JTOK Chatter > Page 366

Why I hate real life shopping.

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Just now I had an experience that REALLY exemplifies why I love shopping with Amazon instead of B&M stores.

I wanted to get Owen a Magnadoodle toy for our upcoming road trip. I checked Amazon, and it was $17.24, but my price comparison add-on told me that Toys’R’Us had it for $9.99. Cool. I checked the site and it said they carried it in the store. Well, for an $8 savings, I was willing to go to the store. I also had a 20% coupon.

Except that I couldn’t find the coupon, so I googled and found a 15% and printed it. I get to the store and there’s almost no parking (I got the last regular spot). I look high and low for these things and finally find a small section…that didn’t have what I was looking for. So I got out my phone and searched for it and NOTHING came up. WHAT? I just saw it an hour before at home. I was just about to give up or find someone to ask when I finally found them on an end cap. And it was NOT $9.99. It was $11.99. But at the time, I honestly couldn’t remember what price it was supposed to be, and I couldn’t find it online to compare. Ugh.

So I get to the check out and my coupon…was expired. I hadn’t looked close enough at the dates. My fault totally but just another annoying addition to the day.

THIRTY FOUR MINUTES. That’s how long I was in the store, not counting the drive there and back. And I get home and check the website to see the item WAS $9.99. >:-[

I honestly would have rather paid a few bucks with the simple click of my finger than deal with the annoyance factors in the real world.

Dah, Duh, Fraw, Pih, and Ahn!

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http://www.wordworld.com

Owen has loved WordWorld for quite some time. Recently, however, he has been saying some of the character names when they come on screen, and it’s soooo cute. Dog was first (Dah), then Duck (Duh), and now Frog (Fraw). On a sidenote, he can recognize frogs in other cartoons as well!

So we have some WordWorld books, and this morning I pointed to Pig in a book and asked Owen who it was and he said “Pih” and then I pointed to Ant and he said “Ahn” so he knows them now, too!

Costume photo shoot

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Taking pictures this year was a lot less fun than last year—he didn’t like the costume and refused to be still! So, this was the best of the bunch.

Unfortunately, the photo shoot ended when he tripped on something in the garage and skinned his nose. It looks extremely pathetic (can’t tell yet if it will be black and blue), but he was over it in about two minutes once I gave him a sippy cup of milk. I think most of what looks bad is dried blood that he won’t let me clean.

Sweet hubby!

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Tom asked me to change my chiro appointment this afternoon because of the Tornado Watch. When I called to reschedule, I was going to lie and use Owen as an excuse…when she asked if I was canceling due to the storm. I said yes, then told her that my husband had actually called me and asked me not to go out with Owen and she said “Oh, that’s sweet.” 🙂 (She also said that they were getting a lot of cancellations.)

Sleeping in…today only!

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Every time Owen sleeps past 6-6:30 (which is quite rare), I get excited that it might mean his sleep schedule is changing and I’ll be able to sleep in… Then again, I also freak out thinking something might be wrong with him and I have to listen to him breathe via the video monitor. 😐

This morning he ended up sleeping in until almost 8! He might have been up REALLY early and fell back to sleep, but he was still sleeping when I first looked at the monitor at 6:30.

Stinker.

The laptop saga, part 5: The End

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So Tom was unable to fix my original Dell (he tried, but the problem must have been something other than what we thought) and I was trying to decide if I wanted to live with the less-than-perfect Toshiba or pay a little more to get exactly what I wanted. I decided I had to “shit or get off the pot” as they say, so I decided I was returning the Toshiba and ordering the more expensive Asus from Amazon. So back to Costco we went.

While we were there, we looked at the laptops again…just because…and they had a 14″ HP with pretty much the exact specs I wanted, for cheaper than the Asus at Amazon. With the advantage being that we were buying it from Costco so—IN THE EVENT I HATED IT FOR SOME REASON—I could return it. (And no, that laptop hadn’t been there before. Had it, I would have gotten it to start with.)

And for the grand topper? Not only did Costco refund me $50, they still also sent the $50 cash card…so my more expensive laptop ended up the same price as all the other laptops I tried [and returned].

Parenting tip for the newbies

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Keep all future clothes/baby supplies/etc. in ONE area, so when you wonder “Do I need to buy ____?” you only have to look in one place.

Yeah, I just found a 2T winter coat that was stashed in some random drawer. Since I found some online on sale and thought I needed one and didn’t see one in the closet…I bought it. Now I have two. Granted, I think one goes to lower temps than the other (both Lands End) but still, I think one was plenty. They were both on sale, so still not too bad…but I could have gotten 3T (of 4T!) had I known I already had a 2T.

I also forget about stashed food, since I keep it in the basement pantry as well as the upstairs island and cupboards. I just realized I have a box of oatmeal and yogurt…which Owen doesn’t eat any more. It’s only $5 worth, but it’s the idea that I forgot about them.

The laptop saga, part 4.

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Well, both Dell laptops have been returned, and I am just waiting for them to credit me (which is hopefully sooner rather than later, as I now have TWO laptops on this month’s AmEx bill). That said, I did receive an email from my Costco contact saying that they could send me a $50 gift card for my troubles. In the meantime, I received an email from a separate Costco entity saying they were going to credit my credit card $50 for my troubles. So, I’m waiting to see if I still get the gift card. 🙂

Also in the meantime, I bought a Toshiba (from Costco locally) but am not loving it—most of all, it’s 15.6″ (which is actually just a hair smaller than Tom’s 17″ laptop) and it’s just TOO big and TOO heavy for me to use as I need it. So, it will be going back.

And Tom is trying to fix my laptop. Which, yes, we should have done in the very beginning… Live and learn.

First hives!

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Owen just woke up from his nap with major hives on his legs. :??:

There has been NOTHING unusual ingested (no new foods) or applied topically (same lotion as always) this morning…so it’s freaking me the hell out. Google says as long as his face isn’t swelling (cutting off the airway) to just treat with Benadryl to lessen itching (though he doesn’t seem to be itchy or uncomfortable in any way) and if they last longer than a week, then contact the pediatrician.

And of course, with all the kid meds I have in the house, I don’t have Benadryl…though I do have Benadryl spray that we had for Maggie. 🙂

Stay tuned.

Two hours later…

Well, honestly, we could have handled that batter. Geez, you’d think two college-educated adults could figure out dosage information—WITH THE USE OF THE INTERNET—in under 10 minutes. 😐 (The box says not to give it to kids under 2 and to ask the doc for dosage for ages 2-5…but the internet [and our doc] doses by weight…so I was going by that. Then we couldn’t find a quick and easy conversion from mg to ml so I found a weight dosage chart, but then Tom misunderstood and was going to give him a very small dose…we FINALLY got it figured out after much arguing and researching.)

That said, I completely forgot we had a ziploc of meds somewhere. I found the boxes (kept for dosing info) so thought that was all we had so didn’t even look. So I went to Rite Aid, got the Benedryl, came home, and then tried to find our droppers because he can’t take it from a cup. Yeah, they were in the ziploc with the other meds. Where the Benedryl (well, Waldryl) was. So we had it the whole time and I didn’t need to run to the store and Tom didn’t need to come home. (Well, he didn’t NEED to come home, though it made it easier for me to run to the store…and he wanted to come home to see the hives.)

And to top it all off, by the time we figured out the dosing and gave it to him, the hives were pretty much going away so we could have likely skipped the meds entirely. 😐

I have a headache.

The Spoon vs. The Dunk

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I was really happy with how well Owen was using his spoon…until he started wanting to dunk EVERYTHING in his yogurt. Now he rarely uses the spoon. 🙁 You can give him the yogurt first, without anything else, and he will use it for a minute…but then he wants his ‘dunkers’ (whatever else I’ll be giving him for his meal).

Last night it was dill pickles, ham, apples, and banana chips dunked in banana
yogurt. In the mornings, it’s always pancakes, graham crackers, and apples in the yogurt.

I am getting SO tired of cleaning up half the yogurt off his hands/arms/face/high chair. The spoon was SOOOO much better.

/sigh

I just keep repeating “It’s a phase—he’ll grow out of it. It’s a phase—he’ll grow out of it.”

Road trip!

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We took a road trip to Frankenmuth to meet up with Grandpa Mike and Grannie Lin—and Great Grandma Pat and Mary Kay (who were down to Traverse City from the U.P.)! Unfortunately, Owen only got about a 40 minute nap on the way there, so we knew the afternoon might get a little sketchy… But he did pretty well at the park with us before lunch and I even got a few great pictures!

I caught him jumping! Look how high he is! I never even realized he was jumping when I was taking the picture!

Lunch at the Bavarian Inn didn’t go quite as smoothly as we had hoped, because Owen just got really tired of sitting in the high chair and HATED the accordion player who stopped in our room—but had plenty of fun walking around and hanging out with grandpa while we ate. Then it was back to the park for some playing, where Owen lasted about an hour until he needed to nap.

Bigfoot update!

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Footie PJ update:

They fit, though barely. Turns out when his foot is a little damp (i.e. last night after a bath) they don’t fit nearly as well. Tonight, completely dry, they fit…though they are close to being too tight.

Kissing!

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So pretty much every morning for the past 6-8 months, when I get Owen up in the morning or after a nap, I give him kisses and say something like “Mommy’s kissing Owen!” or “Kisses for Owen!”

Today he was carrying around a stuffed animal and I asked if he could kiss it…and he did! I thought it might be a fluke since I tried it a few more times (and with me) and he didn’t do it. So when Tom came home we tried again. And BINGO! Owen kissed Tom—twice! The first one I missed with the camera, and the second one I got!

Owen giving Tom a kiss!

Then later, I came up to him on the couch and told him to “give mommy a kiss” and he leaned forward and smacked me on the lips!

:p

The laptop saga, part 3.

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So, when I last talked to Costco.com (10/6), they said I would hear from someone within 1-2 days about my issues. Yeah, I got an email and voice mail from them today. Apologizing up the wazoo about taking so long and all the problem I’ve had… The voice mail asked for clarification on some things, so I sat in the parking lot of Kroger and sent a response from my phone. Among other things, I said I did not want a third laptop UNLESS (and only unless) they could give me a big discount on it.

We’ll see what happens.

A few hours later…

Oh. My. Gawd.

The rep replied and said she didn’t see anything in my account about a return for the laptop and asked if I wanted her to initiate a return. YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. >:XX

Needless to say I kind of went off on her, though somewhat nicely:

I have to say I am completely gobsmacked that there is no return in process. I made it VERY clear to the rep I spoke with on 10/6 (I think it was Evelyn if that helps) that I was returning the second laptop and she assured me she would initiate a return via UPS label and I would receive it via email in 3-5 business days. This comes after the FIRST rep I talked to (during the initial Concierge/Costco.com phone calls weeks ago) said I’d receive a return label…and about 9 days later I hadn’t received it (OR the replacement laptop), so contacted Costo.com via the website asking about my return/replacement status, and they informed me the return hadn’t been processed (at that point). I received the UPS email the very next day. So long story short, YES, please start the return process.

Then I told them there must be something wrong with their returns system, as TWO SEPARATE REPS said they initiated a return, and both apparently failed.

THEN I asked directly about receiving a credit since she didn’t bring it up.

I love Costco, but this is RIDICULOUS.

Reubens!

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Why is it that, when I decide I want reubens, I always forget ONE ingredient?

Yes, I always remember the corned beef, but sometimes it’s the sauerkraut, sometimes the cheese, sometimes the Thousand Island…and today? The bread. And I even prided myself at the store for remembering the cheese/sauerkraut/dressing! But bread didn’t even enter my mind, even as I was thinking about the delicious-smelling bread they were putting in cases.

:**:

The laptop saga, continued.

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So I got the replacement laptop today…and…IT’S THE SAME >:XX ONE.

Costco seems to think they can get it right on the third time, as the lady is sending the issue to “order resolution”—whatever. I told her I had no desire to get a third laptop, and she was all “Well why am I emailing them then?” And I told her so they could figure out why their Dell outlet keeps shipping foreign laptops that don’t match the specs to customers. She didn’t get it. I told her I’ve been without a laptop for three weeks now, and cannot wait another week for this to be resolved and then another week to get a replacement laptop. She didn’t get it.

So I’m letting them do whatever they need to do and I will be laptop shopping elsewhere. I assume I will have to send back a third laptop…

At least now I can send back the second laptop masquerading as the first, so I can at least continue to use the laptop I already have set up with wireless, some programs, etc.

First fall down the stairs

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Oh. My. Gawd.

I just had complete heart failure.

I left the gate open and Owen headed upstairs, which is actually fine because he can go up with ease. But I didn’t want him up there, so I caught him about 3/4 the way up and took his hand to lead him down. He knows how to come down by himself and has done it a few times, though I usually still hold his hand (or stand in front of him to watch him and/or catch him if he should fall).

But today I decided to let the dog out (in her crate in the room at the top of the stairs, which I can reach from the stairs) and in the three seconds it took me to finish the last 1/4 of the stairs and unlatch her gate, he fell. I watched him slide down, head over heels, about three steps. It all happened in s…l…o…w motion, I swear. But it happened so fast I couldn’t even get to him to stop him. I just kept watching him slide…and tumble…

It’s a curved stairwell with a big wood platform about halfway down, and he bonked into that as well, before sliding down another few stairs.

He was in shock, I think. Mostly like “What the hell was that?” Then he started crying…but it wasn’t a horrible cry (as we heard before when a 4×4 dropped on his toe) so I didn’t think it was too bad. Within a minute (or less) of me cuddling him on the steps (making sure he wasn’t bleeding anywhere), he was off down the rest of the stairs, apparently no worse for the wear. He grabbed a burpie from the couch and was off to the living room. It was a good 10 minutes before my heart stopped racing and I calmed down.

I guess he’s not quite ready to go the stairs alone.