A content homecoming

I think that "content" is the most accurately descriptive characteristic of Sadie.  She crys very, very little, and is easily quited by a feeding or a swaddle.  Otherwise, she is just happy to sleep, rest on momma's chest, rock in a chair, or be left alone in her bassonette. 

Today, the contented one came home from the hospital with Mom.  Thank goodness.  It is so nice to have the whole family back together under the same roof.  It's even better that this roof is our own home.  We are all moved back in.  I went to Target today to pick up Kimberly's meds and decided that the basonet with storage shelf below set up just worked too nicely at the hospital.  So, now we have one of those too.  It's actually quite handy, and very practicle.  I reccommend them.  Sadie seems content in hers...

A daddy and his girls

Daddy has been the helper and picture taker for the last couple days. Today, Kimberly felt good enough to be up and around a little. Enough so, as to take a few pictures of Daddy with his new little girl.

Day 3 update, particularly for the out-of-towners (That includes you mom!)

Last night, Kimberly had her first night alone with Sadie. Daddy had to take Soph home and she deserved some time with mommy or daddy anyway. Things were a little sketchy during the evening, as Kimberly's milk still hasn't come in yet (one of the downsides of a c-section) but Sadie was good and ready for it. As such, she did a lot of sucking of air (and therefore got a pretty bad stomach ache) before everyone realized what was happening. The nurses brought in a special doo-dad that gives Sadie formula WHILE she is at the breast so she doesn't get confused, and still stimulates Kimberly's milk to come in. It works great. Today, Sadie is back to normal, feeding for a half hour, then sleeping for 2. She is back to the content and quiet little one that we have known her as. Here are a couple of pictures of her content Day 3:

The trooper

God bless Sophia.  For being a generally inflexible child, she has been a real trooper the last couple days.  She spent Wed with Grandma and Auntie Julie and her cousing Lil.  She spent the night with Lil, and the next day.  Daddy picked her up on Thurs afternoon at about 6pm, and we spent the evening together playing legos and reading books.  Grandma came back this morning to spend time with Soph during the day so daddy could go back to the hospital.  This afternoon, Soph is going to hang out with Kimberly's friend Naomi. 

She has been exceptionally behaved, and just an all around great girl in this time where we feared she might be jealous.  It might still be coming, but we'll relish these first couple days, at least.  Here she was, all gussied up when she came back yesterday to see her little sister at the hospital again:

Day Two

Mom and baby are doing great.  Sadie already has a completely different personality than Sophia.  So far, the most displeasure she has expressed is 2 or 3 squeeky cries when she got her shot.  She grunts a little when she is hungry, and loves resting on Momma's chest.  She just loves contact period.  Everybody got at least 2 or so hours of sleep last night.  The light sleep had nothing to do with Sadie.  She slept most of the night.  Please God, let that be a sign of things to come!  All is well on Day Two...

First Encounters

Every second time parent's question must be, "What will my first child think of this new one?" Will the oldest child view their new sibling as competition or a little sibling to protect and love? If Sophia's first reaction to Sadie is any indication of what she thinks of this whole experiment, we should be in great shape!

Sadie Joy Bass - born July 23, 8:03a.m.

Sadie Joy Bass, our second lovely little girl, joined the world this morning at 8:03a.m. She weighed in at 8lb. 2oz. and is 19 1/4" long. She is beautiful! And, I don't say that often about new babies. Everything went great! Sadie started crying as soon as they pulled her out of the womb, was sucking her thumb inside 25 minutes old, and had her first feeding without difficulty at about 45 minutes old. She's an old pro apparently...

Final Days

So, my wonderfully, technologically, savvy husband has had this blog up and running for quite some time - and sadly, I have yet to publish any posts. Just for the record, it certainly has not been for lack of desire! Unfortunately, being pregnant this time around has been way more tiring than I remember our first pregnancy... which may have a little something to do with having a very passionate, full-of-life, full-of-energy, pre-sch0oler that I am trying to keep up with! ;-)

So in these final days before our second child arrives, we have done much: a lot of "nesting" projects including what basically was a reorganization of the entire house, re-establishing a nursery, getting Sophia situated in her new room, but most importantly - spending some final family time as just the three of us, Jimmy, Sophia and I.

Here are some photos of some of our recent "final family days of just the three of us". I have a feeling any posts that will come after this, will include photos of our new family of four!

Love to all, and be on the lookout for updates!

Grocery shopping badass

It's not really what i ever though might be a source of pride, but I've become at least relatively adept at packing a small family's worth of groceries into a weekly budget of $85 for groceries and $10 for household needs. It's become extremely more difficult as of late as everything has increased in price. Here is a sample list:

Item                          old price                  new price
String Cheese                          $0.27 per                        $.050 per
Market Pantry Crystal Lite       $1.77 pack of 3              $2.99 pack of 3

Today, while shopping, I realized something that made me so excited and so disgusted at the same time.  It was as if i had figured out a secret equation that unlocked some hidden time warp or something.  On at least 3 occassions, i found a case of underhanded packaging and pricing techniques that undoubtedly rob 90% of the grocery shopping public out of more of their hard earned money.  It turns out that there are tons of savings throughout the store just hiding right under your nose!!!

Let me give you a couple of examples.  First off, i think it is a generally accepted understanding that the more you buy of something, the better price you get.  People buy "value packs" because, while there is more food (or whatever) in them than they currently need, the price is better in the long run.  A value pack of 2 boxes of cereal might be $4.50, while 1 single box of cereal is $3.25.  They only came for 1 box of cereal, but when they buy 2, that $3.25 cereal box goes down in price to $2.25 each.  This illustrates well enough the point I am making.  Now, to the example that illustrates that this is not always true.

Today I grabbed the cheapest 1lb. block of cheddar cheese I could find, Market Pantry (Kimberly and I have become partial to Target's generic brand because it actually tastes the same or better in most cases and is more reasonably priced... usually).  It was $5.94, which incidentally is up in price by well over a dollar.  Anyway, i moved on to other things, and swung back by the cheese case a little later only to notice the price of an 8oz. block of cheese was only $2.34.  I looked again, a little taken aback.  This goes completely against the theory that bigger is cheaper in the long run.  In this case, 2 small blocks of cheese would be cheaper than 1 big block... by a lot!

1lb. block of medium cheddar cheese:     $5.94
(2) 8oz. blk medium cheddar cheese:      $4.68
SAVINGS:                                            $1.26               HOLY COW!

Example number 2 is something I realized a couple months ago.  Toilet paper.  This is one of the most caniving examples of packaging confusion.  Kimberly and I are bargain people these days.  As long as our toilet paper is 2 ply and softer than sand paper, we're cool with it.  So, we've been getting a lot of Target brand TP.  I actually prefer it to Charmin.  But, here is the sneakiness of the whole game.  Take the 2 types of TP i was trying to decide between today:

1. Target Ultra Premium TP, 2-ply, 12 rolls       $5.45
2. Angel Soft Toilet Paper, 2-ply, 12 rolls          $5.75

I was going to grab the Target TP (that's 30 cents more for other things!) until i looked at the packaging:

1. Target Ultra Premium TP, 12 rolls @ 300 sq. ft/roll
2. Angel Soft Toilet Paper, 12 rolls @ 502 sq. ft/roll

THAT'S NEARLY TWICE THE TOILET PAPER FOR ABOUT THE SAME PRICE!!

Incidentally, here is what that works out to:

Target TP       = 15 cents/ 100 sq. ft
Angel Soft TP = 9 cents / 100 sq. ft

BIG DIFFERENCE!

I found a couple of other deals, and examples of tricky packaging as well.  It's important to note that you are never really comparing apples to apples even when you are looking at two different brands of the same thing.  Everyone, i mean EVERYONE, is trying to make their product look better.  Pick of 2 different bags of kids chicken nuggets, one brand name and one generic. They'll be about the same price, but one will have a 1/4 pound less chicken in the bag.  You may be surprised which one is cheaper.  The same goes with cereal.  It may look like your cheerios are the same price as they've always been. They may even look cheaper!!!  But, if you look close you'll see that the amount of product in the box has shrunk substantially.  What used to 24oz., may now only be 14oz, or 16oz.


The moral of the story is that if you take your time, figure out who has what cheaper, and make ample time to spend at all the stores you need to, you can save a lot of money.  I'm not just talking about 1 or 2 dollars here.  By my count, i saved over $12 at the store today, just by paying attention.  That's 3 gallons of the gas you can't afford any longer either. 

Sophia's (and Maximus') 1st car wash

Sophia participated in her first car wash today. It was the first car wash Kimberly and I had done in 3 years too. We got rolling and decided to wash all the vehicles. Sophia was a great helper!