The World According to Mommy

If I like to talk about my successes in saving money and finding good deals, then I think it's only fair that I also talk about my failures in these areas. And I think I’m definitely failing right now.

I’ve been doing really well these past few weeks with not spending money. Not great, but definitely better. I did spend about $200 on Nate right at the beginning of the month buying him some cloth diapers and some fall/winter clothing. I have also bought him a pair of shoes and some other small things, which brings his monthly total to $283 so far for the month. That seems like an awful lot to spend on a nine month old in less than a month.

Then, when I started to spend money on myself, I sort of fell off the edge and towards the end began to not really care.

About a week and half ago I got an email from JCrew.com offering 20% off all their final sale items. They are one of my favorite stores, so I headed over to their website to see what they had. They had a lot of great stuff on sale, plus the additional 20% off I would get, so I ended up buying a few things. Well, more than a few, as my total came to around $175 (after the discount). But I got a lot of great stuff, and I hadn’t yet spent any of my allowance yet for the month, so while I felt a little nervous/guilty as I clicked that “Confirm Order” button, I went ahead and did it. (We have worked into our budget some “do anything you want with it” money for Matt and me, and we just call that our allowance. It does sound kind of juvenile calling it our allowance, but I don’t know what else to call it. But I’m open to suggestions! I also have an allowance for Nate where I put things like his diapers, as well as clothes and toys that aren’t gifts.)

If I had a little angst at spending that money, I very quickly got over it. Nate and I went to the mall the other day and on the way I stopped and got some fast food, something I haven’t done in a while. I only ended up eating half of it because I felt really disgusted with myself for not eating before we left the house and just disgusted in general at the not-so-great burger I got. So not only did I waste money, but food as well.

So we get to the mall, Nate plays in the little play area they have there (which is the real reason why we came to the mall, right? Right?), then we walked around for a bit. I happen to go into a store that I like, and while in there I see that they have lots of stuff on sale. Really cute stuff, so I decide to try on a few things. A half hour later I walk out with two bags and a receipt for $130. I think I tried to justify it to myself by saying "I need these clothes, because I've lost a little weight and some of my clothes are a little big," but let's be honest, I wasn't going to go naked if I didn't buy these. This was definitely a want, not a need. As a result of this spending, and a few other things I bought, I am now $46 over my allowance for the month. Yes, definitely a failure.

Then, to top it all off, last night I ordered a pizza for dinner. After tax, delivery charge, and tip, my total came to over $18.00. For just me! Granted, I’ll be able to get a few meals out of it, but still. All because Matt was out of town, Nate was having his normal “witching hour” fussiness, I was hungry, and we were out of milk so I couldn’t have my old standby dinner of cereal, so pizza it was. Yes, I definitely could have had any number of things out of the fridge, freezer, or pantry, but I was lazy. That laziness cost me $18.

This week has really opened my eyes to something I never noticed before. Those few weeks where I really wasn’t spending any money, I didn’t feel deprived. I wasn’t fighting with myself to not spend money. It just became habit. But then, once I did start spending, boy, oh boy, did I spend. It became easier and I had less feelings of guilt the more I did it. That’s scary. It's seems that, for me, spending is definitely a slippery slope. And I have absolutely no interest in seeing what's at the bottom of that slope.

My husband is out of town for work, so it’s just Nate and me for a few days. Matt has gone out of town before, numerous times, even once when Nate was about four months old, so this isn’t the first time we’ve been home alone. But for some reason tonight I got my mind all in a tizzy.

After Nate went to bed I made myself some dinner, and afterwards, I had a piece of candy. As I was chewing the candy I almost started to choke. I didn’t choke, but it was one of those things where I could feel the candy almost go down the wrong pipe.

So I almost choke on the candy (damn you, Tootsie Roll!) and I immediately think “Oh my God, what if I choke on this stupid candy and die, right here on the living room floor? What will happen to Nate?” I mean really, what would happen? I know it’s terribly morbid, but I started thinking about my poor baby sitting up in his crib for Lord knows how long while I lay dead on the floor. It’s not like our neighbors would notice if we didn’t leave the house for days and days, so I can’t really count on them to come and rescue Nate. I guess I could only hope that our dog would summon some kind of super-dog strengths, chew through the front door, then channel his inner Lassie and go get help.

There should really be some kind of service you can sign up for where twice a day someone calls you and says, “Hey, just want to make sure you’re still alive.” But until such a service exists, I’ll just have to make sure I always have my phone on me, and that before I die I dial 911, just so maybe somebody will come check on us. Oh, and for sure, no more Tootsie Rolls.

Nate and I go running in the mornings, and now that fall has officially arrived, it's starting to get pretty chilly in the mornings. I bundle him up in a long sleeve shirt, pants, socks, and zip-up hoodie, but I'm just worried that as it gets colder that's not going to be warm enough for him.

I've been eyeing this blanket called Secure2Me which has clips sewn onto the four corners so that you can clip it to your stroller and not have it fall off:

However, this blanket, which is very cute, is $48 (plus shipping). That's a lot of money for a blanket that Nate will be using for 30-45 minutes per day, so I thought maybe I could tap into my frugal creativity and come up with something that might work just as well.

I took one of Nate's blankets that I hadn't been using, and with some suggestions from Matt, I put a safety pin through the bottom corner, as well as a little ways up, and then put safety pins through the stroller. That way I can easily hook one of the safety pins through the other. This will also make it easy to remove the blanket when we want to talk walks during the day when it's warmer.

I then took these two clippy-things that I bought a few months ago, clippy-things which I had no idea what I was going to do with, but which looked like they might come in handy one day, and I clipped the top corners of the blanket to the stroller.

And this is the final product:

Definitely not as cute as the $48 blanket, but just as functional! And hopefully it will keep my baby just as warm!

This morning for breakfast I tried my hand at making homemade biscuits to go with our eggs, sausage, and gravy. They didn't turn out great, but I thought they were pretty good, especially once you covered them with gravy.

After Matt took a few bites he said, "These taste like buckwheat pancakes." I said, "I don't know what those are. Are they good?" "Well, some people like them." "Gee, thanks," I said. "Well, if I can't give you material for your blog, what good am I?"

Man...he's on to me!

Whenever I feed Nate a new food he always gags and makes a terrible face, what Matt calls his "somebody pooped in my mouth" face.

However, last night when I gave him a new food for dinner, there was no face and no gagging. Any guesses as to what this food was? Hot dogs. Yes, hot dogs. To this Matt said, "Well of course, that's his Daddy in him. I love my smoked meats." Well, of course.

I often wear a headband, especially at home, to keep my hair out of my face. I hate having my hair in my face, although I’m certain this isn’t the most flattering look.

The other day, after having had a headband on for hours, Matt looked at me, having apparently just noticed it, and said, “Have you had that headband on all day? You look like a Stepford wife.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing,” I said.

“No, I just mean you look like you’re in charge.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing.”

“It is.”

I wasn’t really sure what to take away from our little exchange. Maybe I should wear fewer headbands. Or maybe I can take this whole headband/Stepford thing all the way and dress up as a Stepford wife for Halloween. I was once told by a drunk girl in London that I looked like Nicole Kidman, so maybe I could pull it off.

Lately I've started to feel a lot like Jimmy from that episode of "Seinfeld", the one where he refers to himself in the third person. Poor Nate has to listen to me do this practically the whole day. I just noticed that I was doing it a lot. “Momma’s going to make you some lunch now. Do you want to go for a walk with Momma? Come over here and see Momma!” It’s really annoying. I mean really. I’m annoying myself.

One of my favorite Mommy Blogs is called EJ and Henry. She's a friend, of a friend, of a friend...or something along those lines. I don't know her, just came across her blog by browsing other people's blogs, but I think she's hilarious. She wrote a post about Spinning today, and if you have ever in fact Spun, you will know exactly what she's talking about. If you haven't, you will be filled in on all the torture that is Spinning.

Yesterday I read an article about how to have a happy, healthy marriage. I read through it quickly, skimming over all the tips that I’ve read time and again. Have date nights, do small, loving gestures throughout the day, talk about more than just kids and money, etc. These are all things that I know we should be doing, but admittedly, we don’t always do. However, one tip in the article stood out, especially since it seemed like it began “Now Courtney, this one’s for you.”

Don’t set your spouse up for failure. This is the tip which rang so true for me, because, I’m afraid, I do it quite often. I think I have done this much more since Nate’s been born, but I never thought about it as setting Matt up for failure.

There have been times where maybe I’ve had a rough day with Nate, or just a rough day in general, and Matt will come home and see that I’m a little frazzled. He will be a sweet husband and ask me about my day and ask if I’m alright. Then as I’m feeding Nate his dinner or giving him a bath, I will secretly wish that Matt would come up and say “Oh honey, let me take care of all of that.” Then, when it doesn’t happen like that, I get a little annoyed.

I now see that those thoughts were my way of setting Matt up for failure. Of course he was going to fail, because he didn’t know what it would take to win. Or that there was even anything to win! This way of thinking is unfair to Matt, because, undoubtedly, after he fails to read my mind and offer to take care of Nate, I probably act slightly annoyed or frustrated with him, and the poor guy is probably completely confused as to why. And it’s also unfair to me, because I end up getting stressed out and annoyed, for what? Because he couldn’t read my mind! It’s ridiculous.

My husband is an amazing father and a wonderful husband, and if instead of expecting him to read my mind I actually just asked him to feed Nate or give him a bath, I’m sure he would be more than happy to do it. Plus, I think he would probably appreciate having a normal, happy wife after Nate goes to bed rather than the mean, bitchy wife I’m sure he’s gotten on those days I secretly wanted help but failed to ask for it.

You know you're getting old when you see gas for $3.04 a gallon and get very excited. And then you stop to fill up even though you still have more than half a tank. Or maybe that just makes me frugal. Not sure, but I think I'd rather have frugal over old any day!