I’m High-Jacking Our Blog!

The Zippercow so rarely did anything with our blog previously and we only used it to update friends and family on our little family, but now there is facebook so... As some may be aware I’m not the greatest at keeping our blog going, but this time will be different (I’m serious!). I felt our family blog in its previous form read more like the holiday letter that everyone sends out every year. My hope is to have more of my style (I know, I know, who needs that right?) honest mom moments, how we save money,  inexpensive decorating ideas and anything else my crazy brain comes up with. Zippercow may add his input  from time to time but mostly you just get me, and you know you love it!

A Little Sunshine

Look at this little sunshine! It is so smiley and unassuming. You would never know the evil things it is capable of. You might ask, "How can such a cute little sunshine toy be anything but cute?" Oh let me tell you!

We were fortunate enough to have some nice friends loan us their excersaucer for our Littlest Moo to use. And man does he love to sit in it and play! But I recently discovered the little sunshine is not so sweet and sunny because he doubles as a spit sling shot. Sadly our Littlest Moo spits up quite a bit (much like Little Moo did) so while he's playing he spits up and we wipe it up. Littlest Moo finds this little sunny guy the most appealing and can often be seen chewing away on it, which requires him to bend it towards him. Well sometimes he spits up and before we can get to him to clean it up he will have gotten some of the spit up all over this sunny little face and then it will slip out of his hands. But don't you worry, the sunshine shares!As he snaps himself into his upright position he flings all of that lovely spit up all over my living room. Yes, baby vomit in little specks all over my living room.not cool! I didn't realize how bad it was until the other day I found spots of orange on my couch in a couple places. I don't let the little kids snack in the living room so I had to ponder for a few minutes before realizing it was regurgitated carrots that was all over my couch.FAIL. So unassuming he is, just politely smiling. I'd consider taking it off but again, it is Littlest Moos favorite and how can you deny such a sweet face a little sun? So instead we just take cover from the sun.

Here Kitty, Kitty!

Yikes again! We were so busy and during that we all had 3 terrible colds back-to-back. Now that we are all finally feeling better I have time to get back to things (such as this blog) that take a backseat when things get crazy!

We do have some very sad news that I would like to share first. Last week, April 20th, we had to make the very tough decision to put Harry down.  It was a heartbreaking decision for Zippercow and I to make and Little Moo still asks if we are going to pick him up from the vet, which means we have to explain to him all over again that Harry passed away. He asks less now, but the retelling just makes it hurt more. He was with us for 16 great years and if you had ever met him you would know that he was quite possibly the friendliest cat ever. He will be missed. 

 

Moving on to things that aren't so sad, Zippercow has completed a very important phase for getting ready for our little baby boy on the way. Oh yeah, we haven't shared that yet, we are expecting a BOY!!!! Little Moo wasn't too keen on a brother, it took some convincing but now he is excited. Anyhow, back to what I was previously sharing. Zippercow built a cat cage for in the garage. It has a door on the front so that the litter boxes can be accessed as well as any clean ups that are necessary. And now there is also a cat door that leads from the house to this cage, so the litter boxes are no longer going to be in what is now the baby's room. We even put some toys and a new scratching post in the cage for them. It took them a few days to get used to going through the kitty door, but they are getting used to it. I'm so proud of my Zippercow he made the plans, and built this great cat cage and put the kitty door in. They may seem like small things, but each time we do something (even small things) we customize our house to be the home we want it to be. Next will be painting! Three rooms, double yay!?!

 

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Testing, Testing?

Some things have changed with how we can post to our blog so I wanted to see if it still works. If it does I will post more later. If it doesn't..well I'll post tomorrow. 

And so..

Again, a month goes by before I've even noticed it, yikes! So here is what is going on.

We purchased a minivan. Yes a minivan. When we had discussed the eventuality of needing a second vehicle Zippercow was set against a minivan. He had grand ideas for medium sized SUVs and had no desire to be one of THOSE people who drove minivans. I personally never minded, but since he didn't want one I went along with the other options he had researched. And as we would soon discover those other options were at the high end of what we could afford and we were trying REALLY hard to keep the payments close to what we were paying for the Mazda (which is now paid off, hurray!). So we started looking into the smaller SUVs with third row seating. Now I'm sure you are thinking "crazy lady you are only going to have two kids why on earth would you need a third row?!" and as I've had to explain a couple times,  I watch my niece during the week as well so once Little Moo starts preschool (not to mention appointments and now we will actually be able to go to the park!)  I will need to have room for three (yes three) car seats. Anyone who has had the pleasure of strapping the behemoths into a car will tell you, you can never get more than two into a backseat safely. Anyhow,back to how we ended up with a minivan. We looked into smaller SUVs with third rows. Smaller is an understatement, cramped and uncomfortable is more like it. We did a lot of looking online and just were not finding what we needed so we went to a couple dealerships. First I must say that I hate working with salesman more than..well anything. The first place we went she took down all the things we were looking for, high on our list of priorities was price, and though we said it repeatedly she didn't ask what our price range was . After all the info she gathered she brought around a vehicle. It was not ANY of the vehicles we discussed and was about twice what we were willing to spend. She was excited and had it ready for a test drive. I took one look at the inside and new it was out of our price range. I wouldn't even get in, which I'm sure disappointed her. I know how it works, they hope you love it enough that you'll find a way to afford it. We aren't those kind of people. We do a lot of research, we always sleep on our decisions, and the more pressured we feel, the less likely we are to just leave, which I have done before. We left and went to another car lot. The salesman was nice and while he still didn't show us anything we wanted to see he paid attention to what we wanted to pay and that we needed it for a family. He pointed out how difficult it is to buckle children into the smaller SUVs because you have to fold the seat down to get to the back row, which for me would mean taking the seat out or climbing over. Yikes! He did pull around a 2008 Kia Sedona that was perfectly priced and we fell in love. So roomy, no climbing over things, space for the stroller or groceries behind the third row..lets just say I was sold. And surprisingly so was Zippercow! But since we had not researched this vehicle we "slept on it" did some research and discovered that it is quite safe and reliable. So now our driveway houses another vehicle. One of which excites Little Moo so much that he asks multiple times a day if we are going anywhere, apparently he was sold as well!

Other than the purchase of the van we are still slowly working on making way for baby. Mostly we are waiting for the temps to be steadily about 10 degrees warmer so we can open windows and paint. The weather has been so beautiful that everyone around here has just been itching to work in the yard, but it isn't quite warm enough yet. We are also trying to patiently await the ultra sound that will hopefully tell us the gender of our little baby (who has been moving all over the place!). March 18! We are counting down the days, hopefully the baby will cooperate!

So that is what has been going on, but I'm sure I will think of other things. Mostly I'm just enjoying the magic of the van, but more on that later!

"My favorite color is blue, but I LIKE red"

Little Moo is now officially off the floor. You may remember a post I did awhile back about his "big boy bed" that was actually the mattress and box spring on the floor. The point of that, of course, was to keep him closer to the floor in case he fell out of bed but this last weekend we bought him a frame to put his big boy bed on and he couldn't be more excited. Mostly because it is red. Here he is on his new bed.And about five seconds later he bounced himself backward smacking his head on the window sill. I was afraid of that. So now you see him with a "boo boo" buddy in his hand (because why would you put it on said boo boo, duh!) still pretty excited about his bed. And who wouldn't be? It's red!!!!

 

His New 'Do!

I finally did it! I have been contemplating just using the same clippers I do for Zippercow on our Little Moo for months now and this month I finally did it. I REALLY like the little boy haircuts we were getting from the professionals, but because of his many cowlicks the haircut would only look good for a day or two and then it just was always sticking up everywhere. While I'm sad he won't have little boy hair anymore  it has been a couple weeks since I've cut Little Moo's hair and it still isn't sticking up! It took him some getting used to, he was very disappointed when he first looked in the mirror because he thought I had changed his hair color but alas, it is just shorter! He's gotten use to it and was excited when Daddy got his last haircut and exclaimed "Daddy your hair is like mine!". So I of course have some pictures but want to say that it was dark and the flash made it look a little thinner in some places than others, but lets face it he does have his Daddy's hairline (poor thing!) There are a few fly-aways so my first attempt wasn't perfect, but I believe the phrase goes "practice makes perfect" or something to that effect.