Taking a break

I'm going to shut down the blog for a while (as if I hadn't already). To be honest, I haven't had a lot of inspiration for this the last few months and have also become extremely busy, both at work and in my personal life. I wish everyone well and will try to check in on others' blogs as I have time. I just don't have the ability right now to actually write my own.

Thanks to all who have listened to me ramble over the last year-plus!

Finally a break in the action

I've had a busy 4-6 weeks, to say the least, both personally and at work. Now, I finally have a break at work and thought I'd put together a quick post about Halloween.

Myles has big plans this year. He wanted it this way and I, of course, was happy to plan for him. Starting next weekend, we'll have tons of stuff going on:

*Sea World Spooktacular (first year trying this, as we just got passes through the end of the year)
*Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween (at Disney's Magic Kingdom)
*Trick-or-treating at Daddy's workplace (this was a blast last year)
*Trick-or-treating at daycare (again, a great time for him and I take this day off from work)

And of course, Halloween itself, which will include trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.

Billy and I are both dressing up this year - at Myles' request. I think I'm dressing as a witch and we're not sure about Billy. Myles has two costumes this year - his choice, a character named "Dementor," who is apparently on Harry Potter and looks very scary, and our "nice guy" costume, which he wanted no part of, a UPS guy.

For now, he's only wearing Dementor on Halloween and MAYBE at Billy's office. It's not appropriate for the daycare, Sea World or even Disney, IMO.

Regardless, we're planning to have a great time during this season and continue it on through Thanksgiving and Christmas. And to top it off, we start October with our first lows in the '60s. Aaah, comfort is finally on its way back to Florida!

Busy, busy

I was on a cruise from Aug. 29-Sept. 6 and am just starting to come up for air. Never knew how much it takes out of you to be gone for so long.

I'm way behind on my updates so here's a (very) quick overview.

1. Billy and I celebrated 10 years on 9.5 while on the cruise ship! We had a wonderful time and visited Cozumel, Costa Rica and Panama. You can see a link to our photos here. We did not take Myles and it is the LAST time we'll do a vacation w/o him. We missed him terribly and talked to him very little due to the sky-high costs of calling someone while on a ship.

2. Myles turned 3.5 years old on 9.13 and we celebrated w/ a trip to Sea World and a cute alligator cake that he picked out. I posted a couple of photos below.

I'll try to catch up w/ everyone this week. Hope you are all well!

Thinking ahead

Myles and I had a conversation this morning about Halloween. We are going to have a blast this year! You see, I have a son who is obsessed with villains. He will have a tough time deciding just what "meanine" he wants to be. He told me today he wants to be a ghost, but we'll see.

I do know I am taking him shopping for his costume for the first time this year. Letting him pick out his costume will be so much fun - and even better seeing him wear it! He talked the whole ride this morning about scaring everyone and saying "trick or treat." Heck, he's got me so excited, I may even dress up with him!

We are planning to take Myles back to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween party this year, some Sunday in October. We had such a great time last year, it's a must-do for our family for the forseeable future. We will also have the trick-or-treating parade at the daycare to look forward to, along with, of course, Halloween itself.

I'm excited just thinking about it! Come on, October!!!

Myself Belts - hopefully a lifesaver

We were over at my friend Molly's house this weekend and started talking about school uniforms. She has 3 boys and her middle boy is in private school, where he is required to wear a specific uniform each day. She proceeded to tell me about these great belts she buys for him (since he's required to wear them at school) at a site called Myself Belts. She brought one outside so that I could see it and I just had to buy one for Myles!

Myles has never owned a belt and now that he is approaching 3 1/2 - and is wearing more little boy type clothes instead of toddler clothes, he needs them. Plus, he's a very tall boy and we often have issues with shorts and pants that are a little big in the waist but fine in the length. Just the other day, he came home from daycare with his pants safety pinned so they would stop falling down!

Myself Belts offers boys' and girls' belts that look like a regular belt with a clasp, but actually fasten with velcro, making them easy for small children to work with when they need to go to the potty. I received confirmation that his belt shipped today and I can't wait to try it out. I'll be sure to post how it works out!

Great quote

I had a rough night and rough morning with Myles. The timer is still working well but he is lashing out terribly and saying some awful things to us. He assures us he wants out of our house and wants to go live with his Mimi (my mom) in Ocala. He'll get that chance for nine days at the end of the month.

Anyway, I was extremely down today and feeling like a giant loser of a parent. I started looking for some inspiration online and found a great quote: "Be willing to let go of the good things so that you can spend enough time on the best things."

I need to take this to heart. Myles is that best thing. Time to start cutting.

Making progress with a 3 year-old

I have to say this: 3 has been a really tough age for Myles, Billy and me. Gone are the days of the sweet baby, and even the curious (but still sweet) 2 year-old. Three has been - at best - a challenge. Billy and I have often felt like we're drowning in our efforts to find the right approach to stop some of Myles' trying ways...and have been coming up empty time after time.

But now, we may be onto something. We bought a kitchen timer. I introduced him to "my friend Timer" and told him that Timer would be going off when it was time for him to do something. At dinner, he has 25 minutes to eat. If Timer goes off before he finishes, the dogs get what's left. At 9:00, Timer goes off again and it's time for bath. You get the picture.

Well of course, being a 3 year-old, the first night at dinner with Timer was a big test. He ignored our warnings and thought there would be no consequences. He played most of dinner, only taking a bite of applesauce here and there and completely ignoring the chicken on his plate. Well, Timer went off and I walked over to pick up the plate. He FREAKED out! No! No! No! I'll eat! You can't take my plate! No food for the dogs!

He put his arms around the plate so that I couldn't get to it. Billy and I were shocked. So we gave in. We put 5 minutes on Timer and said if the food wasn't gone when Timer went off again, he was done. He chowed down his food in record time.

The second night was much easier. We put Timer on the table, told him he had 25 minutes, and the food was gone before it went off. We gave him major kudos and told him over and over again that he had "won." He had "beat" Timer! (He's extremely competitive so one way to make him do anything you want is to make it a race.)

Timer is also working fairly well so far for bath and bed time. Could we be making some progress? With God's grace, we are. I don't know how much more I can take!

When again is he turning four???

Tadpole lesson

Billy brought home about 10 tadpoles Thursday night from our friends Scott and Dianne's house. They are now living in a glass in our kitchen, just waiting to sprout their legs.

Myles is in charge of feeding them their fish food twice per day and watching out for their legs to sprout. Dianne is also letting us use a neat educational book (good for 3-5 year olds) called "From Tadpole to Frog" to explain to Myles the process of how frogs come to be.

He seems fairly interested in them at this point, but not overly. He doesn't think to feed them himself (I have to remind him) and he usually spends about 60 seconds watching them eat before he's off to his play room to race his cars.

When they grow their legs, the plan is to put the glass outside so that they can hop away where and when they choose. What I won't be doing is this (see link). I'd have A LOT of explaining (and comforting) to do.

August.....nooooooo (or yes?)

I hate August. It's because I live in Florida and August is always unbearable here. So when July hits and I start thinking about how close we're coming to August, I always start to cringe (although this July has been hot enough to compete w/ our typical August so how much worse could it get?).

It's also a likely time for a hurricane to hit and it seems to drag on w/ no holidays...just long, hot, miserable days.

This year, however, I have a reason to look forward to it. Billy and I have booked a Caribbean cruise that leaves August 29 and doesn't return until Sept. 6! Our 10-year anniversary falls on Sept. 5 and we decided we would really make it special. Since we never had a honeymoon, or even a real wedding, and since we beat the odds of making it this far when many people thought our marriage would fail, we are thinking we deserve the celebration.

Sadly, we're not taking Myles with us. I struggled badly w/ this decision but Billy really wants this to be our (very) late honeymoon. Who knows...maybe I'll get pregnant again! :)

We've booked an ATV shore excursion in Cozumel, a white water rafting trip in Costa Rica and a sightseeing tour of the Panama Canal and Panama City in Panama. So here's to NO hurricanes in the Caribbean that week.

Getting creative

One of the reasons I've slowed down my blogging is that I have decided to take up scrapbooking. I'm sure those people who know me are laughing right now as I am not a creative person when it comes to that type of thing. I'm creative at work, like with new ideas for events, promotions, headlines, etc., but about as bland as can be with fashion, decorating and other similar areas.

What started this is that I was going through photos on the computer recently and realized just how many amazing things we've done with Myles. And although they are documented in iPhoto, if our hard drive blew up, all of the proof of those memories would be lost. I was actually shocked to see all we've done!

So now I'm trying to start organizing it all through scrapbooking. If anyone has ideas, please share! I'm completely lost!

I'm a new aunt!

My brother and his wife welcomed their first child last night, Riley James. He was a big boy (almost 9 lbs) and is completely healthy. This is the first niece/nephew on my side of the family and I am so excited to meet him. We plan to make the 2-hour drive Saturday.

I've not been blogging (or reading) as much lately due to pure busy-ness. I've been much busier at work for the past couple of weeks and we seem to have a lot going on at home as well, between kids' birthday parties (FOUR since mid-June) and spending time w/ friends.

I also haven't had as much inspiration in the topics area so that hasn't helped. I guess I'm in a bit of a funk, heavily questioning about my career path, still dealing w/ the miscarriage and the never-ending string of pregnant friends (as much as I hate it, I always wonder why me), struggling to properly parent an increasingly difficult 3 year-old and not feeling like I'm really doing anything (work or parenting) particularly well these days.

I guess we all go through these times. Let's just say I can't WAIT for this awful 3 year-old stage to be over!

Vacations w/ kids are hard

I learned this lesson over the weekend. We took a last minute trip to Mt. Dora, FL for the long holiday weekend and joined two other couples. Four kids were there in all, each under the age of six.

While I had a fabulous time and definitely want to do it again, I learned how difficult it is to take a vacation with a child. We've never taken Myles anywhere other than Atlanta and to the Florida beaches, where I always have loads of family around to help keep him entertained.

A lot of the entertaining fell on me over the weekend and when Sunday night rolled around and I was facing another workweek, I felt tired and stressed. Totally not relaxed.

On a positive note, this helped make our decision for our 10-year anniversary trip this year. We're going alone. It will most likely be the last trip we take without Myles until he's old enough to tell us he's not going. But since it's such a special occasion, we're going to do it. Now we just have to decide where to go!

Product Review - pet shampoo

I wrote in an earlier blog that I would be reviewing a pet shampoo soon. Well, I finally had time to wash the dog and the hypoallergenic pet shampoo from ecostore USA was a hit!

I have a pug and she sheds a lot and stinks horribly. I've been trying different shampoos for a while and nothing really seems to get her clean. I feel like I have to use half a bottle sometimes to fully cover her plump body and even when I'm finished, she still doesn't seem much better off than she was before I washed her.

The biggest difference I noticed with this shampoo is that, similar to the baby wash, it lathered up a lot more and I was able to use less and really have her whole body covered in bubbles. It smelled pleasant enough, although very similar to other pet shampoos I've used. I'd actually love to find a pet shampoo with a stronger smell (like the baby wash), since my dogs always seem to smell so badly.

I will definitely continue using this product, as it was certainly a step above the others I've found. I can't promise your dog won't stink after his first run around your yard, but at least you'll feel he's really been cleaned. All in all, thumbs up!

Board games - a free, fun, healthy family activity

Last night Billy and I took Myles to see Mr. Richard at Chick Fil-A. He plays there one Tuesday evening per month for "Musical Suppertime" and since we hadn't been in a few months, we thought it was time. We met a few friends and Myles had lots of fun in the play area and listening to a few of his favorite Mr. Richard tunes.

But what happened afterward is what was really special. We bought Candyland (the board game) for Myles this past Christmas. We play it somewhat regularly, with me usually recommending it because I'll do anything but spend another minute playing with matchbox cars.

Last night, Myles wanted to play, so all three of us sat down at the coffee table. Myles really understands the game now and LOVES landing on one of the picture squares (unless it's licorice - where you lose a turn - or one of the cards that sends you back to the beginning of the board). We spent close to an hour and playing four games! We played him fair and square and he still ended up winning three of the four. Myles is a very sore loser (he throws a major screaming fit) so we're working with him on how to both win and lose gracefully.

When we put him to bed, he seemed so happy. So were we. I went to sleep knowing we had spent good, quality time with Myles, investing in him and helping him understand another one of life's lessons. So many nights, we just sit down and watch a movie...I think this is a much better alternative.

Funny video

This video was taken in the car yesterday on our way to see my dad for Father's Day. I thought it was funny.

Father's Day is coming

I hope everyone is looking forward to a wonderful Father's Day. I'm still trying to get my husband to tell me if I can see my own dad on Father's Day (he's 90 miles away and typically, Father's Day is reserved for whatever Billy wants to do). This is a rare quiet weekend for us w/ no plans w/ friends and no birthday parties. Hopefully we can spend some time outdoors and I pray it's not too unbearably hot.

Myles is truly a lucky boy to have such a wonderful daddy. Today, they shared Father's Day breakfast at the daycare and he sang Billy a song he learned in class. He also made him some cute keepsakes, which I know made Billy feel really special. I don't say it enough but Billy is really an amazing father and a man that I'm proud and excited to be spending my life with.

Happy Father's Day, Billy! I love you more each day we're together.

Lunchtime dash!

I don't know about you, but I feel like I have a never-ending list of errands that need to be run. And the list only grew when I had Myles three years ago. Since my husband is "not the errand type," I keep a running to-do list.

As a working mom, what time is there to get these things done? Lunchtime!

First off, I'm not big on spending money on lunches out. I go out about 2-3 times per month to connect with friends I don't see much and I bring my lunch the other days. So since I'm always eating at my desk, I can get out to start checking off my to-do list.

Sometimes, it's a mad dash. Case in point: yesterday. I made a short list, which included picking up some supplies that my boss needed me to purchase for the employee gym. I started at Stein Mart, hoping to find my dad an outfit for Father's Day. No luck. So I raced to the mall, where I had pre-purchased some foundation and needed to pick it up during the "free gift" promotion. Since I was basically out of the tester foundation they'd given me to hold me over, I needed to do this ASAP. Check. Then I ran to Target to pick up the work supplies and while I was there, I figured I'd pick up a birthday gift for a little girl whose party Myles will attend next weekend, as well as a card for one of his old daycare teachers, whose last day is today. Check. Finally, I'd had a rare coffee craving all day and since I had a coupon for a free McCafe w/ no purchase required, I went to the McDonalds drive-through to pick one up. I did all of this in one hour, ten minutes!

What I didn't get to do was purchase a gift for a little boy whose party we have on the same day as the little girl's (it's a joint party and I hadn't heard back yet from the mom on what he wants), actually BUY a Father's Day gift for my dad, buy Billy's Father's Day gifts from me and Myles, and buy my Mother in-law's birthday gift (June 22). There simply wasn't enough time. But that's on my list for tomorrow!

This may sound insane to some people - spending your lunch hours this way - but for me, it works. It saves me from spending money on lunches and gives me more quality time with Myles and Billy, free of errands. What about other moms? When do you get your errands run?

Best baby wash EVER

I was contacted to do my first product review and boy, did I luck out! I reviewed the baby wash from ecostore, a New Zealand-based company that offers "genuinely clean and green products," ranging from baby care to bath and body to household cleaners.

I'd been using a popular brand of baby wash on Myles for quite a while and the first time I opened the ecostore Baby Body Wash, I knew it was radically different. First of all, it smells AMAZING! When I finish washing Myles, I want to sit and smell him for the rest of the night. I even sneak in a few sniffs after he falls asleep! It also leaves his skin very soft and seems to glide on easier and suds him up better than other products I've used.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that it includes "no nasty chemicals" - as ecostore's slogan states. And it's good for the planet.

My only gripe is the cost seems a little steep at $10 for a 6.8 fl oz bottle, more than three times what I pay for a traditional baby wash. But since the smell is just so amazing and Myles himself seems to enjoy being bathed with it, they've turned me into a believer - and a new customer.

Check out ecostore's USA site at www.ecostoreusa.com. And enjoy!

PS - I will also be reviewing ecostore's pet shampoo...I just haven't had time yet to wash the dog! Such is the life of the working mom!

Layout issues

FYI, I have obviously changed my layout. This is just a temporary solution though. When I logged on this morning, my page was covered with Photobucket ads and it was basically unreadable. I did some searching to see what the problem was and it was something with my blog designer's personal page. Since I don't have the time at work right now to go and find a new design that suits me and this content well, I'm going with a generic design until I do have the time. Hope everyone is having a happy Monday (or at least as happy as Mondays can get!).

Welcome to summer

I live in Florida. Therefore, I despise the summertime and live for winter. Our 70-degree days from December through February are far more appealing than the 95-plus-degree heat we feel from June through September. And if I had it my way, I'd be out of here in favor of the Pacific Northwest from about May 1 through November 1.

I digress though. There are some nice things about the summer despite the blazing heat that nearly melts your skin. Vacations are #1 and Myles was on one w/ my parents for the past week. He did Disney's Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Blizzard Beach (the closest we get to snow down here) and spent many other days in the resort pool. Below are some pictures from his fun week. All I can say is I'm glad he's home!

Myles at Animal Kingdom

Myles and a snowbaby at Blizzard Beach

Myles and my dad in the resort pool