kayla aimee: only slightly neurotic

I've moved to www.kaylaaimee.com

Thank you so much for visiting me here! I would love for you to join me at my new internet home over at http://kaylaaimee.com.

Here's what you've missed if you haven't updated your link to the new blog yet (which, by the way, is at kaylaaimee.com. I know, that name is really creative and original.)

A long overdue post about how to use swagbucks to earn Amazon gift cards, a typical KA post about almost burning my kitchen down (what, that doesn't surprise you?) and some cute pictures and videos of my baby. Because everything she does is cute. Even waking me up at 3:30 in the morning. Okay, maybe that's not so cute.

Anyhow, I hope you'll come over and hang out with me there if you haven't yet! If you read in a blog reader, I think I've fixed everything so the feeds are updated and no longer all wonky, lmk if you're having problems! If you don't read in a reader, consider following with bloglovin'-it's how I keep up with all of my favorite blogs.

Moving, Freebies & a Giveaway!

So after 5+ years I bit the bullet and moved over to a new blog. WHAT?! I know.

So please come visit me at my new web home www.kaylaaimee.com

I'd love to know what you think about the space!

Plus, I'm throwing a blog-warming party and have lots of fun giveaways for you this week, starting with a bodycology gift basket filled with $100 worth of bath and body products. That's way better than a gift basket from my freebie closet, am I right or am I right? Go over there and enter!

And also, I have some freebies that I'm using for this year's Week In The Life project that you can download over there. I'm enticing y'all with stickers and body wash.

And don't worry family. I know you only read my blog to see pictures of the baby and I've got a whole little Scarlette section over there.

I'll be leaving this blog up for awhile longer but all new posts will take place over there so if you are reading this blog in a reader, please take a minute to update your feed!

So please click here to update to this new site in your blog reader or click here to follow my blog with Bloglovin!

Scarlette Saturday | First Bites!

At Scarlette's last GI appointment, Dr. M thought she had made enough progress to try rice cereal for the first time! And to skip putting it in her bottle and go right to a spoon. They set us up with a feeding therapist because she has a very high risk of choking. Scarlette, not the therapist.

The last picture is of her very first bite! After some discussion it was decided that I would watch her first feeding. Because she had so many tubes in her throat for so long, she has grooves in the roof of her mouth. And because she was tube fed for so long, she tends to gag and choke. Oftentimes a baby will refuse food after experiencing that while eating so there are special techniques for feeding those babies. It was important for me to learn them before feeding her and inadvertently causing her to have bad associations with food.

It's one of those bittersweet moments about parenting a preemie. All of your firsts are different. I know how to feed a baby. But I didn't know how to feed my baby. And the best thing for her was to let the therapist give her her first bite. I admit, I felt a bit sad about it. Until I SAW her take her first bite and then I cried not because I was sad, but because the digestive issues have been so hard for her and now MY BABY CAN EAT!

I am still getting comfortable with the feedings but she is a big fan, as evidenced in the above photos. We put her in the high chair and realized that it wasn't going to be very easy to feed her in it because she is so small. She is almost nine months old but she weighs eleven pounds and is about the size of a one month old so she isn't a great fit. She looks so tiny in it!

The current feeding plan is to continue with rice cereal until she is one, when we will attempt to introduce pureed fruits and vegetables. Which I plan on making myself so hit me up with tips on that, y'all!

(p.s. the Yoshi blanket was sent to her from our friends at Nintendo. It's so cute! I don't know if you can order them but I will find out for those that asked!)

A bouquet of newly sharpened pencils

via

Every time I go to the grocery store I pass a display of brand new school supplies, which makes me all nostalgic about Back To School season. It also makes me think of the above quote from You've Got Mail. I actually can't stand the movie You've Got Mail but my best friend played it multiple times a week in our college dorm room and thus, it is burned into my memory. I can't hold a grudge because we only owned one movie each and my pick was The Princess Diaries. This is probably why we didn't get a lot of dates in college. And by we, I totally mean only me. 

My obsession with school supplies began in elementary school. Once the calendar pages flipped to July, I set about my mission to annoy my mother into taking me shopping for back to school supplies. Typically she made me hold out until August, back when summer break actually lasted an entire summer and students didn't file through the classroom doors until right around Labor day. After picking out the perfect Trapper Keeper, I'd spend hours of my (summer, no school) day meticulously organizing my Lisa Frank pencil box. I'm pretty sure I've always been slightly neurotic.

And still, I kinda wish I had a reason to buy school supplies right now.

Picnic At The Park | Coca-Cola Live Positively

Long before Jeff and I began dating we would drive over to Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park to hike and play frisbee. I never really got any good at frisbee.

Actually, I'm incredibly bad at frisbee. But that's okay because being bad at frisbee is actually a way better workout than being good at it. Like, my husband, he is all good at frisbee and can make it go where he wants it to. Like, right into my hands. But when I throw him the frisbee, he has to chase it down and catch it before it lands on the couple sharing an ice cream cone on their picnic blanket. That's how I keep him in shape.

Kennesaw National Battlefield Park is one of my favorite places because as teenagers our group of friends would hang out there. We'd hike the mountain and congratulate ourselves on being all fit and stuff. I made a lot of great memories in my youth at the mountain, like learning that even though I'm terrible at frisbee I throw a mean spiral when you give me a football. I know, right? Move over, Peyton Manning.

The park is beautiful. It makes me want to be an outdoorsy person. I'm not outdoorsy. But I like to pretend to be. I love that it is more than just some green space, but that it is rich with history. I'm a sucker for historical stuff. 

Out of all the parks around Atlanta, this one is my favorite.

That's why I'm writing about it for the second annual America Is Your Park campaign which is sponsored by the Coca-Cola Live Positively initiative.

Another thing I like about Atlanta? Coca-Cola.

The goal of America Is Your Park is to encourage people to play, be active and help their favorite national, state or local park win a recreation grant provided by Coca-Cola Live Positively.

Um, hi. I can totally do that.

Christmas In July : Freebies + Gift Baskets

This year one of my thrifty goals is to cut our holiday budget by 75%. Here's what I'm doing...

I subscribe to a few online freebie sites and I send off for things that would make good gift basket fillers. I also watch the couponing sites for items I can get for free with my drugstore perks.

I keep a bin in the hall closet full of free items. I also pick up cute storage containers whenever I see them for a great deal in the Target dollar spot. When it's time for gift giving I pull together a gift basket in a specific theme.

This spring I gave a graduation gift basket full of items I got for free. I themed it Dorm Room Survival Kit and added Avery labels, ballpoint pens, mini boxes of cereal, laundry detergent, shampoo, granola bars, toothpaste, notebook paper, and a mini journal.

Every year I do a beauty gift basket for my sister because she's really into cosmetology. I typically fill it with free lotion/perfume samples from Bath & Body Works and other makeup and beauty products that I get for free.

I also make a mini-craft basket for the kids in the family. So far I have some paints, crayons, and play-dough tucked away for this year's baskets. Drugstore deals are the best for free art supplies.

It does take some time/effort but it saves me lots of ca$h money

Here are a few of the freebie sites I visit a few times each week:

WomanFreebies.com - great for beauty freebies although you do have to subscribe by email to see the deals on this site

That Freebie Site - this is my favorite site, they post a lot of deals where you have to like something on facebook to get it free. Those deals go fast but they are normally full sized samples so I subscribe to the site in google reader and then set it on my i-google homepage so that I can always snag a deal as soon as it's published. I'm crafty like a fox. Slight digression: I keep thinking that if I'd kept my maiden name, Crafty Like A Fox would be the MOST AWESOMEST BLOG NAME EVER.

Freeflys.com - the nice thing about this site is that you can choose what categories you want to see freebies in, such as food, baby, or beauty. Which is great because I'm all like "Free healthy protein bar, vitamins, whatever, OH LOOK FREE CANDY BARS!"

I visit Southern Savers because she lists exactly what items you can get free each week. Target.com also has a great freebie sample section. And check out this link for free printable gift basket labels from Creating Keepsakes (source of the photo above).

Also, sign up for birthday freebies because they are typically full sized and make great gift basket fillers. This year I got Philosophy shower gel from Sephora. And you can sign up at Aveda to get a full size $24 beauty product for free on your birthday. Confession: I totally kept that one for myself.

(disclosure: since I use these sites frequently, I signed up as an affiliate for some and those links are included in this post. If you prefer not to use them, it won't hurt my feelings if you bypass my links and go directly to the sites! In any case, I hope you find them helpful!)

That's So Random (and a giveaway!)

• Jeff turned 28 this past week and I'm carrying on the celebration by eating cookie cake for breakfast. 

• The candles on Jeff's cake said 29 because did you know that when made out of wax, the numbers eight and nine look exactly the same? I mean, not to everyone else at the party who were all like "why is there a nine on the cake?" But to me when I'm in the grocery store picking up party supplies and debating between the numbers 2 and 8 or twenty eight individual trick candles. Apparently, I should have chosen the latter.

• I learn a lot of important things through blogging. Like that as it turns out, the phrase is Timbuktu and it is an actual, factual place. Not ten buck two, as heard for the past 28 years by my brain that filters everything in a southern accent. 

• I put my baby's feet in my mouth. That is horrifying and yet totally normal.

• Reader Poll: If you're reading a book and the book is just terrible, do you give up on it? Or do you finish it in hopes that it will get better? Jeff and I were debating the merits of finishing the book vs not finishing the book last night. Because some of us may or may not have been lying on the couch exclaiming "Seriously! This book is terrible! How does this person have a book deal and I don't?" To which the other one of us asked in exasperation why someone didn't just quit reading the book if all she was going to do was complain about how bad it was.

My Baby Clothes Boutique sent me that embroidered tutu onesie. I flippin' love overly girly things like that. They offered to give a $25 gift certificate to one of my readers so click here to enter to win, they have some great outfits & accessories!

And the little one said "roll over, roll over"

Thank you so much for the kind words on my grandfather's passing.

I've been remiss in blogging Scarlette updates over here and I have a really good reason. It's called "this baby keeps me really, really busy and I forget to download the bazillion photos off my memory card." I posted more pictures on flickr.

Jeff came home the other day and as soon as Scarlette saw him she squealed with delight. It was the cutest thing.

Here is the big news: Scarlette rolled from her back to her tummy! This is such a huge deal because it's one of the areas that she is delayed in because of her arm fractures + laying in a hospital bed for five and a half months. We've been working so hard on rolling in her physical therapy.

And normally she just lays there and looks at us like "Yeah, that toy? It does not interest me enough to make me want to exert any effort to roll over there for it. Y'all are gonna have to do a little better than than a plastic rattle. Show me the money, people. SHOW ME THE MONEY!"

I had her laying on her back next to me while I worked, glanced over and she was on her belly! And then I got REALLY, REALLY excited. And she burst into tears because apparently, when mommy squeals with delight it is more scary than cute.

I was reading the Amazima blog this week and was struck by the sentiment that He has entrusted me with much. I feel so deeply the responsibility of loving and rearing a child. And with Scarlette, whenever she does something that's so simple yet so hard for her (like rolling over) I'm deeply in awe of how blessed we are. Of how far she's come. And how we are, indeed, entrusted with much.

(Amy Tangerine sent her those cute shirts. Are they not the sweetest?!)

Papa

My grandfather passed away this week. Today is his funeral and I wanted to take some time away from my regular posting to pay tribute to him.

When I was a little girl, I wasn't sure what to think of my grandfather. My grandmother would flit around the house chatting, showering  me with affection and endearments. But my Papa was the opposite, a strong, silent type.

I remember telling him how my other grandparents got this thing called a newspaper, that had cartoons in it. Could he believe that?! I was five years old when I made this discovery and thought that the Sunday Funnies were the greatest thing since sliced bread.

The next week when we visited them, he pointed me in the direction of the grandfather clock, where he had carefully folded and placed the comics from that week's newspaper. I thought it was the greatest surprise and he smiled mildly at my childish joy. But then the next week when we visited they were there again, and the next week, and the next. And the weeks stretched into months and then years, a newspaper just so I could read the comics. And he never said anything about it, he would just smile at me as I spread the newsprint out on the living room floor and laughed.

That was how I knew my grandfather loved me.

As I grew older, I was able to recognize it in different ways.

Not your average teenager, I was terrified of driving. On the other hand, like most teenagers I did NOT want to ride the bus. And so every day I rambled on about teenage girl things to my grandfather, who picked me up from school and drove me home. I think back now and I am glad my self-absorbed seventeen year old self had so much time with him that year.

Papa was diagnosed with Alzheimer's shortly after I was married and the disease was not kind to him.

I was blessed in that I didn't lose my great-grandparents until my early twenties, and so I assumed Scarlette would grow up with her great-grandfather in her life. My greatest sadness today is that because he has been so sick lately, he was never able to meet my daughter, who is named for his late wife. I know he would have loved that. Though he didn't know me anymore, I told him often and he would say " I like that name. My wife's name was Vonne."

He was a good man, my Papa. He loved his family and I don't think there's any greater thing you can say than that.

"for the greatest of these is love" - 1 Corinthians 13

I Heart Pinterest : No Heat Curls

While I was browing pinterest I found this tutorial on how to make your hair curly without using heat and I was all skeptical about it. Because I'm a wee bit addicted to my hot rollers. I'm from the south, y'all. But it totally works and is my new favorite thing ever, so I wanted to share my tips:

1) She's right about wrapping your hair loosely. I instinctually wanted to wrap smaller sections but the first time I tried this I looked a brunette Shirley Temple. Turns out, that's not a good look for me.

2) If you have really thick hair like me, use two of the hair bands. I wrapped the top half of my hair and then put on another hair band and wrapped the bottom half.

3) It's totally acceptable to swipe an elastic headband from your baby's stash if you don't own the sort of hair band she recommends. Don't tell Scarlette.

4) I didn't put my hair up again the second night, I just slept on it loose and sprized it with a little water in the morning. That day I had very, soft relaxed waves. I like that look best because I like to pretend I'm an Olsen Twin.

Have you tried/made anything you found on pinterest? Link me up!