A "real" Mother's Day post

I'd been holding onto this post while I waited for a picture I wanted to put up with it. So here goes :).

Sunday was my first "real" Mother's Day. I was pregnant last year on the holiday and Chris did give me a card and a gift but this was the first year that I was an "official" mother. I woke up to Chris cooking French toast and bacon for breakfast! Mmm, it was good. He also gave me some flowers and a small box of chocolate (as if I need more chocolate, haha). But my best present came on Monday:
A beautiful new jogging stroller! I'd been wanting one for a little while so I could start exercising with Averie once I realized that our travel system stroller wasn't cutting it on the apparently rather uneven sidewalks around the neighborhood. Chris, Averie and I are planning on enjoying some long walks in the very near future :).

Later that day, we visited my parents' house and were able to talk to my sister, Susan, on the phone who is on her mission in New York. We're able to e-mail with her but it was still nice to talk to her again. Dad made homemade chicken cordon bleu with strawberry shortcake for dessert - he is such a great cook!

Grams (my mom's mom) is 93 and I had been wanting to get a picture of the four of us while I still could, and what better day for such a picture than Mother's Day!

Four generations of women

Overall, it was a wonderful day and I'm looking forward to celebrating many more Mother's Days with my husband and children (present and future)!

Averie's Birth Story

In honor of Mother's Day and because I started our blog after Averie was born, I decided to post Averie's birth story! It's not gross or gory (in my opinion) but feel free to skip this if you don't want to read!

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When I hit 40 weeks without any signs of going into labor, I started getting desperate and trying everything to get labor going (including castor oil, which I would not recommend!). None of it worked. I had a doctor's appointment at 40 weeks 5 days and when I arrived, my blood pressure was 150/90. They gave me a few minutes to see if it would go down after relaxing with some deep breaths but it was still 140/90, so they ordered me straight to the hospital for induction. We rushed home to do some last-minute packing and got to the hospital around 5 PM. They took my blood pressure when I got there and it was back to normal - 110/70. I was so upset, I thought they were going to send me home because my doctor's policy was to induce at 41 weeks and I was a couple days "early." Luckily, they decided to keep me and induce me!

I was 2 cm, 80% effaced to start. At 7 PM, they gave me prostin gel. At 1 AM, I still hadn't made a lot of progress even though I'd been having some regular contractions. At 4 AM, they broke my water and I got an epidural. At 7 AM, I hadn't dilated any further so they give me Pitocin. At 9 AM, I had dilated up to 4 cm and was convinced I was going to be in labor FOREVER since I had only progressed 2 cm in about 14 hours. I worried I would end up with a C-section, which I'm not opposed to, but I was concerned about the longer recovery time and wanted to avoid that. I fell asleep a little bit after that - at that point, I'd been awake for over 24 hours.

I woke up a little before noon with an urgent need to push. Chris got the nurse and I was finally 10 cm! I started pushing and about 1 PM, Dr. Broberg came in. I was having trouble getting her head out so they asked if they could use the vacuum, which I was fine with. Immediately after that, I remember dreading the pushing even more because that meant shoulders were next. However, after he got her head out with the vacuum, I pushed one more time and her shoulders were out, then one more push and I was done! It all happened very quickly. I remember I was rather hysterical - probably a combination of relief, excitement and temporary insanity :D - and screaming that it was over and my baby girl was here!

In total, I was in labor for 17 hours and pushed for almost 1 1/2 hours. Averie was born at 1:23 PM on November 3, 2009. She was 8 lbs 3 oz and they said 19 inches long at first, but we thought she looked longer and re-measured her later that day at 22 inches.

Averie, 1 day old

6 Months!

Time has really flown - Averie is 6 months old today!

At 6 months old, Averie rolls back to front (that's a recent development) and front to back and sits up on her own. She's finished all the flavors of her Stage 1 baby foods and liked some more than others (she loves carrots, sweet potatoes and all fruits; the green beans, not so much).

Averie wears size 2 diapers and, despite being in an upper percentile for weight, is still wearing her 3-6 month clothes. We even had to buy a few summery things for her in 3-6 month sizes because the 6-12 month summer clothes I bought ahead of time are still too wide on her (perfect length though)!

We tried moving her to her convertible car seat over the weekend but we moved her back to her infant carrier today. She still fits fine in it (though she's rapidly approaching the 30 inch height limit!) - we were just a little overly excited to move her to the new seat. She likes to sleep in her car seat still and neither she nor I enjoyed waking her up and taking her in and out of the seat so many times when running errands. We will try again in a month or two.

Stats:
Weight: 17 lbs 5 oz (75th percentile)
Height: 27 inches (90th percentile)

INSANE Paper Deal

Don't hate me for not typing this whole thing out, but let me just say I got 2 cases of paper (cases, not reams) for about $5.

Read Melea's post on Freebies 2 Deals for the details. Go fast for this deal, as Melea said she doesn't know when the promo code provided expires.

Also, as a note to her post - the rebates come in the form of prepaid Visa cards, but when submitting for your rebate, you can select a paper check instead if you like (that's what I chose).

P.S. I placed my order and got my rebates submitted in less than 5 minutes - Staples makes the rebate process SO easy!!

I know, I know

I know I said I wasn't going to make this a coupon blog but there's nothing of note to post about Averie or our lives and I love sharing the good deals with my readers! This deal just started today but when I was at Smith's, the cereal was going fast so you might want to hurry. There was one lady that I'm sure had at least 50 boxes in her cart (Smith's was well-stocked though and had more to put out).

There's an awesome deal going on at Smith's that allowed me to get all this for $7.63 (ignore the mess in the background, lol):
Smith's has Quaker cereals 5 for $5. It includes Life cereal, some oatmeals and all varieties of Cap'n Crunch. There's a $3 off 5 Quaker cereals in the ads at Associated Food stores - Macey's, Ridley's, etc. This is a manufacturer's coupon so you can use it anywhere. Also, buying 3 packages of the Betty Crocker potatoes produces a $3 catalina.

Transaction 1 (you can only do 5 boxes at a time apparently so you'll have to do 2 transactions)
5 boxes of Life cereal - $1 each
3 boxes of Betty Crocker potatoes - $1.99 each
- $3 manufacturer coupon
- $1.00 off 2 BC potatoes (peelie on box)
- $0.40 off 1 BC potatoes (Coupons.com)
= $6.57 (plus tax) and then you get a $3 catalina

Transaction 2
5 boxes of Cap'n Crunch - $1 each
2 Sobe drinks - $2.98 ($1.49 each)
- $3 manufacturer coupon
- $1.49 Sobe drink BOGO catalina (someone left a crumpled up one at the register - finders keepers!)
- $3 catalina
= $0.49 (plus tax)

You'll see on the second transaction that you have to get a filler item so you don't go into the negative since your coupons will take off more than the transaction total otherwise.

So I've got 10 boxes of cereal, 3 boxes of Betty Crocker potatoes (each box contains 2 pouches) and 2 drinks for a little over $7!! It actually would have been less than $5 total but Smith's was out of the individual pouches so I had to purchase the more expensive boxes. If your Smith's has the pouches, they are $0.84 each, instead of $1.99 each.

Thanks to Sarah for the cereal deal and Melea at Freebies 2 Deals for mapping this one out!

One more deal!

I promise I'm not turning this into a coupon blog but this is probably my most awesome deal ever and I had to share.

Rite-Aid is sometimes frustrating for me - it seems you have to get there at the crack of dawn or else the shelves are pretty much wiped clean from the early birds coming through. But Rite-Aid was very good to me today.

Allergies (and their corresponding medications to treat them) are a big thing around our house. So when I was reading another coupon blog about how to maximize savings on allergy meds, I had to take advantage of it.

The retail price of everything shown is $153.39 (that's with sale prices - regular price on this would be about $175).
I combined those sales with $43 worth of coupons, bringing my total to $110. But I also qualified for $90 in rebates (2 Allergy Rewards certificates - $20 each; 1 March Single Check Rebate, 1 April SCR - $25 each), making my OOP expense for all of the above only $20! That's less than one bottle of Zyrtec, but I managed to score 6 bottles of Zyrtec, 4 boxes of Benadryl and 1 bottle of children's Benadryl for that price! Almost 90% savings!

Thanks to Melody at This Beautiful Frugal Life for mapping out this deal scenario!! I seriously could not have figured this out without her!!

Another awesome deal!

Kohl's is having a pretty good sale on their website right now and there are two coupon codes out you can use to save even more. SHOPNOW15 will take 15% off your order and FREEAPRIL gives you free shipping - no minimum order amount! You can stack these and use both discounts.

I bought Averie this adorable dress for the 4th of July for less than $7:

And Carter's footed sleepers for this winter for less than $8 each! These are normally $20 each.

My total spent after tax was $40.05 for the dress and 4 sleepers!

Rebates!

There's a couple good rebates out there right now that I'm taking advantage of...

1) Swiffer rebate - purchase $20 in Swiffer refills (they must be refills - not starter kits) and get $10 back. At Target today, I bought a large package of Swiffer Wet Jet pads, a bottle of Wet Jet solution and refills for our Swiffer duster for $23, minus my $10 rebate makes all the items just $13 - that's about how much it would have cost for just the WJ pads. We really like the Swiffer around here - the Wet Jet is easier and faster than mopping and the dusters really pick up the dust instead of just moving it around. Get the rebate form here.

2) Armor All rebate - Buy any Armor All product priced $3.49 or higher and get a rebate to get their Wheel Protectant free (up to $8.99)! In Target's online coupons, there is a coupon for $3 off 2 Armor All products. When I was there today, a lot of the Armor All stuff was on sale for $4 each. So I bought a package of leather seat wipes for Chris' car ($4) and the wheel protectant ($7.99) for a total of $11.99. Minus the $3 coupon and the $7.99 rebate, plus a 10% off certificate for using my Target card and I actually made 20 cents on the deal (without the 10% off coupon, you're still getting both products for only $1)! Get the rebate form here.

3) Olay Quench rebate - I haven't done this one yet because I forgot to pick it up at Target. Buy any Quench lotion and get a mail-in rebate for the full purchase price. Combine with the $1 manufacturer's coupon from the P&G BrandSaver and you actually make money on the deal! Get the rebate form here.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from our family to yours!

Even though Averie has no concept of the holiday, we couldn't resist making a little basket for her from the Easter Bunny. She had her Easter dress, a rattle, some baby foods she hadn't tried yet and 2 Baby Einstein DVDs (that I picked up for $1 each!). She's also enjoying her Laugh 'n' Learn puppy - she smiles every time it sings Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes (and unfortunately, that song is permanently stuck in Mommy and Daddy's head!).

She was happy to see her new toys...

and Mommy and Daddy were thrilled to see this:

Sitting up all by herself! What a fun Easter surprise for us!

But more important than all the fun and presents, we are most grateful for the sacrifice that our Savior made for us and to celebrate His resurrection on this day!

5 Months!

Averie is 5 months old! Time is going by so fast. Her favorite activity is grabbing her feet and putting her toes in her mouth. She loves being in her jumperoo and spinning the toys on it (she looks a little drunk in the first picture, LOL):

After some long, difficult nights last week, we took her to the doctor and found out she has her first ear infection. She is already back to normal even though she's not even halfway through her antibiotic yet. We also started a new bedtime routine around this time and Averie has been sleeping from 10:30 PM until 9-9:30 AM every night! Mommy and Daddy are extra grateful for the earlier bedtime (she used to go to bed at midnight)!

5 month stats:
Weight: 16 lbs, 4 oz.
Length: 26 inches