It has been eight weekdays since I last blogged. I’m happy to be back! So, here are eight things that have happened over at the Coleman household while I’ve been “on break”:
1. Sean scared me so much when he fell off the loveseat on to the floor. He and Michael were playing with all of the pillows from the sofa and loveseat piled up high. I had just told them to stop because (obviously) Sean doesn’t have the same balance as Michael. I turned away and then I heard a loud cry (Sean’s). I looked over to the loveseat. No Sean. He had fallen over. After making sure that he was alright (that boy’s angels work overtime!) and comforting him, I began to scold him and Michael for not listening to me. The “lesson” ended though when Michael (with his big, bright eyes) looked at me and earnestly said, “I didn’t see THAT coming.” We all had a good laugh and moved on…
2. My husband and I had the “adoption talk”. In a later post I’ll share with you how the economy is affecting our plans to adopt a little girl from Africa. (If anyone knows of any great adoption grant programs, please let me know – kcoleman@mominthecity.com)
3. I got upset with toy manufacturers on Christmas morning. No, it wasn’t the crazy amount of packaging. No, it wasn’t how difficult it is to put some toys together (as a mom friend of mine says: “I need an engineering degree to put together the kids’ toys”). It was the fact that the boxes which held the toys had all of these character images on them that were not included in the box. One toy, in particular, had 15 images on the box. Guess how many came with the set? ONE?! At first, instead of enjoying playing with the set, my son asked, “When can we get the rest of the figures?” At first, I was tempted to get upset with him for being an “ingrate” but I really do believe that the toy manufacturers can do a better job of setting kids up to be happy with what they get. I understand “upselling” and all, but they could include additional item choices with the instructions so the parents (not the kids!) could see them. I’ll get off my soapbox now…
4. I was able to do all of the things on my domestic “to-do before the New Year”. I’ve been in New York City practically half of my life, but I’m still a Southern gal at heart. Cleaning the entire house and having black-eyed peas are two traditions that I still carry with me. So on the cleaning side, we cleaned the entire apartment; went through all of the clothes that Michael has outgrown (a lot!); dropped off bags of clothes (from Michael and my husband) to charity; and (my favorite accomplishment) went through all of our paperwork and put everything in “its place”. (Whew! I need a vacation from my vacation!)
5. I was relieved when a “down to the wire” deal was met to keep several important channels on Time Warner (my cable provider) TV. I didn’t care so much about the possibility of losing MTV. My concern was losing Noggin! Even though that channel is not as popular around here as it once was (my kids tend to like PBS KIDS and Disney channel shows more), they still like “Little Bill” and “Blue’s Clues”.
6. On New Year’s Day, I cooked and had dinner with one of my best girlfriends in the world and her new boyfriend (great, HUGE deal!).
7. In my downtime, I had a chance to explore some social media sites. It was interesting. I will share my thoughts about that in a later post.
And
8. I won THREE contests (yay!).
-I won a $30 gift card to The Children’s Place from Amy at Selfish Mom. (That’s great since we spent a couple of hundred dollars there in the last couple of weeks on clothes for Michael – he outgrew many of his clothes!)
-I won a Sarah Pinto Planner from Kim at Busy Bee Lifestyle. (I love all things paper – so this is a great prize for me!)
And
-I won a $150 grocery gift card from New York City MomsLikeMe.com. (Although it’s relatively new, this site is a great place for NYC moms to connect. They also have great giveaways.) Anyway, I’m SO excited about this win. Since groceries are already in our budget, I’m going to take the $150 and get myself a new camera (that was the only thing on my Christmas list that I didn’t get it.) What’s even better is that I was looking at one of my neighbor’s Lucky magazine. This month, they have a special 25% off code for the KODAK EASYSHARE M1093 IS Digital Camera. It has 10MP (which is SO much better than my current 4MP camera). In addition, I found a “free shipping” code for Kodak, so my total came up to $149.95 (yes!).