That doesn’t work

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I don’t know about other mama’s out there, but one of my biggest pet peeves is when someone -anyone really – tells me that the way I do things with my child is the wrong way, or that my way “doesn’t work”. UGH!

For example, I love my hubby dearly, but he did this to me tonight:

As part of J’s bedtime routine, his sound machine plays music while I nurse him and 99% of the time he falls soundly asleep with no problem.

Tonight though was one of the nights that nothing I do seems to be working as per the norm and I had to call in Daddy after 15+ minutes of trying to get J to settle into sleep.

To preface this, as we turned on his music and got him into jammies, Hubby told me that he doesn’t usually use the sound when he puts J to sleep – but then again Daddy sings to him, so why would he need the music playing too?  Me, I’m not a singer, especially at 2 am, so I’ve not gotten into the habit of singing J to sleep.

So back to tonight’s bedtime routine…As I walk out of the room into the lights of the kitchen, squinting as usual, the Hubby turns to me and says “I told you the music doesn’t work.”

*******insert silent 4 letter words here*******

Just because it didn’t work this one time in the last 100 times means that my routine “doesn’t work” all of a sudden?!?!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?

Now I’m sure that I’ve also done the same thing to him, probably more times than I could count, but why do we always feel the need to correct another parents actions? Even when that parent is the mother/father of your own child?

I think judgement is one of those things that is incredibly hard to quiet.  It seems that in every aspect of anyone’s life, the inert desire or automatic response to any action or response that differs from your own triggers the reaction of immediate judgement.

I admit, I am certainly guilty of this, especially towards other parents or children – more so before I had a kiddo of my own – but still, it was there and probably always will be.

I remember back to when my friends were having children before I’d even gotten married, and all the judgement I’d passed onto them for the decisions they made or the reasons they did the things they did.  Where I thought that I knew anything about their situation, who knows…judgement just reared it’s ugly head without so much as a thought.

I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there judging me for the things I do, the actions I take, the way I raise my kid.  For the most part I really don’t care.  My life, my decisions, etc. etc.  But every once in a while something cuts through and cuts deep.

You want to believe that they way you’re raising your child is the best way you know how and that there aren’t any “better” ways out there that are of any consequence.  Most of us do the best with what we know.  We teach, love, listen, and grow alongside our children as they will eventually become a mirror image of how they were raised.

Here’s to thicker skin, and maybe a little more patience to let it roll off 🙂

Mom of the Year goes to…

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In the past 2 weeks I have done 2 things that should probably earn me the Mom of the year award….if the MOY award is in any kind like the Darwin award. Winner —> right here.

And of course the first happened to be in front of a random person I don’t know (and probably will never see again)…but that almost makes it worse in my mind.  Standing in the checkout line a Kohls with my mom and J last week, and J just loves to chew on Grammas necklaces – which happened to be pink beads this particular day.  Then I see one bead bounce across the floor in front of me…hmm where’d that come from, Oh, Gramma’s necklace is now in 2 pieces….shit.  As I reach into my 10 month old’s mouth and retrieve not 1, not 2, but 4 more pink beads and a 1″ piece of silver chain…in front of this random person, who I’m sure went home and told all her friends about this “dumb mom who almost killed her kid in the store today by letting him choke on pink beads”.  Go me. Ugh.

Then today, as we had just cleaned the entire house top to bottom and lit some candles to clear out the “dirty” smell that it seemed to have pre-cleaning, I pulled yet another awesome MOY move.  Searching through the house to find whatever scented candles I had leftover, I found an oil burner – you know, the ones that you put scented oil in the top part and a tea-light candle underneath.  Never had any issues with this particular one in the past… Then we all headed out on a nice long walk in the spring weather.  45 min later we returned home to find an oil burner on fire. Yup, the entire thing was almost engulfed in flame…so I casually walk up and try to blow it out…and the flame doubled….then the hubby tried, and it grew again…and then trippled when we sprayed it with water…finally baking soda did the trick, but not before a huge burn mark on our mantle and a smell that totally voided the nice clean smell of our newly clean house. Yup, if we had come home a few minutes later or it the burner had been 6 inches to the right we would have come home to our entire family room on fire. Scary. Shit.

Sure got my heart pumping though.  Between that scare and our 45 minute walk, I’d say my cardio workout for the weekend was filled.

Any other Mom Of the Year candidates out there??

Baby Food made easy

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When J was 4 1/2 months we started him on solid foods.  I think I was supposed to wait till 5 months, but my Baby Bullet had been burning a whole in my cabinet for months already and I couldn’t wait to try it out.  I started pretty basic – carrots, sweet potato, peas, pears.  We tried peaches but they weren’t a favorite, and banana’s seemed to make him constipated.

I don’t really remember why I wanted to make my own baby food as opposed to store-bought.  I had no problems with feeding him store-bought food, and we are not a family that focuses on purely organic or natural foods.  Honestly I think it had more to do with saving money than specifically wanting him to only have pure foods.  Besides, the store-bought baby foods seem to be much more “pure” than I once thought they were, most of them seem to be just veggie/fruit and water plus some citric acid.  

I did the math and it was going to cost $0.50 to $1.00 for each package of store-bought food per meal.  You figure 3-5 meals a day depending on the kiddo and how much you are still breastfeeding/formula plus an increase in intake as they get older….that’s $1.50 to $5.00 PER DAY…up to $150.00 per MONTH…which is way more than that per YEAR.  Whoa…kind of made me queasy to think of how much money to feed one little mouth.  BUT then I did the math for making all (or 90%) of my own baby food.  HUGE huge huge difference.

I discovered that shopping the sales was also a big help, Costco had some fruits/veggies for cheaper too (For example – Costco has a large bag of 10+/- pears for $4.99.  Kings and Safeway charge $.79 each on sale.  You do have to cook them all at once though otherwise it’s hard to get through them before they go bad.) and Sprouts became my new weekly shopping stop for baby food supplies – they have the BEST prices on produce at all times (seriously, no joke.).  

On average I would spend about $5.00-$7.00 for 7 to 10 days of baby food – that’s 3-4 meals a day.

Here’s an example of what I would get:

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1 bundle of Kale – steamed
1 butternut squash – roasted
1 sweet potato – boiled and chopped
3 pears – boiled and chopped
Some leftover peas
Blueberries
1 lb carrots – boiled and chopped
Oatmeal baby cereal

Total cost = $10.00 including the cereal

Plus these supplies – 

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I used my Baby bullet a lot in the beginning, but once the batches started to get larger, my blender worked just as well.

Also, the bullet cups are a good size, but they tend to crack when you have to warm them up straight from frozen.  I find that the small Ziploc containers work best  and they are a great size for cheap – I think you get 8 of them for around $2.00

This is what we ended up with:

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That’s 40 servings – pretty friggen awesome for $10.00 right!?

Plus J ate better than we did every day…although it does make it easier to eat better yourself when you have to have all those fresh veggies and fruits in your house on a regular basis!

We did experiment with mixing all different veggies and fruits to make some quite exotic looking creations – kale, blueberry, oatmeal sounded great and tasted fine, but looked like brown sludge…In the end we stuck with just one type of food per serving.  J didn’t seem to mind the mixtures, but it does take more time to do and there’s something to be said about the texture and consistency of what you end up with…

Even though now J is eating most of what we eat now days, I still have 1-2 meals a day for him as straight blended fruit or veggie.

 Also, I’m not downplaying the convenience of store-bought and pre-packaged baby foods in any way.  The simplicity of them makes life way easier at times.  I have a good stock of the food pouches (Happy Family, Mom to Mom, etc.) in my cabinet at all times for when I’m not otherwise prepared, or when we are out of the house.  They are a lifesaver.

Happy baby-fooding 🙂

Mommy’s Craft Day

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After 10 months I’m just getting to the point where I feel like I have the energy to do something outside of being just Mama 24/7.  About once a month another Mama friend and I get together for a mama and baby day, and K suggested incorporating our Pinterest crafts into our monthly playdates, and I loved the idea.  Two birds – One stone type of thing, which is right up my alley (multi-tasker right here). We get to both have a play date for the kiddo’s as well as spend some time with another Mama and do an adult activity.

So since it was her idea, she got to pick the craft – last month was Menu Boards, which happened to be a craft that both of us had pinned – perfect!

Here’s what I ended up with – not too bad for an hours work.  Thankfully J actually took a 1+ hour nap that day…miracle!
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K and I shared our favorite recipes and we ended up with 30+ recipes each to start out our boards with.

I’ve really been trying the last few months to both shop smart when I go to the grocery store – bring a list and shop the sales – and to plan our meals at least a week in advance (which also helps with the list part).  This menu board was a perfect addition to my shop-savvy plan.  So far, it’s been working out great.  Granted we don’t follow it to a “t”, but it lets me know what food I have in the fridge and what our meal options are for the nights that we are cooking in.  Added bonus – it gets us out of our usual same-3-meals-a-week pattern.

There are a TON of other ideas out there for menu boards too so there’s something out there for everyone – even if you aren’t particularly crafty.  Check out Pinterest (duh) for ideas.

Beginnings

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I’m the (fairly) new mom of a 10 month old little boy.  I don’t claim to be an expert on anything.  More so, I have big dreams and not enough time in the day.  I am a Pinterest addict (who isn’t?!) and am quite crafty when I have the time.  I like to learn about and try new things that have to do with my family – although I don’t consider myself to be a “fad” follower per say. Product reviews, meals, new mama missteps, crafts & organization ideas, and anecdotes about my own experiences are some of the things you’ll see here.

My goal with this new blog is to share stories and thoughts about things that most other Mama’s may find interesting, new, familiar, relate-able, or just amusing.

As many of my friends are also starting families, I find it comforting to be able to share in my experiences with them and to hear their experiences as well.  There’s something about power in numbers and knowing that not everyone does everything the same that makes getting through the challenges of being a new Mama less.  I hope that it does the same for you as well 🙂