The [boring] life of a SAHM

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. ;)