Of Bananas & Bagels

Have you ever noticed how anti-routine children are? Despite the fact that they cry out for established routines from infancy, they spend every waking minute as soon as they can talk protesting any and all established routines for meals, bedtime, naptime, car manners, etc. I know that my kids are happier & healthier when we stick to our routines like clockwork, but that doesn't stop them from protesting the routines in their own ways.

Right now we are in the middle of another breakfast shake-up. Nothing that we normally have is acceptable at the moment. DS wants nothing to do with bananas, or toast, or apples. In fact he has decided that for the time being he needs no breakfast, and will take food and then not eat it. When lunchtime rolls around, he is very hungry and ready to eat, but all manner of tantalizing breakfast offerings are eschewed in favor of playing. I think it's another phase and he will return to the breakfast feast in a little bit (I hope so).

DD is expressing her own preferences by varying her selection every day. We just finished the "same thing every morning" phase, of raisin bran with lots of raisins Mom, which was usually spilled somewhere along the line from the kitchen to the living room. Now she wants something different every day. Yesterday with Daddy at home, she wanted raisin bran again, and consumed two full bowls. Today she didn't want banana, or toast, or cereal, or toaster pastries, she wanted orange, MOM, and not the Minneola tangelo, but the regular orange all cut up. We had one left, and a small one at that, and she would not eat the tangelo as a follow up. No thank you Mommy, I don't want this one, as the bowl of tangelo was shoved back at me. *sigh* At least she remembered her manners!

DS is also protesting being fed foods with spoons. He wants to do it by himself. I don't mind the mess, because it's how they learn--but it is comical to watch him wrestle with a spoon that is covered in yogurt or applesauce and try to figure out which end is supposed to hold the food and how to make it to his mouth. Usually he uses a combination of fingers and spoon, and when he's done it all gets wiped all over his face and hair. Did I mention that we are entering the daily bath phase for DS??

He has also decided that he should be able to drink out of plastic water bottles like his big sister. He will loudly whine and point at water bottles in view, and gets especially worked up when he sees someone drinking from one. So we are starting to let him sip from it, with lots of spills and the frustration of trying to teach him not to tilt his head endlessly forward in his attempts to get more out of the bottle. He is trying various techniques, like licking at the water with his tongue, something that resembles nothing more clearly than a small dog licking at a water bottle! It's very funny to watch, and I have to applaud his quest for more independence.

I keep reminding myself that the whole point of the exercise is for them to be independent and well adjusted adults at the end of this, but I do mourn the small losses which signal increased independence. As a SAHM, it's nice to be needed. I know that even when they are teenagers, they will still need me, even if it's in a different way and they would rather die than admit that they need their parents! Still, every change is a chapter closing. I have to remind myself that there are many more fun adventures in the chapters to come, and celebrate the small milestones. Here's to independence!

And the Sippy Cup Is Where?

I spent a good part of my morning hunting for a missing sippy cup, (mostly) full of chocolate milk. DS woke up on the wrong side of the crib this morning, and Mr. Grumpypants saw fit to eschew his breakfast banana, plus overturn the kiddy table in the living room, and in a final fit of capriciousness, to hide his sippy cup from me. Fourteen months old and already mischievous--this is not a good sign.

I did not want to wake up this morning at 6:30 am, but DS thought it was a perfect time to wake up. Let us hope this is not the end of the blissful slumber until 7:30 am that was wrought by the clock change last week. DS' diaper had leaked and his PJs were wet, so I gave up and changed him and got up. Of course DD was up immediately after, since her brother was tearing up and down the hallway outside her room. Ack. And I could not get my coffee fix immediately, being on the last day of antibiotics for a UTI, and said antibiotics being taken at 6:30 meant I could have NO DAIRY until 8:30, which meant NO COFFEE! WAH!!! I broken down at 7:45, and figured well a little milk in coffee isn't going to have THAT big of an impact on the meds, you know...

So, I managed to empty all the Easter eggs from the egg hunt at church yesterday (yes I know it was not Easter Sunday but they do the eggs on Palm Sunday so you can spend EASTER Sunday with your family at home), with both children none the wiser. Candy has been hidden away to be doled out at appropriate intervals, and now we just have to repeat the whole exercise on Sunday, which is actually Easter, at the neighborhood egg hunt. I did give DD some peanut M&Ms for breakfast (hey peanuts are protein so that counts as a nutritious breakfast, right? Right?) and have managed to studiously avoid putting the dishwasher on, as it means dealing with the hellacious pile of dirty dishes in the sink. Ah, the joys of a Sunday evening Costco dinner.

I finally put DS down for a nap in the hope that he will wake up in a better mood. We are going swimming today with our neighbor and their kids, so he really needs to get over the Grumpypants mood. While he nursed himself to oblivion, I contemplated the wide variety of toys in his room that require plastic balls, and how much of a PITA they are, as each toy has a slightly different size and weight of plastic ball, and thus it makes it impossible to get them all mixed up and still have the toys work properly. The ball blast toy requires balls that are slightly larger than the ball popper toy, and if you confuse the two neither will work properly. Then you add in DD's Lil People toys with plastic balls, like the pirate ship cannon ball, and the other cheapy plastic balls from fast food toys and dollar stores, and you see how easily kids can mix them all up so that nothing works and balls get stuck in toys they were never intended for. DD decided the ball blast was the PERFECT corkscrew slide for Weebles, and of course the Weebles got stuck in the bottom. Did I mention that most of these toys are designed for little hands, not Mommy and Daddy sized hands that get stuck when trying to fish out stuck pieces from other toy sets that were never intended to meet? You just wish the toy manufacturers would think about these types of things and set some sort of standard, but I guess when they can't even keep toxic lead out of toys it's a bit much to ask for logical and parent-oriented design at this stage.

After putting DS down, I determined to find the sippy cup of chocolate milk before I found it with my nose in a few days' time. I retraced his footsteps, checking his sister's room, checking all the shoes by the back door to be sure he didn't put it in one of those, checking the toy baskets, checking the dishwasher. Nope. Then I remembered that he was rummaging in a kitchen cupboard, and lo and behold, the missing cup! Still cold, too, so I put it back in the fridge for later. A tiny victory for my day. And there you have it, the ramblings of my not-enough-coffee-saturated mind early in the morning. Bet you're sorry you came over today. *LOL*

Things I Learned Today

• White glue is the best thing to use to make raindrops on the floor. Or so announced DD, as I scraped away at the dried glue dots on her hardwood floor with an old credit card. For those confronted with this problem, let me announce that a credit card does not work nearly as well as a razor blade, but it has the singular advantage of being unable to mar the finish of the floor. So I stuck with the blunt credit card and eventually all the "raindrops" were removed.
• Spring cleaning is a happy concept, however I think it was conceived by someone with no small children in the house. I vacuumed and mopped last week, thinking, Now I can get down to spring cleaning! Har, har, har! How about just keeping it clean? I would be satisfied with that.
• Whenever "spring cleaning" is mentioned, I believe that children have a special hidden switch in their brains that goes into Make More Mess™ mode, wherein they find new and incredibly destructive creative ways to mess up the house. For instance, did you know that toothpaste is great for cleaning hardwood floors (DD)? Or that food items proferred as snacks can be broken up into little bitty pieces and crammed into the carpet (DS)? This is especially fun with mushy foods like bananas!
• I had never noticed the similarity between broken up little bitty pieces of brownies and brown PlayDoh, until DD accused me of vacuuming up her PlayDoh this morning.
• Speaking of PlayDoh, if you don't have any in your house, JUST SAY NO. If bananas and brownies are fun to try to get out of carpet, try dried PlayDoh. Also consider how often you will discover your baby eating PlayDoh that the big sib has left out. DON'T DO IT PEOPLE! Stick to crayons for creativity!!
• I have decided that a protective film of dust on wood furniture is really a good thing. Who needs to dust, really? Not me. Just building immune systems here...
• I will never, ever get the shelves cleaned off by the bird cage. I had high hopes of turning it from the Piled Up Dusty Bits and Generally Untidy-Looking Shelves into a sort of modern-styled baker's rack, holding all my baking paraphenalia and perhaps a few limited other items. Apart from the fact that the bird attacks me when I go over there (to her it is a part of her territory and thus is to be assiduously defended from invaders, even those bearing appeasement snacks of nuts), I don't have a friggin' clue where to put all the crap I mean stuff that's on the shelves now. Maybe in 2010 I will have a better a organizational system.
• I don't want to think about the gargantuan amount of work looming in the yard and in the Cottage, where we currently store boxes and mounds of STUFF from the old house that doesn't fit in this one, but most of which cannot be given away for various reasons (antiques? kids clothes for a possible #3?), but which must be transformed in actuality to a Guest Cottage complete with (currently non-existent) bathroom for DH's parents and sister, who are coming for a Christmas visit. I'm thinking it might be cheaper to rent an RV as our Guest Abode. Ugh...

Scrabulous and Crabby

My DH has been on me to get onto Facebook so that he could play Scrabulous with me. I pointed out that we actually have the Scrabble boardgame, we could just get that out and play it, yada yada yada, but being a techno-geek he is addicted to his laptop and finally wore me down. I set up my Facebook account and we finally had our first game of Scrabulous last night. And I LOST. I try to be a good loser most of the time, but the truth is that I am very competitive and I hate losing. Really hate it. Especially when it's a game that I know I'm good at, like Scrabble. It was really close--I lost by 4 points. Four measly points!! I pointed out to DH that he has been playing this game online for months, refreshing his memory about all the two letter words, best strategies, etc., and he just laughed at me.

Look, here is why this bothers me. Games like Scrabble and Scattergories and Trivial Pursuit have historically been MY DOMAIN. My brain likes these games, I do well at them. My DH, on the other hand, has not historically done well at any of these games. It used to be that he didn't want to play any of them with me, because I would cream his butt every single time. Now, he is all of a sudden uber-competitive with me--what gives??? I used to be the Queen of the Board Game, and now I'm not! And I admit that I don't like it! What happened to the woman who was so dissatisfied with the limited entries in Roget's Thesaurus that she had to go out and find the most comprehensive thesaurus and buy it? (The Synonym Finder, in case you wanted to know...) The gal who could string together three words starting with the same letter to get bonus points in Scattergories? Who could usually find at least ONE word in Scrabble that used all her tiles at once? Where has she gone? Because she has clearly left the building.

I used to laugh about stay at home moms who talked about exchanging their brains for a bowl full of Cheerios, but that's me! I'm there! Those clever and witty parts of my brain that could attack wordy games with gusto and come out on the winning side have gone on vacation, and I fear it is permanent. Ask me where my kids' discarded socks are! Ask me where the missing pieces to the Lil People farm are! Ask me the best place to put the recycling before it goes outside to keep our son out of it! Ask me what are the three most pressing projects around our house/lot, and when all the bills are due! Where's the board game for that?? Because I'm good at that right now! Yet another example, as if one were needed, of how even in the little things all the things moms do are just lost in the background noise, and totally unrewarded by daily life. *sigh* Yet more fodder for feeling low in life station (as if it were needed...sheesh, it's work to convince oneself that housework & happy, healthy kids are reward enough, even though they clearly ARE). And people wonder why SAHMs sometimes feel a bit blue. I just want to know, do you get back those pieces of yourself that you set aside or somehow lose along the way?

What Extra Weight Costs These Days

Well, today it cost me $44. That's the price difference I forked over between my two possible Easter clothing choices. I found a skirt and blazer this morning at Goodwill, which could have sufficed for my Easter outfit, except they were both a *tinch* too tight--enough that I thought the better of purchasing them for the lofty sum of $10 total. I left them in the dressing room and went on my merry way, making myself content with the Easter baskets for the kids (69 cents each), plastic grass (69 cents), and a skirt for DD ($3).

The skirt encountered that familiar problem to those women who've had a c-section and also kept a few of those baby pounds--the "shelf effect". All that extra abdominal fat just sits above the scar, unable to distribute further. It really amplifies the "tire" effect of that abdominal fat, and I really hate it. It makes clothes fit improperly, because it's the one area that is big and the rest of your figure is a size slimmer. I keep thinking about my old personal trainer in Arizona and how her stomach was totally FLAT after having had 2 children. She had a lot of loose skin, and it was all wrinkled and packed in sort of like an elephant, but her stomach was flat and you'd never know looking at her that she had all that extra skin folded away in there. It was a marvel to behold, I'm telling you.

Anyway, I left Goodwill without the skirt and blazer. The arms were a bit tight, too, which is purely the result of extra all-over bodyfat. Later on, I went to Kohls since they had a BOGO sale on most of their women's clothes, and I figured I could probably find something on the clearance rack or elsewhere. I found a chenille v-neck sweater on clearance, and a skirt to match that was a BOGO item, but still cost $34 by itself. I couldn't find any other BOGOs in that line that I liked, so cruised the store (children in tow) and found more items. I made two pilgrimages to the dressing rooms and endured DD opening the door twice during the second visit, and found a dress I loved that was flattering to me. Ouch Factor: $50! YIKES! It was a BOGO item, and I had found a casual shirt I really liked--$38, and it was another BOGO.

Now, I could have gone out and found one more BOGO item, and bought all four BOGOs. I didn't. Not because I wasn't tempted to do so, because I was, but because the kids were done with shopping and I was not optimistic that I would find something else without a third trip to the dressing rooms...plus it's disheartening to keep seeing price tags like that. I decided that however charming the skirt was, I would have to buy the $12 sweater to match it, which meant $46. And I have been hankering for a dress, a real dress as opposed to the endless blouses and skirts I have been wearing due to DS and breastfeeding. He is old enough now to last without me feeding him before or after church, so I can actually wear one piece dresses again! Hooray! Anyway, I did justify it to myself in that vein, and I bought the dress, and the casual shirt was free. So I paid $54 and change for my "Easter dress". And I could have paid $10 for my "Easter dress" if I weighed less. A 81.5% price hike, for the privilege of being fat. *Gulp*

I'm really upset with myself about this. Lately I've had the earthshattering realization that it's all the little decisions I make every day that add up to me being unable to creep down past this plateau weight I've been sitting at for well over 6 months. Actually, that's not true--I did make it down past this weight by 8 lbs, but then Christmas came and I shot right back up here. I don't like it here. I don't like being a size 16. And yet every day, I choose to not eat as many fruits and vegetables as I should. I choose not to do even five minutes of cardio by jumping around with the kids. I choose not to make time for just a little yoga. I choose to snack when the kids snack, and to keep justifying cream in my morning coffee "because it's nicer" than nonfat milk. All those little choices are so powerful when put together, and because I choose the wrong way every day, I sit at this weight and pay a price for it with my health, my energy and stamina levels, and my children pay a price because I don't want to play chase with them as long. That makes me sad and a bit angry at myself. I know a lack of self-discipline is a major generational issue in my family, but to see it so blindingly in myself and not choose differently, it's quite depressing. I am going to have to really work at framing those choices in that light, and see if that helps push the see-saw in the other direction. Something has to change here, or I am staring down the bad genes for diabetes and heart issues. I have to make the better choice every time, or it's not going to add up to a big difference.

Wish me luck.

Cutting Food Expenses

So I am doing my best with rising food prices to hold the line at our $400 per month budget for groceries. I hit Costco today to stock up on some things, and almost $200 lighter of purse I left, stocked up with milk, bread, eggs, beef, chicken, and other assorted items that make Mommy & Daddy happy when they don't have to cook a labor intensive breakfast (frozen flaxseed waffles) or can enjoy some caffeine (Diet Coke, unfortunately NOT a necessity despite DH's protests to the contrary). I also stocked up on bread, due to the rise in wheat prices. I think I have enough now to last us for about 5 months, so that's a good thing.

While I was packaging our ground beef for freezing, I started another little experiment in frugality. Normally we buy the flat of ground beef that is shaped like patties, and then we portion it out into freezer bags, 1 and 1/3 patty per bag. Today, however, I did most of them as a mere 1 patty per bag...just that little bit less, but something we can probably live with in terms of our recipes. Beef is not getting any cheaper--I paid $18.83 today for that flat, which works out to $1.18 per patty. By doing only three bags the usual "1 & 1/3" way, I saved $3.54, and in a pretty painless way. I can bet we won't notice the difference in our meat sauce or tacos.

Likewise I applied $12 in coupons to the total. Not much, but it helps. And I refused the temptation to buy products I wouldn't normally buy just because we had a coupon for them. You have to be careful with those coupons--sometimes the generic Kirkland brand is still the better buy when you factor in cost per use, or how many uses per bottle. That's why I have yet to buy any of the name brand dishwasher detergents from Costco, even with the coupons they keep mailing us. The Kirkland brand is still the better value for our dollars, so that's what we buy.

Now I have to investigate whether it's really cheaper to buy whole chickens for the breastmeat and throw out the rest. I read a blog that said it is cheaper to buy a whole turkey, roast it, and cut off the breasts and throw out the rest (if you like), than to buy turkey breasts already cut off the bone and deskinned. If the same is true for turkey, I am going to buy more whole chickens when I see them on sale. At that kind of price break, I am willing to do the work of cutting off the breast meat and deskinning it! Let me see, the last time I bought roasting chickens they were 68 cents per pound...average price was about $3.50 per chicken. So that would be $1.75 per breast, if you threw everything else away. The last time I checked, our frozen chicken breasts are $2.46 per pound. So all depends on how much those breasts weigh...but I could see how those chicken breasts from the whole chicken might be cheaper! I will have to investigate this further, and also figure out if we would actually use the rest of the chicken. Even to make chicken stock, which is something we use on occasion. I just need a bigger freezer, haha!

Anyway, just my ramblings on saving money on food bills for the day. I'm sure I will continue to find new ways to be LBYM as the weeks progress. In fact I will probably go to Goodwill soon to seek a new Easter dress...more on that to come!

Why My House Will Always Be Cluttered

I got up this morning somewhat grumpily after a poor night's sleep, and after imbibing the appropriate amount of coffee I have started to clean up around the house. I know, it seems like I am perpetually cleaning up around the house in this blog, and that's because I am. Two children plus two clutterbug adults equals a perpetually untidy house.

So I have reassembled our sleeper sofa in the den with the slipcover and cushions just so, which means I have put away all of the coats that were littered on top of it. This is the hazard of having a large piece of furniture right by the door where were come in--far handier than the coat closet near the front door.

Anyway, that is looking quite neat, and I hung up our spring flag outside (having finally found it in a box in the cottage), and I refilled the birdfeeders and brought in the newspaper. Ah! Then I started to clean up the kitchen counter. I have thrown away innumerable art projects from DD's school, and only at DH's insistence have I saved some of her practice letter pages. And that is what killed the cleaning impulse. Now I have to find a PLACE to put them. Which means finding the child nostalgia file I've started for DD. Now where did I put that? In the blue file box? No? In the desk? Oh dear, the desk is overflowing with papers...better not look in there...there lie dragons! In the marble sidetable (which is really an old dresser we've repurposed to that use in the dining room)? No, I don't think it would be in there...

You see, I've stopped now. The computer is right by that table, and DH was tapping away on his laptop so I thought I'd just pop on and check my email, and catch up on a few blogs...and here we are. He should never have told me to stop throwing things away, because who knows when I'll start again?? Wish me luck, I don't know if that countertop is going to be cleared today!