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It’s time for another edition of Tuesday Troubles. I’ve said it before, but this should be named “things i’m annoyed / confused / want to complain about”, however I couldn’t figure out how to make any of those into a snappy title, so Tuesday Troubles it is. And yes, I do realize that these aren’t true “troubles”. I know these for sure could be defined as first world problems!
~As usual, I am obsessed with the release (I know I am a bit late discussing this) of the Erin Condren Life Planners, but I am debating actually purchasing because I don’t really use the one I have. Will I be needing a planner now that L is in school? I mean I know I *need* to use a planner because clearly I don’t remember everything in my head, but how do I make myself actually use one. Do I just need to leave it open at my desk all the time so it’s staring at me?
~So I have (once again) become addicted to the deal sites, you know like Haute Look, Rue La La, etc. However, I am annoyed by the 15 minute cart time limit. I put something in my cart and 15 minutes, it’s gone. I get that things sell out and they don’t want it to sit in your cart for 2 days before you decided if you want to buy it. But dude, I am still on your site SHOPPING for more things to buy.
~I am on the hunt for airline tickets to Las Vegas and OMG are they expensive. What on earth happened to the days of super cheap plane tickets? I want to fly from Detroit to Las Vegas on a non-stop flight for gosh, under $400? And not on like Spirit or something like that. And I don’t want to leave at like 8pm. Is this too much to ask? Clearly it is because I’ve been searching and yeah, it’s not possible. When is it that “they” say that airline tickets are supposed to be the cheapest? Late Tuesday nights? Is that it? Should I be looking tonight?
~So I recently was troubled by the local FB buy / sell / trade / swap group (*) I am in and the crazy pants things people were selling and other people were actually buying. Think pre-worn bras, used cosmetics, half full vitamin bottles, you get the idea. Well, things have taken a crazier turn because in addition to the normal drama and calling people out for not showing up for a trade, posting screen shots of PM’s where people are calling each other names and threatening each other, people are now posting other group member’s arrest records and mug shots. WTF? This crazy train has crashed!
~In something sort of troubling and sort of amusing, L is now under the impression that we will be going on a cruise “every other year” for his birthday. He has decided that next year we don’t need to go because he would like a “piñata” party. Luckily I have some time for him to change his mind on this one. Because yeah, Disney cruises every two years are not happening!
~And finally, if you have a toddler, what does he / she eat? L was such a good eater and would eat anything. WB? Not so much. He used to love mac n cheese, but that’s not even happening these days. He likes basically nothing and while “they” say that kids won’t stave themselves, yeah, WB might. So any ideas??
That’s it from here for now! What’s troubling you today?
Nathaniel is pretty good with eating but he loves fruits. Blueberries seem to be his favorite right now but he has realized that he can squish them with his fingers and make a big mess. He is also into grahm crackers with a little peanut butter. He also loves cherrios.
Las Vegas can be very cheap to fly to (I’m in NJ and i was able to get 2 round trip tickets a while back for high $300 range). The key: Go in February. I don’t know why. It’s the cheapest time to visit and the weather is still really nice. Plus it’s a nice break from the cold and snow. Tuesdays are supposed to be the best days to purchase flights, but i’ve seen it fluctuate. Have you tried Bing’s price predictor? it’ll tell you to buy now, or later, if the price will drop, etc. That’s what i used to buy my flight to Oregon (round trip, non stop for $368!!!)
PS- the Hello Fresh! Box i won from here was delicious, so thanks!
Neither of mine were good eaters when they were WB’s age…and not the best now either. My boys are naturally long and thin, so I was worried that if they didn’t eat they would just dry up and blow away. I started giving them 1 Pediasure a day, and they loved it. Atleast that way I knew they were atleast getting some vitamins.
I think it is hilarious the things that people will post in facebook groups/company pages and fight about and I love reading the drama! It really is highly entertaining. As for kids and food…my 4 year old eats, peanut butter sandwiches (no jelly), waffles, strawberries, cheerios, white part of a hard boiled egg, and any kind of chip/cracker. She’s tough. When she started on regular foods as a baby, she ate anything…then slowly she dropped almost everything. It’s frustrating (and boring) but I guess she will eat good foods one day?? I see other kids eat all sorts of “non kid” healthy foods and yea, mine could care less what others eat. I even wish she would eat “kid foods” like mac n cheese or hot dogs but she won’t budge. WB won’t starve, just keep offering him different foods!
Molly breakfast consists of a bite of granola bar and maybe two bite of a banana-she wont eat until lunch time. Lunch time usually consists of cream cheese eaten off crackers…and trying to get her to eat dinner is another story. I talked to the doctor and he prescribed vitamins. If ANYONE has any idea’s I’d love to hear them also! I’m open for anything! 🙂
@Alena: by the way, sorry about the spelling, I have to stop using my phone for this type of thing! 🙂
My Girl, now 18 months went thru a phase like that too.. She went from eating anything you would give her until around 15 months, then she decided she no longer liked any of it.. she pretty much lived on juice and cheese and whatever else we could get her to eat for about 2 months.. Last Month she just started eating everything again.. Cheese still her favorite.. but at her picky phase she was even refusing mashed potatoes and this girl had never met a mashed potato she didn’t like! lol..
I think your WB is around that same age .. So give it a month or two and he will probably go back to eating whatever he liked before.. Good Luck on finding something he will eat in the meanwhile!!
My 20 month old son is weirdly picky too… here are some things he’ll always eat… any and all cereal and crackers(maybe it’s the crunch), cereal bars (I get the market pantry ones), gerber yogurts (he has one for breakfast every morning), fruit and veg and yogurt melts from gerber, apple sauce. I recently went and bought like $40 of pouches of all different kinds. He’s basically liked 75% of them and I write down the ones he did not want to eat. Some he likes enough or is hungry enough to squeeze it all himself… other ones I’ve been squeezing onto a spoon and giving it to him. I realize he should probably be eating more solid foods but he won’t do pasta or rice or even toast lately.
Tickets to Las Vegas are so pricey these days! My husbands family is there, and it is just getting more and more pricey to visit, unfortunately. I love those Erin Condren planners too, but I know I would use it for two weeks and it would get lost or forgotten!
I got one and I loveeee it. I thought I wouldnt use mine that much either but I have! If you decide to get one I got a $10 off coupon with mine that still may work if youre interested.
I got an Erin Condren planner and I loveee it. I got a $10 off coupon with my purchase that I havent used if youre interested.
@Lauren A.:
If you’re not gonna use her code, I’d love to use it! I have been dying to order an Erin Condren planner!!!
There is a monitor on the Berlin swap site so only swap/for sale items show up. Some weeks the kids don’t stop eating, but the last couple weeks they have hardly ate anything. Must be the weather.
My kid (19 months) is obsessed with salad dressing and ketchup. If we have it on our food, he wants it. He’ll dip his chicken into it and eat it about 75% of the time (an improvement from about 20% of the time plain) He’ll dip his veggies in there too. And he loves bean and cheese quesadillas, pb & j, and grilled cheese (also with ketchup) We’re lucky though, as he will really eat almost anything, and we usually aren’t preparing meals for him that are different from what we are eating ourselves. Try the dipping though, it has been an improvement for us, especially if he has a fork to use as well 🙂
My girl was a picky eater, too. I wanted to teach her to like a variety of foods besides goldfish and bananas, so I decided I would not cater to her preferences for dinner. We just always told her she could eat her dinner if she was hungry, and that was all she got. Eventually (like, a good 8 months probably) she figured it out and now eats at least SOME of her dinner every night. I gave her things I knew she would eat for breakfast and lunch, but dinner was a “you get what you get” kind of meal.
I really love the new EC planners too! However, they are so expensive and I can’t justify buying one now that I am not teaching school this year.
This past weekend was my besties 30th and we were gonna all go to Vegas and RT from Houston was $850 a ticket!! That’s $1,700 just for me and Jeremy to fly there for 2 days!!! AHHH! Thank God they ended up changing it to Wine Tasting in Texas Hill Country, that was just a 4 hour drive. Phew!
OMG I was just working on a post about C not eating! I mean he does not eat anything but fruit!!! He will go a whole day only having lets say Mango’s (fruit changes each day at least). Its freaking me out and driving me NUTS!! The Doc assures me that food is fuel and if he is running around playing then he is fine.. but its really scaring me and freaking me out!
I want an Erin Condren life planner SO BAD. Paying $80+ for it though? not happening. i’ve been trying to find something comparable and I just can’t. It is frustrating!
My son is the same way! He will eat anything with cheese in it or on it though. His favorite is grilled cheese. He eats almost no vegetables, so I mix them in with the Mac and cheese, but that wouldn’t work if WB isn’t eating that anymore. B likes cottage cheese, so I end up squeezing veggie/fruit pouches into that and he’ll eat it. I didn’t think there were any kids that didn’t like fruit, but I have one. He loves bananas, but nothing else! I feel your pain.
my son is almost 11 now and STILL a terrible eater. that’s truth though, they won’t starve. you just have to be ok with what they will eat. he likes (and pretty much always did) strawberries, grapes, applesauce, waffles, and chicken nuggets. oh, and club crackers. not the best, but not the worst, so i just make sure we always have them. obviously, some of this isn’t toddler food but pretty much ANYTHING can be toddler food if you put it in one of those strainer guys (http://www.amazon.com/Munchkin-Pack-Fresh-Feeder-Colors/dp/B000GK5XY2). the waffles are good for teething anyway (frozen). i would say, just offer a lot, and don’t get too worked up about it.
I looked at those life planners and they are really cute! I would never spend $50 on a planner though, I usually end up forgetting about it too. The swap pages are ridiculous! My local one doesn’t seem nearly as bad as yours but that would just be entertaining to watch LOL
Reviews Until You Drop
I was told by someone in the “industry” that late Tuesday night is when flights get reduced, not sure how true it is though!
not to scare you but my sister did not touch a lick of vegetables or fruit until this year (i don’t count potatoes ..and ketchup/salsa is technically not a tomato). she is now 20. your child will not starve, but you may always have the fear that they’re going to die of malnutrition. my sister turned out fine,… if not worrying my mother the whole time. that’s the worst case scenario LOL
also…airfare watchdog, pick the flights you wanna keep an eye on and get an email anytime it’s cheap. useful more if you don’t have set dates. flights are crazy expensive.
I use Hautelook too and I agree the 15 min cart time is annoying! I could spend at least an hour looking at everything. I actually end up buying less though since you have to pay shipping with each order so maybe it’s a good thing.
The deal sites you are shopping on, are they similar to Zulily, in that they usually wave shipping on subsequent purchases within the same shopping day? Not sure if Z still does, but they did in the past. And it was totally worth it on deals that were HOT so you didn’t miss out!
As for toddler eating, I don’t make anything different for L, no matter what. If I know some element of our dinner isn’t his absolutely favorite, like steak, I make sure he gets at least a veggie that he LOVES, and then will offer him a yogurt, a starch or something else of that nature too. But my kids know the deal from the beginning — Im not a restaurant, eat, or get over it! My daughter has been learning that the hard way lately — she barely eats at dinner and then 20 minutes later wants a snack — NO WAY, kid!
I know that I have mentioned the buy sell trade group on FB that I belong to before but this was about the best! The other day a guy posted his ex-wife’s arrest report & what she had stolen since she was selling some of it through the group. She had stolen it from his house while he was taking the kids on vacation!! It’s actually really sad that someone would do that.
I agree that 15 min rule is annoying. I usually end up just buying less or abandon my cart. It’s frustrating because, as you said I could be an hour looking at all the deals. I figure they’re most likely losing money because I end up not buying as much or at all.
I travel quite a bit and so I’ve done my research on best times to buy. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best times to buy (usually Tuesday). I fly Southwest almost exclusively now since there are cheap flights almost all the time. I’m spoiled since they are based in Dallas so there are loads of flights- does SW fly through Detroit? Anyway, a good part of them is you can buy tix and return them for full price as a flight rebate. That might not sound like a big deal BUT some airlines don’t do this and this is a huge discount tip if you purchase a ticket and then find cheaper tix late. You can return the flight, use the money for the new, cheaper flight, and save the rest for later trips. That’s all I’ve got. Tickets to Vegas suck though- we were gonna go and couldn’t find cheap enough tix- we are randomly going to San Fran instead.
Try airfarewatchdog.com for Vegas fares. Right now, not so bad if you fly southwest.
Mackenzie is in the refuse to eat stage every other week! I’ve tried it all too! I have even tried the nibble trays and that sort of works. Basically I just hope she won’t starve herself and offer and extra yogurt pouch or glass of milk when I’m getting worried.
Ooh, I love the Erin Condren planners! They are pricey, I ordered one using a $10 coupon and paid 51.00 for it. I have an extra one if you want it?
The key to using the planner is to use it for everything! I habitually write to-do lists and the planner is so spacious you can write a thousand things to do in it. Track how much water you’ve drank, what you’re cooking for dinner, field trips, doc appts, womanly cycles, homework assignments, etc. I’m still full time in school and with Willard in school now it’s getting used… A lot!
I’m cracking up over that fb group story! People are cray cray! I hate that I can only find time to read your blog once a week now! I’m soooo busy!
The professor I TA for worked for Delta for 26 years and was Sr. VP for Marketing when he left to come work at Universal Studios. I asked him about cheapest tickets, and he said every Tuesday morning at 8:00am Eastern is when the cheapest rates get posted, and they are usually gone by 9:00am. He recommended using Kayak to search because it’s the most thorough amalgamator for flights. This was 100% from him so I have no idea if it’s true or not, but he tends to know his stuff.
Hope that helps!
Cheers,
Shauna
I also wanted to add that I also have an EC life planner that I bought when they had a $20 off coupon. It was totally worth the $45 I paid including the shipping. I use mine for everything; work schedules, school assignments, appts, grocery lists, to-dos, meal planning… I’ve even started using it to plan my blog posts which is working well. The key I’ve found is to always have it with you. It makes a huge difference.
I really like the new design with all that extra space at the bottom of the pages. I’m going to love that when I buy my new one.
~S