Before I tell you about our day (which feels REALLY long but isn’t nearly over), I wanted to let you know that I have another Cafe Mom blog post up! This is number two in a series of eight, and they’ll be posting on Tuesdays. If you’d check it out and tell me what you think, I’d be grateful!!

So, today, we’ve accomplished a lot. Henry is with my parents, because all of the school-age grandchildren get a special day of school shopping with them, and his was today. He also gets to spend the night, which is fantastic, because T. is gone again, after being gone ALL last week, home for the weekend, and gone again for another few days this week. The younger three and I went into town…because I’m totally nuts and like to torture myself (and also because we live 45 minutes from town and gas is expensive), I scheduled their four-month, two-year, and four-year check ups at the same time this morning. Lucky for me, they ALL needed shots! Woohoo! (Can you sense the sarcasm, because it’s oozing out of me right now)

Anyway…the girls did great until their shots. Since Ivy was being a bit of a drama queen about it, they were separated during the actual poking. There may have been screaming and wailing involved. But they recovered and got suckers. Big Erv…well, he’s not so big. He’s fallen below the weight chart (speaking of drama). You know how much grief we went through when he was born, with him not gaining weight for a few weeks, so I’m not thrilled that we’re having issues again. Especially since nursing has been going well and he’s such a happy little guy. He is still on the chart for length, however. And he’s now rolling BOTH ways (aka rolling across the floor).

But, I’m seeking advice (and would love to hear yours, if you’ve got any for me) and am going to try my best to increase my supply and/or pump more milk so I don’t have to resort to formula this time around.

Okay, so after the appointment, I wanted to torture myself just a little bit more, and I made a plan to go to two separate stores with a whole bunch of coupons! (Did I mention that we live 45 minutes away from everything?) But you know what? The kids were great and we survived.

We went to Dillon’s first, and guess what?? I spent $150 and SAVED $150! Woohoo!! And then we went to Target, ate lunch, spent $100 and saved $40! Not bad, huh? Ninety-nine percent of what we got was on sale, and of those sale items, I had a coupon for nearly everything. It did take some planning and sale-ad/coupon matching, but that wasn’t too much work. And we might be slightly exhausted now, but we stocked up on some things that we use/eat all the time, so I’m happy.

Anyway, the girls each took a short nap on the way home, so I’m expecting an early bed time for everybody.