Andy started the day off by vomiting all over the front room floor (Brendan: “That is DEE-SCUST-ING Andy!”). Then all over the living room carpet, right outside his bedroom, at a restaurant (we *had* to go it was a rare family reunion & baby shower- we sat far away) and then bright yellow in the car.
Naturally, he finally kept down some pedialyte and perked up as we were waiting to see the Med-Clinic dr. Of course. “Waste” of $80.
Yup. Good times.
Riddle me this- why do my kids ALWAYS get hurt or sick on the weekend???
On a good note, while we were in triage, Brendan pointed to a sign above a door and said “That says exit.” 🙂 Also, Andy weighs 21 lbs 10 oz. 🙂
Bren is currently having a blast with a N64 Tom & Jerry game that I won off of ebay for some obscenely cheap amount while Andy is chugging bottle after bottle.
Andy has already moved on to the “I’m trying to be brave” stage and can be spotted a couple times daily standing for a bit without holding on to anything. He cruises pretty darn good now.
His first birthday party is tentatively planned for my grandparents’ house next Sunday at 2 pm. The baby shower was a great place to go to see everyone to invite them.
I MUST order a cake. I must follow up with email invites.

If I make a pot of pot roast (I love Kraft’s recipe with Catalina dressing) with potatoes and carrots we have a great supper and I usually have some leftovers the next day for lunch and end up tossing the rest. But I’ve noticed that if I instead stuff a loaf of french bread with shredded pot roast mixed with gravy, we not only use half the amount of meat but the meal is now deemed to be “mana of the Gods” and more sandwiches the next day are not greeted with frowns. It’s just a loaf of bread…. 1 meal for 4 + 1 lunch = $11 or 2 meals for 4 for $6.50 each. To put this in perspective, Hamburger Helper without any coupons costs me $5.50 to make plus the cost of a veggie. I’d much rather have pot roast.

stood up without pulling up on anything or even holding on to anything!

I gave Andy a stack of these cards to mess with while Brendan did his worksheets today. Brendan later helped me pick them up. Of course, he was telling me what everything was as he did so. I had no clue that he knows what a diamond and oval (well, “obal”) are nor that he knows right and left! :O Wow. In fact, the only 2 things he missed were pentagon and hexagon!
We also worked on patterns for the first time. His worksheet had pictures of beads on a string with alternating colors (say: red, blue, red, blue, red, blue, ___). You had to color the last bead the correct color. That took no explanantion at all, he picked up on it right away.
A couple weeks ago, we got this little activity in the mail from Tide. Brendan LOVED it. I thought I’d pass it on.

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Andy has been the Whine Monster!!! Ack! He is driving me insane. He thinks he can and must do everything Bren is doing and perhaps isn’t getting enough stimulation. Yesterday I introduced him to Starfall and he LOVED it. Of course, Brendan discovered us and joined in too. Starfall has added some stuff to their ABC videos too. 😀 Love that site.
Andy has not been sleeping well. Somewhere between 2:30 and 5:30 am he wakes up wailing and I pull him into the guest bed with me. But I’m not really comfortable in that bed and roll around a lot and end up waking him up early. Sigh.

All his own placement and gluesticking. I wasn’t paying any attention to him.
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In the past 2 days Andy has started to (albeit slowly) creep around the furniture. He also now says “Uh-oh” but I’ve only heard him practicing it while changing his diaper- so I’m curious if he has a clue about when to use it.
ETA: He sure does! He was whining, whining, whining on the kitchen floor while I was making him a bottle. I accidently dropped the formula lid on the floor and he immediately stopped whining and belted out a big “Uh Oh!!” 😀 Wheee! He’s a smart one!

Here’s what San Antonio prices are looking like right now:
(Originally from Michelle)
Gas – $2.79/gallon
Milk – I know for sure it costs me $2.89 for a 1/2 gallon. I believe it is $4.29 or $4.39 for a gallon
Bread – The cheapest sandwich bread is $0.57 at HEB. It’s why I struggle with buying the whole grain breads at a minimum of $1.99.
Ground Chuck – The really lean stuff is cheapest at Wal-mart and costs a tad under $4.00 a pound.
Apples – $0.99 a pound in season and $1.29 (or occassionally $1.49) for Fujis or Pink Ladies- which are far superior to Red Delicious.
Bananas – $0.33 a pound almost always.
Cable Internet – $59 including the most basic cable tv, after taxes and such.
Power (electric and gas) – $100-250 depending on how hot it is.
Water bill – $35-55 a month
Grass cut- small yard, $40 each time (includes trimming). My neighbor pays this.

Make sure you finish Deathly Hallows first!!! These helped me a lot more than the flimsy (but romantic!) epilogue chapter.
Live web chat with JK Rowling
Dateline’s interview with JK Rowling

I NEVER do this… but my grocery store is holding a contest where if you buy 6 of their own label products you get a random game piece printed with your receipt. Match the 2 pieces up in any category and then mail them in and get the chance to win that prize in a random drawing. Not only did I keep the few pieces I got at the store but I sent a SASE in for 2 free pieces.
Well, I got them today and one matched one I already had for 1st prize- free groceries for a year (aka $10,400 in gift cards)!!! I also had a match for a cell phone.
Contest ends August 7th! Entries must be received by the 14th.
Gosh, could I use $10,400!

Today was a banner day for the wookbooks. He placed stickers on 4 different fruits and vegetables with an increasing level of difficulty. He did fairly well covering up the missing areas with the stickers, though he had to pull off the stickers a few times.
We completed 2 folding activities together- he is getting the idea now but it is still too hard for him to do alone. You have to bend it in the right area, line it up correctly and then crease it as well. Tough stuff.
Then we worked on a page of “Here is the letter _ , find another one just like it in this row and circle it”. He aced that. The reverse of that was a pictorial story of a snowman, with the last picture showing the sun coming out and the snowman starting to sweat. What comes next (I had folded the 2 pictures choices under the page)? Brendan said “Uh-oh!” a few times but didn’t have the words to tell me so I showed him the pictures and he picked the correct melted one. I then explained melted.
Then he completed 2 mazes.

Here’s an example of a maze from his Kumon book (BTW, there is a buy 3, get 1 free promotion going on at Amazon on them). He really liked this one- the racing theme appeals to him. His chatter was “Come on pencil, you can do it!” this time. So cute! He completed it with only 1 mishap. 5 days ago he started looking ahead on the mazes. A big improvement over how he used to rush through them and then backtrack. 😀
His reward- he asked for a pickle & Clifford the Big Red Dog. LOL.
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Various notes:
My oven broke. 🙁 It’s the electronic touchpad/clock part. $250 plus shipping but DH thinks he can fix it himself.
Bren’s current cartoon faves: Scooby Doo, Avatar, Pokemon, Tom & Jerry
Bren saw a box up on display at the grocery store and was so excited. They were “Sip sip sippin’ straws!!” Apparently they are cereal straws that you use to drink your milk out of. They’re weird because they aerate the milk but he LOVES them. And he drinks all his chocolate milk now. They comes in fruity and chocolate and I am glad he choce chocolate becaue fruity chocolate milk does not sound good. Haha.
Andy’s current faves: fridge magnets, anything amall, nesting cups, baths, various balls, taking things out of containers
Andy is getting more attached to the pacifier.
Starting yesterday, Andy now pulls himself up to a stand all on his own and even climbed onto his first box. Both same day. And everywhere we go he points to items and says “More, more!” He wants it ALLLLLL. LOL. It’s driving us nuts!!!

North Texas Job Prospects: 2
Darrell: 0
Back to the drawing board. 🙁 No real reason was given but we suspect they found a qualified person to take their original low salary offer.