Hello, my name is Jenn. I'm a 24 years old, married, and a work at home mom to three year old girl named 
I hate driving to the other side of the county, but I’ll be doing just that on Tuesday. I’m going to meet with Ryan’s therapist and to check out a hammock chair she has in her home. Normally therapists don’t meet with their clients in their own homes, but she thinks Ryan could benefit from this type of hammock that hangs from a door frame and swings, so she got permission from her supervisor.
We’ll see how it goes… since I’ll just be a minute or two down the road from my brother in law, I may have to stop in and see how he’s doing. 
Reason #176 Why My Husband Rocks: even though he didn’t go to bed until 5am or later, he got up this morning with the kids in let me sleep in. But in my defense, I NEEDED IT. I have been doing weeks of 4-6 hours of sleep at night, almost every night, and last night was my night to crash. I read for two hours, passed out at 3:30am and with the exception of popping up at noon to go the bathroom, slept straight through until 3:30pm this afternoon.
He’s also handy around the house, willing to kill bugs and set out spider traps, and he isn’t bad in bed, either. 
Funny thing with kids. They may get a pet, but you’re the one that’s taking care of it. A week or two back a friend of ours came back from the New Jersey shore with a hermit crab for Alyssa. It was in a wire cage and had a shell, a sponge, some of those hard pebbles that are normally present in aquariums, and a bit of food. After doing some reading, we found that hermit crabs are social, despite their name, and that they need humidity of about 70% and temps around 70-72.
So we now have a ten gallon glass tank (thanks Jason!), sand, moist soil, climbing things, food and treats, extra shells, water dish, and a special water treatment chemical that de-chlorinates water. We also bought an under tank heater, but so far haven’t needed to use it. There are also special light fixtures you can use, but the hermit crabs seem fine without it.
Oh, and three hermit crabs.
Again, Alyssa’s pets… yet Dan did the setup and I’ll be doing the maintenance, lol.
Alyssa decided to use my facial cleanser. ALL of it. Now I have nothing except for some acne that my brother left behind. But I don’t have acne, so obviously the cleanser doesn’t do me much good!
Yesterday we ran a few errands, and picked out some friends for Alyssa’s hermit crab, Cindy. We now have some more food, sea salt, water treatment stuff, climbing log, “tiki hut”, temperature and humidity gauge, and two more Cindys (my daughter isn’t exactly imaginative with names!).
The coolest hermit crab is Cindy #2 — she has a Hello Kitty shell!
But she won’t stay in it. She has been playing musical shells ever since we put her in the tank!
A while back we gave Alyssa a small television to keep in her bedroom. We do strictly limit TV time (generally an hour or so a day, sometimes a bit more if it’s a rainy/sick day and there isn’t much to do) and what is watched, but it’s still nice to free up the living room television for things other than Blue’s Clues and Spongebob Squarepants. One big rule we have is no TV at bedtime.
Lately, Alyssa has been ignoring this rule, and I would go in three and four times a night to scold her, warn her and turn off her TV. Finally, I had enough, and removed the TV altogether. While I was unhooking it, she was telling me that I CAN’T take it because it’s HERS, and BESIDES, it won’t FIT IN THE TRASH CAN.
Pfft. Mommy will do whatever she wants in this house, including taking away a TV because its privileges were being abused even after excessive warnings.
It’s so funny. The other night I was doing a research article on rubber stamps, and now I’m looking over some of the ones that VistaPrint carries, because my husband needs a new date rubber stamp for his job. Small world, eh?
Right now VistaPrint is offering 50% off small rubber stamps with coupon code Stamps50, which is why I picked them. After all, a stamp is a stamp, but saving money is definitely worth something!
Rubber stamps may seem like a silly thing to have around, but if you do a lot of repetitive writing, such as signing your name, initialing documents, adding return addresses to packages, or anything else along those lines, then a stamp can help you. Rubber stamps can be customized to show any text, numbers or images, so with an ink pad you’re all set to expedite tasks.
VistaPrint has several types of stamps, including self-inking stamps in red, black or blue ink, and stamps in a variety of sizes. All stamps can be customized to your exact specifications, so you know you’ll be getting exactly what you want when you place your order!
In addition to rubber stamps, VistaPrint’s full line of custom printing products include business cards, address labels, stationery and letterhead, and a slew of promotional products and marketing materials.
And then I had babies that turned into toddlers.
Spaghetti is cheap, spaghetti is delicious, spaghetti is a food that everyone likes. Especially toddlers. Super especially Ryan. He likes it so much that he adorns himself in it whenever he eats it.
I’d say it’s a toddler thing, but I’m pretty convinced it’s a RYAN thing, and here’s why:
Alyssa and Ryan both had the same meal, same amount of spaghetti sauce on their spaghetti. I gave them both bibs (Ryan always rips his off), toddler-sized forks and spoons, and put them in the booster seats close to the kitchen table.
As cute as this face is…
… the fact that a bath is required to clean the face and the body that goes with it after every spaghetti meal is enough to keep me from making spaghetti more than once a month!
My eyes are itchy and scratchy. Contacts are great, and I love wearing them, but if I get tired, or my eyes get dry, or something gets in my eye, then I get irritable itchiness that I sometimes have to remedy by actually TAKING OUT my contacts, rinsing them in solution, and then putting them back in.
I can’t believe I’ve been wearing contacts for almost a year now. Time sure does fly when you’re having fun!
I’m tired. It’s after 4am and my fatigue is starting to hit me hard. I have been staying up late a lot lately. There’s just so much to do, and not enough time or peace during the day to get it all done in. *sigh* Dan is babbling about his game right now, which is actually turning into a big distraction for me, lol. I’m checking out live video casting solutions for an article I’m working on, and once I finish I plan on getting my butt into bed!
Financially fit, that is. I just took the billsiq.com “Are you financially fit?” quiz, and the answer is NO, I most certainly am not. I scored a D (63%). 
bills.com certainly has a lot to teach and some good advice to offer. The key is to break down the site section by section, so that you’re not overwhelmed, and read over the information thoroughly.
At bills.com, you can take a free quiz that asks you questions about how you handle your finances — from bills to emergencies to general debt, as well as how much you really know about your credit score, what a good credit score is, what to do to improve your credit score, etc. At the end of the quiz, along with your results you are given customized information on how to improve the handling of your finances.
With the economy being so bad, I’m sure a lot of people are scoring low on the quiz, simply because so much misinformation is offered, and it’s so hard to get ahead. If we were all succeeding at managing our financial obligations, there wouldn’t be so much talk of Debt consolidation, Debt help and Debt relief.
I for one know that we would probably benefit from debt consolidation. I just don’t know where to start. I might have my husband check out bills.com with me, and we can make our next move from there. We would like to buy a larger home sometime in the next decade, but until we get a good grip on our finances that might be a bit much for us to take on!
It may be terribly cliche, and straight out of a parenting magazine or a cartoon, but little kids really do enjoy playing with pots and pans! There’s no need to run and buy expensive toys or drum sets, when you have your very own noisemakers tucked into your kitchen cabinets.
A few pots and tablespoons, and we were good to go. I banged together pot lids while Alyssa and Ryan knocked out tunes on a few overturned pots, and together we had a great musical show.
Of course, I was the one who had to stick everything back in the cabinets after washing grubby toddler prints off, but that’s just another part of motherhood.
