After a middle of the day weekend trip to Target this past weekend, I decided I was done with the stores. I have one person left to buy something for and it is my Dad and I am getting him Eddie Bauer stuff which I can buy and ship all on line.
Than I remembered another friend who just had a baby. She bought Matthew a beautiful rocking horse his 1st Christmas. This gift totally trumped anything else we bought and he loved that thing during the 1st two years of his life. Now granted at the time she was single and did not have kids but still... This may seem like a no-brainer but should I buy a gift for her little guy for his 1st Christmas? And if so, should I be extravagant (within reason of course) or just a simple gift?
Oh any ideas (I think Logan will be about 3 months old around Christmas)?
HALP!!!
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label shopping. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
So much, so little time
This post: my plan is to randomly write about the weekend. As far as weekends go it was uneventfully packed with adventures. My darling husband turned to me and reminded me at 10p Friday evening that we were planning to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving on Sunday... I started crying. Okay not really... Our Canadian in-laws are visiting. They are actually doing us a favor so I am keeping my complaints to a minimum. Though I must note they have been in my home for FIVE days and there are still three or four more to go (I have no idea when they go home and I am trying to be VERY ZEN about this :)
We celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving every year whether the in laws are in town or not. However, I am just not ready to do THREE of these huge meals in a role. It is the not act of doing these meals that is so bad... if it were spread out over the year and not all in a three month chunk. And even though I bitch I actually really love making the whole meal because most of what we eat I have learned to make from my mom and dad who in turned learned it from my NY Granny. I hope to share how to make these things with my son. It is special to me every year to remember how to do the turkey and stuffing, the sweet potatoes, and all of the work that does into the meal. I love the smells and the memories that those smells bring back to me. I also love to sit down to eat the meal - usually it is good. This year's CT was okay. I was tired and I did not bring the zest I normally do to it. Finally, I was glad for my in laws because my MIL and husband did all of the dishes afterward while I got Matthew ready for bed. I hate post meal dishes so that made my heart warm!
In other news, we furniture shopped. with Matthew. Ah. He wanted to come and so we let him... It actually went well (when I say that I mean he only annoyed every single sales person who tried to pretend it was cute that my 2 yr was dancing on the $3000 couch with his dirty shoes on AND also it tired my 2 yr out enough that he went to bed at a reasonable hour!) Also, it went well for not having a freakin' clue what we want to buy. You see, we have a weird shaped basement room. At the moment, it houses Matthew's "stuff". At 1st, we were going to get all fancy and redo the fire place complete with built ins but we have changed our minds. We realized how important it was for Matthew to have space and Matthew loves it down there so we bought some shelves from Target and we are making it 'officially' the play room. However, we still need some seating for the adults (namely Kevin and I) because the camp chair just ain't cutting it any more. So that is mostly what we are looking for, we think. We cannot decide if we should just move what is upstairs down and buy some new "fancy" stuff for the upstairs. See, so this was mostly a fact finding mission.
We visited the camera store where I found my "dream" camera and am salivating to get. Kevin, not so much. But man this camera rocked - I can continuously take photos to get the right one like a dang photographer, I can do shit with raw images and I can buy some kick ass filters for the camera to make the photos look like the real thing. sigh. We just looked at it and Kevin said it was my choice. I hate that!
Matthew sat through his 1st (sort of) full length feature film. Okay so it was at home without popcorn but he sat through it nonetheless. Cars. I thought it was horrible but I was also in the process of cooking a 12 lb turkey and all of the fixin's so whatever. I am way old school when it comes to those kinds of movies but Matthew seemed enthralled. Until he came to the dinner table and started talking about Peter Pan. That's my boy!
Oh and I discovered Matthew likes eating cranberries - uncooked. Just like a strawberry, only a cranberry. My boy is strange like that (in a good way!) He went to Cracker Barrel over the weekend and it was reported to me that he ate the two oranges that were on the plate first before anything else and wanted more. Warms my veggie/fruit lovin' heart to hear that.
Finally, we went to a 25th anniversary party on Sunday at a co-worker's house. She lives in a lovely wooded home - every time we go there we wish we had a home like that amongst the trees - it is seriously like a little tree house. More importantly it was fun to see co-workers outside of work. It was relaxing and enjoyable (aside from the stupid bees that decided to congregate around my sweet smelling butt...) I am also reminded that 25 yrs is a long time to be married but the results can be oh so wonderful. It made me smile to end my weekend on that note.
We celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving every year whether the in laws are in town or not. However, I am just not ready to do THREE of these huge meals in a role. It is the not act of doing these meals that is so bad... if it were spread out over the year and not all in a three month chunk. And even though I bitch I actually really love making the whole meal because most of what we eat I have learned to make from my mom and dad who in turned learned it from my NY Granny. I hope to share how to make these things with my son. It is special to me every year to remember how to do the turkey and stuffing, the sweet potatoes, and all of the work that does into the meal. I love the smells and the memories that those smells bring back to me. I also love to sit down to eat the meal - usually it is good. This year's CT was okay. I was tired and I did not bring the zest I normally do to it. Finally, I was glad for my in laws because my MIL and husband did all of the dishes afterward while I got Matthew ready for bed. I hate post meal dishes so that made my heart warm!
In other news, we furniture shopped. with Matthew. Ah. He wanted to come and so we let him... It actually went well (when I say that I mean he only annoyed every single sales person who tried to pretend it was cute that my 2 yr was dancing on the $3000 couch with his dirty shoes on AND also it tired my 2 yr out enough that he went to bed at a reasonable hour!) Also, it went well for not having a freakin' clue what we want to buy. You see, we have a weird shaped basement room. At the moment, it houses Matthew's "stuff". At 1st, we were going to get all fancy and redo the fire place complete with built ins but we have changed our minds. We realized how important it was for Matthew to have space and Matthew loves it down there so we bought some shelves from Target and we are making it 'officially' the play room. However, we still need some seating for the adults (namely Kevin and I) because the camp chair just ain't cutting it any more. So that is mostly what we are looking for, we think. We cannot decide if we should just move what is upstairs down and buy some new "fancy" stuff for the upstairs. See, so this was mostly a fact finding mission.
We visited the camera store where I found my "dream" camera and am salivating to get. Kevin, not so much. But man this camera rocked - I can continuously take photos to get the right one like a dang photographer, I can do shit with raw images and I can buy some kick ass filters for the camera to make the photos look like the real thing. sigh. We just looked at it and Kevin said it was my choice. I hate that!
Matthew sat through his 1st (sort of) full length feature film. Okay so it was at home without popcorn but he sat through it nonetheless. Cars. I thought it was horrible but I was also in the process of cooking a 12 lb turkey and all of the fixin's so whatever. I am way old school when it comes to those kinds of movies but Matthew seemed enthralled. Until he came to the dinner table and started talking about Peter Pan. That's my boy!
Oh and I discovered Matthew likes eating cranberries - uncooked. Just like a strawberry, only a cranberry. My boy is strange like that (in a good way!) He went to Cracker Barrel over the weekend and it was reported to me that he ate the two oranges that were on the plate first before anything else and wanted more. Warms my veggie/fruit lovin' heart to hear that.
Finally, we went to a 25th anniversary party on Sunday at a co-worker's house. She lives in a lovely wooded home - every time we go there we wish we had a home like that amongst the trees - it is seriously like a little tree house. More importantly it was fun to see co-workers outside of work. It was relaxing and enjoyable (aside from the stupid bees that decided to congregate around my sweet smelling butt...) I am also reminded that 25 yrs is a long time to be married but the results can be oh so wonderful. It made me smile to end my weekend on that note.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Gone Shopping...
I am pretty excited for the long weekend. I need it.
We have been dealing with the insanity that is my son's sleep patterns. He is not sleeping well at night, period. This has been ramping up and going on for about two, maybe three weeks. At first it was just a mild tantrum right when we put him down for bed but he could be sung to and would usually go to sleep on his own. Then he started waking up 2-3 times a night and wanted to sleep on the floor. Now it is a full blown drama EVERY single night beginning around 7:30p and going till the wee hours of the morning if we do not (a) let him fall asleep in our arms rocking in his chair, (b) fall asleep on the floor, and/or (c) fall asleep in our bed always with one of us. It is driving me batty. I am cranky and unhappy about this. I mean he is almost 2-1/2 years old. I am so over being sleep deprived... I am tired. Plain and simple. And this tired sucks because there is no rhyme nor reason for it.
Yes, we changed his day care which corresponds with his sleep patterns but I am totally at a loss as to how to get him back on track. And this is seriously a train wreck because it just keeps escalating. I am hoping we can get things back on track before heading to Canada. Okay so that may sound TOTALLY lame but I cannot deal with the in laws when I am tired and irritable.
I am hoping for a low key weekend. I just want to nap A LOT and get some things done around the house (ha, clean our nasty bathroom for one...) Do some gardening and do some planning for the home projects we hoping to get done in the next six months or so. We are planning to put in some closet systems in Matthew's room and the future baby's room at least. I really want to paint a couple of rooms and we are planning to get our carpeting redone. Finally, we need to stain/seal our deck and fence and we are going to do some fall landscaping. LOTS to be done! I want to hit up some sales for some of these items. After all, isn't Labor Day all about sales? Isn't that why they invented this holiday?
There is a local arts festival this weekend as well that I am SO geeked about. I mean I LOVE LOVE LOVE these kinds of things. Growing up in CA in the 80s with my artsy fartsy mother meant attending every Art & Wine festival in the greater Bay Area including my fav in Santa Cruz. I loved them. I adored the feeling of all the other artsy people, I liked looking at the bright colored arts and crafts, the music and sounds, freaky drunks in rainbow colored shorts - come in CA in the 80s! It was just my thing as a kid. Sort of a bright spot in a child hood that was marred by frequent family issues. I am hopefully going with my girlfriend whom I have yet to call... I suck, I know. I also plan to buy some stuff. I totally dig pottery and have one piece I got for Christmas a couple of years ago but I am hoping to add some cool stuff to decorate the homestead with.
As a random aside, I am looking forward to fall. It has been very hot and humid here the whole month of August. I am ready for fall - bring it on, baby. Part of the reason I am looking forward to fall is the clothes! I was just checking out the new arrivals at Gap.com and they have such cute stuff. Now that the heat seems to be subsiding - you know down from 110 (with the heat index) to 85. Hey, it is relatively cooler, right?!
Another random aside: has anyone had acupuncture done? I am setting up an appt today. This person comes highly recommended so I am looking forward to it. Any thoughts?
All right ladies and gentlemen (of which I think I have NONE), have a lovely three day weekend (I know tomorrow is Friday but I may not get a chance to post tomorrow so...)! Have a beer or lemonade - enjoy a BBQ with your family - and SHOP the sales!
We have been dealing with the insanity that is my son's sleep patterns. He is not sleeping well at night, period. This has been ramping up and going on for about two, maybe three weeks. At first it was just a mild tantrum right when we put him down for bed but he could be sung to and would usually go to sleep on his own. Then he started waking up 2-3 times a night and wanted to sleep on the floor. Now it is a full blown drama EVERY single night beginning around 7:30p and going till the wee hours of the morning if we do not (a) let him fall asleep in our arms rocking in his chair, (b) fall asleep on the floor, and/or (c) fall asleep in our bed always with one of us. It is driving me batty. I am cranky and unhappy about this. I mean he is almost 2-1/2 years old. I am so over being sleep deprived... I am tired. Plain and simple. And this tired sucks because there is no rhyme nor reason for it.
Yes, we changed his day care which corresponds with his sleep patterns but I am totally at a loss as to how to get him back on track. And this is seriously a train wreck because it just keeps escalating. I am hoping we can get things back on track before heading to Canada. Okay so that may sound TOTALLY lame but I cannot deal with the in laws when I am tired and irritable.
I am hoping for a low key weekend. I just want to nap A LOT and get some things done around the house (ha, clean our nasty bathroom for one...) Do some gardening and do some planning for the home projects we hoping to get done in the next six months or so. We are planning to put in some closet systems in Matthew's room and the future baby's room at least. I really want to paint a couple of rooms and we are planning to get our carpeting redone. Finally, we need to stain/seal our deck and fence and we are going to do some fall landscaping. LOTS to be done! I want to hit up some sales for some of these items. After all, isn't Labor Day all about sales? Isn't that why they invented this holiday?
There is a local arts festival this weekend as well that I am SO geeked about. I mean I LOVE LOVE LOVE these kinds of things. Growing up in CA in the 80s with my artsy fartsy mother meant attending every Art & Wine festival in the greater Bay Area including my fav in Santa Cruz. I loved them. I adored the feeling of all the other artsy people, I liked looking at the bright colored arts and crafts, the music and sounds, freaky drunks in rainbow colored shorts - come in CA in the 80s! It was just my thing as a kid. Sort of a bright spot in a child hood that was marred by frequent family issues. I am hopefully going with my girlfriend whom I have yet to call... I suck, I know. I also plan to buy some stuff. I totally dig pottery and have one piece I got for Christmas a couple of years ago but I am hoping to add some cool stuff to decorate the homestead with.
As a random aside, I am looking forward to fall. It has been very hot and humid here the whole month of August. I am ready for fall - bring it on, baby. Part of the reason I am looking forward to fall is the clothes! I was just checking out the new arrivals at Gap.com and they have such cute stuff. Now that the heat seems to be subsiding - you know down from 110 (with the heat index) to 85. Hey, it is relatively cooler, right?!
Another random aside: has anyone had acupuncture done? I am setting up an appt today. This person comes highly recommended so I am looking forward to it. Any thoughts?
All right ladies and gentlemen (of which I think I have NONE), have a lovely three day weekend (I know tomorrow is Friday but I may not get a chance to post tomorrow so...)! Have a beer or lemonade - enjoy a BBQ with your family - and SHOP the sales!
Monday, August 13, 2007
Promises... Part Un
I have been thinking about 2008 a lot lately. Did you know on July 25, it will be exactly FOUR months till Christmas?! That sure puts holiday shopping in perspective! I told Kevin I was doing my shopping early because I am tired of being tired around the holidays. But I also want to enjoy this Christmas because it will likely be out last as a three person family... well five if you count Peaches 'n Cream - yeah, that's what I call my dogs... whachya gonna do about?!
More to the point, I have been thinking a lot about pregnancy with a child in tow and parenting two kiddos while being a working momma. I am trying to mentally prepare myself for these (courageous) acts... I know that there is no amount of preparation for this because as prepared as I thought I was for Matthew, I was SO not prepared AND it was terribly different (in a good way) then I ever imagined.
I do want to note that I have really changed my way of thinking about pregnancy, child birth and parenting the past two years. I was pretty "hard core" to some degree two years ago. This hard core attitude came from BABS. I love this place and it is a great thing for our community but made me feel wholly inadequate at best because I was not a hard core mommy to be (nor was I had hardcore vegan/vegetarian and I gave birth in hospital - OMG!) I had these beliefs and ideas about these things that seem so absurd to me now. With that said...
First, there is no way to replicate anything from my 1st pregnancy because Matthew is now a part of our world. There will be none of that dreamy sitting around and wondering about the baby... I mean there will be but that will likely happen at work! It just won't be 24/7 like it was with Matthew. After two years and much time to think about these things, I am making the following "promises" to myself... I do not hold myself accountable for these promises because I now always have a Plan B (and C).
1.) Kevin and I have discussed this extensively. While we have not conclusively decided this - we are probably going to find out the sex of the next baby. It was fun and exciting to not know the 1st time around but we feel like Matthew has the right to know whether he will be a big bro to a little sister or brother. He will be old enough to understand the differences between boys and girls. Plus I feel like it will help him get used to the idea of sharing his life with another little person. On top of that, we can plan the baby's room much better and it will make it easier to get what we need all around. And finally, finding a name we could agree was hell the 1st time around. Eventually we did it but was it ever hard. I would rather just know and be able to haggle over names for one sex versus coming up with six million names for two sexes.
2.) I plan to take A LOT more photos of my developing belly. I really planned to do that Matthew. I was going to keep a baby journal (I bought a cool notebook and everything...) and take a monthly baby belly photo but I did not... I am so sad about that. I wanted to do it because it meant a lot to me. I am a photo hound. I love photos and I look back at my pregnancy and there are hardly any of my developing belly. I think it will be special to look back at that one day.
3.) I promise to enjoy pregnancy even more this time around in all ways. I want to buy some fun clothes. I was so boring and conservative (okay I was really just broke...) I can now afford to buy some of the cute stuff out there and since the plan is to have the baby at a radically different time of year then when I was pregnant with Matthew, I am pretty excited to get some cute stuff. I will enjoy eating and being pregnant a lot more - I worried about EVERYTHING with my 1st pregnancy. So what if I had 400 lb ankles, acne like a 15 yr old and gained 895645 pounds... I did it for Matthew and that was worth every bit of it. My body did what it was supposed to do and it did it well.
4.) We have more loot this time around so can pimp out the next baby's pad! Not that we did not get the best things we could for Matthew because we did. It will just be fun to get nicer things without all of the worry and anxiety. I love to look at all the cool things that have come about the past two years. Little things have changed and, of course, we will re-use the stuff we already have but, for instance, basically Matthew's bouncer broke after approximately 2.5 uses so I can go out and buy a new bouncer without any qualms.
5.) Matthew will hopefully be close to three and a half by the same this mystical Schmidt baby would arrive. He will be very different by that time. He is already radically different. I mean recently Matthew developed this INCREDIBLE, RICH, and OMG it is so BEAUTIFUL imagination. I love this part... I love it so much so that it brings tears to my eyes as I type! I can relate to this because I am still a child at heart. Being a mommy means I can also be the kid at heart I have always been. All of this is for another post at another time but Matthew will be more mature which is a good thing for us. AND hopefully one step closer to being mostly potty trained though some friends of ours told us their SIX year old son (okay both of their sons were like this...) just stopped having accidents in bed at night - ACK!
... to be continued (this post is getting out of control!)
More to the point, I have been thinking a lot about pregnancy with a child in tow and parenting two kiddos while being a working momma. I am trying to mentally prepare myself for these (courageous) acts... I know that there is no amount of preparation for this because as prepared as I thought I was for Matthew, I was SO not prepared AND it was terribly different (in a good way) then I ever imagined.
I do want to note that I have really changed my way of thinking about pregnancy, child birth and parenting the past two years. I was pretty "hard core" to some degree two years ago. This hard core attitude came from BABS. I love this place and it is a great thing for our community but made me feel wholly inadequate at best because I was not a hard core mommy to be (nor was I had hardcore vegan/vegetarian and I gave birth in hospital - OMG!) I had these beliefs and ideas about these things that seem so absurd to me now. With that said...
First, there is no way to replicate anything from my 1st pregnancy because Matthew is now a part of our world. There will be none of that dreamy sitting around and wondering about the baby... I mean there will be but that will likely happen at work! It just won't be 24/7 like it was with Matthew. After two years and much time to think about these things, I am making the following "promises" to myself... I do not hold myself accountable for these promises because I now always have a Plan B (and C).
1.) Kevin and I have discussed this extensively. While we have not conclusively decided this - we are probably going to find out the sex of the next baby. It was fun and exciting to not know the 1st time around but we feel like Matthew has the right to know whether he will be a big bro to a little sister or brother. He will be old enough to understand the differences between boys and girls. Plus I feel like it will help him get used to the idea of sharing his life with another little person. On top of that, we can plan the baby's room much better and it will make it easier to get what we need all around. And finally, finding a name we could agree was hell the 1st time around. Eventually we did it but was it ever hard. I would rather just know and be able to haggle over names for one sex versus coming up with six million names for two sexes.
2.) I plan to take A LOT more photos of my developing belly. I really planned to do that Matthew. I was going to keep a baby journal (I bought a cool notebook and everything...) and take a monthly baby belly photo but I did not... I am so sad about that. I wanted to do it because it meant a lot to me. I am a photo hound. I love photos and I look back at my pregnancy and there are hardly any of my developing belly. I think it will be special to look back at that one day.
3.) I promise to enjoy pregnancy even more this time around in all ways. I want to buy some fun clothes. I was so boring and conservative (okay I was really just broke...) I can now afford to buy some of the cute stuff out there and since the plan is to have the baby at a radically different time of year then when I was pregnant with Matthew, I am pretty excited to get some cute stuff. I will enjoy eating and being pregnant a lot more - I worried about EVERYTHING with my 1st pregnancy. So what if I had 400 lb ankles, acne like a 15 yr old and gained 895645 pounds... I did it for Matthew and that was worth every bit of it. My body did what it was supposed to do and it did it well.
4.) We have more loot this time around so can pimp out the next baby's pad! Not that we did not get the best things we could for Matthew because we did. It will just be fun to get nicer things without all of the worry and anxiety. I love to look at all the cool things that have come about the past two years. Little things have changed and, of course, we will re-use the stuff we already have but, for instance, basically Matthew's bouncer broke after approximately 2.5 uses so I can go out and buy a new bouncer without any qualms.
5.) Matthew will hopefully be close to three and a half by the same this mystical Schmidt baby would arrive. He will be very different by that time. He is already radically different. I mean recently Matthew developed this INCREDIBLE, RICH, and OMG it is so BEAUTIFUL imagination. I love this part... I love it so much so that it brings tears to my eyes as I type! I can relate to this because I am still a child at heart. Being a mommy means I can also be the kid at heart I have always been. All of this is for another post at another time but Matthew will be more mature which is a good thing for us. AND hopefully one step closer to being mostly potty trained though some friends of ours told us their SIX year old son (okay both of their sons were like this...) just stopped having accidents in bed at night - ACK!
... to be continued (this post is getting out of control!)
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