Jetta Mo-bile

Ahhhh…..my Jetta.

 

We bought the Jetta 2.5 years ago since Hugh and I didn’t want to be a two-truck family. Since his truck was really awesome, mine had to go.

The Jetta is great. It’s a diesel, so it gets great gas mileage. It’s also a turbo so it’s really quite fast. It’s too small for us to go anywhere with Aiden in it, but it’s perfect for my commute to work.

And then last week happened. Aiden had a doctor’s appointment and I had to leave work a little early to meet Hugh and Aiden. I get in the car…wouldn’t start. WTF! I ended up calling a place that’s right by my work where we have work done, and they sent a mechanic right over to check it out. The battery was dead! It was so dead that they couldn’t even jump it. The good news is that they offered to bring a new battery over, change it out and then drive it over to their shop for me. Luckily, my mother-in-law was able to come pick me up and Hugh and Aiden came and got me after her appointment.

P.S…..a new battery for a diesel Jetta cost about $200. Now, we paid about $20 for the valet service, but that’s still an expensive battery.

Fast forward to Wednesday of this week. I’m on the highway heading home from work when I hear a loud “POP” from the car. My dashboard lit up like it’s a Fourth of July fireworks show and the car is hard to control. I had a blowout. I was able to exit the highway and make a turn into a gas station. I called my father-in-law and he came to help me change the tire. Chelsey met us at the gas station so I could take Aiden with me, and today I will be getting 4 new tires.

YAY for spending $1,000 on your car in a week!

Aiden @ 7 Months

Aiden is 7 months old today!

She’s become seriously mobile in the past few weeks that have Hugh and I scrambling to keep up. She’s crawling well, and is now pulling up on EVERYTHING. This girl loves to stand up. If she can get her hand on it, she’s going to be pulling herself up on it. Hugh and I have relocated our beloved coffee table into the library to make things a bit safer. Aiden now has free roam in the living room, and it’s such a joy to watch her play. We moved a case of diapers into the living room to give her something to pull up on. In two days time she went from pulling up on the box to pushing the box around the living room.

This is the box. Aiden loves it.

 

The dogs have decided that their best defense with Aiden is to just run away. Aiden wants to play with them, and while they will sit happily and let her pet (um…hit) them for a few moments they usually just get up and scurry off in search of dropped puffs.

Puffs. I had no idea that these things were baby crack. After initially allowing her to have some Gerber ones, I placed an order for some that were organic and lower in sugar. Hugh about had a heart attack when he saw the cost; but Aiden LOVES THEM. We can’t have them out until after she finishes her food, or else she won’t eat her food. She’s gotten very good at feeding herself and the dogs. The dogs sit under her high chair just waiting.

Aiden is currently wearing size 2 diapers and size 6 month clothes. Some of her clothes are still big on her, but she’s growing!

I can’t wait for her to open her Christmas gifts. I know she’s going to enjoy the swing we got her. Of course, I have about 5 costume changes planned for her on Christmas Day. TOO MANY OUTFITS TO CHOOSE FROM!

 

 I love this photo. Cassie typically tries to pretend that Aiden can't see her. Aiden is quite excited about getting her puppy dog.

 

 Currently her favorite toy.

 

 

 Aiden in her high chair with Sophie. Sophie is still delicious, but not as good as puffs.

 One of my favorite photos. Outside of Balderas Tamale Factory. We spent something in the range of $700 there while I was pregnant with her. She loves it like her Momma!

 

 Aiden and Daddy at his office Christmas Party

 

Here's another phots. They're so cute! Loves of my life.

10 Bits of Information

1.       While you may tell yourself at 5:30 in the morning that fat free popcorn will be enough for your lunch, it’s not. Don’t do it. You will starve.

2.       Amazon 1-click purchasing can be a problem.

3.       Amazon Mom (aka Prime) is the best thing since sliced bread. Seriously. The discounts make spending $300 a month on formula a little bit easier. Hey…it could be $400!

4.       The woman that stole my credit cards and some cash from me last year at my brother-in-laws wedding has been sentenced! It only took 11.5 months, but she’s on 4 years of probation for 2 counts of credit card fraud and 1 count of possession of meth. Did I mention that she’d been previously convicted of endangering a child? Oh, and 2 other previous charges of possession of opiates? Classy lady. She’s also been ordered to pay back the $23 in cash she took from me on top of some hefty court fines. Thanks to the Hays County Victim Services department for keeping in contact with me for the past year to keep me in the loop and to get my opinions for the judge.

5.       Aiden has been sitting up on her own and “crawling” (she’s not that good yet) for a while. However, she hadn’t been able to go from a crawling position to a sitting position on her own. She chose to do that yesterday. For my sister. J While I would have enjoyed seeing it for the first time, I’m just happy that she’s growing!

6.       The battery died in the Jetta yesterday. Died as in dead. Couldn’t even hold a charge. I use a great car repair service near my school that did an incredible job. I called them, they sent over their shop foreman immediately. He tried to jump it and realized that I needed a new battery. I already had a ride on the way so he offered to keep my keys, go get a battery, install the new one, and drive it over to their shop so we could get it later. Relatively painless. Minus the fact that it cost us $200. The battery for our little diesel import was $150 alone. Then, the government has to charge you a million dollars to purchase said battery.

7.       Hugh and I joined our block this year in the neighborhood in the decorating theme. We had to buy a Christmas Lamp Post. It’s really cute, but it doesn’t exactly meet Hugh’s high standards for quality plastic decorations.

8.       I made a roast in the crock-pot on Sunday night that was divine. Thank you HEB for having $1.99/lb specials when you open your new stores. We will forever shop HEB grand openings.

9.       Tobey and Cassie got baths and haircuts on Sunday. They weren’t thrilled, but they look so darn cute! They smell better too.

10.   Sucralose is in everything. I recently noticed that it’s in the protein shakes that I drink for meals, it’s in light yogurt, most chocolate milks, and pretty much all things labeled “light”. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t kill you.

Happy Belated Birthday to Hughbear!

Hugh turned 33, almost one month ago. I haven’t had a chance to write about it, but I’m finally getting to it.

For Hugh’s birthday this year, he wanted a party. We came up with the idea of having a “Hughtoberfest” complete with two of Hugh’s favorite things: sausage and beer!

Back in September, we had a little get-together that was a beer making party. We grilled and hung out while Hugh and his friend Lee cooked up a batch of Oktoberfest beer. This beer then got to live in our GUEST SHOWER (I hadn’t been informed of this prior to the beer being made) until the week before Hugh’s party. Did I mention that the beer actually exploded at one time? No??? How silly of me. I’ve blocked it from my memory.

The party was a big success. The house was filled with family and friends and Hugh had a great time. The beer was excellent, and the food was delicious. There were no fires, the police weren’t called, and nobody had their car towed so I’m considering it a success.

The best part of the party? Aiden and I left at 6:30 and spent the night at my in-laws house. After all of the wives went home the guys all stayed and played an old-school original HALO party. They connected two T.V.’s together and played. They had a blast, and even though our house looked like a disaster zone the next morning, Hugh was happy. Plus, they all had a blast.

 

This was taken the night before the party. Hugh and his friend Lee had to make sure that everything worked.

The busy, busy McCrea's!

It’s been a busy time at the McCrea House. In fact, I feel as though we’ve been running non-stop. Let me fill you in on a few things.

We had our first family Christmas pictures taken. It was a lot of fun, and Aiden was very good. She finally got to wear the dress that I bought her on Zulily (back in June, lol) and the cutest pair of black patent shoes. It was precious. I have several photos to share, but I’m only showing one until after Christmas.

Aiden visited the GI doctor. Her spitting-up has progressed to full on vomiting. All the time. She does this throughout the day. We have no clue as to what triggers it and there doesn’t seem to be a solution. She had an Upper GI done, to make sure there were no anatomical problems with her intestines. That sucked. SERIOUSLY sucked. She screamed the entire time. It’s not something that hurts, but they had to hold her down and she wasn’t very excited about that. We’ve been through three different medications, and none of them are working. None.  Hugh and I are both at a loss as to what do, as is her Pediatrician and GI specialist. It’s so frustrating, and it breaks my heart. Especially when I think to myself how she’s never had a day in her ENTIRE life where she hasn’t puked.

We discovered that both of our furnaces were broken. Just FYI: furnaces aren’t cheap. Sadly, it wasn’t anything that would have been caught on our inspection back in April. According to our HVAC guy it wouldn’t have been caught unless we had an actual HVAC mechanic come out and look at them. Fortunately, we have a home warranty that came with the house when we bought it. It covered the majority of the costs, but home warranty companies are crooked as they come. We actually had our personal HVAC mechanic out to diagnose the problems, and then we called the warranty company to come out look. Of course, the warranty company technician tried to say that nothing was wrong. Hugh actually had to go up into the attic and show him the crack. After a few phone calls that were not-so-nice, we finally got a new furnace and the second one repaired.

We bought a new truck! It’s pretty dang awesome, I have to admit. Hugh and I have been discussing for months about what we wanted to do about our vehicle situation. The Jetta is awesome for me, as it gets 38MPG and I drive about 50 miles a day. However, the three of us can’t ride in it together. There’s just not enough room for us to safely drive it with the car seat in the back. The poor passenger has to sit with their knees in their chest. We were debating on trading in the car for a large SUV, but kept holding off knowing that the gas mileage would kill us. Then, I took the truck in for an oil change and we discovered that we needed new brakes and tires. The truck was a 2006 F-150, so we decided to go look a new truck. We were shocked at the prices for 2012 models that were still on the lot, so we made a great deal and brought our new truck home. It’s a really nice truck. It has every extra available option that we could add, minus a cappuccino machine. Seriously. We got the navigation package and it’s really cool. The truck is actually quite a bit bigger than our previous truck and it’s taken a little time to get used to driving it. It sits about 6 inches higher that the other truck and there’s even more room on the inside than before. We ended up getting about $15K off the MSRP, so Hugh and I were both very happy. Now, that’s our family vehicle. We drive it on the weekends or when we all go somewhere together and Hugh drives it to work every day.

AND….pretty much a million other things, but that’s it for now.

Aiden 6 Months!

Yeah, yeah, yeah…I’m behind. I get it. Whatevs.

Aiden was 6 months old on November 21^st! I really can't believe that it's been 6 months. I'm in shock to realize it.

Height: 27 inches! 96^th%

Weight: 14lbs 15^th%

She has seriously grown! Hugh and I are both happy with her growth. We were trying not to worry about her being so small, and this makes us both feel better. She is so long. We put her in 6^th month clothing and it’s starting to get too short, yet she can still wear 3 month clothing in her waist. Maybe she’ll get her Mother’s height and her Father’s metabolism.  Every girl’s dream!

Aiden is eating everything. She’s moved up to stage 2 foods and she’s a happy little eater. We’ve also started giving her puffs. Originally, I thought we would just give her Cheerios (MUCH cheaper) but the puffs dissolve very quickly which is good for babies that only have a few teeth. I will also admit that I caved and spent more money than I’d like to admit on the organic puffs because they have less sugar than the Gerber Ones. Thank goodness for Amazon Mom. She has gotten very good at feeding herself, but she’s also quite happy to share her puffs with the dogs. Tobey seems to have a newfound love for Aiden.

We’ve discovered a few things that Aiden isn’t too keen on eating. One is green beans. When we feed these to her, she just leaves her mouth open and lets them fall out. Awesome. She also makes faces. However, if she gets to eat real green beans, she likes them. I’m guessing that I wouldn’t like baby food green beans either. We also made one mistake with an Ella’s Kitchen Organics pouch of “Broccoli, Pears and Peas”. Never again. She actually spit these at us. Her doctor told us not to stress over what we feed her. The majority of her nutrition comes from her formula, so the food is just “extra”.

We are still staying away from all milk products. This can be tough when looking for food. As she’s allowed to eat more complex food, the chances of milk or cream being an ingredient is certainly increased.

At 6 months Aiden is able to sit on her own and crawl. She’s getting quite good at being mobile. In fact, we have had to move our coffee table into the library to give her some more room. She’s trying to pull up on stuff and it makes me nervous. She has no fear. Mommy has plenty. Her favorite toys right now would have to be her Dinosaur (it pops plastic balls in the air) and anything that she’s not supposed to have. We’ve recently started letting her sleep with a “lovey” and she’s very happy with that.

She’s still sleeping through the night, even though she’s been waking up earlier. She typically sleeps about 11-12 hours and it’s a blessing. It’s the only time that we’re able to really get stuff done. Every once in a while, she’ll wake us up at 2am for food. It seems to be when she’s in a growth spurt and we sure don’t mind feeding our hungry baby girl.