & says the funniest things! :D

even glimpse at the HUUUUUGE sale www.thechildrensplace.com is having. No-I said don't. You'll be tempted. Very tempted.

I got on "just to look" to "see if they added anything new" and was blown away by their clearance prices...so much in fact that I managed to spend nearly $100 more. I think they should thank me. Yes. I just placed my SIXTH order in like 2 weeks. I think I'm responsible for at least half their profits. Yes, they should thank me.


Oh, and if you happen to be tempted and go over there to "take a peek" use the code FAMILYA9 for 15% off your order. I saved $15 this time. ;)

I hate this part of having a baby.


I just packed up most of Addies 0-3 month clothing. I'm so sad. She can still fit *some* 0-3 month onesies since I use onesie extenders but everything else got packed up except a few dresses that can still fit her. She's now in mostly 3-6 months but can fit 6-9 with a bit of room to grow.

Also, I have realized how much I overbought on clothes for her! Holy Moly! Her 0-3 month clothes took up THREE boxes. Thats just the dresses, shirts, coats, jeans & sleepers. The onesies take up an entire LARGE dresser drawer. I realized she hadn't worn like 3/4 of the clothes! I had *favorites* and she wore those aloooot, the rest just sat there. I'm sooo not buying this much for our next kid.

It's also time to go through Braxtons clothes & get rid of all size 4's. He is now in size 5. *tear*

I bought the Sheepy Pants pattern and knit my first pair of shorties! I looove how they turned out even though there are a couple flaws. I left extra string on the shorties in hopes of knitting small flowers and attaching them to the drawstring but I can't find a good knit flower pattern-just crochet. The headband was also supposed to have a large flower on it but again-no good pattern. It took me 4 days to knit the shorties, 1 day for the hat & headband. (I ADORE this hat!) & I love the self striping yarn. I used acrylic yarn so it's kind of stiff.

I knit this for Addie, it's a size small but it sooo doesn't fit. Maybe because I didn't do a ribbed waistband or maybe because its the acrylic wasn't as stretchy as wool. So I am super bummed she won't get to wear them. I had no clue what else to do with them so I am offering them in a free for shipping Lotto on diaperswappers.com. :)

Now my next project: A juliette skirtie!! :D

So I bought a sewing machine...it's been lots of fun but I definetly had alot of learning to do! I haven't sewn anything in YEARS! I started off with something simple:


Cloth wipes. These were super easy. I used an old receiving blanket and a little bit of scrap cotten fabric, cut them to the same shape, turned and topstitched the edges-Voila! Cloth wipes! They cost practically nothing to make!


Then I moved on to something else.

Soft Shoes. I made these using the Stardust soft shoe pattern (as soon as I figure out how I will come back and link to the pattern.) The 2 purple ones were my "practice." They aren't that great so I used cheap-o fabric for them. Once I got the hang of the pattern I used my good fabrics.

Okay this I didn't make but just HAD to show off. *hehe* Remember how I was desperatly searching for Ella the Elephant Fabric? Well...I bought these Ella longies off Spots & noticed whoever was selling them had Ella fabric in the background so I messaged her and asked if she had any yardage I could buy or if she had some scraps. She messaged me back & said she had scraps she would send for free. Whoo-hoo! I thought it would be small scraps...very small but nope! I was shocked when I got the package & saw this inside:

The longies of course AND a pretty decent size scrap! I know I definetly will make a pair of soft shoes with it but I will have left overs so I'm trying to think of what else I could make. She already has an Ella shirt or else I would do make an applique. Hmm..

Addie on Valentines day with her Vday stuffed bear :)

& then the Valentines Day longies I made for her:

A little cargo pocket! :)