The many uses of a Happy Meal box

Wyatt has discovered many more uses for those Happy Meal boxes other than just holding chicken nuggets and a cool toy.

A cool way to finally get a picture of Wyatt where he's looking at me. He told me when he put it on that he was daddy wearing a hat. Not sure where that came from.

A blinder/helmet for running through the house with.

A shoe for both feet.

Finally, a hat for golfing with.

New Breakfast Item

Since Wyatt turned one we have had two staples for breakfast: pancakes or waffles. Now I make the pancakes in large batches and then freeze so I can pull them out as needed. Plus, it makes me feel like I'm giving him a home-cooked meal for breakfast, good mom!! The waffles are just Eggo's, my fave, and both just get some butter put on top of them.
The other morning I decided to give Wyatt half a mini-bagel. Mike and I had purchased them for us to grab and go in the morning and I thought since he loves all breads I should have him try one. The result was fantastic! He loves them!! He doesn't care for my onion and chive cream cheese spread but he does like butter on them. I had to snap some pics of him eating the bagel because he loves to eat on his Cars couch and apparently when eating bread he has to lie down to do it.

Chilling on the couch and eating the bagel

"What Momma?"

Hi!

Chowing down

Getting the hang of it

Well I've been on this couponing campaign for several weeks now and have been doing research and reading blogs to help me and I've had my first successful couponing experience, not once, but twice this week!! And it's only Wednesday!! ;)

First Deal:
Store-Dyer's IGA
Items: Hamburger Helper & Suddenly Salad
Coupons: $0.75 off 3 Hamburger Helpers & $0.50 off 2 Suddenly Salads
Hamburger Helper was on sale for $0.98 already and Suddenly Salads were on sale $1.98. I took the coupons and found out that Dyer's will DOUBLE your coupons up to $1.00. So I only paid $4.90 for all 5 items. The best part was that on my receipt it gave me how much I saved with my coupons and the items being on sale and it totaled $8.53!!

Second Deal:
Store-Walgreens
Item: Colgate Total Protection Toothpaste
Coupon: $1.00 off 1 toothpaste.
I was looking at the Walgreen's ad on Sunday out of my newspaper and saw a sale going on for Colgate Total Protection toothpaste. The sale was for buy one, get one free! Can't get much better than that. So with that sale and my $1.00 coupon I only paid $3.49 for two tubes of toothpaste. My total savings with coupons and sale totaled $5.49! That is only $1.75 for each tube.

Not too bad for my first real coupon deals. Starting small and working my way up to bigger things. :)

Poopy on the Potty!!

*Warning this post is about poop.*

Tonight while Wyatt was taking a bath he started saying he needed to poop. We've had this problem before and we ended up with turds in the bathtub and I didn't really want to repeat that. So I got him out of the tub and could tell that he really had to go. So I plopped him down on his potty and let him sit there. He kept crying and wanting to get up but I pushed through and he stayed on the potty. He pooped a little turd and then wanted to finish but I knew there should be more coming. We stuck it out a little longer and then the big turd came. I kept asking him if he was done and he kept saying "no" because he had found a car to play with while pooping. I guess it's the little things! Finally he said he was done and we got off and got cleaned up and ready for bed. I was so proud and Mike came into the bathroom and made a big deal about it as well. He even gave Wyatt some Smarties for doing such a good job. Hopefully this is a good beginning to starting potty training. :)

Learn to Coupon in 30 Days, Seriously!!

Okay, so my friend Chelse left me a a website on one of my couponing posts about a great website to visit, forthemommas.com and it's wonderful. They are doing a Learn to Coupon in 30 days series and if you are interested in couponing it's very worth the time to read! They offer REALISTIC tips for people that want to coupon and save money. Enjoy, I know I am!! :)

"The worms are sleeping."-Wyatt

That is what Wyatt told me as I snapped this picture! While I was cooking dinner Wyatt had brought in his plastic fishing worms and proceeding to put them in my toaster. When I asked him why he did that he said it was because they were sleeping. I think the reason was kids like to put small things in small spaces. But we'll go with Wyatt's reason for the sake of the story. :)

He took three plastic fishing worms and put them each into their own bed slot in the toaster.

After I got a screw driver and shook the toaster upside-down for several minutes they all re-emerged unharmed and ready for a new adventure. I told Wyatt that maybe they would enjoy a nice bowl instead of the toaster next time.

After the bowl idea he thought he could make them into food and decided to get a spatula to help the preparation process. Gotta love this kid! :)

Our adjusted balance is now $0.00

Two weeks ago Mike and I received a bill from Mercy Hospital. We were extremely perplexed about getting this because we haven't been to the hospital since Wyatt was born and wondered why were getting a bill. Well that's exactly what the bill was for, yep, a bill for when I had him. It was a bill for his stay in the hospital, TWO YEARS AGO! So I did what any normal person would do, I called the hospital and talked to them. They didn't have an answer for me and were just as perplexed as I was about why it was coming 2 years late.
After talking to them I of course called my mom (who works in hospital admissions and deals with insurance paperwork) and she said, "I don't think so!". She gave me some more advice about who to talk to and what to ask for when talking to them. Then I was back to the phones and making more calls.
I finally ended up getting a number to a hospital in Wichita that has taking over billing for Mercy Hospital. After talking to a very rude billing agent who told me that it was my fault!! Can you believe that, my fault?! I was livid to say the least. She said I should have called the hospital when I didn't get another bill from the hospital for Wyatt. I told her that I teach fourth grade and don't get paid to do her job. Trust me when I say this is the edited version of my conversation. Needless to say I ask for her boss' name and number and I talk to her instead.
When I talked to the boss she gave me little more information and said she would look into the situation. Well that was last Tuesday and I didn't hear from her all week. So on Friday I called her and left her a message telling her to call me back. I called her again this morning and of course she was unable to be reached. The secretary asked me if I wanted to leave her a voicemail and I said yes but would also like her to take a message for the boss and give it to her as well. The message was that I would be calling her until I got ahold of her or she called me back and that I was tired of waiting.
I got a call back in only an hour and our account has been adjusted to a balance of $0.00!! So very happy!!

TERRIBLE TWOS ARE HERE!

Okay so I'm sure everyone that has a child is reading the title and laughing like crazy because they know exactly what I'm going through, right?! Wyatt's behavior has progressively gotten more crazy and chaotic as the days go by. This weekend we pretty much did nothing but scream, try to bite, throw stuff (that shouldn't be thrown), and cry. We are doing the whole time-out thing, talking to him and rationalizing his actions to him and we've even spanked him. Yes, sometimes it is warranted. We prefer not to spank and really use the time-out and talking to him 90% of the time. I don't know what to do and I'm know this is just a phase and will pass but strongly considering taking up a new habit to help me get through this! ;) We have also entered the phase of not being able to take him out to eat with us as well. It seems like every time we have gone out to eat in the past couple months that he acts terrible and does the above actions. So I'm pretty sure our days of eating out are few and far between until he can act appropriately. Lord help me!!

Got the coupons, now what?!

Okay after my last Sunday paper coupon failure I was prepared this Sunday and got my paper WITH the coupons in it. I held my ground and looked through my paper before taking it and all the coupon ads were there and ready for me to look through them. Wyatt and I headed home and he chalked on the sidewalk in the cool morning air while I scoured the coupons. I have to say I was very disappointed. :( I thought I was going to find these great coupons and they would all be worth $0.75-$1.00 or higher and make my day. Most of the coupons were only worth a quarter or fifty-cents, blah. The other bad part was that most of the coupons were for things I don't use. Now I know from watching Extreme Couponing they don't care about the brand it's mainly about the product itself. I'm not a product snob by any means. We generally buy store brand items and those things we don't buy store brand are items that we buy a certain name brand and have always bought.
So my mission this week is to make some comparisons for different products we always buy and comparing some of my coupons. I'm also going to go to Dillon's and get a store loyalty card. Big step for me because I have always felt like I shouldn't have to get a card to get a discount. Tomorrow is also the day when ads will come out in the paper so I can look through them and get an idea of what is really on sale and how I can use the small pile of coupons I got from the paper. Stay posted!!

College Try

Well that's what Mike, Wyatt, and I can say about the whole toddler bed trial. We gave it the old college try! Last night after having a Friday night of getting up every hour except for one, we decided to put his crib rail back on his bed. No more toddler bed and welcome back crib. I can say that last night he slept six hours straight without waking up! That's the longest he's slept for a week now and we are all relieved. It didn't help that this weekend Wyatt was running a fever Friday and Saturday.
For now the toddler bed will have to wait. I think maybe he just didn't feel secure while sleeping in it and that just led to him not being able to sleep. I'm thinking we may try again before I start school in August or maybe wait until Christmas break when he'll be closer to 2 1/2 years.

Matching

Wyatt got a Dr. Seuss Matching game for Christmas last year and we haven't really been playing it because I just thought it would be too advanced for him right now. We got it out this morning and he did an awesome job! Now we weren't playing it the traditional way and flipping them over, we had them all picture-side up and then we would pick one and Wyatt would look for it's match. Then we would put the matches on the side and give each other a high-five. He loved it and so did I!! He would play for about ten minutes before he decided he didn't want to play anymore and then would start messing them all up and walking on them.

He found a match and was so excited. He would get them both look at them and then yell "MATCH"!!

Studying the cards very meticulously.

Needing a closer look just to make sure.

In front of him was the match he just made, Thing 1&2 cards. He was pointing at them and smiling but of course wouldn't do it once I had the camera out! Little stinker!

6 is ridiculous!

Well last night was night #6 in his toddler bed and it was by far the WORST night we have had since starting the whole thing. It feels like we took one step forward to take ten steps back. Mike put Wyatt to bed and everything should have gone well. We spent plenty of time outside playing and getting all that energy out, took a bath and then watched Blue's Clues before heading to bed fifteen-minutes later than usual. He should be knocked out for the night! Well at 1:35am we were woken up and I get up and put him back to bed. I've been sitting with him and rubbing his back or just being a presence in his room. Well after forty-minutes I head back to bed, only to be woken back up several short minutes later to a screaming baby. Again we go back to bed and do the same except I leave earlier and the crying starts again. This time I tell Mike that he's just going to have to cry a little bit. Then Mike gets up with him and puts him down, cries again. I get up with him a couple more times, cries again. Finally at 4:00am Mike gets up with him one last time and rocks him to sleep and then there was silence.
I'm at a total loss of what to do to help this. Do we let him cry? Do we keep putting him back in his bed and then leaving? Do we put him back to bed and then stay with him until he falls asleep? Either way I have no idea what to do or not to do and we are very tired.

Night #5

Well last night wasn't as great as #4 but it was better than nights #2-3! He got up a couple of times, I'm pretty sure due to the storm, but once I laid him back in his bed and sat with him he seemed to go back to sleep quickly. Although he is returning to his new routine of getting up at 6:30am and Momma does not likey!! So we'll see how tonight goes since we actually got to play outside again this evening and made another 45-minute trip to the park after daycare again. So he should be worn out tonight, that and he's been favoring Mike quite a bit to put him to bed lately. He gets so upset and then starts telling me "night-night" and giving me kisses so Mike can take him up and not me. It did hurt my feelings at first but I know this is just him bonding with his daddy and I shouldn't take it personally.

On the 4th night there was sleep

Last night was night #4 and it went splendid! I think it had to do with all my preparations for the night. First I took the bumper and put it back on Wyatt's bed and just double-backed the sides. He loves snuggling up to the bumper and it's been hard for him since I took it off trying to prepare him for the toddler bed. So yesterday I put the bumper back on and the KEY to my whole plan was to wear him out!! I picked him up from school and we spent an hour at the park playing. We walked the whole thing and played hard. Then we came home at supper and headed back outside for another 45 minutes. After that we came inside and took a bath and got ready for bed. I was planning on letting him stay up until 8:30 but at 8:10 he came up to Mike and I and said that he was tired and wanted to go night-night. Score!! So we are going to continue this ritual for the rest of the week and hopefully that will help with our transition. :)