Cute Baby Post

Reading with our feet tucked up under us, and glow-in-the-dark eyes...


Snuggling with Daddy and typing random things to help him out...

Blinking and hamming for the camera...

Ahhh, a lazy Saturday.

See? That post wasn't philosophical at all. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

No Picture Today

...we are still teething. For some reason this means that whenever the dog whines like a spoiled brat, Miss Boo has to imitate the whine. Mother is slowly coming to the conclusion that earplugs are not just for neglectful parents anymore.

And although the teething pain seems to be diminishing, we are getting into everything today to make up for it. So not a very big blog today, I'm afraid, unless the stars align and we get a good long nap in.

Cheers anyway,

Breanna

Bicuspids Are Evil

Bicuspids make us feverish as they come in, and being feverish makes us sleepy and fussy. This is all we wanted to do yesterday:


Note: this is Daddy we are sleeping on. Given that the Husband has a job, guess how happy we were with Mama most of the day?

Luckily today the teeth seem to be broken through and not so bothersome, and the fever's gone, but we've had two nights now of waking up and wailing because our mouth hurts, and wanting Mama and the old bed. I'm praying that tonight we can FINALLY go back to our new normal Big Girl Bed. It's been so nice having her in the Big Girl Bed and being able to do things at night like talk with my husband without waking up a baby who's snorting a few feet away.

It's snowing here again, having remembered that it's February, so today Miss Boo and I are having a catch-up sort of day (seeing as yesterday we did nothing but teethe). She wants to read books now, so I will go do that.

Cheers,

Breanna

Don't Say Anything-- It's Just Ashes on Their Forehead

This picture is my desktop right now. It's the cutest mac n' cheese picture and I realized I didn't post it before. Mac n' Cheese is appropriate, because I've discovered reading Catholic blogs that it's a big item eaten during Lent.




In case you did not live in a Catholic town when you were in high school, don't say anything when you see people with stuff on their forehead this morning. It's Ash Wednesday, so good Catholics have been to church and have gotten a smear of ash on their foreheads. I think most of them feel silly enough about it without having to field Protestants chasing them with a wet-nap (ask me how I know).

The concept of having a season set aside for repentance is actually a wholesome one; the various weirdnesses of Lent have to do with the medieval Catholic Church's odd ideas of how to prove to the world you were repenting. Ashes on the head has some Biblical precedent (though to be consistent you should also, I suppose, rip your clothes), but interpreting "fast" as "abstain from meat--oops, we only mean four-legged meat, you can have fish" is a bit of a stretch. Especially since the "you can have fish" part was added in after the Pope realized nobody was listening to the "abstain from meat" part.

Anyhoo, yesterday was Fat Tuesday, and appropriately enough PBO's address to Congress contained an awful lot of spending proposals. Given that PBO is discovering what Bill Clinton discovered (i.e., you can't make Congress do what you tell them), we'll see how much of it actually comes to pass, but his plans are.... ambitious to say the least. At one point during the speech I turned to the Husband and said, "Maybe the people who bury gold coins in their yard aren't so crazy after all."

My point was not that I think we should buy gold coins--I think that's a stupid reaction to the idea of currency collapse, and that if you really thought your money was going to be valueless you should invest in things that have value in a barter economy, like chocolate, booze, and cigarettes--but that it sounds as though we're going down an even more foolish road than we went down with the first Depression. Either PBO doesn't understand how bad things are and how they got this way, or he truly believes that the best way to get the economy going again is to spend money that we don't have. In other words, go even further into debt to other nations. This sounds like a recipe for disaster to me, but what do I know? I'm just someone who has to balance a checkbook and who thinks the lesson of the current depression is "don't put things on your credit cards that you can't afford".

On a less serious note, I caught a couple of errors in the speech last night. One was when PBO said the U.S. government laid the coast-to-coast railroad during the Civil War. Um, no, that was the Union Pacific, although the government did sell bonds to support it. The other was when he said the U.S. invented the automobile. Um, no, that would be Mr. Benz in Germany. As in, Mercedes-Benz?

These items are easy to check on Wikipedia. I wonder if the speech writer got fired, or just got a stern look and his coffee privileges revoked?

On the plus side, the speech was very inspiring and PBO's snazzy red-and-white-striped tie has, I notice this morning, become all the rage among news anchors. I predict red-and-white patterned ties are going to be The Next Big Thing. And Mrs. Obama looked very nice too. (Nancy Pelosi's dress was the color of bile, but presumably that wasn't her fault.)

Enough politics; I have to go buy canned tuna today. Hope you all have a solemn and repentant Ash Wednesday. Try a "buy nothing but food" challenge during Lent; you will probably need all the money you save sooner than you think.

Cheers anyhow,

Breanna

I Love My Vacuum

I was just thinking about this yesterday. It's probably a little weird to like your vacuum as much as I do, isn't it? Well, here's a picture of the kind of vacuum I have: ...which I stole from some Dyson seller so hopefully Dyson will see that my article is complimentary, and let me keep the copyrighted picture. Dysons are awesome vacuums, by the way, just slightly less complicated than a space shuttle, but with all kinds of nifty features that make them easier to lug, shove, and roll around.

I think I come by my love for my vacuum genetically. I have a vivid memory of being about ten, and being allowed to vacuum the stairs down to my bedroom (I don't think I could lift Mom's vacuum before that) and describing what I did to Wyoming Grandmother afterwards. I remember I told her about vacuuming my room, and then up the stairs, and I finished by saying enthusiastically, "And I vacuumed out the corners, too!"

Instead of thinking that she had a very strange ten-year-old on her hands, Grandma said, with an understanding gleam in her eye, "And didn't it feel good?" Thus I think that vacuum-loving, and the attendant neuroses, are likely mine by birthright.

Note that I didn't say I like the process of vacuuming, necessarily (although I do find something soothing about dividing a room up into vacuum-sized chunks and taking the most efficient route around the floor) but I do love the end result, and I love having a high-quality tool. My Dyson works exactly like she's supposed to.

(My vacuum is a girl. My coffee-maker is a boy. The bread machine I'm not too sure about; it might be a wimpy boy. The food processor is a grumpy old lady. Don't pretend your appliances don't have genders.)

At any rate, I was thinking of the pleasures of vacuuming yesterday--while I was doing it, ironically enough-- and realizing that this is one of those things nobody ever mentions about housewifery. It is possible to get an illogical amount of satisfaction out of cleaning a carpet, so that people can walk on it in their bare feet and go "Aaaaaaah." The feeling of a job well done is something that most housewives never allow themselves. It may in fact be something that most people never allow themselves; we tend to percieve work as either important or unimportant and we devalue doing "unimportant" work well, even when that work (trash removal, say, or laundry) is vital to the health and comfort of everybody.

So I guess the point of my post today, if there is one, is for all you who have to do houskeeping or "unimportant" work in any way to step back at the end of doing a job today and look at what you did, and say, "And didn't it feel good?"

:D

Cheers,

Breanna

The Armchair Miss Boo

We went to WalMart (aka The Great Satan) on Saturday to buy milk and a few other sundry things we needed, and I mentioned that I thought Miss Boo would like her own chair, seeing as she tries to kick the dog off his bed 97 times per day (and then I have to kick her off the dog's bed, because that's gross). We found a tiny, foam armchair in the toy section, by the bikes, and here is how she responded to it:

In other words, "Why didn't you guys get me a chair that fit me sooner?"

This is her "The flash on that camera is too bright" face.

This is "Mom, quit bugging me, I want to see how The Poky Little Puppy ends this time. Strangely the book seems to be going in reverse."

Right now we're calling it the Pink Princess Chair and it seems to be a winning strategy for getting the dog his bed back. Although he still seems to think Miss Boo has first dibs on his bed, and slinks over to it, eyeing her, as though he's stealing.

I can't think of much else interesting to talk about today; I have a couple of other ranty posts that I am turning over in my mind, but two rants in a row is too many. :) So, enjoy the pictures of Miss Boo, and I will plug along at my (surprise!) laundry.

Happy Monday,

Breanna

A Dream On a Rooftop

An email was going around a while back about dihydrogen monoxide. This scary chemical, the email warned, was a major component of acid rain, had been found in cancerous tumors, tobacco, and made up a large portion of industrial waste. Frighteningly, it was also found in every major infant formula as well as breastmilk, and every person sampled had dihydrogen monoxide in their blood. It's even been found in pristine mountain streams, suggesting the contamination is severe. The email ended calling for a federal ban on dihydrogen monoxide, and asking you to "sign a petition" to that effect.

It was a joke, of course, and all the chemists in the family are laughing, because "dihydrogen monoxide" is a way of writing H2O. That's right-- it's water. Everything I said about it in the paragraph above is true, but that doesn't make it dangerous.

Keeping in mind the lesson of dihydrogen monoxide, when I became pregnant with Miss Boo I began looking into this business of "organic" food. (Another term that makes chemists laugh; as the Husband says, what's the alternative? Inorganic food?) Was organic food really better? If not, why were people willing to pay more for spotty carrots and wilted beets?

First off I discovered that all the parenting and pregnancy books I had recommended that I buy organic if at all possible. If, they reluctantly conceded, I was unable to afford to pay triple the cost for my produce, I was to at the very least buy "The Dirty Dozen" as organic. ("The Dirty Dozen" is a list of the produce that typically requires the heaviest pesticide use.) Otherwise, I was going to be giving my unborn baby poison to ingest. Since I was supposed to be eating a good bit of produce, I would be presumably eating a lot of poison with conventional produce.

So I looked into what the FDA has to say about organics, which is... not much. They don't regulate what calls itself organic or not and they let the CDC worry about the E. coli scares. The USDA does regulate organics, and they stress there has never been a benefit proven to consuming organic produce. In other words, in no study has consuming organic over conventional produce been shown to provide more nutrients, fewer toxins, or be "better" in any way.

"Yeah," say the proponents of organics, "but just look at what they put on the produce! Pesticides! Chemical fertilizers! Petroleum products! It just can't be good for you to be exposed to all that stuff, because if you think you can wash it off, you're just deluding yourself."

Well, I thought reasonably, it's not logical to assume that organic farmers put nothing on the plants. If they don't use a chemical fertilizer, what might they use? (Discovered: copper, which stays in the ground forever, eventually poisoning it, and manure, both animal and...er, well, sludge from the water treatment plant.) If they don't use a chemical pesticide, what might they use? (Discovered: they use chemical pesticides, just not the same chemcials as everybody else.) If they don't use petroleum products... but wait! They do! Almost nobody runs a tractor on soybean oil, it appears, even if they grow soybeans. And if you think you can wash it all off, I snidely thought, you're deluding yourself.

Take your pick--chemicals or poo! Ain't farming wonderful?

So all this made me start thinking. Why were people willing to pay so much extra for food that was, at best, equal to conventional produce, and, at worst, was inferior to it?

Well, for one thing they were being told by everybody to do it, at least for their kids, "just to be safe." For another, buying organic immediately puts you into a sort of club. The People Who Care About the Environment Club, also known as The People Who Really Care About Good Nutrition Club, also known as The Good Mothers Club. Buying food becomes not just a nutrition or a chemical issue, it becomes a righteousness issue.

I'm not kidding. I've been in real and virtual discussions with mothers who felt free to comment on the intelligence, laziness, or education of other women in the checkout line with them, based on whether the others had conventional macaroni n' cheese in their cart ("she doesn't care what she does to her kids's health") or Annie's Organic Mac n' Cheese. They stress about making their husbands see that it's really worth it to spend $600 per month on food, because "you can't put a price on your family's health!"

In a way, a lot of people feel about food the way Peter did when he had his dream on the rooftop, and God showed him all the unclean animals and told him to eat some. Peter was grossed out. He was kosher, what was the Lord thinking?

I understand that the Lord was making a bigger point than "come on, Peter, it doesn't matter that much what you eat" --namely, Gentiles can be Christians, too-- but I think the point about food stands. It doesn't make us better people because we eat organic food, nor does it guarantee our health. People who eat conventional food are not stupid, lazy, or unsophisticated. The science is, to put it kindly, not supportive of the idea that organic produce is the better product; at the moment, it is merely a status symbol.

For me it came down to the money. If conventional and organic produce cost roughly the same, I could have accepted the argument to buy organic "just in case." But for me, if I had switched to buying everything organic, my grocery bill would triple. I can't afford to triple my grocery bill, not if I want to have other things like heat and the ability to tithe. So I decided that any carrots were better than not buying carrots at all, and bought the strip-mined carrots from Ecuador, or wherever they're from.

Peter had the kosher system, which had the advantage over organics in that it was actually divinely ordained. If that method of eating didn't make him a better person, then buying organics is hardly likely to make me a better mom.

And that's my rant of the week!

Cheers,

Breanna

So Why Don't I?

And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life, he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

-- 1 John 5:11-12

No, the verse doesn't have anything really to do with the post today, I just need to memorize it for Sunday School so I've put it everywhere I look at often (including the blog). :)

But I HAVE been thinking about the Providence of God lately; last night Miss Boo had another awesome night and woke up ONCE. As in, one time. All night long. In her own Big Girl Bed. I was so impressed. She even saved the Husband from being late for work by waking up for the morning at 5am, since he'd forgotten to set his alarm.

So, beyond "blankets are awesome", what have I learned? I've learned: why do I ever get into anything, even housework or baby care, without praying? Things go soooo much better when I remember to ask God to handle them. I mean, I have the omnipotent Ruler of the Universe available to me to talk to-- why do I try to do things by myself?

It's not overt rebellion, but it is subtle pride. I think to myself (subconsciously) something along the lines of, "it's just housework, I got this". When, of course, every breath is a gift and we never "get" anything by ourselves. One of my favorite psalms tells us to cast our cares on the Lord, but the reason it's my favorite is it says in the margin that another way to translate "cast" is "roll". As in, anything you have that's too heavy to lift, just push it in His direction and let Him take care of the thing that's too big for you.

It's humbling to admit that sometimes my daily work is too heavy to lift; but then it's comforting to reflect that I was never meant to wean my baby, or get through the laundry, or any of the things that seem so heavy and overwhelming, in my own strength. Very gently, by giving me victories, the Lord is teaching me to pray about the everyday, to recognize His providence in laundry, dishes, dusting, and diapers. If He cares when sparrows fall and sees to it that they have enough to eat, I guess I don' t need to feel silly asking Him to help me get a load of diapers washed (again).

Although I'm sure I will be buzzing around later today thinking I've got everything in hand, I'm going to try to remember that not only does doing my work in my own strength not work, but it's much more unpleasant than rolling my cares to the Lord and leaving them with Him.

Cheers,

Breanna

YAAAAAAAAAY!

We did it! Miss Boo spent THE WHOLE NIGHT in her Big Girl Bed. Hoooraaaaay! I got six baby-free hours of sleep in a row. I feel awesome. She slept better. I could turn over with impunity without having to think about whether it would wake up the baby sleeping a short distance away. Here I was beginning to think the baby would be in my bedroom until she was 14 1/2 years old.

Aaaaaahhhhh, God is so good!

She's in an excellent mood today as well, by the way. Somehow the blanket I tucked in with her last night seems to have made the difference between awesome and what our Big Girl Bed nights have been up until now; namely, miserable. Go blankets. Blankets rock.

This is not to say she slept through the night without waking up at all, but we had no meltdowns, and she only woke up 8 times and went back to sleep with minimal patting and shushing. (I know 8 times sounds like a lot, but on a miserable night it's like 20 times. You can see why the Big Girl Bed was hard for me to stick to when she would wake up only like 2 times if she was in our room.) It is so reassuring to me that we're going to get this Big Girl Bed thing down before Boychild arrives and needs to move into our room.

As I said once before, God is so good... but then it bears repeating!

Cheers,

Breanna

When Mama Has a Cold...

...Everybody gets to eat macaroni and cheese. I don't think they mind too much.
You can't see the cheese mustache as well as you could in real life, but she does have one.

We were poking the noodles with our little metal fork for a while, but that got too slow.

And we really don't like stuff that sticks to our fingers. Creeps us out.

I realized the other day we never actually said "thank you" to Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa for the book and the Valentine. We meant to--thank you! They're great. Miss Boo loves them. She thought the envelope was neat, too.

(In passing, why do I always say "we" when I mean "Miss Boo"? Maybe it's because I was attached to her circulatory system for 9 months and kept thinking of us as a unit. Hmm.)

Anyhoo, we have colds. Or rather, I have a cold and everyone else seems to just have an annoyance. Perhaps they are putting on a good front for me, but I'm too pregnant to put on any kind of a front and I've spent the last forty hours or so sitting in my recliner with Carol Channing voice and no sense of smell, yelping "ouch!" every time I cough and complaining about my huge left tonsil. (It's not a help to be a nurse when you're sick and to grade your own tonsils. It just makes you more morose that they hurt this bad and are a measly +2.)

The Husband was amazing last night--he took care of Miss Boo, cooked great spagetti from scratch, washed the dishes, and then to top it all off he put Miss Boo to bed. Did I marry a wonderful man or what? All I did last night was veg in front of the computer, and sip tea, and feel sorry for myself. It was awesome.

I feel a little better today, although I sound worse, and I suspect my sense of hearing isn't that acute. All my colds go to my ears because, as I had a nurse practitioner explain once, I have short eustacian tubes. (Who knew they varied in length?) Apparently they get plugged and I get all the fun of feeling like I have an ear infection without actually having an infection that can be treated with antibiotics. Oh well, antibiotics are overused anyway...

This is a very rambly post so I'd better stop for now, until I have some actual news besides my cold. Oh, and for those of you who were wondering, Boychild seems to be doing just fine. He's kicking on his normal schedule and presumably does not have a prenatal cold, and I haven't had a fever, so he's in no danger.

Cheers,

Breanna

30 Weeks

We were going to do a cute Valentine's post where Miss Boo held up her new Valentine's book that she got from Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa, but Miss Boo apparently thought that if I was taking a picture of her and her book, that meant I was going to snatch it away from her. Thus she ran away with the book and wouldn't face the camera:

Today we are busily engaged in hiding all the remotes in the entryway table. (Is there a fancy word for "entryway table"?)


You pull out the drawer that has the baby-lock on it as far as it will go, and then shove and shove and shove until the remote fits in the little crack. Then you turn around---

--and dare your mother to figure out where the remotes went. Ha! No Oprah for you today, Mimi!

(I'm still Mimi sometimes rather than Mama. Daddy gets pronounced properly. Don't know why I'm Mimi.)

Today Boychild is 30 weeks along and we've got another midwife appointment to see how he's growing; he's been hitting his marks like a champ so far.

(I should mention in passing for those of you who tuned in late that Miss Boo and Boychild are not really named "Miss Boo" and "Boychild" and in fact I highly doubt I will ever call Boychild "Boychild" in real life, since he has a perfectly good name already, but I'm paranoid about creepy stranger people that might read my blog someday and find out my kids's names and come stalk them or something. So I made up clever aliases. But don't think I'm abusing my kids by calling them these names on the street. :) I just couldn't stand doing what a lot of blogs do and referring to them as "DD" for Dear Daughter and "DS" for Dear Son. It makes them sound like sizes or federal agencies.)

Anyway, it's sort of exciting because now we're in the every-two-weeks phase of midwife visits instead of the once-a-month phase, which means we're counting down. There's only ten weeks left. And helpfully, Boychild has turned lately so that his little rear end is clearly palpable just beneath my sternum, with a wandering foot here and there in my ribs, making him easier to measure. (It also makes me feel better about him not being breech; I've had an illogical worry in the back of my mind this pregnancy that he would be breech. Or transverse. Or something.)

I should stop now because Miss Boo is consistently trying to kick the poor dog off his bed, stand on his bed, and use it for leverage to reach the few magazines in the house I do not let her rip to pieces.

Happy Monday!

Breanna

P.S.

Why yes, I AM doing laundry again today, how did you guess?

Just Because I'm Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not Out to Get Me

So I've noticed a common thread to folks who are making certain medical claims. I'm talking about the people who think vaccines are bad, or Big Pharmacy is out to murder the population, or the government puts fluoride in our water to make us stupid. Namely: "The reason mainstream medicine doesn't support my idea is that there is a giant conspiracy against me."

Usually these people have some sort of "cure They don't want you to know about" that they are willing to sell you for only $19.95. Sometimes, however, they are sincerely misguided. They really believe that putting rock salt under your bed or wearing copper jewelry or rubbing blue lights on your thyroid will heal you of your ailments. Sometimes they are partially right--like a lot of herbalists I've read who make valid points about harvesting medications in the wild but fail to realize that a medication made from a plant is still a medication. In any case, regarding your opposition as evil is unhelpful unless your opposition is Charles Manson.

What I look for, therefore, in the discussion of someone who is advocating a non-mainstream idea, is a willingness to see good in their opponents. Do they think that all physicians are malicious jerks who are merely in it for the money? Or do they think that doctors are generally decent folks who might be honestly mistaken about whether or not ginko biloba is a good idea?

Moving from medicine to religion, do they think that "emergent church" people are truly Satanists at heart, cackling gleefully while pulling churches down around their ears? Or might they be truly decieved and misinformed about proper doctrine? In other words, do they sound more like Martin Luther on his bad days, or C.S. Lewis on his good ones? If the person trying to sell me an idea that mainstream thinking doesn't accept is willing to believe that his opponents are honestly mistaken, but not neccesarily malicious, I am much more likely to listen to him.

It's something I have to watch in myself. Am I automatically attributing bad motives to someone I disagree with, or do I at least assume that they are trying to do the right thing (albeit perhaps failing miserably)? Because honestly, how am I supposed to love people like Christ loved them when I am making all these wicked assumptions about them?

A caveat: if someone has shown you they are a manipulative jerk, then don't do business with them again. But in everything else, perhaps we could get a better hearing for or own non-mainstream idea--the Gospel--if we remember that the Bible says the mainstream--the Lost--are completely decieved and walking in darkness. Why do we expect them to act as though they can see? If there's one time when we can be sure about someone's motives, that they genuinely do not understand what they're doing or saying, it's when we're talking to an unsaved person. Our hearts should break for them when they are at their most blasphemous, because literally "they know not what they do." Instead, to my shame, I find myself getting irritated with them.

So hopefully, next time I'm talking to someone arrogantly going on against religion, I can recite to myself "vaccines cause autism and fluoride in the water makes you stupid", take a deep breath, and respond in love.

Enough serious posting for today,

Breanna

Getting Ready for Boychild

Here we are laying out three sizes of diaper (with the ever-helpful assistance of Miss Boo): "Toddler", the "regular" size that Miss Boo wears now, and "Newborn, which is slightly larger than a Little Golden Book:

Can you tell which aspect of Boychild's arrival has been on my mind?

My belly has been getting so big lately that it's a constant reminder of things I haven't gotten ready yet. For instance, although it's absurdly early and I couldn't possibly need it for another two months, I want to have everything ready to go into my hospital bag. I will just feel better that way.

Cheers,

Breanna

The Hottest New Toy This Season

Is it Tickle-Me Elmo, Cabbage Patch dolls, or whatever other made-in-China fluff we're supposed to trample each other at Wal-Mart for this year?

Why, no, by Jingo, it's not. The toy all the babies want right now is...

A paper bag! You can put things inside it!
You can take them out again! It crinkles! It's amazing!

Why do we even buy her stuff? This bag came wrapped around something from the grocery store earlier this week and I was only saving it as firestarter. I may have to get a package of lunch bags when this one disintegrates.

In other news, Valentine's Day is coming up on Saturday. I'm warning all of you in advance--so you can look smart. Do something nice for your sweetie, because the feast day of St. Valentine is for some reason the holiday of Romantic Love. Because, you know, nothing says Romantic Love like an elderly Roman getting martyred by being mauled to death by lions in the Arena. Pretend that all the blood-red heart imagery is not now a little suspect in your mind and just go ahead and buy the heart-shaped box of candy. (You're welcome.)

An even more made-up-to-sell-cards holiday that I've discovered is called "Sweetest Day" and it happens later in the year. There's also a "Secretary's Day" and nurses get a whole week, but I've yet to see a "Park Ranger's Day" or "Mailman Appreciation Week" so I think it tells us something about female psychology and which gender it is that can be bullied into buying cards for the other gender.

Actually it's a pretty cheap way for all of you with Y chromosomes to make about 100 points quickly-- a card and flowers, particularly a sappy card, will make us nearly as happy as rubies. I let you in on a secret here. If you wash the dishes on the same night as the card and the flowers, you can practically guarantee you're going to have a very happy lady, and thus you will be a very happy man.

So to recap: paper bags are the best toys, washing the dishes + flowers = rubies. Hmm. Maybe the best things in life really are free? (No, no, coffee costs money after all...)

Cheers,

Breanna

What's Dup?

This is a Dup. And Dups say "Gak."

At least according to Miss Boo they do. Of course, everything except doggies say Gak; doggies say "Ooofoofoofoofoof". Oh, and I forgot, alligators hiss. (Thanks for that, Uncle Dunkle.)

Just thought you all might want to know that, in case you have to talk to someone important today.

Cheers!

Breanna

Monday Menu Plan

...the title is "Monday Menu Plan" instead of "Menu Plan Monday" because someone on another blog already uses that title and I didn't want to link to her because... well, I'm lazy.

Anyhoo, here at the House of Frugal Delights we (and by this I mean I) plan menus for the week on Monday. Loosely. Because I've already gone grocery shopping for the month, this just means I pick from my list of 30 meals 5 or so meals, and then 2 meals skeptically.

I only pick 5 or so meals to give us some latitude for "I feel like homemade pizza tonight" or "we have so much roast beef leftover it seems really wasteful to cook a fresh piece of meat, let's just have BBQ beef sandwiches" or "look, honey, I won a gift certificate to Macaraoni Grill again!"

Also I never bother to "plan" breakfasts and lunches, because we always eat the same thing: cereal, eggs & toast, sandwiches, or leftovers.

Here is my menu for this week, if you're curious.

Monday - Chicken bean & rice enchiladas, salad
Tuesday - Salmon turnovers (basically canned salmon, cream cheese, celery, & seasonings inside biscut dough)
Wednesday - pork chops & sauerkraut
Thursday - steak, potatoes, peas
Friday - tuna casserole
Saturday - (Valentine's Day) A Fancy Italian Meal, to wit: minestrone, breadsticks, salad; chicken alfredo, fettucini, peas; black coffee. (I will probably get chocolate of some sort in some way on this day, so I don't bother to write down dessert.)
Sunday - meatloaf, mashed potatoes, challah, broccoli & roasted carrots (my husband has requested weekly challah bread).

There you have it. Not terribly fancy, but it helps to have an idea what to fix when. Incidentally, the two meals I'm skeptical about are the tuna casserole and the salmon turnovers, because they involve no thawing of anything and minimal prep time. Thus, I won't have a big thawed piece of meat dying to be used while I am trying to figure out a different dinner instead.

Oh, and I frequently move around which meal I cook on which day. Only the Valentine's Day meal needs to stay as-is.

Cheers!

Breanna

Laundry Again

No, I don't do anything besides laundry. Haven't any of you ever talked to your mothers? All mothers do is laundry, all day long. I'm doing some right now. In the meantime, in leiu of more pictures of my laundry, here is a picture of Miss Boo:
This is our "I want to peer inside the camera lens and see where the flash comes from" face.

And this is "I will be distracted from the fact that I bonked myself in the eye with my Grover book if you let me zip and unzip the camera case" face.

We are hanging in there on our Monday washday. Enjoy the cutness!

Cheers,

Breanna

Getting All Stimulus-y

Is anybody else getting tired of hearing "PASS THE STIMULUS OR THE SKY WILL FALL!! PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE FINE PRINT!"

Me too. So instead of pointing out that we're spending 1/8th of the amount of money on "the people" that we spent on "the banks" I thought I'd go less depressing and just talk about mending. And I am also considering stopping any news consumption, but I'm afraid I might miss an update on whether Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are talking to each other or not. (Blech!)

That's right, mending and beans, the two things I think will help us out of our Less-Than-Great Depression. (Of course there are actually more than two things; I just would be a lot more comfortable if I knew the whole country could cook up a decent mess of beans and set a patch.)

Here is a link to a Youtube video about how to mend a rip by hand with a blind seam. If you can do this, you can probably figure out how to fix other kinds of rips and how to put a patch over a hole you can't mend with a blind seam.

And about socks: I give you permission to use as rags the cotton, storebought socks that get holes in them. You can't darn them, because the fabric gets too thin and just rips again. But you CAN darn dark dress socks, and/or wool socks, as is demonstrated here. I found out the key to dark dress socks: embroidery floss. Much nicer than regular thread. Which makes one think: should I only buy darnable socks from now on? Hmm. (Don't think so. Cotton socks are still dang cheap. But maybe something to consider.)

Why bother mending, you may ask? Why not just go buy a new item of clothing? Well, aside from the fact that you're learning to make beans because we're talking a Depression here--even CBS News says so--it's a waste to take a perfectly good shirt and throw it away just for the sake of a little tear or a lost button. (I'm not talking to Steve here. Steve likes keeping dead shirts that don't have many shirt molecules left to them. To each his own; Steve does not need a course in clothing saving.) In short, take the $3 it would cost you to buy a new shirt and go buy some beans with it.

If I sound a little skeptical about whether the stimulus will help us or not, you have to forgive me; I can read history and it does seem to me that the last time we had a similar situation and fiddled with it--come to think of it, the last couple times were the two presidents PBO has been compared to, Carter and FDR, go figure--the fiddling made everything worse and the "downturn" lasted between 8-10 years depending on whose figures you take. So. I'm less than optimistic.

Anyhoo, I hope PBO and the stimulus do fix the economy and you can use your $3 to buy Twinkies instead of beans. But at least you'll look snazzy doing it, in your mended shirt. :)

Happy Mending,

Breanna

P.S.
Except for you, Steve-- you'll look snazzy in that shirt that can't be mended because there's not enough fabric left. You know the one I mean. :D

The Literary Pleasures

Miss Boo has a dishtub full of books that are fun to 1) read and 2) dump all over the carpet so she can sit in the dishtub like it's a little boat. Yes, this is a girl whose legs are short enough she can put her little tush against one side of a dishtub and put her feet flat against the other side. She likes me to read to her still, but I suspect my delivery has gotten a bit repetitive. She chooses the Husband preferentially now when he's home. And by preferentially, I mean LOUDLY and INSISTENTLY. It's finally my turn to say, "I guess she just wants you, dear!"

MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I have to chortle about someting in these few weeks left before I have a nursing baby again who will "just want you, mama" for quite a bit. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

How to Spend Less on Coffee

1. Get pregnant. (Sadly, this strategy will not work for any man other than that man/woman who was on Oprah who turned out to have XX blood and the necessary equipment but have gotten some surgery in order to be "the pregnant man".)

2. Read all the horrible things you might be doing to your baby if you have caffiene. (Might. The books grudgingly admit that there is little actual research proving that caffiene is harmful, but they tell you to treat it like vodka anyway. Oh, and you can't eat sugar either.)

3. Buy decaf coffee.

4. Drink it. Hmm.

5. Decide you don't need to drink coffee every morning. Keep making coffee for your husband until he tells you that choosing between zombie wives and work coffee is an easy decision--he will drink the work coffee. Stop making daily coffee at all.

6. Sleep in an extra hour every morning that the baby lets you.

That, in short, is why we haven't had to buy coffee in four months. I only make "real coffee" for the Husband on Saturdays and I make decaf for myself only when I'm in danger of drinking random real coffee. Amazing savings plan, eh?

I'll be happy when Boychild arrives, not just because, you know, the whole new life thing, but I really, really miss real coffee. Bleah.

Enjoy your cup,

Breanna

Monthly Shopping: Part Deux

(And ten points to everyone who snickered at the post title.)

So, we don't watch much TV-- this is the nightly news because this a rare, indulgent night when the Husband is not home to keep me from talking to the news and arguing with it. Miss Boo is a bit distracted...
...but ultimately the book is much more interesting.

Our monthly grocery shopping worked out well last month. The hiccups were my underestimating how much dairy we consume (we should get a cow and graze it on the softball field behind the house), and overestimating our frozen vegetable/chicken/fish consumption. The consequence being that I didn't have to buy any meat except bacon this month, and no frozen veggies except broccoli. Wouldn't even have had to buy broccoli except that I've been craving it like mad. :)

The grand total for groceries for February (keeping in mind that it's effectively for 3 weeks only, since Miss Boo and Boychild and I will be spending a week at Grammy's while the Husband is on a business trip) was: $148.33. Yes, Virginia, shopping for a lot of things at the super Walmart, never deviating from the list, and not having to buy meat makes a big difference, as does having a pantry established that one can pull out of. (30 pounds of pinto beans, anyone? Taco night is never a problem somehow.)

Granted, these numbers will not be achievable when Miss Boo and Boychild are eating more (although Boychild has been increasing MY appetite quite a bit... the midwife told me not to worry about it and make sure that I get enough snacks), but I am still pretty impressed with how this works out, given that it's about a quarter of what we've figured our budget could actually handle as a grocery allowance. (We ran the percentage in Larry Burkett's budgeting for young couples book. We're geeks.)

I'm going to go eat some frugal potato soup now, and look smugly at the canned goods and potatoes that are still waiting to go in the pantry, and feel smart. :) Hope you all have as fun an evening!

Cheers,

Breanna

Beautiful Sights

Yes, this is a clothesline full of sheets. What's beautiful about it is that this is the first chance I've had to hang out the wash since September-- and my sheets are finally going to smell awesome again. Not to mention now I can finally let the sun bleach my diapers back to fluffy whiteness again.





(No, I didn't train the dog to guard the laundry. He just does that. He's a neurotic dog.)



Here is another beautiful sight: Miss Boo playing like a big girl, too busy to notice her sore teeth (we're getting a canine tooth).


And finally....

The view of my belly from the top. I haven't seen my feet in weeks. This is only beautiful because it means that Boychild is growing apace. He passed his 28-week checkup yesterday with flying colors, by the way, and had a great little sugar buzz on from the glucose-tolerance-test stuff I had to drink. (50 grams of orange-flavored glucose. You can imagine how it tastes. Yup. Like that. They don't even carbonate the stuff.) Anyway, imagine giving a double-shot mocha latte, extra syrup, to a baby who already likes to kick a lot. It was sort of like being pregnant with a rabbit all morning.

Miss Boo was a perfect lady at the midwife's office, and sat solemnly on my chest while the midwife measured my belly. (She won't let the nurses hold her on the general principle that nurses are the ones who give you shots. Don't tell her I'm a nurse.)

I just heard the dryer kick off, which means that I can put the next load of Miss Boo clothes in. I'm off-- have a great day!

Cheers,

Breanna

Which Ship Are You On?

The pastor played this clip during the service on Sunday (we did go to church, we weren't entire football heathens) and I thought it was pretty succinct. I thought some of ya'll might enjoy it and/or find it encouraging-- at least, to me it's encouraging when I reflect that if I'm on the right ship, nothing worse than is really to be expected has befallen me, spiritually speaking.

Oh, and I'm getting my laundry done after all. :)

Breanna

Not that we like to brag but...

We now have almost as many Superbowl titles as we do teeth.

It was so exciting, we ran around yelling "DOODOODOODOODOODOODOODOODOOO!" all afternoon and then fell asleep just in time to make it so that Daddy and Mommy and Uncle Steve had to celebrate quietly. It's very hard to celebrate a Superbowl quietly.

Today's one of those post holiday days when you wander around bleary-eyed, realizing there are no clean forks and you have to do laundry and sweep up the jalepeno popper crumbs. Well, well, on to the laundry! I have some lavender-scented fabric softener to inspire me.

Cheers,

Breanna