Screaming babies, long car rides, and Black Friday

Wow.  I can’t believe it’s been a week since I last posted.  So sorry I’ve been absent.  We went to visit family over the Thanksgiving holiday, coming back Sunday evening.  Seems everyone had the same idea we did, because our normally three hour car ride took us five hours.  And for a solid 30 minutes of that Nate screamed.  He wasn’t crying, he was screaming.  I felt so bad for him.  Poor guy was completely exhausted, all he wanted to do was take a nap, yet he needed some help falling asleep.  Every trick I had was failing, and he was just downright mad.  Finally, finally, singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” very slowly roughly 30 times calmed him down enough so that he could fall asleep.  That was one of the few times that I’ve experienced a feeling of complete helplessness as a mom.  Needless to say, I needed to take yesterday to recover from that car ride and our long weekend away.

I did venture out on Black Friday, but I waited until the afternoon, and mostly because I felt like Nate needed to get out of the house for a little bit.  While at the mall I discovered the secret to not overspending on Black Friday: take a fussy, whining, teething baby who really would have been pleased as punch to have stayed home in the first place, shopping with you.  For the first seven minutes of being in the mall, Nate was fine, but once minute eight hit, he had had enough.  Then the whining started.  Hard to do much browsing with a baby who is trying to tell you, repeatedly, how unhappy he is.  Then, after we had been there 30 minutes, he was officially done, and the crying started.  And there you have it!  Black Friday savings courtesy of no free hands, because one was holding a now very pleased baby, while the other pushed a stroller through a ridiculously crowded mall. 

I was able to go out the next evening, by myself, to do some shopping while Matt stayed home with his parents and watched over Nate.  It was so nice to be able to take my time, to stop for a coffee if I wanted, to have a free hand with which to drink the coffee while I shopped.  I was able to get a few Christmas presents, a few things for Nate, and a few things for myself.  Best find?  A pair of jeans at J. Crew that normally retailed for $108 marked down to $10.50.  I also used a Dillard’s gift card that we got from our credit card, the Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards Card.  This card gives points for each dollar that you spend, and for some retailers, like grocery stores and gas stations, gives you multiple points for each dollar spent.  You are then able to redeem these points through their Thank You Rewards network where you can use the points to purchase specific items or use them to buy gift cards, which is what we always do.  This works for us because we pay our credit card in full every month, and it’s so nice to get free gift cards for the spending that we already do anyway.    

So I did find a few really good deals, got to spend some free money in the form of gift card rewards, and I had a couple hours to myself.  Not a bad way to spend a Saturday night.