Time for a new routine

There are a few new things going on at the Parker home. The first is that we bought our tickets to go to Chile for Christmas this year. I am really excited for Ryan to meet all of my family down there and for us to go visit a part of my old life. I am also excited that my family will get to meet Aubrey. We wanted to go before she turned 2 so she could fly for free, so this was the ideal time to do so. That being said, those airline tickets wiped us out with the savings account. We weren’t too worried about it, but with the current state of things in America, I have to say that it makes me nervous not to have any backup. So we are going back over the budget, hunkering down and building that puppy back up! Good thing I bought my iphone before all of these banks started failing! So its back to simplifying my life, which will be good for me. I started working to help our family get to a place where I could stay home with the kid without jeaopardizing our livelihood, and have instead gotten caught up in all of my material tendencies. This buckling down will be for the greater good of our family. I might be annoyed that I can’t buy a certain thing right away, but in the long run it will enable me to live my dream (SAHM) and create a more stable environment for our children (because when we do reach our goals, I am having another kid).

So that’s that. The other thing that I need your help with, Internet, is that Aubrey needs a new bedtime routine. I took her for her 15 month check-up yesterday and she checked out fine. Tiny, but fine. I can’t believe she only weighs 17 pounds. I promise, I feed her, and when I try and overfeed her, she reminds me that this is a bad idea by throwing up all over me. Her doctor said I could try giving her PediaSure and it might help her start gaining. She was getting so fat before she started crawling and now that she can walk, she won’t sit still. I am sure she burns a ton of calories all day long. But she is doing everything she should be, developmentally. Then I was told that it was time to take her off her bottle.

GREAT. The bottle, filled with whole milk, is the only way Aubrey will fall asleep at night. We have a routine. Bath, Teeth brushing, Bottle, Bed. Not that she ever stays asleep for the entire night but the sucking motion makes her sleepy and her eyes start drooping and at the end of that 8 ounces, I can lay her down with relatively low levels of whimpering before she decides to give me about 4 hours of uninterrupted chore/sleeptime. So when the doctor said that this bottle business, it needs to stop, I wanted to invite her over to try putting my kid to bed everynight by merely laying her in her crib. I would have even offered to throw in some ear plugs.

New routines. For someone who hates change as much as I do, I am really not looking forward to the next couple weeks/months. I know in the end our savings account will be a nice cushiony nest again, I might be able to entertain the idea of more children, and Aubrey will go to bed at night without a bottle and perhaps even sleep all night.

So I need help! What is your bedtime routine with your toddler and how do you get them to go to sleep on their own? Please please please, comment away!

I HATE SWEAT! (so why did I just join a gym?)

Well after about 6 months of playing the “I just had a baby” card, I decided to put the cookies down and purchase some Slim Fast. That’s okay with me bc Slim Fast kind of tastes like cookies. But seriously, since I had Aubrey I have been thinking a lot about the future, the values I’d like to instill in her, and the example I will set for her. I started to care about things like the environment and what kind of world she is going to get handed as an adult. I started to care about eating organic food (as much as I can afford, anyway) and planting my own garden. I started recycling anything and everything that is recyclable, and I got my office to go along with it.

                                        

One thing that I completely ignored, however, was the whole exercise, get-off-your-rump thing. I’m not so great at that. I absolutely HATE to sweat. HATE IT. I will do anything to avoid it, including running the AC (not environmentally friendly, I know. I’m a woman of contradictions) while I blow dry my hair in the middle of January. I get so irritated in the summer when I shower, spend an hour doing my hair and makeup only to step outside and my scalp immediately undoes all the product and blow-drying and clean feeling that I have infused into my hair. I get so irritated when I get my makeup to cover every blemish that I inevitably get in the summer due to SWEAT and my big ugly pores and as soon as I step outside my forehead gets shiny and oh how I hate it when my upper lip sweats. GAH!

                             

Needless to say, when a local gym made a deal with my employer for a discount membership, I promptly deleted the email and told myself that Slim Fast and Special K would do the trick. Ryan, however, had a different idea. He mentioned that we should do it together (its like $30/mo for both of us) and that it went along with my whole “wellness living” kick. I agreed, almost even got excited about it, and then for a few weeks we forgot about it. Until Wednesday, when Ryan said, “Hey, let’s go up to the gym at lunch and sign up” to which I said, “Okay but I want to eat first” which, I know it was lunchtime and its appropriate to eat at lunchtime, but I felt guilty. Whatever, I ate the food and then we went.

                             

I actually like the facility, the childcare is clean and I would feel comfortable leaving Aubrey there for an hour. So I kind of started to get pumped, remember that I used to be able to look forward to bathing suit season instead of dreading it, and that before the baby I could shop for a size that didn’t make me wonder if I am technically obese.

Today I am going for the first time (Ryan has been every day, punk) when I get off work since we get off early on Fridays, and I have already conjured up a massive headache and major fatigue. I don’t wanna go! I wanna go home and take a nap! But I will go, and after a week of hating it, I know I will actually look forward to it. At least I have a workout buddy.

Plus, doesn’t this mean I get to run over to Target and get workout clothes? I think it does!

                                      

Alcoholics have bars… I have Target

I think (and my husband would shout a resounding YES!) that when it comes to shopping, I have a problem. I don’t know what it is about those bright white linoleum floors or the red plastic shopping carts (an atrocious amount of non-decomposable matter but that is a whole other blog), but my shopping list suddenly looks too short and I begin to panic that I might run out of toilet paper. And “oh look, the toilet paper is on sale AND THIS WEEK ONLY if you buy a box of Huggies along with a 24 pack of Cottonelle toilet paper, you get a $5 gift card-which, omg I need a new candle for my desk so that would totally pay for a soy blended candle and hey, didn’t someone tell me they sell those Immaculate Baking Company organic cookies here?” You see the trend, I won’t even begin to tell you what runs through my mind when I walk down the baby aisle, but today it had to do with Aubrey’s bottle nipples beginning to turn a suspicious shade of murky and “I should probably buy some new ones and hey, its about time to introduce the sippy cup I wonder if they have transition spouts and I would really prefer to buy glass instead of plastic b/c plastic takes like 500 years to biodegrade and glass is recyclable and hey, I wonder if they sell biodegradable trash bags here”. You get the idea.

It’s so weird to me that I am like this now, because when I wasn’t working I became very enlightened as to what I could live without. Staying home with Aubrey was much more important than getting a good deal on toothpicks or making sure I have a certain brand of cheese. Of course I have always loved to shop, but I turned that switch off when we were living on one paycheck.

And then, this job falls into my lap and all of the sudden our income is doubled and before I know it, not only have I spent all my allotted spending money on picture frames, but I have opened up a Target credit card to pay for all that other stuff that I truly didn’t need… seriously, I didn’t need it, it was mother’s day gifts for my MIL, mom and grandma. Isn’t mother’s day still a month away? Oh but it was on SALE and I HAD to get it bc its SUCH a cute idea!

                                             

I eventually confessed my sin to Ryan, who rolled his eyes and gave a very exasperated, “Oh, Kitty”. I get called Kitty when I do something really cool or I do something really stupid. I am inclined to believe the latter choice applied here. And rightfully so, I mean hello who uses a 24% interest rate card when I have an 11% one sitting at home for emergencies that we can get miles for? To hide it, that’s why. I binged.

So, to recap, the basic signs of addiction are there: binging, remorse, enabling my habit… but hey. I got a swift kick in the pants and I am back on track. I paid off that Target beast on my lunch break AND bought the stuff I needed with CASH. Now if only I could get myself to shred it…