I think I'm done shopping Sears online

So remember how I mentioned that I had ordered another dress for Aurora from Sears after I noticed that the one I got her was the wrong size. That one had been canceled, so I requested that the rest of the order be canceled (the dress that matched it for Cinderella), then found a different dress and ordered it for Aurora.

Well I found out today (because I haven't looked at my e-mail since then), that the order for Cinderella wasn't canceled, because they CAN'T. But if I refuse the delivery, it will be sent back to the Sears wear house, and then I will be refunded for the price of the dress, but they CAN'T refund the shipping. So I might as well keep the dress when it comes.

Also the final dress that I ordered for Aurora, was also canceled. Out of stock. If it is out of stock, why does it show up as available to order on the website? I understand that sometimes there is only a few in stock, and so it hasn't cleared the website before more orders are placed than items in stock. But should it really take 5-8 hours for them to send me an e-mail that my order can't go through?

So I think from now on, if I buy from Sears, it will be in store. But seeing as how there isn't one conveniently located near where I live, they just might not receive much business from me anymore. Sorry Sears, but you blew that one.

Making do

So I decided to have Aurora wear her Christmas dress after all. We had to cuff the sleeves, but it didn't look to bad.

Sleeping Beauty is Aurora

So Sleeping Beauty is a really big thing to type, so I am going to start calling her Aurora in my blog posts. Same princess, different name. Just didn't want you to be confused.

Your Done

Warning: This post is about nursing. If that makes you uncomfortable, skip it.

So Sleeping Beauty has never been that great of a nurser. And she often gets distracted, and pulls away before she is done. To cope with this I have started counting. As soon as she pulls away I start counting down from 10. If I get to 1 and she still hasn't re latched, I say "your done" give her her "plug" and set her on the floor.

Well Guy has caught on to this and enjoys telling her she is done. Only problem is he doesn't wait until I reach one. I start counting, and he will interrupt with "your done."

Well this morning I was feeding Sleeping Beauty, and I knew she wasn't all that hungry, because it hadn't really been that long since she had eaten. She had just woken up and thought she needed to eat, so I was feeding her. Anyway, Guy woke up and came into my room. He started talking to me, and it distracted Sleeping Beauty. So she broke her latch, and looked to see him. He started counting.

"One, two, three, your done." She then turned back and started nursing again. He said, "no your done. Mommy, pull your shirt down. " He then came over and tried to pull my shirt down, while she was still nursing. He then picked up her plug and tried to break her latch again to give it to her. As soon as she looked away from me he stuck it in her mouth, and said "your done." Because I knew she wasn't really all that hungry, I let her be done, and put her on the floor so her brother could play with her.

Frustrating !

So I thought it would be a lot of fun to have Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty have matching dresses for Christmas. However I didn't come up with this idea in enough time to sew them myself. However Sears sells the brand Youngland, which makes fancy little girl dresses, and has similar ones in the little girl sizes and baby sizes. So I hunted around and found some, and bought them on sale.

They are cute dresses and I am happy with my purchase. When the package got here, I opened it, checked to make sure they were what I thought I had ordered, but forgot to check the sizes.

So today I was looking at them, and noticed that Sleeping Beauty's is bigger than the other 12 month size dress it was hanging next to in the closet. It was then that I noticed that it wasn't a 12 month size, but a 24 month size. So I promptly went to the computer to see if the sears near me happened to have that dress in stock in the right size. Nope. But they did have all of their dresses on sale for 60% off as a door buster this morning. (Why do they call it a door buster on line?) Anyway, so I decided that since Cinderella doesn't have a lot of dresses, I could probably afford to buy a new one for her, and get one that matched for Sleeping Beauty. So I did a bunch of hunting. Most of the Christmas type dresses were out of stock. (Go figure, it's the day after Christmas.) But I was able to find one that they had in both sizes. So I placed my order.

Then at 5:45 this afternoon I get an e-mail telling me that the 12 month size dress is out of stock and so that item on the order has been canceled. I was already frustrated because they won't have their matching dresses for tomorrow, but I was hoping to have some by the first Sunday of the New Year. Well because the sale ended at noon, I can't even afford to get them both dresses. I did get a new dress for Sleeping Beauty (if this order doesn't fall through), and Cinderella will be keeping her original one. So they both get dresses, however they won't match. That makes me sad, but their isn't anything I can do about it now.

But I can make sure they have matching dresses for Easter. I'm going to make those ones myself.

Merry Christmas!

What a day!

So this morning I was getting the kids ready to take Cinderella to preschool. We were running a little bit behind, when we went to get in the van. Well my FAB wasn't working to open the doors, and so I tried to unlock it. I didn't even get the lights to blink. It then occurred to me that the battery was probably dead. I tried to turn it on. Yep the battery was dead. "GREAT", I thought, "what do I do now?"

I thought of one of my visiting teachers who lives across from my street. I gave her a call, but there was no answer. Cinderella suggested that we walk. Well first let me tell you about the weather we had yesterday. We already had snow on the ground, and it rained. The snow damned the gutters, and so they turned into lakes. Then it snowed some more, and froze over night. So the sidewalks were covered in snow and ice. Not exactly stroller conditions. But I figured I didn't really have much choice. I bundled the kids up some more, and put them in the stroller, and started walking. I knew we would be late, because when we left the house we had 10 min. before preschool started, and in good conditions it takes me 15-20 min to get there walking.

Well pushing the stroller was a struggle, but I made it to the corner. There I saw probably a foot of water frozen over with a thin layer of ice over the entire gutter. I knew there was no way I was getting that stroller off that corner. I didn't know what to do. But I noticed that my Visiting Teacher's van was in her drive way, so I decided that I would try to knock on her door. I told my kids to not leave the stroller. Left it on the corner, waded through the water and crossed the street.
She was home, and when she answered her door, I was sobbing. I told her my van wouldn't start and I needed to get Cinderella to preschool. She told me to take her van, and then helped me get my kids across the street.

She offered to watch my younger two, while I took Cinderella, and then offered to let me continue usage of her van, to get my husband and see what we could do to get our van fixed. I am so grateful for her service.

So I took Cinderella to preschool, came home, called my husband. He told me to come and get him. So I went and fed Sleeping Beauty, then went and got my husband. We went to Home Depot, to get some leather gloves so he could clean off the corrosion on the battery to see if that was the problem.

Then we went home. He cleaned off the battery. It still didn't work. So then we needed to try to jump start it. Well of course it was parked in the garage, front in. So to jump it we would need to push it out of the garage. We went next door to where some people were working in a garage to see if someone had some longer jumper cables. No one did, but someone had a portable battery charger. So we tried that. It wouldn't work. It would make the noise like it was going to start, but not turn over all the way.

So we took the battery out, and took it to Auto Zone, picking up Cinderella on the way. They tested the battery, but it was too low for them to get a reading. They said they would put it in their charger, and we needed to check back in an hour and they could give us more information. So we went and got the kids, made them lunch then checked back again. Well I guess when they tried to hook it to the charger the battery exploded. So we ended up getting a new battery. But at least our van works now. But I'll tell you what. That day wore me out.

A tea set and cars

So I try to stay on top of my Christmas shopping and get it done before the Christmas Season really starts. This has it's down sides sometimes too.

We went to a Christmas party a last week, and when Cinderella sat on Santa's lap she told him she wanted a tea set. This was the first I had heard of this idea. However it has cropped up several times since then. When I asked Cinderella what she wanted in her stocking she told me a tea set. I asked her if she thought a tea set would fit in her stocking. She said she thought it would. Last night she was sobbing in her bed. I went to see what was wrong, she told me she had a dream where it was Christmas and her stocking was empty. Now I've already gotten all of her presents and she isn't getting a tea set. At least not that I know of. I wonder if she will be really disappointed on Christmas when she doesn't get it.

Guy on the other hand is certain that his presents are all cars. Because he loves cars so much, of course someone would be giving him cars right? Wrong. Not one of his presents that I know about are cars. Trains, yes. A tractor, yes. Cars, no. I hope he's not too disappointed either.

Is it always this hard to get gifts for people?

Santa Claus. They want to believe

My husband grew up in a family where his parents taught him there isn't a Santa Claus.

I grew up in a family where there was Santa Claus.

My husband told me when we were still dating, before we were married that he didn't want to teach his children about Santa Claus. Now I can respect that, but I wasn't so sure that I wanted to tell my children that Santa isn't real, because I believe he is.

No, I don't believe in a fat man who lives at the North Pole. But I do believe in people giving gifts anonymously and saying they are from "Santa." Whether it be parents or people giving gifts to a needy family, I do believe Santa exists. My husband could see some value in my opinion as well and we decided on a compromise. We decided that we would teach our children that Santa is a game that people play, when they want to give gifts to someone without the recipient knowing who the gift is from.

As time has gone on, we have had some gifts from "Santa" in our home. But we never really told our kids that Santa is real, or that he isn't.

The other day I was having a discussion with Cinderella. She was asking me if she can stay awake all night on Christmas Eve. I asked why she wanted to do that. She said, because she wants to see Santa so she can get a present from him. So how do you reply to such a comment with out giving the message that Santa is real or that he isn't?

I asked her if she thought she needed to see Santa to get a present. She said no. So I asked why she wanted to see him, and she said she just did. I then started to tell her that Santa is a game. She cut me off by whining. I asked what was wrong, and she told me she didn't like what I was saying. So I ended it there and haven't made any comments on the subject since.

I guess she really wants to believe and who am I to not let her.

Sleeping Beauty's First Snow

So we've had our first snow storm that has actually stuck around this year. I took the kids out to play in it. I thought Sleeping Beauty would get tired of it quick and want to go back inside. But she surprised me. She actually enjoyed laying in the snow, and rolling around. It seemed to be a fun new experience for her.
Cinderella was really into making snow angels.And after Sleeping Beauty fell down I "helped" her make one. Then Guy said, "This is my snow angel."
I told him he needed to lay down in the snow. He then told me he didn't want to lay down. This was his snow angel.

Later we were attempting to build a snowman. We never got there because Cinderella kept wanting to eat the snowball. Guy however said, "This is my snow man." He had put a little snow ball on top of his ball that was covered with snow. I tried to take a picture but he knocked the ball off before I could.
This is Guy rolling his "snowball."

Yep we had lots of fun in the snow.

She's being an orange

This morning Cinderella didn't want to get dressed. As a result she ended up spending some time in her room stomping on the floor because it makes a big noise.
I was downstairs with Guy, and he asked me what the noise was. I told him it was Cinderella being a pill.
He then said "We don't eat peels, we eat oranges. She's not eating a peel, she's eating an orange."
I told him, "she's not eating anything. She is BEING a pill."
His reply was, "She's not being a peel, she's being an orange."

Favorite November Pictures

Which sibling does she look more like?

I asked some friends and family who they thought Sleeping Beauty looked like. I had a lot of people tell me they think she looks like Guy. I haven't seen it that much myself, but as a parent, when I look at my children I just see that child. Well we were eating at a restaurant the other day, and the waitress referred to Sleeping Beauty as a he. Now this isn't all that uncommon, for someone to get a baby's gender mixed up, and she was wearing a brown shirt, so I can see how someone could be confused. Anyway, when she said that, my husband looked at Sleeping Beauty, and saw a miniature Guy.

Well Sleeping Beauty has always looked feminine to me, and Guy masculine, but I wondered how much of that is in the clothes. So I decided to do an experiment. I dug out one of Guy's old outfits and took some pictures of Sleeping Beauty in it.
To be fair, I decided to also post a picture of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty wearing the same outfits.

So this is comparing them at similar ages. Now I want to know what you think. Which sibling does she look more like? Cinderella? Or Guy? Or neither?

Favorite October Pictures