It's been a Year

I just realized that I have had this blog for a year now (on September 21st) and I thought I should mark this occasion with an update on my family.

My husband, Tom, is getting a new, much better paying, job this month.  A friend of his started a new buisness and has clients already and has shown to be very promising.

Evelyn is in soccer but has yet to play since the game fields have fire ants and they aren't 100% sure they are all gone.  Recently a thirteen year old boy at football practice fell into a fire ant pile and died three days later.  The whole area around us are taking extra precautions this year because of that happening.  Evelyn is only three and at this age, she doesn't do practices, she only does "training" on Saturdays at the game fields then her group scrimages another group her age.  That's why she hasn't been able to play yet, expect in our yard.  Evelyn is in the middle (I wish it was the end) of potty-training and her big motivation is being ready to go to school.  We practice the alphabet, numbers, writing and drawing, even some "psychology."  I have faces each with different emotions and we talk about what we do when we feel that way and also what we can do for others when they feel that way.  Evelyn wanted to go to school this year but she isn't old enough yet, plus she needs to be potty-trained.  That is her great motivator.

We are still trying to have a second baby.  By Monday we should know if we are.  How do you wait for such a thing?  Since I was very young I knew I was meant to be a mother.  I've always wanted children, and lots of them.  We want to have six kids, four at least, but it is hard to see that number right now when we can't even get to Baby 2.0.  We've only been trying for five months and from my research, you don't need to go to a fertility doctor until you have consistantly been trying for a year.  Tom works a lot and we have a three year old so it is difficult to try as much as we should but with Evelyn, it took only one time.  It was also quite random.  One night after a football game we looked at each other and asked, "Should we?"  Let me translate that; "Should we try to have a baby now even though we said we wouldn't start trying to have a baby until a year of marriage so that we would have the first year as just us without getting ready for a baby or should we just throw all of that out the window?"  Yes, we threw it all out the window.  We wanted both really, us time and a baby, but we were very ready to have a baby to love so we tried once.  I think we wanted to see if we were really meant to have a baby already or not and then a month from that day, we got three positives using home pregnancy tests.  I read back on the journal I had at that time and it was very obvious that I was pregnant.  I was dizzy, tired, breast were tender, I didn't like food much and I was getting random headaches.  Right now I feel like I'm have pre-period aches but I am praying everyday that it is all baby-aches.

I prepare further aheah then when I need to; I'm a forgetful person so I do this to be sure nothing is over looked.  I have been planning the nursery, in detail, since we have started to try again.  We have names planned out, nothing concrete yet, mainly because we aren't pregnant yet (or maybe we are?), and we have general colors picked out for the nursery also; grey and yellow.  If it's a boy, more grey, if its a girl, more yellow.  Recently I've been thinking that I just need to find a nursery geared picture from Etsy and then make the nursery off of that.  I like the idea of grey and yellow (sunshine!), but...we will see.  Right now the nursery is Evelyn's room.  We need to move her to her new room before we can even decorate the nursery.

Evelyn's room is going to be Doc McStuffins from Disney Junior.  Mostly using teal, purple and just Doc bedding.  Doing that will make it easier for her to grow with her room; all we would need to do is get new bedding.

So my life is revolving around getting Evelyn ready for school next fall and getting ready for a baby that hasn't been concieved yet (or maybe...).  Plus Tom of course.  He is a big part.  Without him...we couldn't be a family.  I'm glad to have both of them in my life.

H-E-Buddy Training Pants Review

(Discloser: HEB did not pay me or ask me to do this review, I am doing this on my own accord.)
While Evelyn has potty trained, we have tried three different brands of training pants; Huggies (Pull-Ups), Pampers (Easy Ups) and H-E-B (H-E-Buddy Training Pants).

I will be doing a review, specifically, on the

H-E-Buddy Training Pants.

They come in two syles.

Butterflies & Race cars

Sizes 2T-3T, 3T-4T, and 4T-5T.

Evelyn prefers the blue ones, blue is her favorite color.  We were worried that they would not cover the appropriate areas but from what we can see and have experienced, the only difference between the blue training pants and the pink training pants is the outer design.  They absorb the same as Pull-Ups or Easy Ups but unlike Easy Ups, they have reclosable sides.  You can put a new training pant on your child without them needing to take off shoes and pants which is a great benefit when you are at a public restroom.

They also last just fine through the night.  If you put a fresh training pant on your child before bed (like you always should no matter the age of your child), there will be absolutly no worry about leaking as long as your child is at the potty training stage.  They don't absorb like regular diapers, of course, as no training pants do (though these seem close to it), so be sure to use them when your child is ready for them.

The H-E-Buddy Training Pants fit Evelyn nicely around her thighs and her waist.  Evelyn is a three year old that wears size 6 clothes, so many times, things that fit other children her age, will be too small on her (especially down here in South Texas, where we have a lot of Hispanic children, and we aren't the biggest and tallest children in the bunch), but these training pants fit her just fine.  The waist is not elastic, it's not puckered, so it is not trim fitted at the waist which may cause some problems for children who are lean but since the sides are reclosable so you can fit them to your child.  If you are not careful, and pull too roughly on the tabs, you can pull off the reclosable strip which then would make the training pant unusable.  I would say that every tenth package has one training pant that the reclosable strip comes off a bit easy making that one unusable but the price makes it worth it even if there were a defective one in every package (which there isn't).

At our local H-E-B, they are a dollar cheaper than the Easy Ups and you get the same amount of training pants in each package.  Example with real numbers:  The Easy Ups are $8.97 each and the

H-E-Buddy Training Pants are $7.97 each.

Overview of H-E-Buddy Training Pants

• Comes in two designs
• Comes in three different sizes
• Neither is internally gender specific (so your tough girl can pick race cars or your bright color loving boy can pick butterflies)
• Great absorbency
• Reclosable sides
• Fitted legs
• Not fitted around the waist [but has the reclosable side making it easy to adjust]
• Cheaper than name brand

I hope that this helped those who are interested in H-E-Buddy Training Pants.  I am all for buying

*H-E-B brand products, it saves me money and they are guaranteed to be the same or better than their name brand counter part.

Note: We tried Pull-Ups for only a short time. When Evelyn was first born we used only Huggies (including only Huggies wipes), they fit the best and she also didn't have any reaction to them. When she was about to turn two, for some unknown reason, she would get horribly red. We changed wipes and it lessened, then we changed from Huggies to Pampers and the redness completely vanished. We tried out the Pull-Ups to see it she still had the problem, she does so we didn't use them long at all so I don't know too much about the Pull-Ups in comparision to the

H-E-Buddy Training Pants.

*H-E-B brand products are not to be confused with Hill Country Fare brand products, which are also made by H-E-B, which are made to be affordable first, when the H-E-B brand is first made to be the same as or better than the name brand counter part then second to be more affordable than the name brand counter part.  There is another H-E-B brand, Central Market, which is the designer line of

H-E-B products, concentrating on quality only.  Good stuff in nice glass jars but is much more expensive, even more than name brand most of the time.