Hubby

Hubby & I have been married for 9 years now. WOW! lol. He is a project manager for weapons systems with a defense contractor. That's as much info as there is on his job since it's all top secret stuff. I myself, just don't ask questions. ;0)

A few things about Hubby

* He cannot sit still to save his life, but that means lots of things DO get done. :0)
* He loves motorcycles, although it used to be cars.
* He enjoys spending time at the shooting range.
* He is a fantastic father, very hands on.
* He loves music and enjoys trying to make me listen to stuff I don't like, lol

If you ask me he is forever attached to that blackberry. Fortunately, he really is my best friend and we work well as a team.

New Baby....

It's official....Little Man is going to be a big brother!!

While a few of you knew, I wasn't willing to shout it from the rooftops until I'd had my first appointment.

I had that first appointment today, along with an ultrasound to get an accurate due date. (June 14) That's VERY important in light of Little Man's early arrival. Since I've delivered preterm once, it puts me at a higher risk of it happening again.

I love, love, love, LOVE my doctor!!!! Hubby & Little Man like her too!

While the due date is June 14, I'd look for an arrival about 2 weeks before that unless he/she decides to make an early appearance. And I'm hoping not because with Little Man, my first stage of labor was only 4 hours and I live almost an hour away from the hospital!!!!!

It was really nice to see the baby bean today and hear the heartbeat. Very reassuring to us both.

My Budget

We are a family of 4. Two adults, one day-time potty trained toddler, & an infant. This is my budget.
$10/week for diapers
$17.50/week for formula
$75/week for all food (excluding eating out), toiletries/HBA, paper products, cleaning products, batteries, OTC meds, etc.

$10 a week in diapers is from when both were in diapers. I probably have 6-7 months worth of pull-ups here so I should probably just adjust the amount we're putting towards it. Huggies are my preferred brand followed by Pampers but if there is a good enough sale I'll use just about anything. Afterall, he's only going to poop in it! :)

Just because we have the budget for it doesn't mean I'm spending it. One example is that I don't actually buy diapers every week, I wait until there is a decent sale on my preferred brands and buy some then. Formula is another example of this. I have done SO well with the formula budget that I still have 20 cans in the top of my pantry and haven't bought any formula since the end of December. I'm setting that money aside every week for when I do need to buy a little more.

That last category doesn't include eating out because we have a bad habit we are trying to break.

How I Calculate My Savings

I am calculating my savings pretty much based on what receipts say I saved. This would include the savings on a sales price versus the regular price in most cases. My opinion is that if I needed an item immediately, that is the price I'd pay so I am still saving it. By stocking up on certain items I am able to wait until another sale comes around and I just buy more at a cheaper price. The amount I pay on a gift card is savings. The amount I get in a RR, Catalina, ECB, GC, etc is not counted as a savings until I spend it. Many people like to talk about the "net cost" of an item AFTER RR or ECBs. An Example:

Buy 2 deodorants for $5 get $2 in RR back. I will only count the $2 as savings when I spend it on a future purchase since that's when it will actually reduce my OOP costs.

Updated Feb 2, 2009

New Arrival!

Our third born son, also pre-term, arrived safe & sound on Oct 9, 2009. He weighed in at exactly 6lbs & 18" long. A healthy little boy to bring even more joy into our home & hearts.

So far, so good.

Diva

Meet our sassy niece, Diva. She's one of our 3 beautiful nieces. (No nephews). She also happens to be Little Man's best friend. She is 14 months older than Little Man, which means she turned 5 in August. Most of the time they act more like brother & sister than cousins.

Spitfire is a great word to describe Diva. Wait...so is Diva, lol. She's great though. She's stubborn and head strong but she's also very intelligent. She is incredibly articulate. She has a never ending imagination and there is no shortage of "OMG, Did you hear what she said?" when she's around.

She is starting Kindergarten this Fall (in a G&T program) which I know is going to bring some great humor to us. Bless this child's teacher. Bless EVERY Kindergarten teacher, lol.

You'll have to excuse the hair in her face in this one...she was playing really hard at the bounce place for her birthday.

Peanut

Peanut celebrated his first birthday this past April. =)

He was born just over 7 weeks early and spent 29 very long days in NICU before coming home with us. (It's all documented here on the blog.)

In December we found out that Peanut has external hydrocephalus. That's fancy words for a head that grew so quickly that his brain began to make more fluid to surround his brain since his now bigger than normal head has a more than normal amount of space. Did ya catch all that? You can read about it in this post. The most important info is that we recently learned he should be out of the woods and not need any surgical intervention to correct this problem.

Peanut is eager for attention and loves to laugh. He knows how to get what he wants, which is called screaming. Or screeching. Or squealing. Pick your description because whatever it is, it's LOUD & will wake the dead!

This child is an eater. There is NOTHING he will not eat. Apparently eating is now one of his favorite hobbies. :) He is a really good eater though which is a huge relief to us seeing as we've been fighting with Little Man about eating for going on 4 years now.

He has zero words in his vocabulary but he makes a lot of noises & sounds so we're not ready to worry about that yet. He has an infectious smile that will leave you in a good mood, no matter what.

It's just amazing to see how different the personalities really are. Peanut is more agressive & demanding. Little Man just goes with the flow most of the time.

Maybe we should call him Linus since he's so attached to his blanket.

He is DEFINITELY a button pusher. He can't help himself when he sees a button...he MUST push it, lol.

Updated: August 19, 2009

Little Man

Little Man is 4 and thankfully he doesn't give us a lot of trouble. He's eager and determined and doesn't quit until he's "figured it out". He loves puzzles, drawing and writing. Yes, he can write the entire alphabet, upper & lower case, and can spell a few handfuls of words. It's just something that he really loves.

Traumatic would be the appropriate adjective for his birth, which also happened a month early. Since then we've been slowly putting the pieces of his puzzle together which is finally starting to shape into a whole picture. He didn't learn how to eat so he spent 6 months in feeding therapy with a speech therapist to learn how to chew. He also has some sensory issues which can make for some amusing moments. I won't lie though, it can also make for some frustrating moments.

Probably the most important treatment he's getting right now is speech. Little man has a (rare) true case of childhood apraxia of speech. His expressive speech is significantly delayed although his receptive is where it should be. He's learned a lot of sign language and is making huge strides each day. When he turned 3 he had literally a handful of words in his speaking vocabulary and very few of them were recognizable to an "outsider." Fast forward a year later and he's speaking sentences and talks about everything. Most of what he says while not perfect is at least recognizable. Especially if you know the context.

He's in a special preschool class this fall and is loving the heck out of it. We are so excited to see how much he's going to grow this coming year.