So I’m laying here on the bed, home from work early because I hurt my back and am awaiting my chiropractor appointment this afternoon.  I’m done window shopping online, checking message boards for bargains and decided that I should update this blog thing! I had great intentions on writing a lot or at least posting pics often but instead I just make quick posts to facebook and neglect this. I’ll try harder I promise!

Lots has gone on! I went back to work a few weeks ago. All is going smoothly there and it’s nice to be back. School is back in full swing to that means no more nice parking spot *cry*, walking farther in the rain! It also means students stumbling into my office lost! It means the Professors, that I actually do miss from time to time, reappear from their breaks.

The kids are taking the new daycare better. Braysen LOVES it! He comes home beat tired and when he doesn’t fight us on naps he typically takes a nice long one. You can tell he’s playing and having fun because he tells me “have fun at Kim’s house”. He is Mr. Artist lately, loves to draw (even managed to get Patricks fairly new flatscreen tv the other morning…OOPS!) He tells me he’s drawing snakes, airplanes, helicopters, happy faces, tick tocks and many other objects. His circles look really good though (proud mom comment there!). He also is big into colors and shapes of things. We are always asking him what colors things are or what shapes and how many things he has. He seems to have those things down pretty well.  He is also into trains big time.  I mean the kid has loved anything with wheels for as long as I can remember but now he likes the whole train and train track building thing.

Merrick is 4 months.  Can you believe he’s already 4 months? He had a hard time at first with taking a bottle at daycare but seems to be better. Although, he doesn’t like to be put down for them which is kind of bothering at times. I feel bad for them and I feel bad for him. He gets put down all the time here, whether it be on his tummy or back, playmat, bouncing seat ..here there or everywhere! In fact, he scootches OFF his playmat now! No longer immobile, he’s off! He arches himself OUT of his bouncer so guess we need to start strapping him down! He rolls this or that way depending on what he wants. He also is grabbing things and putting them in his mouth. He’s growing like a weed, cooing REALLY loud and is the funniest little man.

Lots has been going on over the past few weeks but I just can’t seem to get myself to write.  Threw a baby shower for friend/neighbor Katie who is due any day now!  Went to a birthday party for 2 of the little girls in the neighborhood that turned 3.  Have been trying to get into the swing of water aerobics when not in pain with my back or when I’m not busy doing other stuff.  Would LOVE to lose more of my baby weight!  Had a girls night last week with some neighbors that I am just getting to know better and it was a fun night.  Had a bbq with some of our friends over the Labor Day weekend.  Painted the great room a different color, the “mint” green wasn’t working for me anymore.  Sam (a good friend of ours, affectionately known as Uncle Sam) came over to help us!!!  We <3 him.

Well, guess I’ll get ready to go pick up the kids at daycare and then hopefully lay low until 2:30 when I have my appt.

Someday soon I’ll do an update on my Fisher Price thing and some other stuff that is more like fun mom things!

Oh and I won a pair of baby legs from that site I linked on here last time!  SO COOL!  I NEVER win stuff and was very surprised!  Plus, I just love baby legs.

Back to RL!

So I’ve stumbled on this new site for mom stuff / kid stuff and just all around neat products out there! They also do some great giveaways and the latest is for babylegs.  If you haven’t seen them you MUST check them out.  I’ve bought them for shower gifts, birthday gifts and for my own little men.  They even sell them at Target under a different name just for them!!!

To enter the giveaway go to this cool new site - Baby Wears Prada and Enter!!!

So today was my 1st day back to work.  Lots of stress leading up to this unlike when I returned after Braysen.  With Braysen I stayed home for the 1st year and at that point was more ready to go back.  This time it was harder leaving a “baby”.   Besides just the necessary leaving the kids behind, there’s the whole fitting into clothes for work issue and also the pumping at work/keeping up with supply & bottles issue.

Luckily I went out shopping this past Saturday morning while Patrick held down the fort and I got some great sale deals and now have a few things to tide me over until I either a) lose more weight or b) get out to the outlets and find some more deals.

I also am VERY thankful for having a nice pump this time around.  I have a back room at work that my boss suggested me use and it worked out great today and it looks like it shouldn’t be as dreaded as I thought.  I’ll only have to do it once while i’m there since I only work 4 hours.  I managed to get enough today to cover the 2 bottles we used today so ideally if I can pump what he eats while I’m gone, my freezer stash that I’ve built up will not dwindle!

2 weeks ago I also started doing water aerobics in a nearby town with 2 of the gals from my neighborhood. It feels great to be in a pool again, even if I’m not swimming laps quite yet.  The water aerobics isn’t a walk in the park when it comes to working out though!  I did hit up the sporting goods store to buy up a new pair of goggles, a new cap and some new hand paddles for me to start swimming laps again.  I still have my zoomie flippers and my pull buoy.  I’m trying to figure out a night to do that but not to stick Patrick with the boys every night.  I thought maybe before work I’d hit up the pool but getting ready for work at the pool is well not my ideal situation.

This week we have another doc appt. for shots.  I mentioned before that I’m spacing them out and doing an alternative shot schedule. I have the book in my tote bag so I can try and read some of it this week before heading off to meet the doc. and do the next few we scheduled.  I’m definitely happier that we are doing them 2 at a time instead of a lot each visit.  This may mean a few extra visits instead of every few months but it’s worth it to me.

Oh!  Merrick can roll both ways now. He doesn’t do back to front often but he can pull it off!  He started that like 2 weeks ago or so!!  (Why do my boys have to be so fast to go mobile?)
To cut this short…I’m going to hit the sack.  So tired after the 1st day chaos and I’m going in at 8:30 tomorrow instead of 9.  I thought I did pretty good getting us all out the door today and ready but tomorrow will be even earlier!

New pics and updates soon.

Here’s a video we took of Braysen dancing last night to one of our fave summer shows “So You Think You Can Dance.”  I am just figuring out the whole video thing so if all works well, we’ll be sharing more videos of the boys on this good ol’ blog!

In honor of Merrick’s 2 month doc visit I bring you the cutest sad face you’ll see and a great head of hair on top of that!!!

He is 13 lbs 7 oz.  (MY GOSH HE’S BIG!) and 24 inches long.  I swear he makes Braysen look tiny at this age!  But they are both tall kiddos, just way different in weights.  Merrick is 86% for both height and weight whereas Braysen was 20-25% for weight and 80-90% for heights.

We also decided to do a alternative vaccine schedule to spread out his vaccines a bit.  I wasn’t comfortable having him get a bunch of shots at once like Braysen did so we had only 2 done today (1 of which was an oral) and his PKU screen.  I’m going to be following something similar to the Dr. Sears vaccine schedule but we are going to meet with our doc. next month to discuss it a bit more when he gets his next 2.  We didn’t have our regular doctor today but he did come out to see us in the waiting room for a bit before we went in and we discussed it a bit.  He was very open to it and said to just email him with questions too if I want before our visit so we can discuss it that way also.  I was very impressed with him (but I always have loved our pediatrician anyhow!).  Well back to the peace & quiet of nap time!

Here’s the munchkin last night after a bath and in a sort of sad state! (but I had to take pics)
*as always, these are thumbnails so click to make larger!*

Merrick has been smiling for a little while now but I kept missing it on camera.  Finally, I got it the other day. He is especially smiley in the mornings and coo’s up quite the conversation too.

Here’s the first of many smiles I’m sure I’ll get

and here’s Braysen holding him
(when Merrick wasn’t all that happy to start with!)

and lastly what happened shortly after he was held, MELTDOWN!

Since I finally have a place to talk “mom” stuff I thought I’d post about our new stroller since I LOVE it!

We have an Inglesina Zippy from when Braysen was born.  We can put our car seat on it and it has worked pretty good for us.  I really like the quick fold and overall it’s a great stroller!  The thing is, I’ve wanted an Umbrella lightweight stroller to just toss and go with.  (not saying we don’t do that with the Zippy though too)  Braysen is kind of an anti-stroller kiddo (don’t get me started on how that all happened!) and I really had this hope that an umbrella stroller would be easier for him to get in/out and he’d be more comfy in it.  I wanted a Maclaren (still do actually!) but I saw some good reviews on a new one called the “G-Lite” from Uppababy when they started appearing.  They are fairly new and just caught my attention.  I thought of a double stroller for the 2 kiddos but the $$ when Braysen doesn’t even like to ride in the stroller turned us off for now.

Well, after putting off getting a new stroller we came across a deal we couldn’t pass up!  The deals site I visit daily (Mama Bargains)** had the Uppababy G-Lite stroller for only $49.99 +s/h which is like 50% off so I couldn’t pass it up!!!!  It is sooo lightweight at just around 8lbs. and folds up nice & easy!! Braysen likes it surprisingly so all is good in stroller land.  He sometimes likes to push it himself instead of sitting in it but it still is working out better for us so far! You can see the stroller in the post below with pics from the Waterfront.

There are like a million stroller options out there, even way more so then when I first looked before Braysen was born.   I’m happy with these 2 for now but I still think I’m going to end up wanting a Maclaren eventually for Merrick.  Guess time will tell!

**will do a post later about Mama Bargains website because I think it rocks by the way**

My brother was in town over the weekend (flew in late Thursday night) so it was a pretty busy weekend!  We lounged around on Friday, the guys recovered from the late night airport pickup.  Saturday we headed off to the coast and hit up the Outlets in Lincoln City.  Not a sunny day on the coast sadly but at least not down pouring!  Sunday we decided to make a trip into Portland Waterfront before taking JM to the airport and got a few decent pictures out of the day!

It was nice seeing JM but it was a quick trip and we were sad to see him leave so fast.  Braysen of course loves his Uncle and JM thought little Merrick was a cutie (although somehow we don’t have any pics of JM holding him! - he is a bit camera shy pretty much avoids the camera at all costs and I end up taking pics of his backside mostly!)

Here’s a few that we tookfrom the Waterfront~ it was a beautiful day to be down there!!!

Braysen last night REALLY wanted to hold his brother on the couch and show him Tigger. Tigger bounced all over Merrick. Every time I went to take Merrick off his lap he got mad. Thankfully Merrick was somewhat content to his brother’s poking, bouncing and finding his belly button!

and here’s 2 of the not so little man in his nifty outfit from Bejay & Holly

How it all started:
Before I was a mom Patrick bought me a Coach purse. It was my first fancy purse and it’s a classic black one that I love. Next was my Coach wallet that somehow a lovely ink pen exploded on and has a nice blue ink stain. Patrick told me he wouldn’t buy me anymore Coach after that but little did he know my next bag craze was on the horizon! I had to put my cute Coach bag away for a diaper bag when I became a mom. To say that I’m a bag addict is probably at this point an understatement but he started it with that first purchase! I have seen much bigger bag stashes from other moms so I guess I am not as crazy as I had originally thought. Patrick would beg to differ I think.

So, I have gone through a few bags in the last 2 1/2 years being a new mom. I find that bags have certain purposes and some are better for things then others.

The evolution of my diaper bag craze:

First bag~ I started off with a Skip Hop Dash:

It wasn’t too diaperbagish and cutesy which I was trying to avoid. Sorry, no Winnie the Pooh diaper bag for me! I got a black one figuring Patrick would be carrying it too. It was nice and affordable compared to some of the others I drooled over. For Braysen’s first year I carried this bag everywhere and couldn’t say enough good things about it. I still think it’s a great bag, especially for a dad to carry and is very affordable. I liked the way it attaches to the strollers too! They also market their bags at Target under the name Spark for a really good price! I do have a Spark Pronto that I’ll write about eventually.

Next, my Coach Tote:

I refused to think you should spend nearly $400 for a Coach diaper bag but I managed to get a great deal on a Coach tote instead. It was nice and big so I could carry my “Diapees & Wipees” case in it (will explain later!) plus some snacks, sippy cups and the basics I needed for myself or Braysen without looking like I was carrying a diaper bag. I used it for work at first but it became my everyday bag until sippys were leaking, there was a serious lack of pockets for things and the shoulder strap was just uncomfy as it kept sliding off. When you are trying to carry a toddler the last thing you want to do is be adjusting the bag back up on your arm!

Moving on, Reese Li Lexington Tote:

This came along when I had been looking for something to replace my Coach tote. I had a gift certificate for Amazon and was looking at my usual non-diaper bag types when I stumbled upon a good deal for a Reese Li. It seemed like a perfect size for me to take to work, had more pockets for Braysen and I could use it later easily. The price was definitely right and the gift card needed some use so wala! The key question always seems to be, “Can I use this later?” and this looked like it would pass the test!

and LAST but definitely not Least - Ju Ju Be:

I came across these bags at Segals (a baby/kids store in Beaverton, OR that I’ve bought a lot of our kids stuff from) and fell in love with this one print on a bag. I didn’t really know anything about the bags, just was in love with the color. Well, I decided I needed one. When we found out we were having a 2nd kiddo I kept saying I wanted a different bag, something that could work better for an infant + toddler. Well, I found the perfect brand, Ju Ju Be.

I chose a Lush Paisley Between as my first bag from them but I can see the need for some of there others in my future. I went back and forth on getting a different type. I loved the Packabe’s versatility of using it as a backpack, messenger or tote depending on how you use your straps. I like the style of the Spicy and the size. I like the organization of the Be Right Back. I think the Be Prepared looks awesome for those weekend trips. The Minibe looks like a great small backpack to keep around for those in/out type of trips or just to leave in the car and then later for the kiddos just to carry themselves. I really want to get a few Be Quicks (they can be used so many ways - for diapers/wipes, for extra clothes and more!) I like the Be Mine wallet type but I’m itching for a new Coach wallet since the Be Mine in Lush Paisley is hard to find and that’s really the only color I’d want it in so far!

They just released 2 new styles of bags and some new colors. The Be Light style is more of a shoulder tote style which I can see myself getting to use as a work bag. The Wannabe isn’t really something I could put to use at this point because it’s more useful for the beach or carrying a lot more then I do.

Little did I know that the print I liked was a limited edition. Sooo, I’m glad I got my bag in that print before I couldn’t find one. I do like one of the new colors, the Lotus Lullaby and I think I need some things in that. Patrick is truly scared of this whole Ju Ju Be craze. I think they are one of the most original cool bags out there.

There you have it. I’m sure you’ll be seeing me write more as I acquire new bags (although I think they will be Ju Ju Be’s!!!) Plus, I need somewhere to be excited about these type of things. I mean, come on, men don’t get the fascination with bags! (I know some women don’t either) Some women like shoes, I like bags!

Yes, I’m a bag lady!

I will be posting links to all these bag companies on my Kids Product Links page up above here soon!