I’ve really gotten into couponing. I used to think it was a waste of time because, well, you only save a little bit on each purchase anyway, but I now have seen how wrong I was. I spent time every week now cutting out coupons, organizing the ones I’ll use in my coupon binder and putting others aside to trade on coupon trading rings.

My shopping trip for the last two weeks was my best ever. I got $166 worth of groceries for $88. I was kind of bummed because I really wanted my total to be around $50, but in retrospect, I think I did pretty darn good.

My first shopping trip of the pay period: $61 worth of groceries, which I got for $14. I stocked up on things we use since they were on super sale and I had awesome coupons.

That’s 12 cans of soup, 10 boxes of macaroni and cheese, 4 loaves of garlic bread, 4 jars of spaghetti sauce and 2 cans of vegetables. I got the garlic bread for a total of $0.60. Score!

It’s like a game for me every time I go grocery shopping to see how little I can get my groceries for. This time, my goal again is $50 for the two weeks. We’ll see how close I come.

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Lucy has torticollis. This was something we’d been wondering about since we noticed her turning her head to one side, but our former pediatrician said we didn’t need to be worried about it. Today, we saw a different doctor in the practice, and he said that she has torticollis. He doesn’t think it’s severe at this point and he thinks we caught it early enough. We’re being referred to a pediatric ENT, and we were told Lucy might have to have a helmet.

The doctor said the torticollis is likely why she’s not lifting her head yet, and he thinks that once it gets fixed she’ll start lifting her head more. He said her neck muscles feel normal for her age, which is good.

I’m really pissed off that our old pediatrician didn’t take us seriously. We could have nipped this in the bud a month or so ago. At least now we know, and I know we made the right decision in switching doctors.

I know I’m not supposed to compare my baby to others, and I know that all babies progress at different rates, but I just saw a blogger post pictures of her 9-week-old baby who can hold her head up when on her stomach and prop herself up on her arms. My baby just lays there when she’s on her stomach. I can’t help but feel bad. I feel like my baby isn’t progressing as she should, and I feel like it’s my fault for not pushing her more.

Please, please, please tell me one of you had a 3-month-old who was still struggling to lift his/her head. Please.

Jess’s post today got me thinking about names and how parents choose their children’s names. While I had always wanted to name a daughter Lucy, I did some checking before we made a final decision. I didn’t want to use it if it was super popular. That was pretty much my only criteria. I wasn’t super picky. I did a quick check of the SSA baby name database and, while Lucy has gained in popularity as a name since 1999, it wasn’t in the top 100. That’s what I was looking for. I was actually kind of surprised that other names made the top 100 while Lucy didn’t. As Jess mentioned, Nevaeh, which is Heaven spelled backward, was No. 34. Seriously? I’m not seeing that as a top 50 name.

I spent a little bit of time this afternoon looking up other family names on the SSA database. My sister was born in 1969. My dad tells us that they didn’t know of any other babies named Lisa, which is why they chose that as her name. But that year? Lisa ended up being the No. 1 name. So much for being unique!

In 1980, the year I was born, Jennifer was the most popular name. I was surprised that my name, Cadence, actually made the list. Even more surprisingly, it was No. 212 in 2008.

So, for those of you who have kids, did you have any specific criteria you kept in mind when choosing your kids’ names? For those of you who don’t yet have kids, how will you pick their names? And, what was the most popular name the year you were born?

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of AccuWeather. All opinions are 100% mine.

I do a lot of weather checking during the day. I check the weather at work since bad weather can mean more air time for us at the radio station. During the three snows we’ve had this winter (seriously? three snows??), I was constantly checking the weather so we could give updates as to what our listeners could expect through the overnight and into the next day. Sites like AccuWeather’s new Web site make my job a lot easier by making the information easily accessible and by including radar with the local forecast. That really helps us in seeing how storms progress.

I also do a lot of weather checking at home, too, so I know how to dress myself and Lucy and, on the weekends, it helps us plan what we’re going to do. If the temperature is going to be nice, we can head out to the park, but if it’s supposed to be cold, as it has been the last few months, we stay in. I also like to see what the weather will be like when we go on trips, which is so much easier now with Accuweather’s new lifestyle sections.

What about you? Are you a weather bug, too?