Powder Pouch Give-Away!!!

***UPDATE: I am extending the entry period until tomorrow (Tuesday) morning! Keep up the entires, friend referrals, and Facebook and blog links!***

I am REALLY excited about this give-away!!! The first reason I'm excited is because we LOVE this product and are excited to share it with others. The second reason is because I e-mailed The Powder Pouch company to see if they would help me host a give-away on my blog and they were really excited to :) Yay!

So, without further ado I bring you the Powder Pouch! (That is a link--go ahead and click on it! I still can't figure out how to get my links to show themselves!)
My best friend's mom always brought baby powder to the beach when we were little. We would pack up our stuff at the end of the day, head to the concrete area at the top of the hill, and sit on our towels while our moms sprinkled us with powder. We made quite a mess, but it did get rid of the sand! Last summer, we went to Myrtle Beach with Mary Jo, Mark, and James. Mary Jo bought us both Powder Pouches. To be honest, I had seen them at the store and thought they were silly. Oh my gosh, was I wrong! The Powder Pouch is a cute cloth bag filled with baby powder. You take the bag out of the carrying case and just pat it all over a sandy area. When you wipe it with your towel, the sand is gone! The powder is still contained in the bag and you haven't made a huge mess! Josh took it with him golfing while we were in SC and it really helped his hands stay dry. He doesn't like golfing with a golf glove, but it was so dang hot! I'm sure we will find even more uses for the Powder Pouch, but we are already in love :)

Give-Away Details
*I have two Powder Pouches to give away, so we will have two winners.
*I will pick the winners on Monday morning.
***Leave a comment on this post to enter
***If you have a blog, share this give-away! Then comment below with a link to your blog and get a second entry!
***Tweet or Facebook this give-away! Comment about it below and get a third entry!
***Refer a friend to this give-away and you both will get entered!

That is four ways for you to enter the give-away! You need to leave a separate comment for each thing you do!

For more Things I Love Thursday, check out The Diaper Diaries!

Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday...

What a day it has been, and it's not even over yet :( I don't mean that completely pathetically--I'm actually quite proud of myself for how positive I stayed this morning. Now I need to muster up some positivity for this afternoon... Jackson has been waking up just after 5 for the past few mornings. The past two days, he took a good-ish morning nap, but then NO afternoon nap! What a disappointing fake-out! He's been about 50/50 on the morning nap for a while, and if he did take one, he has been taking pretty predictable and good afternoon naps. I decided yesterday that this was a sign for us to implement a one-nap schedule. I'm beginning to accept the reality of one nap, but it just can't be in the morning! Yikes! So, I planned for a long-ish feeling morning followed by a good afternoon nap. Well, Jackson sure delivered on the long morning part! The lack of sleep hasn't seemed to affect him...until today! Of course! The day that I finally dedicate myself to one nap... By 7:30 he was already cranky and rubbing his eyes! I decided to push ahead with my previously decided upon plan.


Once James got dropped off, we took our walk much earlier than usual, but it was a beautiful morning and I figured it would break up the morning a little. We also could get our walk in before it got really hot! After we got home, the boys were SO cute! Jackson was driving his Cozy Coupe and he and James were giving hugs and kisses through the window! Such good friends :)


The troops were getting a bit restless around snack time so I decided I would brave outdoor play with both of them! This has scared me in the past because they are so unpredictable! I didn't think I could handle them going in opposite directions! Plus, our parking lot is essentially the street! I don't know if I'll ever get over that worry... Anyways, I brought out snacks and bubbles and was ready to try it out. Jackson had some snack, but then found the rake. This falls into the category of Favorite Toys I Can Push (other members include the snow brush, the dust mop, the toilet brush, and the broom). He raked the yard, we took a walk holding hands up and down the sidewalk a few times. Then, James went to get his drink off of the stoop and Jackson started raking the sidewalk. So far, so good...I thought! I apparently was so worried about them running into the street, that I didn't worry about the unevenness of the sidewalk or the slight slope of our street. Before I knew it, Jackson had tripped over a crack and fallen with the rake. He cut his lip (again!) and his face is a little scraped up. It was pretty sad, and I had no idea what to do! I set him in the grass so I could get James inside. Once James was inside I knew I could give Jackson my attention without worrying about James running away!

Jackson settled down, but then it was a whiny road to lunch :( I did lunch a bit early for him anticipating an earlier than normal afternoon nap. He went down easily at 12:45 and I got to relax outside for a while. I had lunch and finished my book and was working on posting this blog, when Jackson started screaming around 1:45! What's that about?! I went up to see if I could settle him down, and he wasn't even awake! He didn't open his eyes or anything. He just laid there crying! It was so sad. I left for a few minutes and then tried again. This time he relaxed once I have him his pacis and I rubbed his back. I was making progress until he started crying again! It was so sad! He was obviously uncomfortable, but I didn't know what to do! I kept patting and rubbing and he settled down! I got him back to sleep (at least judging by his closed eyes and steady, heavy breathing). I felt like Super Mom...for a minute... :( He woke up for good right after that. But, I think I'll still enjoy my moment of achievement!

Now, I just feel like a horrible mom for making him stay up all morning when he clearly wanted a nap only to have him not get nearly enough sleep during his one nap! ARGH! I really wish there was a right answer for all kids! Or at least one problem to fix: getting up too early or only needing one nap. One thing at a time, folks!

So, since we were cooped up all morning, I think we'll get out and get a few things done once James wakes up! I think I might have to revert back to an early bedtime even though we have been trying to move his bedtime later! Oy!

Apple-A-Holic

I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before, but Jackson LOVES apples! I have to hide from him while I eat mine, if I don't feel like sharing! The other day I shared a few bites as I ate most of it, and then I gave the rest of the apple to Jackson to work on. Man, did he go to town! His love of apples translates to applesauce as well. He loves having "app-sau" for a snack most days :) He also is really liking Trader Joe's pre-cut apple slices!

Shrek-Tacular Give-Away!

I found a link to this awesome give-away on Things I Love Thursday at Diaper Diaries! Check out the details at Penny Wise 4 Life (this is a link--it just doesn't look like it!).

Four Poses of the Buglet

My friend, Erin, sent Jackson this ADORABLE shirt! It arrived yesterday, and I made a pretty big deal to Jackson about him getting a package. When I took it out and saw what it was I LOVED it! I showed it to Jackson and pointed to the bug. He looked at it, smiled really big, and then pointed to his chest! It was absolutely adorable!!!

Yesterday after lunch, he pulled it off the chair it was hanging on and acted like he wanted me to put it on him. I did...right over his outfit! He was so happy! We tried to get him to say, "Bug," and point to himself, but that didn't quite work. I was trying to take a cute picture of him in the shirt for Erin, and ended up with this lovely four-part series!

What a ham, and what a sweet boy :)

Getting Jiggy With It

Josh was having fun listening to good ole' Will Smith songs on YouTube and came up for lunch singing, "Getting Jiggy With It." Jackson caught on very quickly to the nah-nah-nah-nah-nah part! It was so cute! He would say it and bounce with Josh! We had lunch, and then we went down to the family room to play. Jackson was intrigued again with what Josh was listening to, and did the nah-nah-nah-nah-nah part again pretty much without prompting!

Below is a flashback moment from Jackson's fifth week. He was obsessed with dancing with Daddy to old school music:

LOVE this Face!

I REALLY want to know what he is thinking when he makes these hilariously ridiculous faces at us!

The Antics of Jackson Albert

That's right: a certain someone learned how to climb up on to the futon AND into the window! What am I going to do with this monkey??? This "trick" doesn't bother me nearly as much as his other trick of climbing on to a dining room chair and then on to the dining room table! Oy vey!

The boys are loving playing under the table and chairs! They also like to chase each other around the outside. They are so cute and play SO well together :)

Birthday Food!

I love birthdays AND free food! I love it even more when the two are combined :) Here is a totally un-comprehensive list (I'm sure) of restaurants that offer birthday club surprises, but it is a starting point! We have joined the e-mail/birthday clubs at the following restaurants and are rewarded around our birthdays! A lot of the coupons are sent via e-mail, but a few are still snail mail. Quite a few of the ones I received this year were good for a two week period with my birthday falling right in the middle. Some are good all month, and some even longer. Definitely check the fine print for expiration dates because wasted free food is a very sad thing!

bd's Mongolian Grill: free bowl

Firehouse Subs: free sandwich

Moe's Southwest Grill: free entree

Noodles and Co.: free noodle bowl (with up to one add-on) I'm pretty sure it was a large noodle bowl as well!

On the Border: free Dip Trio or Brownie Sundae

Panera: if you have a MyPanera card (only available in some cities), they load a birthday surprise on to your card

Red Robin: free burger

Here's to good eating on your birthday!

For more Things I Love Thursday, check out The Diaper Diaries!

Love is Not a Color

Well, I can't figure out how to embed the actual video that I'm trying to share, but if you go to Kevin and Stacie's blog, you can watch it there :) When I started checking out other blogs, I found myself following along with many families' adoption stories. Kevin and Stacie are in the process of adopting their second child from Ethiopia. Not only is this video really sweet, but the song is pretty great too! You can enter a contest on the blog to win a Love is Not a Color t-shirt, as well as buy one to support them in their travels and with the adoption process. If nothing else, this video will probably make you smile :)

Toddlers, Toddlers Everywhere!

This weekend had lots of plans on the calendar, but they didn't all go quite as planned. We did manage to stay busy despite the changes! We started with plans to have dinner with the Mullens followed by hanging out. We headed to our house and put the boys to bed. James was having an unusually hard time getting to sleep and Mark and Mary Jo took turns working with him. I think Mary Jo was on her way downstairs to tell us that they should go home when she slipped down the stairs and ended up breaking three bones in her ankle as well as dislocating it :( It was really scary, but James was totally fine! We called 911 and an ambulance came to take Mary Jo to the hospital. James ended up sleeping over at our house. The boys seemed to enjoy their first sleepover! They were a little surprised to see each other before breakfast, but went with the flow :)

Mark picked up James pretty early and Jackson and I went for a run. After our run, I loaded up Jackson in the car and we drove to Woodbridge to pick up a stroller I bought off of Craigslist.

Let me say, I LOVE this stroller! It's the Graco Ipo and it was an amazing deal!

On the way home Jackson fell asleep so I let him stay that way in his carseat while I waited for the Yanceys to drop off Rachel! They were in town house-hunting in anticipation of Joe being relocated to Fort Belvoir (WOO HOO!) this August. Rachel and Jackson had a GREAT time playing together! Unfortunately, I didn't get very many good pictures. I thought I would share what I did take!





Susie's mom and sister picked up Rachel around lunchtime, Jackson napped, we took a family walk, and then we met the Yanceys for dinner! The craziness continued as we all came back here to put Jackson to bed, give Rachel her birthday presents, get the boys set up on the Wii, Susie and I went back to her mom's to put Rachel to sleep, picked up Dairy Queen to bring home, and looked at pictures of favorite houses after a day of house hunting! I'm a little exhausted after just typing that!

Sunday was surprisingly calm and we got Josh ready for his four-day business trip to Oklahoma City!

A Fish Called Jackson

Jackson and I attended our first Toddler and Me swim class this morning :) I signed him up through the Fairfax County Park District, and the class meets at the South Run Rec Center just down the road from us. Jackson LOVED the class! I was a bit nervous because he gets much quieter in large groups. But, he waded right in with the other kids--it's a neat pool that you can walk right in to and it gradually gets deeper. The class starts at 19 months, so Jackson is definitely at the bottom of the age bracket, but he did just fine! A lot of the other kids are the same age. The teacher, Miss Emily, was great! She led us in songs and lots of different movements in the water. We learned four ways to hold our toddlers in the water: on our hip, face-to-face, under our arm so they can "swim," and the safe position (their back against our chests so they can just rest with their face away from the water). By the end, I think Jackson wanted me to let him just go! We are definitely looking forward to this week's class!

Earrings Give-Away!!!

Emily of The Adventures of Miss Mommy is doing a give-away for a beautiful pair of earrings! Check out this link to check out the details of how to enter. There are multiple ways to enter, and make sure you let her know that I sent you her way :) Good luck!

Mother's Day the Second

We were home for a whopping day and Wednesday morning before leaving for a VERY short trip to Staunton. It was supposed to be a bit longer, but some work got in the way :( A short visit was better than no visit, however! We left during naptime for Jackson and he slept all the way to Larry and Murph's house. We had some good hang out time with Kerry before everyone else slowly trickled in. Larry and Murph were gracious enough to feed us all (as usual, and the food was delicious!). We also got to visit with Meemaw, Gramma, Goldie, Bobby, and Tyler. I was trying to help Jackson catch up on sleep so he went to bed pretty early. He definitely let us know how upset he was about that (translation: super over-tired!) and cried for a REALLY long time before passing out. We enjoyed some delicious gelato cake after dinner and then just had a nice time visiting.


Jackson knocked over Hammie's food bowl twice before Kerry and I were fast enough to get it put up and out of reach! Luckily, he really likes putting things away...



We were able to celebrate Mother's Day (belatedly), my birthday, and Kerry's graduation! Jackson is getting pretty good about handing things to a specific person. He handed both great-grandmas their presents :)


We did stay the night at Windjammer even though we had to get up and going pretty early. Of course, Jackson slept until 7:45am and we had to rush to get on the road in time, but it all worked out. It was especially nice since Jackson took an early nap in the car and slept almost the whole way home!

TSA Does Have a Sense of Humor!

Me (going thru security at BWI with what I thought was my license): Oh! I guess you don't want my Panera card!

TSA Guy: No (but gives a little smile).

Me: But there's a free cookie loaded on it!



There is much more to come about our trip to New Orleans! Hopefully I can pictures and a recap posted sooner rather than later :)

Leaving on an Airplane...

It was no surprise that this morning also started early :) A bit later than the past couple of days, but still early :( Our plan was to head to Cafe du Monde across the street from Jackson Square for beignets and cafe au lait! On the way I took some pictures of things we had seen a lot of during the trip--it was a beautiful morning to walk along the river!



We also stopped by the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial to show Mom how cool it was! I think it's definitely worth clicking on the link--the time it must have taken to plan and construct this is incredible to think about!
After our breakfast, we headed back to the hotel for Jackson to nap. We figured we'd have to force it more or less, but we also knew it was our only shot at a nap before boarding the plan around 5:15... Force we did :( We had the crib in Mom's room and we sat in our room and listened to him scream hysterically for about 45 minutes. It was so hard, but I was definitely too tired to worry TOO much about it! Finally, Jackson fell asleep and the rest of us were able to relax. He ended up sleeping for over an hour and a half--way longer than I would have expected! Yay! We walked over to Arby's for a quick lunch and then caught a cab to the airport.

We decided to just go early when Mom had to go to catch her earlier flight. We had walked around NOLA as much as we wanted, it was supposed to be really hot, and we figured we could kill time at the airport. Jackson had a grand time playing with the automatic doors, ducking under the line stanchions, and riding the escalators. Finally, it was time to board our plane! The flight was mostly booked and the flight attendants helped us guard the third seat in our row (all the way in the back), so we ended up with a whole row to ourselves. To his credit, Jackson was really good and was actually trying to go to sleep most of the flight. He is just too big to fit on one seat, and he's not quite old enough to understand that he could rest his head on our laps. Poor little guy just couldn't get comfortable! He finally fell asleep as we started our descent--go figure! He ended up in one of the many positions he tried multiple times during the flight, but apparently he got it just right this time... ;) He was out cold! He slept through landing and woke up a little when they turned the lights back on in the cabin. He promptly went back to sleep...sitting up...snoring and all!

After landing close to 9pm in Baltimore, we had Pax picked up and were home in bed by 11ish. Not too bad! Jackson helped me make a dent in my exhaustion by sleeping until 8am! WOO HOO!!!

Mother's Day New Orleans Style

We had a great Mother's Day!!! It was so special to be able to celebrate with Jackson and my mom at the same time! Jackson slept in Mimi's room after the wedding and she got up with him for a little while in the morning. That was definitely a nice bonus :) She and I kept him busy and started in on the yummy muffins from the farmer's market while Josh slept. Jackson definitely wanted to go, go, go as early as we had been, but we were waiting until a bit later to catch the streetcar that would take us to the Audubon Zoo. I was looking forward to this outing, and was pretty excited about the $3 off coupon I had! LOL We had such a nice surprise when paying admission--my mom and I were free for Mother's Day! The woman selling tickets asked if we had any mothers in our group and I told her two. I just thought she was going to give us a coupon for the gift shop or something, but she told me it would just be $10.50 for Josh! What a lovely surprise :)










Jackson had fallen asleep on the walk from the streetcar stop, through the park (Audubon Park, I think), to the zoo, so we walked all the way to the far end of the zoo to start our sightseeing. We figured Jackson wouldn't miss anything that way and we might avoid some crowds. That was an excellent idea, if I do say so myself! The exhibits were very well done and there was even some music piped in! Mr. Jackson definitely let us know that he was reaching the limit of this vacation with a few meltdowns while at the zoo, but overall he was holding up really well! He's a trooper, for sure! We had lunch at the zoo cafe and it was really yummy! A pretty good bargain compared to the other places we had been eating! Once we had seen everything we wanted to see, we walked back across the park to the streetcar stop and rode back to the hotel. Jackson had a grand time sticking his head out the window and checking out passing streetcars :)

We weren't quite sure what we wanted to do for dinner. We figured since we'd be going on the early side, we might not have to contend with too much Mother's Day busyness... I asked for a recommendation at the front desk of the hotel and was given the name of Oceana Grill. Even though it was a tad further than we wanted to walk, we headed over there anyways. I am SO glad we did! We sat in the little outdoor courtyard and enjoyed the beautiful weather (the whole day was gorgeous!). Our waiter was great and the food was delicious! I had barbecue shrimp and the sauce it was in was fabulous dipping sauce for bread. Josh had a yummy pasta dish with lots of seafood in it. Mom had fried eggplant, I think, and it was even good! After dinner we walked around the French Quarter for a bit and I finally got my drink to go: a Hurricane Daquiri :) It was quite tasty!