RookieMoms Blog

My second son, Milo, is a very active 11 months now. He likes to climb, pull up, scoot all the time.

But that sort of gets in the way of my plans for him.

Our normal getting out of the car routine includes me bringing him inside the house, plopping him into the exersaucer or jumperoo (depending on what room of the house I want him to be in), and going back outside to fetch Holden from the car so we can wrestle with shoes, jackets, and stuff. I like Milo to be safely contained (and possibly entertained) while this is going on. But am I relying on these crutches too much?

Do I need switch things around and let the two-year old come in the house first? Should we all enter together and forget about the stuff? How old is too old for the exersaucer? Can I wait until he can climb out of it or tell me in words that he’s sick of it?

If you have a girl, you will find that many of her clothes are wild and crazy prints. Recently, Mom101 wrote about seeing Thalia’s crazy pants and knowing that it meant they had reached the bottom of the barrel and it was laundry day. I’m actually finding that we have more crazy pants than sane pants.

My husband, who does not like to feel inept at such things, has expressed concern about the difficulty of dressing a girl when he is faced with drawers full of printed clothes. He would like to be able to compose a charming ensemble of mixed prints, but does not want it to go awry and then be accused of incompetent baby girl-dressing.

I have a tip for him, and I’ll share it with you.

Domino magazine had a piece about creating a unique look for your bedding by mixing prints. The key, they coach us, is to choose prints that have a common background color. You can use a floral print with a striped print if they are both on cream, or white, or heather grey. Or if the dominant colors are exactly the same. (Magenta and fuschia might not work.)

I think the same advice can be applied to mixing prints on baby clothes. This probably goes for boys, too, but perhaps it’s less charming to mix checks with stripes than it is to mix hearts with florals.

Sisters unite. Help me think of the perfect non-new gift for my sister-in-law’s new baby. She’s due in about a week. My compact month starts in about a week and I don’t want to go in cheating.

A few things to know about my sister-in-law:

1. Her name is also Heather
2. She hates used stuff
3. She lives cross-country in DC
4. This will be her second daughter, g-d willing
5. and she’s Orthodox Jewish

What’s a good gift? Help please!!

ps I don’t think she reads this site, so go ahead and give me some ideas.

First things first: Guilty as charged.

In December, we followed a well-controlled budget for buying gifts for family and friends. I didn’t deviate (much) and we emerged from that month with a credit card bill that was similar to other months. We felt good about ourselves.

By contrast, in January we’ve gone a little nuts! Following the holidays, we had a some gift money to spend on ourselves and we spent that and then some. Our “seed money” from relatives grew into several major purchases.

While we get a tiny little high five for getting a good deal on a used HDTV via Craig’s List, the TV spawned several related and unrelated splurges:

• HD Tivo and rabbit ear antenna (because our direcTV doesn’t work with this new thing)
• New camera (because “wah wah,” I cry, “that TV is just for you, I don’t care what we watch”)
• Fancy shampoo and conditioner (probably allowable expense, but getting the frou frou stuff feels like something I should cut out)
• New Joe’s Jeans (one or two pairs of seriously expensive jeans depending on how you count it, cuz new clothes are totally outlawed)

I have been doing some crazy shopping-feasting before my shopping-famine. I have that anxious feeling I sometimes get before a big trip where I want to make sure I pack everything I could possibly need for the week even though I know they sell necessities like baby food and diapers in Ohio. It seems like my need to Be Prepared for my shopping freeze is starting to defeat the purpose.

Since Heather is doing one of her crazy I-have-lots-of-systems-and-rules projects again (see post below), I am going to try to support her. She wants to buy nothing new in February. Have fun with that, H.

I won’t mock the fact that you are buying extra stuff now in preparation of not buying anything later.

I respect her project and hate to throw away landfill-bound crap like an infant bathtub or cell phone charger for a phone I no longer use, so, inspired by Heather, I’m sort of on a Craig’s List/Freecycle kick myself. We are about to move into a 3-month furnished sublet while our house is demolished, er, remodeled, and I don’t want to pack up, move, unpack, repack, move and unpack anything I don’t really need.

So I have been packing up clothes, donating baby blankets, selling stuff on Craig’s List, and hoping for the rain to stop so that I can put a “free” box in front of my house with some cast-off items in it. Even with this attitude, I find it hard to work quickly through my piles of posessions. I get caught up in where things should go, wondering if I’ll miss them later. We’ve lived in this house for five years and have boxes of books and CDs that we never unpacked from our last house, but still somehow believe we should own. I sit down to attack a pile and get sidetracked by a million different aspects of this process. Clearly my process is faulty.

Here’s an example: I look at a vase. I think, “I don’t like this much now. Maybe I’ll like it later.” And then I look for a place to store it. On my way to looking for a place, I spot some things that seem easier to pack than the vase I don’t care for. I pick them up. Do you see the downward spiral happening? Do you think I should keep a vase that is nice, but just not my taste?

Today I saw this collection of books at Barnes and Noble. Boy was I tempted to buy all of them. I know Heather and I would have a lot of fun with a Closet Organizing book that comes with a DVD (birthday hint!) But then I remembered that I shouldn’t bring anything new into my house.

It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff

Closet Control: The Ultimate Guide to Revitalizing Your Wardrobe and Revolutionizing the Way You Store It (Book & DVD)

Absolutely Organized: A Mom’s Guide to a No-stress Schedule and Clutter-free Home

Do you know about the Compact? I’m going to try my own version of it for February where I stop buying so much stuff. And I’ll give you weekly status reports.

My rules:

1. No buying new stuff. Exceptions include food, necessary toiletries, shoes, undies.
2. No take out food. In order to cut down on overall packaging and waste, we’re cutting out the carry-out. If we’re in a crunch for a meal, eating in a restaurant is ok. Three Stone Hearth, a local community supported kitchen that uses returnable glass jars (while not cheap) is perfect.
3. Borrow, barter, or buy used.
4. Blog successes and failures. Be honest about what’s easy and what’s impossible.

I don’t think I was nearly as cheap before I met my husband. I ate out constantly and didn’t think twice before buying the cutest snowboard that I could afford.

As husbands go, I hit the jackpot. He’s a born saver; Alec doesn’t fritter away our money and he helps me think twice before buying stuff.

Aside from the genetic thrift, there’s an environmental component to his frugality that I can’t help but admire. He got me to start questioning the products I buy and whether they can be found cheaper on craig’s list or ebay.

Again, I’ve hit the jackpot with that mindset on baby gear. Between Craig’s List, Ebay, freecycle, the Berkeley Parents Network Marketplace, hand-me-downs, garage sales, resale shops, and the occasional board book on the sidewalk, my home is brimming with things I didn’t pay full price for.

Of course — with honesty in mind — they’re not all winners, some are just life lessons: I drove 45 minutes for an $8 diaper bag a few years ago. Last weekend, we saved a bundle on a TV twice as far away. We never even used that sad diaper bag; at least the TV has been plugged in.

We freecycle or pass along everything we think can be useful to other folks. And my annual clothing swap is the gift that keeps on giving for many of my friends. With all that good karma out there, surely I can hang on to my cute pink Burton snowboard just a few more years in case I start riding again…[Alec just asked, “is it pink? I’ve never seen it”]

My sister-in-law has two boys and lives in Minnesota. She used to tell me that she liked going to the grocery store because it was her time to relax. She left the boys at home and shopped for food. She saw it as a refreshing getaway. She was 34. I was 28, newly married, and thought that relaxing meant going to a cafe and knitting with my girlfriends, falling asleep on an airplane en route to Costa Rica, or reading US Weekly in bed at 9 am on Sunday morning. I thought she sounded like a loser.

This morning I left Scarlett with a sitter, dropped Julian at preschool, and headed to Trader Joe’s. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Who’s the loser now?

The Little Author will make professional note cards out of your kid’s artwork. You can scan artwork that’s up to 11×17 inches, which they will shrink down for you, and you can enter whatever text you want. Of course, they come with matching envelopes.

I would be dead impressed if I went to a kid’s birthday party and got one of these back as a thank you note. I would think that kid had some of the cleverest parents around! At $15 for 10 note cards, I definitely feel it’s worth it to go this route instead of trying to make them yourself at Kinko’s or something. I would absolutely use the service, and I’m a person who has a) no kids and b) plenty of time to go to Kinko’s.

If you’re willing to splurge, you can get also get a 24-page hardcover book for $68. Check it out at theLittleAuthor.com

Related Rookie Mom Activities:
Activity #250: Make personalized thank you notes
Activity #337: Use your baby for greetings
Activity #506: Facilitate thank you notes with a personal *touch*

—
Thanks to Karen for this fun discovery.

I’m sad to report that Scarlett’s “Downtime” hat is getting too tight. Her head must be growing faster than her body, because she doesn’t seem ready for many of the 6-12 clothes that I’m so anxious to put her in.

This hat is the softest cotton and the eyelashes on it are so dang cute that we get comments wherever we go. Although the intended use is for the parent to slide the brim down over baby’s eyes to facilitate a nap, I kept it on her awake as well. I wish I had a hat this soft and stretchy for me.

Downtime hats were invented by a mom. So if you’re down with moms (ha ha) check out her little business. She sneakily suggests that if your baby doesn’t like hats, you slide the hat on over her head and eyes after she’s already asleep to help extend the nap. If your baby is crazy stimulated like mine, this might help her get to sleep faster when you’re on the go.

This weekend, we went into the city on the BART, for Julian’s benefit. Our destination was secondary (the mall) and the two-train ride was the big event.

On the way home, a woman sitting near us, whose age appeared to be somewhere between 20 and 30 kept a pacifier in her mouth. I was obsessed. I found this both intriguing and disgusting. It was the same type of pacifier that my 6-month old daughter uses. I had images of my daughter riding BART into San Francisco with her girlfriends in fifteen years. Will she have her iPhone in one hand and her pacifier in the other?

This woman talked to one person for about half the ride and then when he got off, another stranger sat across from her and they began chatting. She simply kept the binky in the side of her mouth, like a stogie, and continuted to schmooze with fellow passengers.

I thought Julian would be as obsessed as I was. I was positive he was going to ask in his innocent, slow-paced three-year old voice, “Why does dat woman have a paci in her mouf?” I even thought maybe if she heard him, I could use it as an excuse to get an explanation out of her. But no, he took it in stride. I guess he’s not as judgmental as his mother. Adults with rubber nipples in their mouths do not bother him. Apparently I need to get out on public transportation more often and get exposed to the masses.