When we were trying to come up with a name for our third child, I browsed a ton of baby name sites. I thought I’d share my favorites with y’all. They’re in no particular order, since there is something to love about all of them! 🙂
1. http://www.babynames.com/ I love that this site gives the meanings, similar names, popularity ranking and a ton of search options to choose from. It’s super easy to navigate, too, which is a huge plus when you’re suffering from pregnancy brain!
2. http://www.babynamewizard.com/ This site is awesome if you want particular sounds in your child’s name or want to avoid certain sounds you don’t like (i.e. wanting it to start with “Sh” and not to end with “lee” or whatever your little heart desires) or looking for a particular type of name (i.e. Biblical or Jewish or traditional or a variety of other types).
3. http://www.thinkbabynames.com/ One of the neatest features on this site is that you can actually search for names by meaning, which I find totally fascinating and unique. I don’t know about you, but it was extremely important to me that none of my children have negative meanings to their names.
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For my older children, I searched online a little, but I mostly went with the conventional baby books. Want to know a few I recommend? Best Baby Name Book In The Whole WorldThis has a lot of different names, and helps you think of things that may inspire you in a direction for choosing your child’s name.
What is most important to you in choosing a name for your little one?
For a creative announcement for a fall pregnancy or third baby, please look at my last pregnancy announcement here: Another Thanksgiving Blessing. It was featured on Parents.com! 🙂
Introducing the reason for my silence this past while, our little Sweet Pea, born 7-9-15 at 5:20 pm weighing in at a healthy (and ironic) 7 lbs. 9 ounces!!! 🙂
Excuse my “it’s been a looooooong labor” face.
I was having some issues- along with weeks of prolonged consistent labor without progress- so I underwent an induction just before her due date. 23 hours after they began the induction, I delivered our beautiful baby girl without an epidural. I’ll spare the details, but it was a long and very difficult process. I have zero regrets about my choices, including doing an induction without an epidural, because of the circumstances. I did not want induced, but needed interference, in spite of my ideal scenario. I blacked out about an hour and a half after our daughter was born, due to blood loss and exhaustion. I was already depleted, and my hemoglobins dropped enough that they wanted to do a transfusion, which I refused, so my recovery will be slow. I am just glad things are great with the baby, and I will eventually be okay.
This Is What a Dream Come True Looks Like
Our little girl is sweet, beautiful, and very healthy. Our older children- especially our oldest daughter- are absolutely in love with their new baby sister, as you can see from the photos. For our oldest Princess, having a living baby doll of a baby sister is literally a dream come true! She can’t get enough of snuggling her new sissy. Our boyish Bambam is a bit intimidated by how teensy tiny she is, and already a super overprotective big brother (a position he takes quite seriously and is extremely proud of). He loves giving her extremely gentle kisses on her head. She’s a really calm and good natured little gal thus far.
Big Brother Holding Baby
We are so blessed! I am excited to introduce our precious Sweet Pea to y’all, hope you understand my absence this past bit, and keep following my little corner of the internet! 🙂
My kids give a whole new definition to the term “homewrecker”. There are times when the little varmints seem intent upon destroying our home and everything in it, nailed down or not. Take the first couple of days of last week, for instance. We had just returned from a short vacation, and our kiddos were excited to be home again. Their response to their joy at being back in their home sweet home? My little darlings turned into a two tot demolition derby!
The first full day at home was the beginning of the madness. My sweet little Peanut, who just turned a year old, pulled the leg off of our coffee table and then did his new-walker “monster run” around the living room trying to whack anything that couldn’t skedaddle. Princess Peach strewed every book she could find all over her bedroom floor while I thought she was nicely reading on her bed, and her baby brother thought the books were perfect for one of his favorite games, Shred The Paper. (I should’ve known better than to think the fact she was on her bed quietly looking at a book and baby was on the living room floor with a toy meant it was safe to go to the bathroom alone, for once.) While trying to fix a quick supper, with them right behind me, Peanut dumped out the trash can and was frantically trying to dig through it before I could grab him out of the mess. After supper, I thought I could do dishes with them in the kitchen with me. Nope! Baby Peanut was pulling them out and throwing them as quickly as I could set them in, and my daredevil Princess was stacking empty boxes to try to climb on the counters to get at things she wasn’t supposed to have. AVALANCHE!!! They both fought sleep until the bitter end that night, and since I didn’t even begin to detail everything the little boogers got into that day, it took me about an hour of clean-up once they finally lost their battle with the snooze monster for me to be able to go to bed that night. This is even after making my daughter pick up every single book and all the toys she had scattered hither and thither across our humble abode.
She colored her face with blue crayon
I figured by the second day that the gruesome twosome would’ve settled down a bit. They were pretty good while I took them to church and a fundraiser spaghetti dinner afterwards. Apparently, that was merely to lull their dear ol’ mom into a false sense of security.
The madness began again as soon as they got home. They found an open bag of potato chips, which they both proceeded to try to cram into their jowls as quickly as possible before I could deprive them of their prize. The result? Well, chips & crumbs from head to toe to floor….everywhere! They pulled out just about every toy they owned, and a few I didn’t even know existed anymore. When I attempted another ill-fated attempt at relieving my bladder, this time taking Peanut in there with me while I thought Princess was watching a cartoon, she climbed the counter and got into some chocolate. She had it half eaten and smeared all over by the time I got out. I even heard her opening the wrapper and hollered from the potty. Did that deter my determined diva? Nosirreebob!! It just made her gobble faster. This went on and on all day long, one thing after another.
Cut to the grand finale of that lovely day…
The Princess’ Potty
At one point I thought I could keep an eye on them and check my messages online, since I hadn’t been on a computer for a few days. Princess Peach took off for the potty as I was logging on. I gave her a minute to do her business before I followed. BIG MISTAKE!! By the time I got in there, she had crammed a ton of toilet paper into the toilet and repeatedly tried flushing it. Can we say FLOOD??? Yep, it was an overflowing mess! Did I mention that my husband was on duty at the fire department? But of course he was! 😉 As yours truly was hurriedly turning off the water and ordering the incorrigibly cute culprit to timeout, Peanut was trying to swim in the mess. Once I got the floodwaters to shop rushing, I had to strip him down to a diaper and toss him into the playpen. Picture this: Screaming Peanut, ringing phone, whining Princess and mumbling Mommy rushing back and forth with a bucket tossing water outside, plunging, hauling buckets of water, plunging again, yadayadayada. It took about a dozen cycles of plunging and water hauling to get the toilet fixed up. After that I had to remove everything from the bathroom, clean everything, put back what I could and explain to Princess Peach exactly why Mommy was so far beyond irritated with her at the moment and why she should never do that again. Of course, next it was baths all around and off to beddy bye. Also, of course, they fought sleep yet another night to the bitter, nerve wrecking end!
Now, I don’t think any of these things are all that unusual in a day of life with munchkins. They just went on an absolute homewrecking spree there for a few days! This wasn’t even the end, since the next week included another flooding of the toilet, painting the bathroom with pink toothpaste, many more raids of forbidden snack stashes, destroying of items they shouldn’t touch, etc. My nerves have yet to settle down, since both of my kiddos are in some high maintenance stages right about now. Why am I sharing this? Maybe ’cause I’m a mess of a mom sometimes, and am too tired to care that everyone knows. Maybe to let other mommies who want to go outside and howl at the moon in frustration know that they aren’t alone in loving life with their precious children at the same time as wanting to crawl into a hole and cry. Maybe ’cause life is crazy, but it’s meant to be shared. Maybe so these little lunatics I am raising can look at this later when their own progeny are driving them up the walls and see that it’s just the way things are sometimes.
I’m convinced that God made children adorable and innocent so that at times like this, when they make their parents want to scream, howl and have a toddler sized meltdown from frustration….we look at the source of our frustration and think “You’re lucky you’re so stinkin’ cute, kid!”. LOL
My messmakers
Off to make sure Princess Peach isn’t wrecking havoc in the temporary silence of a napping Peanut. If your kids are at home and quiet….CHECK ON THEM!!!! 😉 I have to add that the little booger was yet again brushing the walls with pink toothpaste, as well as dumping water all over the floor and squirting pink toothpaste into the sink to use for her painting. I shouldn’t have left her alone, because she’s rarely behaving if she’s quiet lately. What’s a mommy to do??? Gotta laugh or cry! *laughing now that I’ve cleaned the bathroom and let her out of timeout* LOL! AHHHHHH!!!!
Anyone else had fun times like this?? Tell me I’m not alone, y’all, pleeeeeeease!!! 🙂
This Doterra essential oils set giveaway also has quite a few great tips for diy recipes to use to clean your home more naturally, so it’s another contest where everyone wins, in a way! (Ends 5/25)
Any bloggers or small businesses with current family friendly giveaways are welcome to post links to one or two of those giveaways with a brief description in the comments section. If you have an upcoming giveaway you would like to be featured, please contact me via my Facebook page with details. This will continue to be a weekly feature here on Penny Pinching Peach if there is consistent interest, so give a shout if you enjoy these lists and let me know if you entered any contests! Oh, and definitely come back and let me know if you win something, please!!!
I was given a gift card to The Bird & Elephant Etsy store as a prize in an amazing contest I won awhile back. I was excited looking through the shop, because she has a wide assortment of gorgeous prints and reasonable prices for custom products. She makes a variety of adorable items, such as reversible custom bibs, wooden teething rings, soft blocks to play with, burp cloths and more! I wound up using my gift card on a whole slew of bibs, since that’s something I actually need even for a third child. I also got a masculine- yet oh-so-cute– moustache camo bandana style bib for my toddler.
Not only are these reversible bibs adorable, available in multiple sizes & shapes, and come in a large selection of awesome custom prints and colors, but they are a great quality! Even my husband- who is not easily impressed- was surprised at how well made these bibs were. Our little guy loves his bandana bib, and looks pretty doggone handsome in it, too! I’m really looking forward to putting our newest addition in her bibs and seeing how adorable she’ll look while keeping clean!
Which pattern is your favorite? I think the butterflies and the moustache camo are my personal loves, but I have a hard time choosing. They’re just all so vibrant! 🙂
Click the link below to shop for the cutiepies in your life! 🙂
Anyone else have some crazy pregnancy phobias? Tell me I’m not alone! I had a huge fear with my first pregnancy, and I’m sharing with y’all how I managed to prevent that fear from coming true.
Let me start by saying I’m not a medical professional or a scientist, nor am I being compensated to review the products mentioned (unless you are nice enough to use my affiliate links to order through and help a mama out a bit). I’m just a mom with my own experiences to share in hopes that it will help someone else. I know that they say there is nothing you can do to avoid or treat them. I’m also aware that they say it’s all genetics. Who knows? They may be right. I don’t think that is entirely true, based on my aforementioned experiences, but I’ll get to that. There, now that I have that out of the way, I can share my trick for a smooth mommy tummy… 😉
Something many women seriously dread is stretch marks. With my first pregnancy, I was absolutely horrified at the thought of getting stretch marks. I started out my journey into motherhood with defined abs and zero stretch marks, and wanted to at least keep the latter part of that statement true. While I know many women have them, and are still beautiful, it was just a phobia of mine, and something I’d rather avoid if I could even now. Lucky for me, I had heard from my stretch mark free Mom and Nana about how they helped their tummies appear unscathed!
From the moment each of them found out that they were pregnant, they lathered their bellies down with oil every day. They mentioned coconut oil, vitamin E and olive oil, varied, as well as cocoa butter layered over it. They did this religiously throughout pregnancy, increasing the frequency as their tummies got fuller and their skin grew tighter. Since they both had beautiful skin of completely different types (Nana’s skin is quite dry, while my mom’s was like her dad’s & very oily), I thought there was a good chance of their regimen working for me, since I fall somewhere in between on the skin type scale. My biggest concern was that it might not work for me because they were both in their teens and very early 20s during their pregnancies, while I brought my first child home from the hospital on my 28th birthday. I was concerned that my skin might not have the same resilience theirs did.
I’ve been pregnant four times (once ended in an early miscarriage). Each time, I started immediately oiling my as-yet-unchanged pregnant belly with Palmer’s Cocoa Butter Formula with Vitamin E Skin Therapy Oil — 5.1 fl oz
. This is a little embarassing to admit, but the first pregnancy I neglected to start oiling my breasts until they were swelling and itchy, since noone warned me about that, and got some mild stretch marks on them. This is where I was convinced that the oil works! I still have zero stretch marks on my stomach or sides over six months into this pregnancy, which I ALWAYS oiled. You can see that from the current belly pictures I took to prove it. Excuse the selfies. I don’t have a photographer on staff here. 🙂 (The bruise is because I’m a klutzy pregnant woman and never seem to adjust to having a tummy blown up like a hot air ballooon. LOL) Those mild ones came up on my breasts before I realized I should be oiling them, too. Time and the continued use of the oils throughout pregnancy and the first several months of breastfeeding each time seems to have faded them to nearly undetectable, though. You’ll just have to take my word on that one. Modesty prevents me from sharing proof of that one! 😉
Will this work for you? Honestly, I don’t know. It isn’t likely to hurt, and is sure to relieve the dryness and itchiness that comes along with pregnant skin. I have definitely had positive results. I don’t know if the genetics thing is part of it, since my mom and my nana don’t have stretch marks, or if it’s to be credited to the skin care regimen we’ve all used, or a little bit of both.
Does anyone else have any tried and true tricks for preventing or treating stretch marks? “Penny Pinching Peach is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com”
Finally, time for the long awaited tiebreaker announcement! Who is going to be ahead- boys or girls?? First, let me give you a back story.
Tiebreaker!
Our daughter, long before I was actually pregnant with this child, informed me that if we ever had another baby boy, she was trading him for a sister. She already had a baby brother and didn’t need another one of those. Thankfully, she’d decided we would keep the baby regardless of gender before we went in for the revealing ultrasound, since she does love the brother she has and figured she’ll love another one and want to keep him, too. LOL
That being said…
On the way to pick up the kids after our ultrasound, I bought a couple of very gender obvious outfits and a toy and put them in a gender neutral bag. When we arrived, our daughter came running to ask what the baby is and I told her to open the bag and it would tell her whether they were going to get a baby brother or sister. When she opened it, her jaw dropped. It was a priceless moment! 🙂
No trading necessary. As our oldest daughter put it, “God must have heard all my dreams and prayers, because He gave me exactly what I’ve been wishing for for sooooo long…a BABY SISTER!!!!”. 🙂 As you can see from the happy face in the picture, in which I’d just asked her how she felt about getting a new little sister, she is absolutely over the moon with joy!!! We are all happy, but would’ve been happy with either gender. For her, though, this is literally her greatest dream come true. For a five year old, he cup is overflowing with pure joy and wonder that God heard her prayers and the hopes of her heart. My joy in this coming little girl, my baby daughter, is even greater because her big sister is so very, very thrilled.
Sister smiles
As for our all-boy Bambam, his reaction was priceless in a completely different way. When he found out we were having a little girl and saw her little profile picture from the ultrasound, he said “Me big brudda!” followed by a period of thoughtful silence, apparently pondering on his new duties as a big brother, after which he strongly exclaimed “Mean guys hurt me baby sista, me KICK BUTT!!”. LOL!!! Yep, he’s all boy, and already a super protective big brother! This didn’t come as a surprise, since he’s already very protective of Mommy and is so gentle with little ones, in spite of earning that nickname of Bambam with his roughness and strength. 🙂
Both of my children reacted in totally different ways that reflect their unique personalities, but they are both happy as can be. 🙂
Y’all had it right! In our Baby Bump Clues poll, your votes tallied in at: Girl- 53.33% Boy- 33.33% Well, it’s a baby, anyway! 13.33%. If you go by pregnancy symptoms and something called “the angle of the dangle” that showed in a previous ultrasound (look it up….fascinating, but not dependable enough to go by alone), I’d already suspected she was a girl, but refused to say it, assume it or tell anyone about it. This is confirmation that apparently girls make me reallystinkin’ sick during early pregnancy, since with both girls I had horrible, prolonged morning sickness and my sweet son spared me that particular symptom. Thank God, they’re worth it! 🙂
Okay, I’m going in for my hopeful gender revealing ultrasound soon, and thought I’d see if y’all wanted to play a game of Guess the Gender with me. Check out the baby bump in the current picture and the ones from my previous pregnancies of each sex, and tell me which sex you think this baby will be. 🙂 Both pictures with my older children are from later pregnancy, probably 8 with my daughter and maybe 6-7 with my son, since I believe these were the last pregnancy pictures for either. I’m 4 months along with baby #3.
I don’t think cravings have anything to do with gender, but for the fun of it, I’ll throw those in. Once morning sickness faded with my daughter, I craved tomato and cheese sandwiches (and ate them almost daily for the last few months), bananas and milkshakes. With my son, I craved spinach (which I also ate pretty much daily) and hot fudge sundaes. Not together on any of those, for the record! LOL With this one, now that I can eat more, I seem to be really wanting a lot of avocado, tomato, cheese when I have an appetite.
Feel free to comment with why you guess the way you did, if you’d like. We’ll see who is right before too long, I hope! We are super duper excited, even though it doesn’t particularly matter one way or another.
Oh, the fickle nature of morning sickness! One morning I couldn’t stand even the sight or smell of the food I was fixing for my family for breakfast. The next I’d be scarfing down leftover Mexican food first thing in the morning. One day I wake up feeling like I was hit by a mac truck and spun around in circles 50 times. The next I wake up energized and ready to run. One day my morning is miserable. The next I’m fine all morning and feel like death all afternoon. More often, until the past couple weeks, miserably ill all stinkin’ day long! Btw, does anyone else feeling punching the guy who called it that right in the stomach, because he got it soooooo wrong and you’d love for him to experience a bit of your agony??? LOL JK Really, though, if you only got it in the morning, you are one lucky gal!!
With my first (our daughter), “morning” sickness was an all day, pull-over-on-the-side-of-the-road-to-throw-up, repulsed by all odors regardless of whether they were pleasant or nasty, frustrating kind of business. With my second (our son), I hardly had any at all, just some occasional and very mild nausea. With my third (which I miscarried) it was a mild all day thing. With this one, it’s been completely neurotic and unpredictable, but for several weeks it was an all day misery of sickness and loss of appetite, resulting in losing five pounds while simultaneously developing a noticeable baby bump (not the same one as I’m sharing below).
Some things I found that helped with nausea a bit were:
Anything with real ginger in it. Real ginger ale. Real ginger tea. Real candied ginger. Real ginger drops (bonus points because holding a piece of hard candy in my mouth also helped some). I’m going to post a link to some real ginger candies at the bottom if you want some. Yum for relief!
Crackers, especially sucking on them. I’d even keep them by my bed to suck on occasionally before I got up to lessen that overpowering wave of nausea when I first stood up in the morning.
I have heard those pressure wrist bands are great for morning sickness, although I’ll admit I didn’t actually try it. Dunno why, except maybe the fog of misery prevented it. Link at the bottom to a cute pink one!
Slowly sipping warm drinks or even broths can be soothing at times, especially safe herbal teas. Do your research before you indulge, because some herbal teas are not recommended during pregnancy. Red raspberry is one of the more popular, but I’ve heard good things about the Earth Mama teas, so I’m including a link to their morning sickness tea below.
Lemon drops and lemon water seemed to help me, but I have absolutely no scientific backing for that. It just did, okayyyyy?? LOL
Was/Is your morning sickness on any kind of pattern? If you have multiple children of both sexes, did you notice worse or milder sickness with the different genders? Any remedies to share? I am so glad my sickness is slowly subsiding! There is nothing fun about “morning” sickness, except maybe accidental weight loss, Read on for the promised handy links to helpful products.
Earth Mama Angel Baby Organic Morning Wellness Tea, 16 teabags, 2 pack “Penny Pinching Peach is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com”
I just ordered from http://www.breastpads.com, and if I can get at least 5 of my friends to order using promo code C88DD6019 (good for $ 35.00 off!), they are going to refund my shipping & handling charges!
We are trying to do things frugally, as usual for me. I breastfed both of our first two children. The fact that it is frugal is an incidental and wonderful side benefit to something so natural, healthy and sweet, honestly. I used disposable nursing pads mostly with my first two because I didn’t know of any decent cheap alternatives and the homemade ones I rigged up just didn’t work out well, either due to lack of properly keeping comfortable or the material irritating me. I needed really good ones, since I made an overabundance of milk both times when it came in, and it just didn’t stop! LOL This time I’m hoping to be able to use a lot more of the reusable kind, since I ordered 10 pairs of these babies. They come in a variety of cute prints. I got six in basic colors like black, nude and light pink, but four are in more cutesy designs. I’m excited to see how these feel when they come in!! 🙂
Anyone else want to try these out? Total charges for this set of 10 pairs wound up being $14.99 shipping with my free code, which seemed pretty reasonable to me. They currently have a special going right now where you can get additional pairs at $2.00 each, if you’d like to try even more.
Penny Pinching Peach 