Alissa was right

This summer, I had a conversation with my sister about how we dress our kids. She said she dressed Tate in sweatpants most days because she wanted him to be comfortable. I said I dressed Cason in jeans because I wanted him to look cute.

I got away with it for the first two years with Cason. I dressed him however I liked, usually in jeans or khaki pants. I think he did look very cute. Now that he is opinionated, it's another story. At first I let him choose his shirt each day and then before we left the house, I had him put on jeans. When he started to resist the jeans, I could convince him of wearing corduroys, which are still very cute. But I have come to realize that he just prefers the comfort of athletic pants. And I no longer care. Now I let him pick out whatever he wants to wear because it's just not worth it to me. Today he chose to wear a green shirt with gray and red pants. So fashionable. But he was comfortable and we didn't have to battle about getting dressed.

If anyone can understand comfort, it should be me. I wore Nike windpants EVERY SINGLE DAY of junior high. I cut all the tags out of my shirts when I was a kid. I could only stand to wear one brand of socks because the seam of the socks had to be in just the right place. And even then, I cut the end of that seam off so that all of my socks had holes in them.

Why am I telling you this? To publicly say that Alissa was right. So there you have it.

Paper Back Swap

I was reading a friend's blog last night and she was talking about how to build a home library on a budget. It seems like I'm always reading a book or looking for a new book to read these days. Usually a parenting book or photography book or the like. I usually check out amazon, half.com, and ebay and go with whomever is cheapest. I get most of Cason's books at Half Price Books unless I'm looking for something very specific. Anyway, Alyssa's blog mentioned swapping books and gave a link to paperbackswap.com. I checked it out right away, signed up, and have already sent off two of my old books.

Basically, you create an account and then post any books you have that you are willing to send out to someone else who requests it. Once you post 10 books, they start you off with 2 credits. For every book you send out, you earn an additional credit. You may then use these credits to request books from other members. There is no fee for the whole thing, you just pay shipping for the books you send out, which is typically $2-$3. Then when you receive a book, it's totally free! Cool, right? My only problem is that the only books I've searched for so far are pretty in demand and I'm like #79 in line waiting for a copy. But I've only spent a few minutes looking and I'm sure I can find some books I want that are less popular.

They also have sister sites of swapacd and swapadvd but I haven't checked them out at all. Just wanted to pass this along in case anyone else is interested in swapping books.

My Knock Off Wood

A week or two ago, my sister showed me this awesome DIY blog called Knock Off Wood. She had seen it on Mandy's sister, Ashley's, blog. Did you follow that? I love the idea and would love to build some of the furniture but we aren't really lacking on furniture in this house.

I did love these clip art rails though and thought that they would be cheap and easy enough. Besides, we have a big empty wall in the playroom that we have been needing to do something with. So I decided to give it a try.

The first step was to disassemble 50 clothespins and paint them. Seriously??? That sounded like a lot of work to me. So I decided to be lazy and try to just buy some white clothespins. When I searched on google for them, I found that a bunch of people on etsy make cute clothespins with scrapbook paper on them. I thought it was pretty cute so I got a few sheets of scrapbook paper I liked and got to work. In the end, I'm sure I spent just as much, if not more, time adhering scrapbook paper to the clothespins as I would have disassembling and painting them but I like how they turned out. I love the extra color they bring to the room and make it a little more funky.





This is an awful picture but here is the finished product. It looks cuter in person. We like how it turned out and are considering doing something similar in black for the living room to put pictures, postcards, and seasonal cards on.

My little fishy

Bryce has been doing this thing lately that I think is so cute and I was happy to get it on video because he'll probably stop doing it soon. He opens and closes his mouth quickly but doesn't make any noise. I think he looks like a little fish. My guess is that he thinks he's talking but he hasn't figured out that he needs to move air to make sounds. He also talks by grunting and will happily take turns grunting with me for a minute or so, I got this on the video too.

adidas

Cason is obsessed with his adidas outfit. He wants to wear it every day. He turns up his nose at about half of the shirts that I had bought him for this winter. So I decided to look for some adidas shirts for him to wear this summer. But I'm really cheap. I don't like to spend much money on clothes, especially toddler clothes. So I checked out ebay and scored some good deals in the past week or two. Cason loved opening his mail to see what the postal woman brought him.

I got this orange adidas shirt for just 99 cents.



This shirt AND shorts were $6.99 total.



And his new adidas baseball shirt was $2.99.



I also e-mailed Grandma G., who bought him the original adidas outfit and let her know how much Cason loved it. She did what grandma's do and went out to check for sales up at the local stores. She sent Cason this outfit that fits this winter. He loved it so much that he insisted on wearing it to bed tonight. She was also nice enough to buy another outfit that will fit NEXT winter, as well as two adidas outfits for Bryce for next winter. Thanks Grandma!



I'm hoping he will wear this one as an everyday jacket since he refuses all other jackets and getting him to wear one when it's really cold is a huge battle.



Kelly told Cason that adidas stands for "all day I dream about spatulas" since he still sleeps with that spatula just about every night.

New vocab

Cason was eating a yogurt this morning for breakfast. All of the sudden he said, "oh no!" and held his yogurt up to show me that one side of the container was dented.

Me: "oh, is it dented?"

Cason: "it's CRUMPLED"

Rhyme Time

Last week I wanted to see if I could teach Cason how to rhyme words. He picked up on it pretty quickly. I taped him this morning rhyming for me. A few thoughts about the video:

1. Please ignore all of my um's. So annoying.

2. Sorry for the lighting. He insists that I flip the screen around so he can see himself so I can't really see what the camera is looking at.

3. I thought he was doing really good until I watched this and realized that about 70% of the time, he just says a word that rhymes that starts with h, even if it's not a real word.

4. Can you tell that we read a lot of Dr. Seuss?