Finally

This past Friday we finally got our TivoHD setup. It is the Best. Thing. Ever.

We never watch anything live anymore. Everything is Tivo'd. So since, until now, our only Tivo was hooked upstairs to our non-HD TV that is what we have been watching. Once a week we may watch live TV if were are two shows on at the same time. You see, our old school Tivo could only record one thing at a time. Imagine that.

But now, now we are good. The TivoHD can record 2 shows at once and we still have the Tivo upstairs which can record a third. We never have to watch live Tivo again. I'm giddy with excitement.

On a sort of related note, we Tivo'd the American Idol Finale last night so we could start watching it an hour and a half into its 2 hours and then skip past the commercials and the ridiculousness of most of it. As we neared the end I started to get a bit worried. How were they going to have time to announce the winner. There are only 2 minutes left on the recording and Ryan Seacrest is still babbling. Will someone please shut him up and just tell me who won. And then, it happened. We heard something similar to "and the winner of American Idol season 7 by 12 million votes is...." and then nothing. The damn recording stopped. Stupid show was running late. We had no clue how won. I was using my phone to surf around the web to try and find the winner but at this point it was only about 5 past 10 so nothing was updated yet. I had to call my mom to get the results. Ok, lesson learned. Now that we have a Tivo that can record 2 shows at once we should put a buffer on American Idol.

See, I said there would be more

Meghan has decided that, at least on weekends, naps are optional. While I don't agree (nap time = peaceful) it is better to let her play than the 2 hour battle that nap time turns out to be. I'll usually use that time to run errands and take Meghan with me. The majority of the time she will take a short catnap in the car as we are driving around and that holds her over until bedtime. She wakes up so early sometimes that she really does need a nap to make it through the day. (Um, me too.)

Sunday was one of those days when she did not nap at all.

Here is what happens when Meghan does not nap.


No Nap for Meghan from Dorene on Vimeo.

Just the first of what will probably be many

I started playing around with my new camera. Sorry for the shaking

Enjoy!

Sunday Afternoon with Sean from Dorene on Vimeo.

This week in shopping...so far

I tried the Grocery Game again this week. My grocery store bill was originally $104.98 and I saved $26.50.

I had hoped to buy more but this week was more difficult:

• I had Meghan with me. It is hard to think with all of her babbling. (Seriously, the child does not shut up. Her new thing, asking "what happens next?")
• I went to an unfamiliar store. We went to BJs first so i hit the market next door. Not the one I usually go to. So I had no idea where everything was.
• A lot of the stuff I wanted to buy was missing from the shelves. I was not able to buy any of the meat listed on sale because the did not have any out. There were a few other things that were missing. I would have tried to get rain checks but I really just wanted to get out of there.

I did get a bunch of stuff a BJs as well. I saved $28.49 there just by bringing coupons that were about to expire for stuff I usually buy anyway.

I am waiting until the CVS list comes out so I can stop there later in the week.

Bye Bye Bubba

Bubba is no longer with us. Bubba was our fish. I'm not sure I ever really wrote about Bubba (and the fact that I am not searching for reference links tells you a little about my feelings towards him). I think I had a love/hate relationship with Bubba. I loved the idea of having a fish tank, loved that he was pretty cool looking fish. Hated that he would not leave landscape rocks in tank alone and killed every other fish in the tank so he could have it all to himself. Oh, and he had these piranha type teeth that would draw blood if you were not careful.

Madison taunting Bubba.

Bubba has been with us for, gosh, maybe around 10 years? I know, impressive right? He survived a move from one apartment to another and then to our current house. He had been around longer than our kids, our cat and our marriage. He was pretty feisty in his younger days. He was constantly rearranging the tank and he got an occasional treat of smaller fish. Sometimes he would got moving enough that he would splash water out of the tank.

So, as much as I kinda wanted him gone so we could once again populate the tank with lots of pretty fish, I felt bad for the big guy last night. Ryan moved him to a final resting place outside. Hopefully, he is now moving rocks around in the big tank in the sky.

I actually went shopping with a list

I decided it may be a good idea to try and save some money on grocery shopping considering I am now paying over $200/month for gas thanks to my wonderful commute to work. Ahem. Anyway, this weekend I joined The Grocery Game. The first month only costs $1 so I figured why not try it.

I selected Stop & Shop and CVS as my stores. Gathered the last 2 weeks of Sunday coupons and printed my list. Clipped coupons and off I went (I actually forgot to change my default printer so one of my coupons was printed at work instead. Oops.).

I actually saved about $30 at each store. Ended up paying $80 at Stop & Shop and $11 at CVS for the week. Plus, I have an additional $6 of CVS Extra Care Bucks to use next time. I came home with a buttload of stuff. If I were not so busy lazy I would have taken photos and had the actual totals available to post.

It was pretty easy but I'm not 100% sure about it yet. I will definitely give it a few more weeks. With Sean's milk allergy I will always have to buy the soy and organic things. Coupons are hard to find for those. But, if I can save elsewhere, it may be worth it. I'll keep you posted.

If you decide to try it out based on my rave review here please put my email in as a reference (dorenecc at yahoo dot com).

Mother's Day

I will spare you all the full Mother's Day recap. Let's just say it involved, waking at the ass-crack of dawn, puke, and a leaky toilet.

I did get this as a gift:

Which means, once I find time to take it out of the box, you will all be buried in cute kid videos with a shaky picture and bad editing (all my flaws, not the camera). I apologize in advance.

Optimistic

I am almost afraid to write that things seem to be settling down around here.

We had Sean's appointment with the pulmonary specialist on Wednesday. He reviewed Sean's records and believes that what he has is a mild case of asthma and everything we have experience so far was just a bunch of bad luck. Nice. He did confirm that he did have pneumonia a few weeks ago and said that the nebulizer treatments may have actually been making things worse. So now we have asthma medicine to give him twice a day, and that is it. No more nebulizer treatments. No more steroids. No more waking up at 2AM to give him a nebulizer treatment. And....so far so good. He HATES the asthma inhaler because we have to put a mask over his face. We are hoping he gets used to it.

There has also been progress with Sean's eating. Although he is still not gaining as much as we had hoped (he lost weight with all the drama the past 3 weeks), he is moving to more and more solid food. He now eats:

sweet potatoes
squash
pasta w/ketchup
macaroni and "chreese" (stuff smells nasty)
soy yogurt
Gorilla Banana Waffles
green beans (surprise!)
rice
carrots
bananas
peaches
pears
fruit cocktail
mixed fruit
applesauce
cream of wheat
graham crackers
Gerber puffs
oatmeal cinnamon cookies

Tomorrow we may try eggs again or chicken nuggets.

Let's hope this post did not just jinx everything.

Today's test = Normal

Sean had a sweat test today to rule out cystic fibrosis.

Today's test results came back in the normal range.

We can cross one possible cause of his respiratory problems off our list (we really were not surprised as he was screened at birth).

Tomorrow is our appointment with the pulmonary specialist.

What happens in Vegas...

..will happen without us.

I spent part of the morning canceling our trip to Las Vegas. We were supposed to go on Thursday. Not gonna do it.

Sean had another respiratory issue last Thursday. Things were very hectic as I tried to calm him down and get him breathing normally by giving him nebulizer treatments but nothing was working. Sooooo, we ended up in the ER. Again.

This time was not as bad as last time. I did call an ambulance because Ryan was not home at the time. They gave Sean another nebulizer treatment in the ambulance and that one started to work on him. They did not have to give him an IV and he did not get admitted. We were able all go home four hours later.

The doctors believe this may be asthma aggravated by allergies. We have a lab test tomorrow and an appointment with the Pulmonolgist on Wednesday. Let's hope they figure something out.