My Pottern Barn Dilemma

I love Pottery Barn, I just don't love their prices. After Christmas, I found myself with three PB gift cards totaling $120 just waiting to be spent in my wallet. Seeing as how the economy could use a little help, I figured I would fulfill my civic duty this afternoon to spend someone else's money on things I don't really need that cost way more than they should (at least IMHO).

Anyway, enter Pottery Barn, the bane of my shopping experience, into the mix. As much as I love just about everything I see there and acknowledge it's good quality stuff, I usually cannot justify buying any of it unless 1) it's on sale AND discounted quite a bit, or 2) some kind soul has generously given me a gift card, which was the case today. Ok, so here's the dilemma: even though I wasn't spending any of my own money shopping with gift cards, I still felt compelled to get the most bang for my buck. The problem with Pottery Barn is that I suffer from the I-know-I-can-buy-something- like-this-at-a-better-price-somewhere-else syndrome that robs me of all joy while shopping there. So I continuously talk myself out of buying anything because a dialogue keeps playing in my head that goes something like:

"They want how much for wall art? I could make that myself. How about some shelves for Jack's room? They want how much for piddly little shelves?? Hmm, I know I could buy those cheaper at Hobby Lobby. What about the guest bathroom...I love that shower curtain, but $70? No way! Hmmm, how about some new pillows for the couch? Oh goody, I could buy a whopping two pillows. There must be something I could find cheaper at Bed Bath and Beyond...."

And on and on it went. I ended up talking myself out of everything I saw! Finally I settled on a nice shower curtain for the kids' bathroom that was on clearance and another shower curtain for the guest bathroom that wasn't on sale (that $70 one I mentioned above). But gosh, what a nice $70 shower curtain it is!

My other beef with Pottery Barn is that they calculate shipping based on the cost of your order, not weight or volume. Well, let's see, since I spent $70 on a shower curtain, it meant that lucky me qualified for a $14 shipping charge. $14....for a shower curtain....that probably weighs a few pounds....Add on the tax to that, and I spent $9o for a piece of fabric to hang up in my bathroom. Yeesh. The other $30 went towards the other shower curtain. So my $120 in gift cards went towards two shower curtains. Whohoo! But seriously, there really wasn't much else I could buy there, even with $120.

But hey, at least my bathrooms are going to look pretty darn classy now! Oh, and don't let my ranting and raving scare anyone off from further PB gift card donations to the Looney family...I'll just have to get used to buying one pillow a year!

BTW-These kind of posts are written very tongue-in-cheek...I know there are far worse things I could be debating over!

I love MDO

So it's about 11:30AM on a Monday morning, I'm actually getting to sit down to eat a meal uninterrupted, my house is clean (though in the interest of full disclosure my master bath could still use some work), laundry is put away, and I have some free time to write a blog post. How in the world is that possible with two young kids you ask? Jack is now at his first day of Mother's Day Out this morning!

This past weekend, I kept feeling this sense of sadness from time to time knowing that today was coming. Now why in the world would I feel bummed out that I get a break for five hours today? I guess it's just the realization that he's growing up and I'm starting to lose some control over the influences in his life. He's been in childcare for a few hours at a time each week while I attend some other groups I'm involved with, so it's not like he's never been away from Bob or I for any extended period of time. This Mother's Day Out thing just feels different though, maybe because it's more structured and that reminds me of him going to school somehow? I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway, I thought I would be sad without him here today, but I confess that it's been absolutely WONDERFUL. I don't know what I was so worried about this weekend! I've had time to play with Anna and then get the house cleaned up while she's napping. I even have time to go to the grocery store during the day now! I still haven't tackled an HEB run yet with two kids. Bob and I have just taken turns taking Jack at night to get our groceries, but now I can actually do it during daylight hours. What a concept! I do miss Jack, but boy it's nice to have some time to myself. If it wasn't for the fact that he's already in childcare two other mornings of the week as well, I'd bump him up to two days at MDO instead of one. I think we'll do that in the Fall.

My only frustration with MDO has been searching for a silly nap mat for Jack to sleep on. Those things are impossible to find in stores! JC Penney was the only store that had some in stock, but all they had was Dora the Explorer. I saw a bunch of sites online that sell them, but needed to get one for Jack by today and didn't want to wait on shipping or pay the prices I saw. Luckily a friend of mine had one to spare, so Jack is using that one. I figured with the number of moms that have their kids in daycare, preschool, or MDO that these things would be easy to find, but apparently I was wrong. Hello Target? Walmart?

The other wonderful thing that's happened over the last week is that Anna has decided to start sleeping through the night! Actually, I should say we've started to let her sleep through the night. At her two month well-baby check, her pediatrician told us that she should be able to sleep through the night now (meaning at least a six hour stretch). We had been waking her up to feed her around 11pm thinking that it would help her sleep longer, and when we stopped doing that, she's magically been sleeping longer on her own!! We've put her down around 8pm and she's slept until about 4:30am the last few nights. Now I know that little babies can be really fickle with their sleeping habits and that this may change next week, but I'm encouraged we've had a few nights in a row that she's been able to go so long. It's amazing how much better the world looks when you've had a decent nights sleep!

Happy 2009: Sneezing, coughing, and a broken microwave

Well, unfortunately we're not off to a great start to 2009. Nothing earth-shattering here, but the last few days have passed by incredibly slow.

It's not a whole lot of fun (at least for me) on New Year's Eve to sit cooped up inside the house, but that's where we found ourselves the other night. It all started when I thought my allergies were acting up about a week ago with the sudden onset of sneezing and subsequent stuffy nose. I'm now better, but unfortunately Jack then developed the sneezing a few days later, which then progressed to one of those nasty wet coughs that make you wince to listen to when other children have them...you just KNOW lots of nasty germs are getting spread around with each cough. Yeah, Jack is now that child. Never before has the phrase "Cover your mouth!" been so paramount to my sanity, and of course it doesn't work on a two-year-old...which should clue you in to my mental state at this point.

Unfortunately, it (cold, virus??) didn't stop there, and baby Anna decided she would like to join the fun a few days ago as well. She's mainly had the sneezing and congestion, but then started in with the wet cough too. Never before have I been sneezed and coughed upon so much in my life. I did comfort myself though with the thought that I would take sneezing and coughing over vomiting and the other stuff...Anyway, our night was topped off by listening to our neighbors set off an obnoxious amount of fireworks right over our backyard. Now I'm all for some fun with fireworks, but this really was bordering on ridiculous, and with two sick kids, I was not in the mood to listen to them, nor have Jack and Anna woken up by them.

Our microwave then randomly decided it wanted to stop working New Year's Day afternoon as I reheated some food. You take for granted how much you use a microwave until it doesn't work anymore! So the bad news was that our bank account took a minor hit, but at least it happened on the best day of the year for appliance sales. We ended up getting a pretty good deal on a new microwave! What a romantic gift to start the new year, don't you think?

Hope you all had a better start to the New Year!