Coffee Date Friday

I wasn't able to get a vlog for this morning, so I'm going to write to you as if we were having coffee today!

If we were having coffee today:

• I would tell you that I've had a very busy week of travel. One that I'm excited to share with you in June! 
• I would probably show you our front hall closet in our new house - it is home to 3-4 winter coats,  my BOB stroller, and an awesome Dyson. The BOB and the Dyson are two of my favorite things that we own. I love the BOB because it makes taking Wesley for walks possible. And I love the Dyson because my sweet Aunt and Uncle bought it for us when they were visiting. My uncle said, "Hey! I'm taking you to Costco and you can get whatever vacuum you want!" And off to Costco we went. I absolutely adore my new Dyson. It's beautiful and makes vacuuming fantastic! 
• I would tell you about this delicious meal I made a few nights ago. We had 3 chicken breasts, 1/2 an onion chopped, one sweet potato, mushrooms, and about 6 small yukon golds. I decided to cook the chicken breasts in a dutch oven with a little bit of olive oil. Once they were cooked, I pulled them out and shredded them in the kitchenaid. (toss them in and run it on low with the paddle attachment until the chicken is shredded) While the chicken was shredding, I cooked the onions while chopping the potatoes into small pieces. Then I tossed in the potatoes and sliced mushrooms and salted everything. I let the potatoes cook for about 30 minutes or until they were tender. Then I noticed that we had some ranch seasoning...We normally don't use packaged seasoning, but I bought the ranch to make salad dressing once and thought it would be good on the potatoes. I sprinkled that on the potatoes, stirred it up, and added the chicken. I let that cook for a little longer until everything had time to get friendly in the dutch oven. Bam. It was delicious. 
• I'd tell you about how hard it is to travel because it means time away from my boy. I hate missing so many moments with him and cannot wait for things to settle down a little bit! There's still more traveling this summer, but he will go with me for most of my trips. Yay!
• We tried to teach Wesley baby sign when he turned 6 months old. We started with more and moved to all done. He didn't pick it up quickly and it didn't help with communication. We still use more and all done, but opted not to introduce more signs because they weren't helpful for him. He's become much more vocal recently and has mastered many words, including more. I decided the other day that it was time for him to learn please. I went to hand him his pancake and said, "Say please, Wesley." and he signed please. Seriously? Way to go, new school. You rock at teaching my kid things I can't. 

What are you up to today? What would you share with me if we had coffee? Have any awesome plans for Memorial Day?

Poop, pee, and what it means to be a mom.

Every parent has dealt with poop in the bathtub. It's inevitable. Someday your kid will poop in the bath.  I wish there was a way to avoid it, but I haven't been able to find one. It's just a risk of washing your kids...and washing is essential. I don't know what normal people do when their kid poops in the tub, but this is what I did.

The other night I was bathing Wesley and Jarrod was making dinner. Wesley grunted and bam. Poop in the tub. Wesley had soap in his hair and I wasn't really sure what to do. I screamed for Jarrod, grabbed Wesley, and walked to the hallway.

"You take the tub and I'll take Wes," I bark at my husband as I run to the other bathroom.  I went into our bathroom and ran the shower. I can count on one hand the number of times Wesley has been in the shower, but I wasn't really sure what else to do. I stripped myself down, all while holding a naked and wet toddler covered in soap. We got in the shower and cleaned off. I got the soap off of him while he screamed and clung to me. He was terrified.

Because Jarrod was cleaning the tub, I had to navigate Wesley and I getting out of the shower. I grabbed a towel and wrapped us both up, drying all his hair while I went. We were singing a song and having a great time. Then I felt warm...

That's right. Pee. Wesley peed on me. Right after we got out of the shower. Right after he pooped in the bath.

This is what it means to be a mom, right? And I didn't even mind. I was kind of impressed!

What do you do when your kid poops in the tub? 

TV Watching Made Easier

I wrote this post and scheduled it for today. However, this past weekend something bad happened. We were watching TV on Thursday evening. You know, the night of The Office finale, Scandal, and Grey's Anatomy. And our modem and cable box went out at 8:15pm. Jarrod went crazy for a little while and called AT&T. They were incredibly NOT helpful and told us that someone would be by with a new modem the next day between 8am-12pm. Thankfully, Fridays are Jarrod's days off and we had planend to stay around the house the following morning. The AT&T guy came, fixed the modem, and informed us that it was a refurbished model...which is why it broke after just 13 days of use. I called AT&T back and told them I was furious with the service we received and they took $10 off our bill ($5/day without service). Evidently $5/day is their rate for service. Not sure why then I pay $80/month... But anyway, they made it right within 24 hours, which is a good day for me. On with the original glowing review. 

Jarrod and I moved last week and one of the best parts of the move for me was switching cable providers. I know that's crazy, but I was so frustrated with various issues for nearly 2 years in our last place. We chose Time Warner when we moved to Dallas because it was easy. We had a few steps up from basic cable, one DVR box, and internet.

Let me note here that this is a ridiculous post. Children are dying, elderly are starving, and the world is a scary place. And yet I'm complaining about cable. I know. I also know that we live frugally and cable doesn't normally fit into a frugal lifestyle. 

The issues began almost immediately. When our cable was hooked up, they didn't hook up our second TV. Problem. They had to come out again and hook it up. Inconvenient, but definitely not the end of the world. When the problem is on the company, I selfishly expect some kind of compensation or apology. That didn't happen and I began to get a sinking suspicion that I'd regret choosing Time Warner.

Over the course of 23 months our cable box went out not once, but twice. Completely died for absolutely no reason. Which meant we lost all of our DVRed shows and settings. Note: I like to set the favorite channels so I don't need to scroll through 84,008,279 channels anytime I want to watch anything. Do you do that too?  We also always have several hours worth of shows saved on the DVR at any given time. All lost at a moments notice. Again, inconvenient. When your box breaks you have two choices: waiting 5-6 days for a repair person to come out and fix it (what we did the first time) or return our box and pick up a new one. The nearest location is about 20 minutes away, but that's what we did the second time.

The service was spotty, internet incredibly slow, and customer service was a joke. I mentioned switching or cancelling to Jarrod many times. He felt that this was our only option and didn't want to sacrifice without cable.

We could live without cable and the internet. We have chosen to fit this luxury into our budget because it makes life a little easier. We can work from home and need internet to do so.
We have researched Netflix/Hulu/internet watching vs. having cable. Between Jarrod's love of the UFC and our mutual love of the Food Network, this isn't a good option for us. If it is for you, that's awesome!

I think cable companies make you think that they are the only option. You pay a ton of money each month for bad service. If Time Warner were a restaurant  I'd stop eating there and I'd tell all my friends to stop eating there too. But since it's cable, we continue to blindly pay each month. It's insane. You are all my friends and now I'm telling you that it's insane.

When we moved we knew we wouldn't continue with Time Warner. We'd heard great things about AT&T's Uverse. I checked it out and could order it online. Done and done. We bundled the cable option and internet option and saved some money. In fact, we're saving about $40/month for the exact same package. Except with Uverse, it's better. And here's why:

• More channels. We now get some fancy UFC channel that makes Jarrod really happy. We also get the Cooking Channel. It makes me really happy. 
• Better interface. The remote is smaller and the interface on the TV is much more intuitive. 
• Easy fast forward. You know when you're watching a show on the DVR and you go to fast forward through the commercials but you go to far forward and have to rewind again? Making you wish you would have just watched the commercial because of the hassle fast forwarding and rewinding? Our new remote will fast forward and then when you hit play again it jumps back 2 seconds. It's magical. 
• WAY more space on the DVR. Jarrod says our new DVR will hold 400 hours of shows. (or something like that.) He said our old DVR only held 30 hours. I don't know if this is true, but I do know that our old DVR made us delete stuff all the time and we never had that many shows on it.
• We can record up to 4 shows at the same time! I don't know why we'd ever need to do that because we really don't watch that much TV, but how cool is that?
• It's cheaper. We're saving at least $40/month. That's great! 
• The wireless router is included in the cost of the internet. This was not the case with Time Warner - we used our own wireless router. This could be the reason it was so slow before...

Why am I telling you this? Perhaps you have a cable service that you hate and are looking for alternatives. Uverse is awesome. Time Warner is not. Perhaps you have a service provider that you hate - one that each time you write the check or pay online you get angry. STOP! You have options! Unless there's a monopoly (some states have monopolies on energy and some towns do for water, etc) you can switch! 

Have you ever felt trapped by a service provider? What do you do when you receive bad service?

Why I Stopped Starting...

Some of you may be wondering why I stopped writing my weekly posts about Jon Acuff's Start. I'm still making my way through the amazing book, but I lost my motivation. I wrote here about how I was trying to drive as much traffic to his book site in competition with other Blissdom bloggers in hopes to win a trip to Nashville to have dinner with Jon Acuff and Dave Ramsey. I'm still convinced that no one wanted the trip as badly as I did, but I didn't win.

In fact, I didn't even make the top five. I'm confident I was #6, though.

I got an e-mail in my inbox several weeks before the end of the competition encouraging me (and everyone else!) to keep up the good work. The e-mail also included the top 5 bloggers. The email was positive and said that there were only a few points between the top bloggers and to keep working hard until May 1st. But my name wasn't on the list. At. All.

I was so bummed. I tried hard not to be bummed. I considered keeping up the good work and still writing, reading, and pretending I was #1. But the other 5 bloggers were all big name bloggers and I figured one of them would win. I was bitter, frustrated, and upset. I really wanted to win.

So I completely stopped reading. I still carried Start in my purse, but I wasn't reading it at all. I was mad. I don't know who I was mad at, but I was mad. I tried my hardest and didn't win. I was proud of my effort, but I wasn't going to win. These things happen. I'm so thankful I started, pushed myself, and shared my thoughts. I am disappointed I stopped.

The bottom line is that I didn't do it to win. Of course I wanted to win, but I did it for the same reason I write just about anything - to help others. I hope that some of you read my posts about Start and were inspired to start. I hope that some of you were inspired to read Jon Acuff's book because you needed a good kick in the pants. But when I didn't win, I forgot what my motivation was. I gave up. And that's not cool.

So it'll be back. I'll write more of my thoughts and what I got from the book. Honestly, I'm still processing it. I'm figuring out what I want to start. I'm figuring out what I've mastered and how I can guide others.

Anyway, I've been feeling guilty that I just stopped starting for y'all. I wanted to come clean. I had a temper tantrum. But I'm back now. :-)

Coffee Date #3

Look at this! I'm vlogging for the 3rd time in a row! I'm linking up with Alissa from Rags to Stitches again this week for Coffee Date.

A couple of disclaimers:

• My dryer was going and you can hear clinking in the background. So sorry about that!
• Yes, I talk about bras. Here's your warning.
• I got a text message about halfway through and there's a weird vibrating sound. That's what that was.

If we were having coffee, what would you want to share?

Stubborn Little Boy

On Monday I wrote about Wesley's new school. We love it and love the sweet little boy he is growing into. However, over the past few weeks of incredible transition, we've also discovered how strong-willed and stubborn our little man is. He's just 16 months old and doesn't communicate well at all. He prefers to point even when we insist on baby sign. The lack of communication is frustrating to him, I know. But he's also learning the meaning of no.

Of course he's also turning into a toddler - fits are frequent and he's sharing his opinions and preferences. He is a stubborn and strong-willed child. We are working on redirecting, ignoring, and setting boundaries. Rationally, I know it's completely normal, but it hurts my heart each time I have to hold him down to change his diaper or brush his teeth.

Mealtime is especially frustrating. For example, dinner is often more frustrating and aerobic than relaxing and enjoyable. We feed Wesley whatever we are eating - no special means and no "kid food." This went well for a long time but the past few weeks he decides each day what he likes and what he doesn't like. Something he would eat the day before, he won't even put in his mouth just a day later. In fact, he'll SCREAM, throw his arms around, and shut his mouth as tight as he can. If we force food into his mouth, he'll usually realize it's not poison and eat until he decides he's no longer interested. We are interested in making sure that he's not a picky eater, but this might be backfiring on us!

We have tried redirecting his attention to something else, encouraging him when he does well, and ignoring bad behavior. We know that fits and temper tantrums are going to happen, but the frequency of them are starting to stress me out. I'm not entirely sure the best way to deal with this behavior. We LOVED Baby Wise and would love another book like this that might help me navigate the toddler years. I've heard that On Becoming Toddlerwise, Happiest Toddler on the Block, and Love and Logic are excellent resources. I haven't read any of them, but they are all on my reading list. :-)

And do you have any advice for me on books or resources on how to best parent my sweet boy? Any stories of a stubborn or strong-willed kid of your own? Misery loves company, you know. :-)

Some of those links are affiliate links but Amazon.com doesn't know I exist and I've never made more than a few pennies. 

Mother's Day 2013

I had the most beautiful Mother's Day. In spite of my child being a tantrum-throwing toddler, we really enjoyed the day. Jarrod woke up early and went to church. Wesley actually slept in, which would have been delightful had I not gotten up early in hopes to take him for a walk before church. Luckily, I used the time to get things done before he woke up. After he got up we ate breakfast and got ready for church. The sermon at church was from a minister who is battling infertility. It was honest, authentic, and moving. Mother's Day sermons can tend to be fluffy and I was overwhelmed with the depth of emotion brought this year.

After church we went home for a quick and light lunch. Jarrod got to making some sweet potato chips and I went for a walk while Wesley napped. Once Wes woke up, we played, read books, and played music. Around 3:30pm we walked to the park! We have a fabulous park just 1/2 a mile from our house, which is awesome!

Jarrod packed a picnic early dinner. He made grilled chicken salad sandwiches, sweet potato chips, and crackers and brie. It was incredible and relaxing. Wesley was so good and loves playing at the park. There's actually a small jungle gym just for toddlers at our park, which rocks. Wesley can run and play without worrying about him falling or getting scared. The slides are even small enough for him to go down by himself. As long as I'm at the top and Jarrod's at the bottom to catch him!

After the park, we went home and gave our messy kid a bath. After bathtime we read stories and played in Wesley's room. After Wesley went to bed, Jarrod and I enjoyed a glass of wine and ice cream. I am well aware that wine doesn't "go" with ice cream. But that's just silly. Ice cream - good. Wine - good!

What did you do for Mother's Day? Did you get any pictures with your little ones? I obviously didn't do that!