The Official MLB | Mommy's Little Blog: March 2013

Thursday, March 28, 2013

Bargain shopper!

If you know me, you know I love a SALE. You can blame all things shopping and sale related on my mom. Anyways, more specifically, I love yard sales. Now I have to admit, 9 times out of 10 I will go to one and I don’t buy a single thing because let’s face it, everything is usually junk. Then there is always that 1 ticket item that you find, haggle for and come home giddy with. This one item is what keeps you going back to more. No? Just me? Even though I normally come home disappointed, I really do enjoy it!

Now that I have a baby, I feel as though I am going to find a million more “ticket items”. Everyone sells baby/kid stuff because as sad as it is, they grow up. I stumbled across the mother load of children’s yard sales last weekend. I dragged my sister along with me; this was easy to do…I told her Nolan would be coming. And we walked away with this….

Jackpot!

What you see pictured:

I spent $1 on the mini bead maze.

For the wooden pull toy I spent $3 (haggled from $5 and retails for $17). This toy is adorable! The animals each have 3 pieces and are also a puzzle.

My most exciting find on the day was a brand new Baby Jogger console! We recently purchased the City Mini (after begging Ryan since we returned from Disney in the beginning of December) and we were going to buy the console. The console retails for $30. They had a $10 sticker on it and I haggled and got it for $8!

(We finally got the City Mini!)

Activity Cube retails for $59.99, they marked it $30, I worked my magic again and purchased this for $20. The lady selling this was pretty funny. She informed my sister and I that these things “really do make your baby smart”. While I don’t disagree, it was funny to watch how serious she was about it when selling it to us! Nolan you better become a baby genius now!

Lastly, my other very exciting find on the day was the Snail RockABye rocker!

These bad boys retail for $140! I really wanted to get Nolan “Homer” for his birthday, but I couldn’t walk by this deal. Our snail is now named Homer! They had a sticker on the snail for $10! I tried to keep my calm as I stood there very puzzled as to why no one had bought it yet! Homer did have a few stains which started to discourage me. Alaina told me to haggle again, and we would use stain remover and disinfect the crap out of it. I bought this for $8! The stains have all been removed and Homer is a new addition to the toy collection.

Aw, Homer! I love you, but you are not $8.

My findings on the day cost me $40! Can you believe that? Yes, they were pre-owned. Yes, I am a germaphob and yes, I was skeptical, but heck yes, I will be doing this more often! The console alone would have been $30 that I was going to spend that weekend. I managed to buy that plus all those goodies for only $10 more! Everything has been scrubbed down and disinfected and it is all as good as new!

Nolan and Aunt Lainy after we found all these wonderful items! We stopped by and saw Ryan at the golf course and he made us all lunch!

Pop Pop and his grandchildren!

And let's not forget about the snow day we had this past Monday. Yes, it is 1 week away from April and we had a snow day. Brr! Ryan had to work, but I got to spend my day with these two!

The inner child in me decided that Nolan should go sledding too....but I hate being cold. Therefore, we had an indoor sledding session! Nolan loved it!

Oh, and not 1 but both of his bottom front teeth are coming in!

Friday, March 22, 2013

A tooth is coming!

So the past 5 months (or longer) I have swore that Nolan was teething; I was obviously wrong. This Saturday I learned that a teething baby is in fact miserable. My poor baby boy had a low grade fever and only wanted to cuddle on Saturday evening. Mommy did not mind cuddling all evening, but it was so sad to see him moaning and upset. He thankfully has been able to sleep well, but just hears every little thing. He has woken up to Chuggins barking twice this past week, and he never used to budge before. Both of these times he woke up crying. On a normal basis Nolan wakes up happy, talking and playing with his paci in his crib. Sometimes he will take his paci and stick it back in his mouth and go right back to sleep. Other mornings he will normally throw his paci on the floor and say "uh oh". Once the pacificer hits the floor he is not going back to sleep. Besides Saturday evening, he has been happy. If that night was the worst of it...we are very lucky. His gums are red and we can finally feel a little white ridge. Our almost, 10 month old baby may have a tooth soon!

I feel like I barely saw my baby this week. We had a family emergency to attend too. After work each day I was spending my evenings at the hospital to keep my dad company. Pop Pop was in the hospital from Friday evening through Thursday afternoon, but he is finally home now and doing well! We all had dinner with him last night and Nolan cheered him up. At the hospital, I tried to order my dad a cheeseburger on multiple occasions, but because of the hospital diet they put him on he could not have one. I would just like to report that last night my dad finally got his cheeseburger! :)

Crazy cloud outside the hospital!

Pop Pop is home!!!

Nolan still hates food. He has thrown up on two separate occasions when feeding him dinner because he gags over the taste. We have tried stage 3 and table foods. He will only eat stage 2 food. Nolan does love his sippy cup though and will chug his water. As Ryan says, "I think we named the wrong one "Chuggins". He is definitely a little chugalug with his sippy!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

How cute are they?!

Happy 1st Day of Spring!

Monday, March 11, 2013

Spring-like weather!

Nolan’s 9 month checkup:

Weighing in at 19.2 pounds (40%) and standing tall at 28.5 inches (55%). Our little boy is starting to average out, but the drastic drop in height percentile required measuring Nolan 3 times which he was not too happy about. Developmentally Nolan is doing great! The pediatrician mentioned that within the next 3 months he should be able to say 1-3 words and then was surprised to hear that he already has done that! Way to go Nolie! She asked about crawling and we told her that he just figured it out. She predicted that he will be walking by next month. She also asked how he was taking to table food…Nolan seriously hates food! He LOVES to eat the pureed stage 2 baby foods, puffs and yogurt melts. We have tried stage 3 and table foods but they just get spit out of his mouth. Maybe once he gets a tooth or two he will like food more? This boy seriously is just as picky as his mama!

Then during his appointment we found out that Nolan had a double ear infection, meaning an ear infection in BOTH ears! I seriously have never felt so awful in my life. At that moment, I felt like the world’s worst mommy. Our pediatrician did a good job to make me feel better by stating that this happens a lot with babies that have a high pain tolerance. Nolan did not have a fever and has been in such a good mood. We called the pediatrician last week because he had an awful cold, but he didn’t have a fever. They told us to monitor his temperature and make sure he didn’t get a fever and that the cold just had to run its course. He did tug on his ear a few times, but was not fussy. He is always in such a great mood. Even when we pick him up from daycare and Aunt Ginnie’s house we hear about the great day he has had. How were we to know? Needless to say, our little boy is on antibiotics for his ear infectionS. :(

The weather this weekend was absolutely gorgeous! It really made me excited for spring and taking trips to the parks and playgrounds. We had such a busy weekend and were able to spend a great deal of time outside soaking up the weather! On Friday night we went to my dad’s house for dinner to see Aunt Nora. She was my mom’s childhood friend growing up and I love that she still makes it a point to see us every time she is on the east coast. Before we left for my dad’s a UPS delivery showed up at our house and it was an LA Kings pillow pet that Aunt Nora had sent to Nolan so he would have a Stanley Cup Champs souvenir!

Saturday morning we woke up to gorgeous weather, bundled up Nolan and headed to Rockburn Branch Park to take Nolan to the playground. He went down the slides and was put in a swing for the first time since the whole My Gym debacle. I am so happy to say that Nolan was all smiles when swinging! This boy also loves, loves, loves the slides! We spent a good bit of the morning at the playground and then went home to squeeze in a nap before Colby’s 1^st birthday party.

I still cannot believe that Colby is already 1! We had a great afternoon celebrating the little guy and watching him enjoy his smash cake. Kim did a wonderful job with all the decorations and food. I absolutely loved the Colby banners she made. Watching all the babies play together (or ignore each other and play on their own, but close to each other) was so fun! Colby’s birthday party has me very excited for Nolan’s first birthday, but at the same time I do not want to rush away those months at all!

After Colby’s birthday party we went downtown to Sabbatino’s in Little Italy with my family! Nolan was a little rock star at dinner considering he was on the go all day with maybe a 45-minute nap during Colby’s party. Not-so-fun Fact: I did learn that Sabbatino’s does not have changing tables in the restrooms of their bathrooms. Luckily, we were tucked in the back corner of one of the rooms in the restaurant so yes, I changed Nolan on his changing pad on the floor behind our table. You got to do what you got to do, right?

Sunday was daylight savings time. Nolan followed his schedule according to daylight savings. This meaning, he sprung forward and took his morning nap at 11am instead of 10am and same with his afternoon nap, dinner and bedtime! Saturday was Ryan’s dad’s birthday and since our day was jam packed we met up with them on Sunday to celebrate. The weather was just as nice as it was on Saturday and so we met at Patapsco State Park for a nice afternoon walk. After our walk we grabbed some lunch and went to Rockburn Branch Park had a picnic and played for a little bit. Nolan went on the slides and swings again on Sunday! We topped off our weekend by taking an evening walk to the grocery store. Leaving the grocery store we ran into Brent, Kim and Colby and talked with them for a bit before heading home. We really made the most of the nice weather this weekend and I cannot wait for spring to be here.

I apologize now for the massive amount of pictures...nice weather + busy weekend = LOTS of pictures!

Nolan playing peek-a-boo at dinner on Saturday night!