Potty Power!

We've been working on Potty training Steffie for quite some time now. At 3 1/2 she has all of the particulars down and some days she does really really well with using the potty. She went for 2 weeks without having an accident so I know she can do it! But for the last 2 weeks she has had several days of constant "accidents". For some reason she has days when she just doesn't want to use the potty. It can be very frustrating... especially when I know she can do it... she just doesn't want to!

We started when she was 18 months old by buying her her very own special potty.... which she promtly decided to wear on her head like a crown.... the potty princess! And then she decided to stir it with her broom... like a potty cauldron. She liked to sit on it like most kids do.... but we soon decided we were pushing too hard and too early... so we backed off.

Last summer we went back to potty training with determination.... she was by then 2 1/2.... the whole summer while we were home she wore only her shirt and panties to make it easier for her to go potty... and to dirty less clothes. She did very well and by fall was going potty quite often but with days of having lots of "accidents". This is where we've been since then. The accidents are fewer but she still has those days...

One of the things we've found that has helped her tremendously is borrowing potty training videos from the Library. Her favorite is Potty Power. She loves the songs and sings them with each step of the pottying process. We borrow it often to reinforce the message and keep her using her Potty Power.

We have also stopped using pullups except for at night. Letting her wear them during the day just gave her permission to not go potty. I had hoped that telling her not pee or poop on Strawberry Shortcake and Dora (on her panties) would help.... but she really doesn't care if she pees or poops on them!

Oddly enough she has developed a huge fascination with public restrooms! When we're out somewhere she always wants to go potty.... we had to stop at the Race Track 3 times the other day because she insisted on going potty there. She just loves public restrooms!

Today while browsing blogs I ran across an awesome sounding potty training aide and they're giving one away! Jolly Mom and Potty MD have teamed up to give some lucky family this awesome Potty Monkey. It includes a diaper, big monkey underwear, a flushing potty, a parent's guide and a potty training certificate. It has a timer that can be set for either 30 minutes or 90 minutes. Potty Monkey will remind your child to go to the bathroom by saying, "I need to go potty!Let's go potty!" and "I really need to go! C'mon, lets go potty! Potty Monkey also talks and sings every time your child places him on the interactive learning toilet. It sounds like a great way to get Steffie fully trained and put an end to her accidents. I would love to have one of these! So click on over there and maybe one of us will be the lucky winner!

~A Lil Enchanted~

Yummy Lunch and More Freebies!

Well I really enjoyed my free lunch from Dominos.... it was delicious! I hope you all took advantage of it.

And I did make it to Baskin Robbins after all! I had Bubble Gum ice cream....Mmmmm.... I love Bubble Gum ice cream and Baskin Robbins is the only place to get it. I guess it takes me back to being a lil girl again... but they had so many yummy flavors it was hard to choose.

Here are a couple of Freebies I found for the lil ones... grab them while you can!


Get a FREE music CD for your baby!

What is the Learning Path?

The Learning Path is a free, online resource that lets you see and share in your child's play and learning with LeapFrog.

Get learning tips that are tailored to your child

Find ideas and activities to inspire learning

Learn about the skills your child is exploring

It's as easy as 1-2-3!

1. Create a leapfrog.com account
2. Create a Learning Path footprint
3. Link your toy to the Learning Path

Learning Rhythms CD features 15 songs to get children ages 0 to 3 learning, moving and growing. Receive a free copy via download or mail

http://www.leapfrog.com/en/freecd/splash.html

AllFreePrintables.com

Get Free Printable Bookmarks , Chore Coupons , Checklists , Seed Packets , Mother's Day Printables , Christmas Printables , Valentine's Day Printables , Halloween Printables , Kitchen Prints and More!

http://www.allfreeprintables.com/

~A Lil Enchanted~

Get A Free Lunch Today!

This offer is good today only at participating Dominos locations so call before you go to make sure your local one is included. Mine is and I plan to have a free lunch!



Then later this evening take the family out for some yummy delicious Baskin Robbins Icecream! It's not free but it's cheap!... 31 cents a scoop is a bargain! Again call your local Baskin Robbins to make sure they are participating before you drive over.

Unfortunately I'll miss this one... hubby will gone to work and I won't have a vehicle : (


~A Lil Enchanted~

Free Stuff For Mother's Day!

Well I've ran across some awesome giveaways for Mother's Day so I thought I would help pass them along.




Over the next two weeks, they will be posting giveaways for some great prizes at 5 Minutes for Mom.

You will have a chance to win prizes such as:

* An HP Mini 1000 PC
* Purses from Coach and Elliot Lucca
* A Kodak Wireless Digital Frame
* A Kodak Digital Camera
* A Blu-Ray player and Blu-Ray Pride and Prejudice gift pack
* Jewelry from Things Remembered
* Crock-Pot® Smart-Pot® Slow Cooker

and more…

So click on over there and enter to win!

Click on this link to enter the Mary Kay Microderm Abrasion Kit!

http://abafadams.blogspot.com/2009/04/this-weeks-giveaway-great-for-mothers.html

Over at Alley's Coupons, Family and Fun she's giving away this Mary Kay Microdern Abrasion Kit to a lucky Mom... so go over and sign up for your chance to win it!





I just did this and it was absolutely FREE!! It even includes the shipping!!You have to register with Hallmark, but you can do that online. You get a FREE 5X7 personalized Mother's Day card, and they even mail it for you for FREE~
Use Promo code CARD4MOM at checkout. Get it quick so you'll have your card in time for Mother's Day!
http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/home%7c10001%7c10051%7c-1

~A Lil Enchanted~

Curse Of The Can Opener...

Is it too much to ask to just have a can opener that I don't have to fight with???

I had a perfectly good can opener... worked every time with no problems.

It was a Black and Decker SpaceSaver that I mounted under my cabinet when we first moved here 9 years ago. All was well until my oldest daughter hit it with something and broke it several years later. Ever since then I have been in Can Opener Hell!!!

I tried using several of those cheaper metal hand can openers that I had in my gadget drawer.... they were crap... wouldn't open a can for anything... wouldn't even get a good grip on the can. So we bought a hand held battery operated one from Dollar General for about $6.... this one worked great for about 2 months when the motor burned out.

Our next purchase was a hand held $20 can opener from Belk... the kind that cuts the lid off under the rim so you can put it back on if you should choose to do so. It too worked great for a couple of years... now it's dull and doesn't cut so well anymore... you have to go around the can several times to actually get it cut... and on certain cans it just doesn't want to cut at all. Soup cans are just not going to open with this one anymore. Oddly enough... the larger the can the more likely it is to open it.

My hand starts to hurt after going around and around these blasted cans 3 or 4 times just to open one. So several months ago I decided it was time to replace my Black and Decker SpaceSaver. I went to Walmart to make my purchase... brought it home hoping to install it into the same holes I had drilled for the previous one only to discover that it has been of course new and improved.... we all know that means new but probably not so improved. The holes didn't match up... so I got out my drill to make new holes.... and installed the can opener only to find out that under my particular cabinets it would not work... there was no way to install it so that the mechanism would lift up. I was not a happy camper! I packed it back into the box and took it back to Walmart and purchased the cheapy $6 counter top model... a can opener is a can opener right???? So I thought...

I threw away the packaging and the receipt... just happy to have a working can opener. Well.... after a few weeks and several cans that I had to fight with just to get them to stay put in the cutter I was growing more and more frustrated that the simple act of opening a can was such an ordeal. I finally got fed up and threw it in the trash declaring that that is exactly what it was.... a piece of trash!

A couple of weeks later we were in a thrift store and I saw a nice new looking counter top can opener for $4... I thought surely this one will work better so I bought it. The first few cans opened fine yet again.... then it started... is it me??? Have I lost the simple ability to open a can???.... An ability I've had since I was young child.... am I getting *that* old that I can't operate a can opener??? Apparently not... my 20 year old daughter screamed from the kitchen a couple of weeks ago for me to come and open a can for her because *she* couldn't do it either! Whew! What a relief... I'm not that old.... yet! After struggling for about 10 minutes (I kid you not!) and still not getting the can open I grew frustrated once more and threw... yes threw!... that one into the trash as well.

So here I am today still struggling to open cans with that hand held can opener that has to go around and around the can at least 3 times and then you have to pry the lid the rest of the way off. As I was cooking dinner.... instead of tossing the contraption out the back door.... I declared to my husband that as soon as we get our income tax refund back we are going to the most expensive store in town and buying the most expensive can opener that we can find!

Now for me to even think such a thought is totally out of character... yard sale... thrift store... Dollar General Store.... thrifty old girl that I am... wanting an expensive... surely over-priced can opener?!!! Oh well... you gotta do what you gotta do to open those blasted cans right?! Why can't they just put those pull tabs on all cans nowadays?? Or just get rid of cans all together and use jars with screw on lids??? Oh wait!... they used to that back in the old days... remember canning???

Oh well.... I guess I'm stuck in Can Opener Hell for a lil longer... but I *will* get a can opener some day that actually works! That or maybe a Ginsu knife!

A Lil Enchanted...

Princess Furniture.... and Memories of a Lil Girl...

Well we *finally* got Steffie's new furniture moved! My niece got new bedroom furniture for Christmas so she would have a more mature room.... she is now in middle school and the pretty white lil girl furniture was just too juvenile for her. So my sister offered it to Steffie who just got her very own bedroom last spring.

This furniture is white french provincial that once belonged to my beloved aunt. I remember I thought it was soooo beautiful! I was about 7... and she was 8 (at least I think that's what our ages were). I had never known anyone that had such beautiful furniture.... all white with gold trim.... and that beautiful canopy bed!.... Just like a princess....

We spent many nights giggling in that bed... playing lil girl games.... whispering about monsters in the closet and walls.... all the things lil girls do when they spend the night together.... and we spent many. We were more like sisters than aunt and niece. She was a year older than me and I idolized her.

After she died at age 12 from a brain tumor the furniture was passed on to my younger sister who had been adopted by my Grandparents. Later.... after we grew up.... the house was sold and the furniture left there. My sister became pregnant with my niece and somehow was able to get the furniture back and have it refinished for Abbey's room. The gold trim is now pink, purple, green and blue... but it's a perfect match for Steffie's room which has all of those colors in her Dora The Explorer accessories. The beautiful canopy bed was not recovered.... but that's okay too. Steffie can continue to use her pink and purple Little Tykes Cottage bed that I painted for her a lil longer.... and later we can find her a white bed.

Steffie was soooo excited when I told her we were going to Aunt Jackie's to get her new Princess Furniture... and to see Aunt Jackie.... whom she loves very much. She had so much fun jumping on the trampoline and sticking her feet.... and then her head into the newly uncovered and very cold swimming pool. She swore it was not cold but I remember when I was a lil girl we would all get so excited when the cover came off the pool... usually on Easter Sunday.... the water was like a huge bowl of ice water but we didn't care!.... on went the swim suits and into that icy cold water we jumped. Our lips turned purple and we shivered out the words "no... it's not cold..." and kept right on swimming.

Steffie got her furniture and quite a few other goodies as well. She came home with a Barbie Dreamhouse.... Barbie airplane... a fiber optic butterfly lamp.... a lava lamp (which we used to call a "blob lamp").... a few squishy pillows... several pom poms.... and a rocking chair. Jackie had bought Abbey tons of Barbie stuff when she was younger... hoping that Abbey would love Barbies as much as we did... but like my own older daughter she never developed that love for Barbie that we had as lil girls. We spent hours playing with our Barbies and their houses and planes... campers and swimming pools.... tons of furniture and clothes.... we had our own lil Barbie town that stretched through several rooms of the house. Amazingly Gramma would allow us to leave it all set up for a few days at a time... I guess because we spent so many hours actually playing with it..... *and* it kept us out of her hair!

Steffie's room with it's Barbie Pink walls and purple trim... looks really pretty with her new Princess Furniture. I hope someday she will understand and appreciate the history behind it. And someday it will get passed down to another lil girl in our family.... and maybe she'll even love Barbie!

~A Lil Enchanted~ when she first got the furniture.... I thought is was

Get Paid To Read E-Mails???

You betcha!..... Okay I know everyone has heard of getting paid to read e-mails.... and thought "yea right"...... well you really can. It's only a few cents per e-mail... but it only takes a few minutes a day and over time those few cents add up. I started doing this in September and so far I've earned about $70. I plan to keep all of mine in the accounts until December and use it for Christmas shopping!

If you want to give it a try here are 3 legitimate companies that I've found:

Inbox Dollars

Send Earnings

Snap Dollars


If you know of any others please do share! It's a quick and easy way to earn a few extra dollars and who can't use that?!

If you decide to sign up for any of the other offers to earn money on these sites make sure you keep records of what you purchased or signed up for so you can be sure to get paid though. I had an issue when I made a purchase and was supposed to get $5 credited to my account and after a few weeks it still wasn't showing up. I was able to send them copies of my e-mails showing that I made the purchase and which offer it was and they did finally credit my account. So save all of that until it shows your credits just in case you need it.

Most of my earnings have been just reading the e-mails!

It's all in a days work...

Dragging a kicking screaming 3 year old from the library is always a joy. Steffie loves our weekly trip to the library where she gets to pick her very own videos and books to borrow for the week.... but this trip turned into a melt down. All was good until she decided to go find Daddy and he was no where to be seen.... she ran screaming and crying through the very quiet building looking for him. I had to get her out of there so I dropped our backpack by the bookshelf... scooped her up and headed outside.... of course her screams grew even louder. At the van I explained to her that our library visit was now over.... didn't she behave the way she is supposed to behave in the library. Before each visit we discuss how to behave.... no running... no climbing on the furniture (yes she has done this).... and be very very quiet and use your library voice. She usually behaves quite well.... picks out her books and videos... chats nicely with other children and the ladies who work there ... makes a trip to the potty (she has a thing about public restrooms.... and not the usual thing people have about them.... she loves them.... and insists she has to go potty everywhere we go) .... but not today... today was a library disaster. Daddy finally came out with his own books and our library bag with the 6 videos and 2 books she had chosen... he had heard the whole thing.... of course!.... who hadn't?!! After another meltdown because Daddy wouldn't take her back in to pick more books all was well and she now understands that if she misbehaves we will leave.

Now the house is quiet.... Steffie is bed.... and it's time to get some work done.

What a tangled web we weave...

"And the days go by... like a strand in the wind.... in the web that is my own I begin again...." Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen

Have you ever thought about how our lives are like a spider's web? Each lil aspect... every tiny thing in our lives are like the threads of the web.... all woven together... all connected.... all having an effect on the other....

Sometimes we even catch things in our web that we never intended to catch... sometimes these are delightful treats... sometimes they are nasty lil vermon that we have to work hard to get rid of....

Each day.... and with every thing we touch.... every thought we have.... our web grows. Sometimes it sparkles and shines with tiny droplets of morning dew.... and sometimes it's just big and nasty and sticky.... and we wonder what we have gotten into....

So sometimes we have to stop and go back the center.... and take a look around us.... decide what parts of the web we need to remove.... what parts of the web we need to reconstruct.... some parts will become a strand in the wind as we break them loose.... and some parts are strong and hold our web in place.... give it foundation. Some parts need tending to because we've neglected them for far too long...

Here is my own lil web.... I hope you find it interesting.... maybe even helpful in some way.... maybe you'll choose to stick around in it for awhile... maybe you'll be a lil enchanted by it....

Welcome to my web... said the spider to the fly....