Mommahood with two.

They say that you can’t compare your kids to eachother.  And yet on the other hand, part of me things, “Well, I had one kid, I know what is going on here…”  I think each of those statements is correct… in its own sort of way.  There is something to be said for already having had a baby, you know that you as their mom can figure it out, you know you will survive the sleep deprived state, you know that all those hard lined rules you had the first time… well, your kid will probably turn out ok with or without a passifyer.  But now having two kids, I’m realizing how much is different as well.  Belle has always been shy and taken so long to warm up to people.  But Johnny, well, he might be shy when someone walks into the room, but he is our little social butterfly.  He loves people, starts yelling when someone is at the door and will walk up to a complete stranger just to say hi.  With sleeping, we let Belle cry it out… hard core when she was a baby.  It was rough for several months, but then when she was six months old…. for like a year and half the kid slept 12 hours straight a night.  Wonderful! Then with Johnny, we decided to do some different things a night with feedings.  Waiting until he was 6 months old to even try to cry it out and then when he did, we comforted him some.  Well, now we have a 13 month old son who still does not sleep through the night.  Last week we just cut out his 5am feeding so he is not nursing anymore… but man… will this kid ever sleep?  And my newest “difference” between the two?  Teething.  I never understood what moms would talk/complain about with teething and their kids.  Belle was never even all that cranky when she was teething.  Sure she was fussy and I was guessing what was going on… but overall, not a bad experience.  John Boy has been an entire different story all together.  The kids will cry, keep his fingers in his mouth, tug at his ears and have a fever for like a month before a tooth will even pop through.  And then, the “pair or second” tooth that usually comes right along is another two weeks out.  I remember a nurse who warned me of “teething poop” (explosive stools) again- I thought people just made this stuff up.  But my child has so many dirty diapers during the day.  They are all over the place and he is living with almost constant diaper rash.  My friend calls it “teething poop that burns your butt” and I’m convinced the little guys is in that boat right now.  We’ve been going at it a good 3 weeks now and still no sign of any more teeth.  The child only has 6 teeth popped through…. I have a feeling this is going to be a long year ahead of us as he gets the rest of them. Until then, cheers to IB profen, lots of baths, no diaper time, Destatin and Oragel.

Quote of the day:

Nothing quite prepares you for the day when your three and a half year old daughter walks around the corner and informs you of the following:

“Mom, I’m getting married.”

She was all dressed up and ready for her "big day!"

We just went to a wedding last weekend and I think that it is the first one that she understood what was happening.  This morning she said she was going to marry Johnny. I told her that we probably shouldn’t marry our brothers, so then she said “Mom, when I marry Johnny…. just for pretend….”   She put duplos on her fingers and said they were her rings.  She wanted to know where the gift table was and if I needed directions to get to her wedding.

Happy Birthday John Boy!

Yes, I am a little late, but this last weekend was a bit crazy.  We returned from a week in KS, ran our 5K, attended Jade’s baby shower and then off to Jason’s cousin’s wedding and reception.  Then on Sunday we celebrated Johnny’s birthday with Jason’s family and then on Sunday afternoon we were able to let him blow out his candle (thanks for the help Belle!) and dive into his cake.

I can hardly believe a year has gone by since the day he was put in my arms…

This is Johnny and Emily (our friends and my old boss! had their daughter the day before!) They kept each other company in the nursery at night…

Happy birthday to our little man!

Double or nothin’/Update/What is my goal?

Quite a title, huh?

Well, I thought I would give ya’ll a little update of my mission for the summer.  Shortly after I posted my first blog entry on this idea, man… I was on a roll!  First, I sold that stroller for $15 that I had only spent $1.  That following week was Coralville trash days and I happened upon a turtle sandbox and exercauser, both filthy, but in great condition otherwise.  Belle and I spent some quality time with some good ol’ dawn soap and the house and had them fixed up in no time.  I sold both of those for $20 each, upping my total pot to $55.  I was pretty excited, I was able to purchase a new (used!) double stroller- much nicer than ours (the wheel was giving me fits, it was huge and bulky and didn’t fold down very well- but it served us well) and I would probably still have it to this day had I not sold that other stuff and had cash to pay for it.  Anyway, the bummer part, is that I don’t have that cash to show for my work, just a nicer double stroller.  But since then I have had some great finds, a John Deere cake pan- bought for $5, sold for $15 and a never used/still in the box Pampered Chef ice cream sandwich maker for $.25!  Sold that last week for $8!  Woo hoo!

However, not everything has been that bright.  I bought a mower for $5 that they said “It stopped working while we were mowing and we just went out and bought a new one”- so I called Jason, brought it home and we quickly found out it had an oil leak… bummer.  However, someone is supposed to come tonight and get the mower for $5- so I’m hoping we will just be out the $2.29 for the  oil.  And then a bike trailor (pull behind) that didn’t have a hitch.  I bought that for $15, but then just sold it for $15 cause it wasn’t worth the work.  The guy I bought it from said “yeah, just go online and they have the piece you need for $10″ – turns out it wasn’t so easy.  So, moral of those stories, I’ve decided not to buy anything that is broke unless I know for SURE, that I can fix it.

And then there is the stuff that I am going to sell in the fall, boots- new with tags ($1), snow pants ($1), winter coats ($5) that I know I need to hold onto until it is the right season.

Now, my current question for myself and my hubby is what is my goal here?  Is it to double my money on every sale or is it to make a buck (or $7.75! for the PC item) and see what I can turn.  With much thought and deliberation, I/we have decided that my goal is to double (or sometimes triple) my money, but that I don’t want to get stingy.  I keep thinking “What is a fair price here” even when I got a steal of a deal.  My new goal is just to turn some inventory of some current household items… otherwise, Jason thinks we will have to have our own garage sale in the fall to empty out the house.  :) It doesn’t seem worth it to hang onto this stuff, just to make and extra $5 in the end.  So, I feel better now that I have that figured out, I am ok, with making my steal of a deal a great deal for someone else.  I just finished re-listing some of my stuff…. here’s to clearing out the garage!

Quote of the day:

(We biked to Hobby Lobby this morning and passed by a coffee shop…)

Belle: “Mom, if you need some caffeine, you can go to the caffeine store…”

Christmas in July or June or all year!

In an effort to break away from a seemingly endless cycle, we (the Sokoll fam) have decided to try something different this year for our Christmas gift giving celebration.  In the past few years, each of us kids has drawn a name out of a hat and have been in charge of getting that sibling what they wanted.  Now, when more of us were living at home, it was easier to spy, probe and figure out what something would be that would bless that person.  But since everyone is so spread out now… last year it turned into “what do you want for a gift” and then everyone got what they knew was coming.  I enjoyed getting the gift that I was hoping for, but 20 years down the road, maybe we should have just kept our own money and bought ourselves our own gifts.  But that would be no fun.  So…. I heard from someone else that they were purchasing all their gift second hand last year and decided to run with the idea.  I pitched it all to my fam, that we could each (either per household or per each adult) bring a $20 (ish) gift that is second hand to the pot and then we we do some sort of game/stealing, ect to end up with the gifts.  Now, I really really like this idea.  Not so much that I am “going green” although- I’m happy about that as well.  But that I can hunt and search all year long for the best second hand gifts and try to get some really good deals.  $20 can take you a long way when you have an entire year devoted to the process.  Someone else in the family chimed in that they would like it to be second hand OR  a clearance item… so apparently that is a part of the deal now as well.  Anyway, there was this sweet set of Corningware baking dishes clearanced out at Sears this week.  I didn’t buy them, because I had forgot about Christmas! Then last night I realized I could totally have gotten them for $23 and used them as one of our gifts.  Jason had to head to the eye doctor today, so I asked him to see if they were still there.  They were NOT! Bummer.  But now I feel like I’m in gear and I won’t let something like that pass me by again.  This coming weekend is Solon garage sale days… so excited to be on the hunt!

Design on a Dime.

Quote of the day:

” (Leah) You are like Martha Stewart”

pause….

“No, you’re like Martha Stewart on steroids”

Haha!  We met some new friends in the past few months and I had told them that I didn’t inherit any talent like my siblings (inteligence, athletics, a beautiful voice, ect)  but since then, apparently each time we meet, there is something more up my sleeve that they didn’t know about.  IE : pouring candles, making homemade yogurt, building my own flower boxes…. the list goes on… I didn’t think it was that interesting, but that was their statement once they heard about the flower boxes.  Anyway, since last week I have been noticing how much my mind races, how often Jason comes home and I say the following “I have an idea…” or “I need to sell you on something” and my patience and willing husband will usually go with the idea or at least consider it an option until the next day when I have a newer and more exciting idea.  I am constantly dreaming, scheming and planning… what can I say.  I’m an entrepreneur  at heart.  Thanks dad!

Anyway,  yesterday I was driving home with the kids and I saw this piece of artwork on the curb of someone in our neighborhood.  I drove by it and thought “Gee, that would look great on the wall when you walk into our house (I’ve wanted something there since we have moved in, but have yet to find the $$ in the budget for that. Anyway, I turned the car around, went back and put it in the trunk and came home to my husband waiting in the drive way and I had a huge smile on my face. Oh my!

This is what I found and I quickly told him that we already had cream and gold in our house and that if I could paint the stems brown (paint that we already had in the garage) that I think it would work with what we already have going on in our home.  He agreed that I could try (although I”m not thinking he thought it would all happen today… but you know who my dad is… I like to move fast  So here is my project:

 

I know it is hard to see with the paper under it, but basically it was all gold with some cream flowers...

 

Anyway, I painted parts of it brown this afternoon and my wonderfully talented husband hung it for me… just 24 hours after my “amazing” find!  And now when you walk into our home… this is what you will see!

Suds and Duds.

I have no idea why two kids has pushed me over the edge in the laundry department, but it has.  When it was just Belle, I was doing about 4 loads of laundry a week.  1 load of her clothes, 2 of Jason and I’s, and 1 of towels.  Maybe it has something to do with cloth diapering, but between the mountains and mountains of laundry, I feel like I”m always ready  needing to do more laundry.  My old laundry day was Monday, I would wake up and start the loads right away in the morning and get it all done by mid -late morning. Then came my trouble area- folding it and putting it away.  I am terrible at putting the laundry away.  Very often Jason used to  comes home to several loads all folded on the couch or the bed just waiting to be put away.  Geesh… I wish I could get a handle on this! But since I’ve had Johnny I have had no laundry day…. just a constant every other day thing that some laundry needs to be done.  He didn’t stop spitting up all over the place until about 7 months old- so that was part of the problem.  But even since then, it seems like I can’t get a handle on a “laundry day”… until today that is.  So far I’ve washed, dried, folded and put away two loads and I have one other load waiting to be folded and put away.  I’m hoping we are well on our way to establishing some sort of routine in this area at our house.  But as I see it, it seems as though I just need to get used to the idea of doing laundry every day.  I’m totally a “get it all done and not think about it again for a week” kind a girl.  But I’m learning with mommy hood- that doesn’t always pan out like I plan. Either that, or I need to purchase some more clothes for John Boy so he can last a few extra days.

Double or nothin’

Since I have this weird knack for finding a good deal… my husband has given me a mission.  I have $100 to spend this summer on items and my goal is to turn it into $200 by the end of the summer.  I’m am so excited!  I plan to post a list later on in the fall (most likely the money makers are going to be out of season stuff so I will have to hold onto it for a few months) so you/I/Jason can see my progress.  I do not think I will be able to turn my buck because  many a time before I have bought stuff thinking I could re- sell it and it didn’t quite work that  way .  Oops.  But more times than not,  I snag a good deal and either benefit our family, a friend or sell it later on.  

This weekend I made my first $.  I found this stroller for $1 at a garage sale.

 

Last night I sold it on craigslist for $15!  Woo hoo!  If only all my transactions gave me 15x back!  Anyhow, I will keep ya’ll posted on how this goes!

Please leave a message after the beep.

Cell phones and voice mail confuse me.  If you call someone and they don’t answer- should you leave a message?  Every time I have to leave a message, I”m wondering… will they listen to this before they call me back?  Will they just call me back if they see my number?  I tend to do this, if someone calls and doesn’t leave a message, I think “Gee, they called for something, I should find out what it was”- but then Jason said the other night, “No, I’m not going to call them back, they didn’t leave a message.”  And then, I leave a message and someone calls me back and I start talking like they know why I called, then there is this awkward time as I try to figure out if they listened to the message or not.  Or, if I miss a message from a few days ago, the little symbol is on my phone, but then I never know if current calls are leaving a message.  2 days later I check my phone and realize that I have missed 7 messages…. eak!

 

I think this problem would all be solved if everyone would just convert to texting.