Grocery Stock-Up

Last night, Robert and I went to the grocery store. This was an exceedingly necessary trip. We hadn't gone to get groceries since before our Christmas trip to see my folks and only the fact that they sent us home with bags of frozen food kept us going even this long! A fun little sort-of tradition we've developed is that my folks, who have a tendency to stuff both their large fridge-freezer and the downstairs deep freeze with way too much food, will go through their collection at the end of our visit and give us all sorts of stuff. This give them room in the freezer, and gives us all sorts of wonderful stuff to eat. We've had mini corndogs and French Toast Sticks, an excellent beef stew that I made into shepherd's pie with the addition of some frozen mashed potatoes, and all kinds of lovely things to eat. Waste not, want not, right? But we needed milk and margarine and formula, and there was a good sale going that I wanted to hit up, so it was grocery time!

Grocery time was originally going to be Sunday, but Sunday morning I woke up feeling weird and icky. I made it to church because I was worship leader that day, but by the time I got home, I was just feeling rotten, and starting to run a fever to boot. I sort of stayed away  from everyone at church, so I hope I didn't pass it to anyone. M watched Robert all Sunday and let me rest, which was helpful as I was almost totally nonfunctional. But by Monday morning, he had it too, which was even worse. We were both running at about 25% capacity, while Robert was still at 100, which made things hard. Working in shifts, we cared for him and slept, and eventually by Tuesday, we were starting to feel better. Robert never got sick, thank god. He was the only one of us who had a flu shot this year, which probably had something to do with it.

Anyway, with that happening, groceries got pushed forward to last night, which meant that I had to do all this month's WIC shopping and Meijer's big 11-for-$10 sale and use the other coupons I wanted to use all in the same visit! Eee! With Robert as my trusty navigator, we set out. This month I did something smart! Even though Meijer keeps the frozen food in front, I skipped it for once, and went straight for the baby aisle! I did all the WIC shopping first, stacked it all into a shopping basket, and put the basket under the cart. Not only did that keep it out of the way, it made it so much easier to get out and keep together at checkout time! I will always do that from now on. It took us almost an hour and a half for me to gather the sixty-odd items on my list (I did the 11-for-10 deal four times over, and got other stuff as well) and by the time we were getting towards the end, Robert was more than done with shopping. It was getting late, and he was tired and hungry! The nice lady in the deli saved our day by giving him a whole potato wedge, which was by far the largest french fry Robert had ever seen. And you know how he feels about french fries. Eating his way through that kept him busy all the way to the checkout counter, and most of the way through the line. Phew.

I'm trying a new experiment this month, one that is very popular with a lot of the frugal bloggers I like to read. You get your grocery budget for the month, and you take it out of the bank in cash. Before you go shopping, you figure out about how much your groceries will cost, and you take that much with you in cash, and you use it to pay for your groceries. You look at the money as you give it to the cashier, and you physically take your change. Not only does it make you think harder about how much you're spending, but when the money you've taken out of the bank for the month is gone, you're done shopping till next month. This was my first time trying it, so I carefully figured out all the prices and coupons and stuff before leaving home, estimating on what I didn't know for sure. I thought it would be around 55 dollars, but because it was my first time, I took 70 with me. It turned out that my sixty-odd items, a bulging cartful, cost me 53 dollars, a savings of 61 dollars total. Not bad for a rookie! That's still a third of my budget for the month gone, though, and it's only the sixth of the month now. I have lots of creative plans to make sure that the money and food stretches. After all, I have new silverware, new storage containers, and new pots and pans. I have no excuses not to get awesome in the kitchen!

Robert Goes Outside

I forgot to post yesterday! I got so busy answering ChaCha questions and reading my new book, suddenly it was 2am and I was falling asleep in my chair. D'oh. Here are extra pictures to make up for my shameful lack of diligence! We took Robert outside this afternoon to get pictures of him in natural light. I took thirty-six pictures of him and he smiled for exactly one of them. I think I will try again tomorrow in the morning, when he generally feels more smiley.

Today was a cleaning day. My friend Jamie came over in the afternoon, so in the morning M and I straightened up the joint, washing dishes, gathering laundry and cleaning the living room. I put the plastic floor pad from the desk that we NEVER EVER EVER use under the baby feeding station so I don't have to set a towel down anymore. It looks much nicer and is more effective to boot. (The desk is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, it takes up a huge chunk of our bedroom real estate and is used only as a repository for junk. I would like to get rid of it, but have been consistently outvoted by M and M's muscles, without which the desk cannot be moved.) Anyway, the place is looking a lot better and Robert has more room to almost-crawl. He crawled nearly a baby-handspan today before falling on his face!

Jamie's visit was fun, we talked about baby stuff and cravings. She is pregnant now, and is inheriting a lot of Robert's baby gear, since they're pretty sure it's a boy. This is awesome because we have no room for Robert's old stuff, and I don't want to actually get rid of big things like the swing. Today I gave her a box of Robert's newborn clothes, so there's the added benefit that I'll be able to see another teeny baby wearing Robert's adorable outfits and remember how he looked wearing them. D'awwww. As an added plus, Jamie and her husband come to town often, so they will look after our pets while we are traveling! Awesome! That's always the hardest part of traveling, finding someone to care for the animals. I am very happy about that.

Not too much else of interest today, so I'll backtrack to yesterday. We went to church and had some fun there with Robert's little buddies. The microphone system at church is new and very, very sensitive, so we also got a little of the sermon from the Unitarian church across the way, much to the pastor and sound guy's chagrin. It made Robert's friend CeeCee cry, very sad. After church, we dropped M off at school to do an afternoon of intense, baby-and-wife-free schoolwork, and went shopping.

Well, napping, and then shopping. Priorities! I had thirteen dollars in CVS reward money that was expiring yesterday, so that was the big priority. Luckily, CVS was running some great sales. Robert and I went in and got three things of John Frieda shampoo, two Glade scented oil warmers and two refills, a bottle of eyedrops, and three big cans of iced tea, all for under five dollars, which I paid with a gift card. I spent the 13 reward bucks and got 11 back, so that's not shabby at all. I saved fifty dollars off retail.

I just want to take a moment here to shill for John Frieda's Frizz-Ease line. I don't normally do that in my regular blog posts, but I am feeling in very good charity with them because I love their stuff and they release great coupons for it. I have frizzy flyaway hair, especially in the summer. This is hands-down the best shampoo I have ever used for making my hair actually look neat and orderly after it's been brushed and dried. It's awesome, and if you have frizz, you should try it out. Kind of expensive at five bucks a pop, but like I said, they have great coupons that combine well with CVS sales. I got my three bottles for two dollars after coupons and reward bucks. It's definitely worth more!

Anyway, after CVS we hit up Office Depot for their back-to-school loss leaders. It was right on the way, so it was an easy stop. I picked up ten pocket folders, three rulers, and three pencil cases, all for a total of 17 cents, which I was luckily able to find in my wallet. I wasn't about to do a debit transaction for 17 cents, that's just dumb. Hooray, stray nickels and dimes.! Most of the stuff at those office stores is ridiculously expensive, but if you go regularly and only buy the best sales, you get great deals. More stuff for the food pantry! I'm sure there are kids who use it who still need supplies.

Our last stop was at Sam's Club, where I spent a lot of money. I don't shop at Sam's as often as I used to, but every so often I go and stock up. I had armed myself for this trip in advance by cashing out the rewards for our two credit cards. Discover's cashback rewards scored us a free year's renewal and a ten dollar gift card, very nice, and Chase gave us 50 dollars right into our bank account, also excellent. Not, you know, excellent enough that I'm not still working to pay down as fast as I can, but still. All of that went right into this trip. The biggest expense by far was new printer ink. I won't buy the off-brand stuff anymore, but three color and two black cartridges set us back sixty-plus dollars. Yeow! Good thing we don't print too many pictures. This set will also last a lot longer than the last set. I ruined those cartridges by trying to get the off-brand cartridges to work. The first set we had lasted a long time.

Besides ink, I got a case of bottled water that'll last us a few months, a box of tortilla chips and two jugs of salsa, five pounds of carrots, three pounds of grapes, six pounds of bananas, and five pounds of mozzarella cheese. I also got new trash bags and paper towels (Yes Dad, we actually needed new paper towels, finally!) After much consultation with Robert, who was very encouraging, I also caved and bought the new Nora Roberts hardcover, The Search. It was ten dollars less than the cover price, and I have wanted it since before it came out. I'm so weak! But I stayed up half the night reading it, and it was amazing, and I'm not really very sorry. The whole trip, after gift card, came to 145 dollars, ouch! But I got pretty good deals on things, and passed up a lot that I would've thought were good deals before I educated myself.

When we got home, I embarked on one of my favorite activities, putting things in the freezer! I broke the big bag of shredded mozzarella into two-cup portions in individual baggies, put them in a freezer bag, and froze most of them to save for when we need them. We use tons of mozza, but in the fridge, some always goes to waste. I washed and froze the grapes, which are delicious that way, and pureed and froze almost fifty carrot cubes for Robert's future meals. The bananas are still green, but when they are ripe, a lot of them will hit the freezer too. I love it! I spent most of the evening, after baby was sleeping, reading my book and answering questions. As of tonight, my total ChaCha earnings are about 38 dollars, and I'm having a good time. After my last job, having a good time is extra-nice.

Stocking the Freezer

Today was a lovely day! Robert woke up at 5:30 and needed a diaper change (he's been doing that recently, maybe something to do with solid foods), but he let himself be sung back to bed and slept till the blissful hour of eight thirty. We played around and snuggled on the bed and watched Fraggles, and he ate some peas very nicely. When M came home from class, I even got a chance to take a nap, which is always wonderful. After my nap and Robert's nap, we went shopping and left M to have a nap and a few hours of peace and quiet as well.

And there was plenty of shopping to be done! I had to skip the stores that I would've had to take the interstate to get to because of an unexplained traffic jam, but we still hit up four different stores. At Office Depot, we got five cent pencil sharpeners and folders and 25 cent scissors, plus a fifty cent composition book for M, and new paper clips for my coupon binder. At CVS I got a new Schick Hydro 3 razor, a very nice razor that is normally ten dollars. I had to pay 1.50 because the other items I was going to buy were not in stock, but since I got 4 dollars back in extra care bucks, I feel pretty good about it. Now that M is shaving with a blade, we need twice as many good razors! At Walgreens, I got some free low-dose aspirin for the food bank, a couple of free pens, and clued in a nice lady with a lovely English accent about the sale on glue sticks, before picking some up myself. All of that stuff from all those stores cost me about five dollars total, not counting the ECBs I got back.

We finished up at Meijer, with some serious grocery shopping. There were some great sales in the deli, so I got ham, turkey and cheese, plus a half-loaf of day-old italian bread for sandwiches. I got four pints of blueberries and some peaches and some bananas, all of which will be pureed (except for what M and I eat) into baby food. There was also another sale on chicken legs and thighs, and this time I could stock up, because I have a freezer! Between that, the deli, and two pounds of ground turkey, I bought fifteen pounds of meat today. Meat is what we needed though, because we still have tons of stuff in the pantry that could be used with meat. I got bread too, for more sandwiches, and almost got some giant marshmallows, but they were too expensive, Oh well.

Robert was super good through the trip, getting compliments from the checker at CVS and the man stocking the frozen meat section at Meijer. He's in a bit of a solemn phase now, and that just makes people all the more eager to get him to smile. The cashier at CVS said I could just leave him right there with her, but I said my husband would probably have some hard questions if I came home without the baby. He was getting tired by the end of the fourth store though, and fussed a bit in line, but that was the worst of it. He's such a good shopper. We came home and he had a bottle and some banana mango food, and I made big fancy sandwiches on the italian bread for supper. I also bagged up the chicken pieces into crock-pot sized batches and put them in the freezer, and froze a tray of blueberries to eat later. I took a whole pint of blueberries and put them in the blender with a little rice cereal, then poured the puree into an ice cube tray and froze that too. When all the blueberries were frozen, I put the berries in a bag and the berry cubes in a bag, and, you guessed it, put them back in the freezer! I love the freezer!

Oh, and my niece advised me to try the Nuk sippy cup with Robert, since that's what worked with her kids. I actually happened to have one around that I picked up on clearance months ago, so I pulled it out to give it a try. Not a lot of progress today, but I have hope. We'll keep working on it. =)

Free is Delicious!

Well, Robert woke us up at three this morning, little stinker, so I'm entirely exhausted and I'd love to get to bed at midnight for a change. So I have five minutes to write this! Church this morning was nice, Robert was okay but had to be removed for rediapering, with much screaming, before even the children's message had started. Oh well, he's still very small. One day he'll be able to play in the nursery during church, and won't that be nice?

After church, we dropped M off at school to get some work done, and Robert and I went.. dum-de-dummmm... shopping! We hit up Walgreens first, my new favorite Walgreens where the other couponers don't go quite as early in the week. I didn't have much to get there this week, but Old Spice body wash was on sale where if you buy 1 for 4.49, you get 4.49 back in register rewards, plus I had BOGOF coupons for Old Spice body wash. I did that deal twice, so I got two free body washes, plus two body washes where I got back all I paid in coupon money. Not bad! I used up the coupon money by buying a mini humidifier on clearance sale for 12 dollars, down from 24. I also got three copies of the paper (and found Walgreens isn't discounting them anymore, boo), a box of juice sticks for water bottles, and a water bottle (free with the juice sticks.) The whole kit and kaboodle came out to twenty dollars, which is more than I normally spend at Walgreens, but did include a small appliance.

We also stopped at CVS, where I made a 3 dollar profit by buying shampoo, bar soap, and a can of waterless shampoo that had a rebate offer attached. After sales and coupons I paid 1.75 for everything, and I will get a 4.49 rebate back. That's the way to shop! Of course, I demonstrated the way not to shop a little bit later when I went to Babies R Us and went a little insane. I wanted a baptism outfit for Robert, but the actual fancy ones did not come in his size. I would've bought one, though, if it did. Even though they were 45 dollars for a little white baby tux that he would likely only wear once. Babies R Us is like that, it makes you insane. Robert was not helping, either. He slept like an angel the whole time I was in there, giving me plenty of time to browse. I ended up buying a white collared onesie for a shirt, white shorts, and then socks and little white shoes with crosses on them from the baptism clothes display. Too cute. Then I went on and bought another outfit (the shorts were BOGOF today, so I figured I might as well get my free item!), three Nuby bottles on clearance because we need bigger bottles that do not leak, a six pack of spoons for the transition to solids, and some clearance short-sleeved onesies. I spent nearly fifty dollars! It was nuts. I can see how people find it much easier to splurge on their children than on themselves.

This evening we did some cleaning, M cleaned up the kitchen while I attempted to excavate the dining room table. I found some Dominos Pizza gift certificates that my mom gave us that I'd totally forgotten about. Awesome! We got a large pepperoni pizza and a 2-liter of Diet Coke for supper and didn't have to pay anything for it. That made it taste especially good. And now: Bedtime!

On the Move

Today was quite a busy day. Robert got us up at the relatively civilized hour of 6:45, though the fact that I consider that a decent hour to wake up at sort of makes me sad. Where are the long lazy Saturday mornings of my youth? Gone, gone until he learns to operate cartoons by himself, I suppose. We all got dressed and headed out to the university to see a friend of ours give a talk about the research she's been doing. She really wanted to meet Robert, but she moved away before he was born, so it's been tough. Robert was really quite good during the lectures, and he charmed everyone he met, so that was nice. There was also delicious pizza for lunch, an extra bonus! It's nice to be able to take Robert to some places, even if listening to a lecture with a baby on your lap is like listening to a lecture with a randomized-timer bomb of spit up, poop, and screams, just waiting to go off. It makes things so exciting!

On the way to the lecture, we dropped by CVS to snag a bargain on some diapers. I had five dollars worth of stacking coupons, plus a two dollar coupon rewards offer, bringing the grand total of the diapers down to less than two dollars. I used coupon rewards to pay, so basically only the fifty cents of sales tax came out of my pocket. It's the only way to shop. =D On the way back we dropped by Meijer and picked up frozen ground turkey on sale and some more bananas. We also splurged on a bit of store brand ice cream, the better to watch the ice cream episode of Man Vs. Food. I love that show, but some episodes are just not good to eat when you're hungry.

Census is a little better, I think. I was pretty het up about it yesterday, but today I got to fob off the case that was really irritating me, and I managed to get in all my hours I need for the week. Another paycheck comes in three days, how exciting! Doing this work has made me get all philosophical about houses, being as how I spend a lot of time observing them and walking up to them these days. It's funny the expectations that you have, just walking up to someone's house. You expect a house to be a certain way, and when it isn't that way, or when your expectations are suddenly subverted, that can be disorienting.

For example, I was out the other day in a normal middle-class neighborhood and I went up to one of my houses. It was just a normal looking house, chairs on the porch, no cars in the driveway. I walked up onto the porch and looked at the door, and suddenly it was all wrong. The door was standing open, which is not so unusual, but it had no doorknob. There was just a hole where the doorknob mechanism should be, and a hanging-open door, and no one around at all. Suddenly, the entire complexion of the house changed for me. It wasn't what I'd thought it was anymore. It wasn't somebody's house, it was an empty shell that could have pretty much anything inside it. Even though there was virtually no danger in a nice neighborhood on a sunny afternoon, a little part of me just wanted to get the heck off that porch right then and not look back. It was kind of strange. Maybe I've watched too many scary movies, or maybe it's just an ostention of the same principle that horror movies trade on, that the familiar twisted just enough to be strange can be a lot scarier than the totally alien.

Anyway, that's the sort of philosophical musing that carried me through my two mile round trip walk today, maybe there's more of heat exhaustion than philosophy in it, but that's okay. In other news, the pool is going to open soon, and I'm really excited. I've been looking for a pool float for Robert, and I really like this one.  It's just as cute as can be, and not too expensive. Next time I get a paycheck, I think I may order that. An inflatable float and some swim diapers, and Robert will be ready for summer pool fun! I've already got the high-powered sunscreen!

May the Coupons be With You

I'm trying to get to bed early tonight since tomorrow's going to be a long day, but  I wanted to at least post about couponing today. I didn't coupon hardly at all last week, too busy with Census stuff, and no really thrilling sales. But CVS this week was practically begging me to come out and play, and I had to oblige! Plus my register rewards at Walgreens expired today, so I needed to spend them. I did a triple-transaction at CVS with the very nice cashier, and did quite well for myself. Robert was a little testy because it was late by the time we got out of the house, but he didn't cry, and the cashier thought he was funny, so it worked out all right. By the time I got done at Walgreens, he was sound asleep and slept through that much-simpler transaction.

So what did I get? Let's see... I got 2 bottles of aspirin, 2 tubes of toothpaste, a box of floss, a pack of sanitary pads, a Breeze 2 blood glucose monitor, 2 boxes of bandaids, 2 sticks of deodorant, 1 Hydro 3 razor, 2 bottles of Soft Scrub, 1 big bottle of SPF 70 baby sunscreen, and 2 bottles of pop. Oh, and a bottle of coconut rum that was on clearance. ;-)  Not a bad haul, all things considered! The damage? 94 dollars worth of stuff for 11 dollars, about an 88% savings rate. Plus most of that was on the CVS gift card I got for my birthday, so only about 3 dollars came out of my budget. Woo-hoo!

Bored of talking about pumping, it continues nonetheless. Robert is about to roll over, I'm sure of it. My dad suggested that taking off his diaper might help him roll over, so I tried that today. It seemed to help a little, but then he peed on the floor. Not sure I want to try that again. But he's getting stronger and fatter by the day, so that's very good! I took him outside with me today and we planted the tomato and pepper seedlings in their hanging basket. We'll see how they go. The peppers are looking great, but the seedling tomatoes are anemic at best. That's okay, I don't like tomatoes much anyway!

Another Kentucky Valley Sunday

I'm going to try and keep this short, because the evening got away from me and it's already midnight. Gack! Robert was really good today in church, I packed him a big bottle and between that, his paci, and the before-church nap, he made it almost all the way through the sermon before we had to walk him around a little. After church, the coffee-time snack was cake, and he put his hand right in the middle of my cake and got frosting everywhere. Gotta watch those teeny hands every minute! Luckily, M happened to be right there with a napkin and saved the day.

In the afternoon, I spent about an hour doing coupon reconnaissance, getting ready for my Walgreens trip. It usually doesn't take nearly so long, but there are a ton of sales there this week, and I wanted to take full advantage while spending as little money as possible. I don't have much budget left for the month! Walgreens has a complicated set of couponing rules that you have to know in order to be really successful there. I swear, if I taught a life skills class in high school, Walgreens would totally be the final exam. It'd hone the math skills, too. I finally took off with Robert, who had been  fussy and needed a car ride and some cart time so he could get a nice nap. We ended up going to three Walgreens before we found everything we needed, but it was worth it. In my three transactions, I spent 8.23, and received 98.60 worth of stuff, a 91.65% savings rate. (Incidentally, it also pushed me back over 75% this month!)

 I got a box of Purex 3-in-1 laundry sheets, two packs of maxi pads, four toothbrushes, two boxes of dental floss, two bags of dental floss picks, two bottles of body wash, two bottles of shave gel, two boxes of Sudafed Sinus, an electric eyebrow trimmer, two candy bars a package of packing tape, three copies of the Sunday newspaper, and a bottle of weird orange pop. (I needed a filler item!) For those of you playing along at home, if I had been paying regular price, just the roll of packing tape and the three newspapers would've cost just a bit more than my out of pocket cost for the whole trip. Couponing is your friend! Some of the stuff went straight into the bag for the food pantry, but some of it, especially the laundry sheets, I am very happy to have for myself.

For supper, I dipped into the food I couponed last month and made chili tamale pie with two cans of firehouse chili and two packages of corn muffin mix. It was very easy, pour the chili in a baking dish, mix up the muffins and pour them on top, cook at 400 for 25 minutes, then melt some Mexican shredded cheese over the top. Yum! For dessert, I made some cookie bars from a mix I got for free. We've got lots of leftovers for tomorrow lunch, too. And that's good, because Monday is always such a grind. I'd better get some sleep!

And Called it Macaroni

Rainy day today! Good for my plants, but bad for me! Robert and I missed our weekly trip to the thrift store (which is okay, because it meant I finally got the clothes I bought for him last week washed), and had to stay indoors all morning. Robert was fussy again, though we had some good times when I was flying him above my head and singing the Superman theme. The boy's got quite a smile on him, I just wish he'd break it out more often lately. I've been giving him the gripe water a couple of times a day, and it seems to help, so maybe he's gassy. I should mind what I eat more and see if that helps. I froze a quarter-sized chunk of fruit juice and tried him on the mesh teething paci today, but he would have none of it. I don't think it's his teeth yet. He ended up going to sleep at seven, which is early and unusual for him, but I can't say I wasn't grateful. ;-) 

This afternoon, after M got home from school, we made a family trip out to Meijer. Lately I have been needing him along for my Meijer trips because their carts are poorly designed and Robert takes up all the room in one basket, plus I usually need to do two transactions. Meijer's coupon policy is not bad, but they only double two identical coupons per transaction, and some of their sales have per-transaction limits. Today was a special "Buy 5 of these, get $5 off instantly," and there were some really good deals. We got 25 boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, four boxes of Ritz, two boxes of Chips Ahoy, a jar of Miracle Whip, four packages of deli meat, a box of Capri Sun and four packages of cheese, all for sixteen dollars. I also bought birdseed for the birds, because hey, they gotta eat! I'm marking down on my spreadsheet whenever I buy food for Victoria and the birds, so I can get a more precise measure on that for the budget. Even with Victoria's premium food, their food expenses are not too much. It is the vetting that is always the problem. I am hoping for healthy pets this summer. 

Oh, and I got a check from one of my survey companies in the mail today, so that's fifteen dollars to add to the budget this month or next. Hurrah! I actually just quit that survey company, so that's kind of funny. It was the first one I joined up with, and it was reliable, but the rewards were very small. Now that I can regularly get at least a dollar and often more for each survey, I am not interested in 25 and 50 cent surveys anymore. I also decided at the 11th hour to cancel our life insurance medical exam for tomorrow. I called the agent yesterday because I had questions, and he never bothered to call me back. If he's like that when he's trying to sell me insurance, what's his company going to be like when we're reeled in? I think we may be able to do better. 

The Herb Garden

Church this morning was nice as usual. I really like our new church, everyone is so nice to us, and they all love Robert. Yesterday they had a congregational meeting with food, and they marked some of the leftovers for us, so we had a pan of baked pasta to bring home with us from church. It was delicious and wonderful to have. I think I kind of forgot what it was like to be part of a church until I got involved with one again. I would like to be able to do more, but Robert crimps my volunteering style a bit. That's okay, eventually he'll be old enough to bring along to things. I also found and Facebook-friended a bunch of church people, which is great because I am so lousy with names. Now I have pictures with names attached to look at, yay!

After church, M went to get the oil changed in the car. We weren't supposed to be due for another month, but somehow we're several hundred miles overdue anyway. Oops. Anyway, he got it changed and they also replaced a taillight I didn't even know was out. That reminds me, I need to get to the courthouse this week and get our car re-registered! The last thing we need is a ticket! I'll probably do that on Thursday, I just need to keep reminding myself. We watched Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home  on Netflix on the television, which was fun. It's been a long time since I've seen that, and all the funny lines were funny again. Robert fell asleep in the swing, and took a nice long sorely-needed nap.

While he was napping, I took the opportunity to slip out to Walgreens for my weekly papers and to work a couple of deals. I had fifteen dollars worth of register rewards that would expire day after tomorrow, and I needed to use them up. Register rewards are basically coupon money, they are for dollars off your next transaction, so you can basically pay with them, anything except the tax on your purchase. You don't want to let them expire. Using my register rewards, I got four bottles of low-dose aspirin, two bottles of vitamins, four reusable grocery bags, three bottles of Dawn, four bags of gummy worms, two packs of Walgreens-brand Ding-Dongs, and three Sunday newspapers for $3.87 cash. Not bad, considering I would've paid 3.75 just to buy the papers, even at Walgreens' reduced price. In addition to that, I got 13 more register rewards to use next week! I will probably give the vitamins and the aspirin to the food bank, because I'm sure there is someone who is on aspirin therapy or who could use a Vitamin D supplement, but I don't need them myself.

Later on in the evening, after reading in the paper about Home Depot's special sale today, the three of us headed out all together to get some gardening supplies. I decided that this was how I was going to split the difference on my birthday money, spend it on something that I do very much want, my garden, but that is also good for the family. Today all their vegetable and herb plants in peat pots were buy one get one free, and since they were mostly 3.50 apiece, that's quite a good deal on a healthy plant in a four inch peat pot. I bought sweet basil, greek oregano, cilantro, catnip, lavender, and a watermelon, because I have always wanted to try growing one. I needed a bag of potting soil to put those in, and to freshen up last year's container gardening, and we picked up another 98-cent concrete slab to add to the path leading from the lawn to our door. I also picked up one of those tiny little seed-starter greenhouse things, and some tomato and pepper seeds to start in it. Vegetable seeds were also BOGOF, which was cool, and we got a CFL lightbulb for our living room lamp for 97 cents. Sweet!

When we got home, I decided I wanted to do the gardening right away, and set to work. Robert watched me for a few minutes, but it was getting on towards his bedtime and he lost interest rapidly. M took him inside while I finished and watered everything. It looks really good. After Robert was fed and in bed, I put together the little greenhouse, too. I can't wait to see how everything grows. Man, I am looking forward to some _amazing_ spaghetti sauce this summer.

Saturday Shopping and Baking

Morning started today at 4am with baby-feeding, but thankfully Robert went back down till seven, a slightly more humane hour. M and I swapped off watching him and each got a facsimile of sleeping in that way. It's not like the old days when we'd snuggle in together until halfway through the morning or later, but sleep is sleep. It helps that Robert is at his most charming in the morning, happy and smiling and noisy with sounds that aren't crying. We still have a lot of new-parent hormones flowing, and a big gummy smile can turn either of us into a cooing parental puddle, which is pretty funny to watch and oddly enjoyable to experience.

I didn't make it out shopping last night like I was going to, thanks to a sudden and acute attack of the lazy, but I went out today to Kroger with Robert. I used to do my WIC shopping and non-coupon shopping at Meijer, but I am still unhappy about the way I was treated last month, so boo to them. Kroger was very busy, something about one of the other nearby Krogers being closed for some reason, but we soldiered through anyway. I picked up some escarole for the birds because the vet says they need more veggies, and a little ball of lettuce is just the right size. I also got some bananas and a cantaloupe, and two boxes of Mother's Milk Tea , because I was totally out. The stuff is horrible, but it really works, I had some of that and some oatmeal this evening, and it made a real difference when I pumped, plus Robert was less fussy.

The WIC voucher this week got us milk, cheese, eggs, juice, beans, rice and peanut butter, all the nutritious staple foods. I did make the mistake of setting the voucher down in the carseat while I was bagging the lettuce, and when I looked over again, Robert had it clutched in his teeny little fist. He was happy about it, too. I had visions of trying to present a crumpled up, soon-to-be-drooled-on voucher at the checkout, and spent several minutes carefully prying it out of his hand. The time when I could use his lap as my coupon table is past, I think. Ah well. While we were there, I browsed the clearance carts and shelves as well. Kroger usually has interesting things on clearance, and sometimes I can get really good deals. Today I got some lemonade tubes and some almond-cranberry oatmeal for well under a dollar each, and I picked up a NUK Learner Cup  for just 3.19 on clearance. Good deal! Robert won't be ready to use it for awhile yet, but might as well get it now when the getting is good!

At the checkout, I found that my cashier had the same midwife as me, Sister Kay, which was cool. I felt bad though, because she had her baby less than three weeks ago and was already back at work. I think that's just awful, but what can you say? It's not like she probably had much choice in the matter, checkers don't get paid maternity leave. It was another reminder to me to be grateful for all that I have, even if sometimes I feel frustrated or like we never have enough. I'm actually very fortunate to be in the position that I'm in and have the opportunity I do. Once we got home, Robert went down for a nap and M and I cleaned out the birdcages, then he did all the dishes. Woo-hoo!

Having all the dishes done put me in a creative mood. I haven't been using eggs as fast as we get them lately, so a lot of them have built up in the fridge, and I decided to use some for baking. I found a cool recipe for cinnamon-sugar biscotti and made that. It was easy, and I even got down the food processor to give my flour a proper sifting. M and I both thought it turned out really well. I would like to try it sometime when I have real butter on hand, I think it would be even better. I tried some with my tea, but that was actually kind of icky, because it made me taste the tea for longer. I ended up going with my usual technique, letting the tea cool till tepid and then chugging it as fast as possible. Undignified, but it works.

Baby Shopping Aggregator

From time to time on my blog, I will do reviews of websites I've been asked to look at, sort of like a survey where I share the results with people. I receive compensation for doing these reviews, but they don't tell me what I have to say, or even that I have to say nice things. All the opinions contained herein are entirely my own.

Today I looked at a baby shopping aggregator called Become.com. Well, actually it's a shopping aggregator for a lot of things, but they have a fairly substantial baby section as well. If you're not familiar with the concept of a shopping aggregator, it's a website where you can enter whatever it is you're shopping for and it will look at different websites to see what's available and how much it costs. Ideally, the aggregator directs you to the lowest priced item available and you can buy it directly from the retailer's website.

The best way to test one of these websites is to run some actual searches on it, so that's what I did. First off, I ran a general search for baby tunnels. I think it's a crying shame that the Baby Einstein tunnel we got for Robert has been discontinued, but there are other tunnels out there. This site returned a good variety from a bunch of different websites, though it leaned very heavily towards Babies R Us and seemed to ignore sites like Amazon and Target. I learned about products I'd never heard of, and that I might not have found just looking at one site. So that was a positive.

The next search I ran was for a specific baby item, the Winkel I was talking about last night. It's currently enjoying Most Favored Toy status around here, and I've been told by experienced parents that anything especially beloved should be backed up in case of loss or disaster. It found the Winkel right away, both the original version and the alternate-color version, so that was good. What I did notice, though, was that it didn't give me a list of places that carry the Winkel, just one hit for each type, and a price tag of 13.95. I prefer my aggregators to be able to show me a list of places that carry an item, and the price plus shipping from each site. Just for reference, I ran a quick Google search and turned up three prices lower than that for the Winkel at other stores. So I'm not sure I would use it for actual shopping, at least not on its own.

Overall, I think this baby aggregator could be a valuable research tool when you're not quite sure what you're looking for. It's really nice to be able to look at a lot of different sites without having to navigate all over the place, and to compare different varieties and brands of things. For individual items, though, I think it should just be a starting point, and I would probably look at other websites as well. That's alway good advice, if you want a good bargain, you've got to shop around a little.

Helping My Hamburger

Today I took nineteen pictures of Robert. All of them are of him crying or just about to cry. This should give you some kind of idea of what kind of baby-wrangling day it was. He was sweet at church, thankfully, and then spent most of the rest of the day having baby tantrums. I haven't made it down to the store lately for a weighted feeding, but I think I'm going to have to. He's so fussy after eating, I wonder if he's getting enough. In the meantime, I'm drinking the mother's milk tea that I have, and looking at getting more. That stuff hardly ever goes on sale, either. Bummer.

The new week of shopping has been good to me so far, though. Meijer is running another of their "Buy 10 for 10, get the 11th item free" promotions, and once again it has coincided with a good run of Hamburger Helper coupons, as well as coupons on a number of other box and package mixes for things. M and Robert and I went to the store this afternoon, and while Robert sniveled in my cart, we got two identical orders of 22 items apiece, each one 12 Helpers, two boxes of potatoes, two boxes of pasta, two cans of soup, and two packages of cookie mix. We split on the last items, he got dinner rolls and I got the sponge cake portion for strawberry shortcake. I also picked up a tub of Cool Whip towards that end as well. With coupons, we ended up with 73 dollars worth of food for 21 dollars. (Observant readers will note that this is about half what you'd expect to pay for 44 items in a Buy 10 for 10 sale, but that's the beauty of coupons.) I used our gift card from last month, so it doesn't come out of the budget, either. Excellent. The only other purchase of the day was my weekly newspapers at Walgreens, plus I picked up the free 8x10 I ordered during their week of deals last week.

Oh wait, no, I was totally wrong about that. This evening I got a wild hair and started shopping on Amazon, because it is almost my birthday. Swagbucks and Surveyhead, two of the online companies I work with, reward me in Amazon gift cards, and I had 40 dollars worth saved up after a few months of work. Not bad! I found a beautiful glass teakettle/infuser that is stove and microwave safe, and will infuse tea right in the kettle. It's just lovely, and will be even better when I don't have to drink the nasty tea anymore and can have good tea. I also picked up an entire Nora Roberts trilogy that I've been wanting but haven't wanted to pay for up until this point. I got the first two used, and picked up the third one on preorder, so I saved in each case. Between the tea kettle and the four books, I used all my gift cards, but I only ended up spending 49 cents of my own money. That will be a lovely birthday present to myself, and now I don't mind so much if I end up needing the cash money for something. I can't wait to brew a pot of tea and sit down with a new book... preferably after seeing M and Robert off on some adventure outside the house. ;-)

Super Double Coupon Day!

Today was a very busy day. We had to get up early early and get out of the house by 7:30 for my appointment at the health department. Not being insured definitely sucks. I had to wait a month for this appointment, where I filled out a questionnaire and gave a urine sample and made another appointment, again for a month from now, though I can pray for cancellations. If that appointment in a month goes well, I will get another appointment to actually see a health care provider, woo-hoo! I can hardly wait.


There was no time to go home after the clinic, because M had to go straight to class. Robert and I dropped him off, then noodled around in Cincinnati for a couple of hours, so as not to drive all the way home and back again. I have a bag packed up for the food bank, so I went to church to drop it off, but it was closed and locked. I even tried the parsonage, but the pastor was not in. Oh well, I can always drop it off on Sunday. Filling the bag made room in my storage boxes, and it makes me feel good, too. Part of me thinks it might feel kind of odd to be in a shelter and getting this fancy shampoo and conditioner, but maybe it'll make someone happy. I have decided that in the future I will definitely buy less conditioner and more shampoo. I use conditioner all the time, but shampoo is totally more useful. After the church, we went to McDonalds and I used my last free frappe coupon while Robert allowed people to coo at him for awhile. I nursed him in the car in the parking garage, and we were ready to face the rest of our day.

When M was done going to class it was time for him to teach a class. We headed back into Kentucky to his other school, where he showed Robert off to his faculty friends and to his class. I sat in his office with Robert while he was actually teaching, and ended up turning off the top light so the baby could catch a nap. He was fussy. When that was all done, we headed home, Robert ate again, and then it was time for SUPER DOUBLE COUPON DAY!!!

I have been very excited about Super Double Coupon Day at Remke. This weekend, Remke is having an event where they double coupons up to 2.00, rather than just 1.00 as is the norm at doubling stores. So if you have a coupon worth one dollar, it's suddenly worth 2, which is huge. Remke is a small local chain, so nobody does price matching online and I was on my own, so I printed off many one dollar coupons that I thought might net free or cheap product, and Robert and I did some serious shopping legwork. And we did well for ourselves! One thing to remember is that Remke is not a cheap store, not at all. You don't see stores with competitive prices doing super doublers. The only stores I've ever seen do it at all are Remke and K-Mart, which is a store that combines the dirty hopelessness of an off-brand dollar store with the upscale prices of an affluent department store and the surly customer service of the Soviet Union. Remke is a far more pleasant place than that, but its prices are super-high for groceries in this area.

Even with effectively two dollars off coupons, quite a few things remained out of the price range I was willing to pay, but I got some great deals. I wound up spending fifteen dollars on what would've been a 45 dollar purchase after Remke's sales, before my coupons. Tack on another 20 for shopping the sales, and I paid fifteen for what would've been closer to 70 if I'd gone in there with no sales and no coupons, so I'm pretty happy. The best part, I think, about the super doubler is that it let me indulge in a few premium items I normally couldn't get even with coupons. I got a box of Peppridge Farm cookies, which I love, some Buitoni tortellini, and two packs of King's Hawaiian rolls, which I also love, but which are normally so expensive I can only buy them for parties. We used the rolls tonight on the slow cooker barbecue chicken I made of the cheap chicken quarters from Kroger, and it was amazing. Love it! Robert was a very good shopping buddy. I usually let him "hold" the coupons by setting them in the carrier while I push the cart, but today he surprised me by actually grabbing them and waving them around. I almost couldn't get them back. =) He's getting really good at this whole "having hands" thing!



Oh, and as promised, pictures of my coupon binder! As you can see, I really haven't done any wholesale clipping, I've just put the whole insert into the page protector and secured the top with a paper clip. My coupon-matching websites tell me which insert to look in for the coupons I need, and if I see a sale and want to coupon-match myself, I can always use the Taylortown Preview, a website that lists all the coupons in every insert. I would like to think of something clever to do for a cover, as right now I just have the generic "This is a binder" cover on it, and that's boring. I know a few people read this regularly now, so if anyone has any ideas, let me know!

Jumping for my Love

Still haven't found my camera cord, how annoying! I did find out that I can swap out the SD card into my camcorder and upload it that way, which is better than nothing. So I have a picture for you today! Yesterday was a pretty quiet day, Robert and I hung out in the daytime and nursed our colds, then I went and picked up 20 free photo prints from Walgreens. That makes 70 free photo prints in a week, between Walgreens and CVS. Almost all of them are of Robert. ;-)

Today was a nice day. Robert was in a good mood almost all day. When he was alert, he was very alert and wanted entertainment, and when he was not, he wanted to sleep. He took a very nice nap in the crib, and one in the bouncer, and one in the swing. The big excitement, though, was the Jumparoo! I know he's very little for it, but I have been wanting to put it together since basically before he was born, and his head control is very good for his age. I took it out of the box and put it together this morning, then tried him out in it. He really loves it for about five minutes at a time, after which point all the stimulation totally overwhelms his tiny brain and he wants out. I think he'll really have fun with it as he gets bigger. Right now, I have to put a pack of sheets underneath it, because his little feet don't touch the floor, even on the lowest setting.



When M got home from school, Robert and I took the car and went to Walgreens to spend the last of my coupons there this week. I also took my old ink cartridge to try and get it refilled, but was informed that Epson cartridges aren't refillable, at least not at Walgreens. Bummer! I will look into that further, but I may just have to keep an eye out for deals at Staples and Office Max. I have Office Max rewards coming to me next month, I know.

At Walgreens, we picked up more Frappucino (yay!) and the very last clearanced Easter candy that I will get, I swear, and another thing of Kotex and three more shampoos. I found out from my pastor how to get stuff to the food bank, so I'm getting a bag ready for this weekend. I then splurged and bought a package of page protectors so that I could actually put together my coupon binder like I've been wanting to for weeks. That cost more than all the rest of it put together, but it was worth it. I got the binder put together tonight, and I love it. (I will show you a picture of how it turned out tomorrow!)

We had not-so-good luck at the checkout counter, when I didn't get one of my register rewards, and the manager had to be called. It turned out that the cashier had forgotten to ring up one of the shampoos, so I didn't get the reward I should have. We had to void the whole transaction, get all the coupons back out of her envelope, and try the whole thing again. But she and the manager were very nice about it, and I was very nice about it, and most importantly, Robert stayed calm the whole time. He is often chancy at checkout, when the cart is not moving. In the end, it all turned out fine. Oh, and they also let me trade in my two unopened packages of Size 1 Huggies for Size 2 Huggies, so I am feeling very good about Walgreens today.

At Home and Shopping Again

It's been a few days between posts, partially because I've been very busy, but mainly since I can't find my camera upload cord since we got back from Illinois. I hope I didn't leave it there. Luckily, now that I have an SD card, there's more than one way to skin an upload! Or something. In any case, there are pictures, both here and on the Flickr account.

The big news of today is that we bought a netbook at Best Buy, because M's hard drive bit the dust big time and needs to be sent away for what are likely to be lengthy repairs. It is under warranty, but our backup computer, a six-year-old Gateway, is also on its last legs, we decided it was time to get something small, relatively cheap, and highly portable. We'd already shelled out 150 dollars to attempt to repair the Dell's hard drive, but we got that back when the attempt failed, so put that money towards the new netbook. M's folks are generously contributing to the fund as well. I've been doing research for a couple days, and we eventually decided on an Asus netbook without a huge amount of processing power, but with a good long battery life, Windows 7 starter, and that is absolutely adorable in every way. We're very happy with it so far. It pretty much takes care of the remainder of our tax refund money, but it's a good investment. We also got the full two year replacement warranty, since it's small enough to fit in the diaper bag and I'm sure we're going to break it at least once. =)

So that was our big expenditure of the year thus far, but I've also been doing a lot of other shopping lately. Lots of it! Yesterday, Robert and I got out the stroller and did the two and a half mile round trip walk to Walgreens for some couponing. Man, Mommy is sooo out of shape. It wouldn't have been so bad except for the fact that Kentucky insists upon being full of hills. We did very well for ourselves, though, getting 83 dollars worth of stuff for 12 dollars. I picked up three boxes of Kotex and six bottles of Garnier Fructis shampoo and hair stuff, some of both of which will go to the food bank as soon as I talk to my pastor about where to take it. I also got some packs of pens, four Frappucinos, five Cadbury Eggs and six toothbrushes (to go with all the toothpaste I've been getting!) I managed to wedge all of that, barely, into the basket below the stroller, and pushed the whole thing home. Robert had a good time, he likes traveling in the stroller and usually sleeps most of the time. It's been eighty degrees for the past two days here, so it was a warm, warm walk.

Today M cleaned the kitchen for me this morning, which made me really, really, really happy. He's been super busy lately, working on a big paper, and with him at school and me dealing with the baby, the house has fallen into extreme disrepair. Having the kitchen clean was really great. We dropped him off at school to spend the rest of the day on his paper, and after a little time to reconnoiter at home, headed off on a multi-store spree. Robert was an angel through Target, CVS, and Walgreens, but melted down halfway through Kroger, because he was getting hungry. Luckily, at eleven weeks he is at the age where screaming is generally adorable to strangers, rather than annoying. Getting all our stuff into the house was quite a challenge by myself, especially with a hungry baby, but I managed. It helps that Robert quite likes being outside, so I could let him sit on the patio and watch me as I made numerous trips from the car to the patio, then from the patio to the kitchen.

Target was an excellent trip, I got two Intuition razors, an automatic air freshener, a bottle of VitaminWater, and a box of Cadbury eggs, with an out of pocket cost of 1.96 after my gift cards from last time. I also got another five dollar gift card for next time, sweet! I should note that I would've paid less than fifty cents if not for the impulse egg purchase, they are my Achilles heel. I keep buying them at half price and putting them in the freezer. At CVS I paid sixty cents for a Pantene shampoo and conditioner, a tube of toothpaste, a pack of gum, and fifty prints I'd ordered online of the Daily Roberts and some other good pictures. Walgreens, I got another pack of Kotex and six more bottles of Garnier Fructis, along with six more erasable gel pens. With tax that all came to nine dollars, but I got a ten dollar coupon back, bringing me to 20 register rewards dollars for Walgreens next week. In total, I paid 21 dollars at Walgreens this week, got 125 dollars worth of stuff, and wound up with six more coupon dollars than I started with. That's not bad, not bad at all.

Kroger was actually for grocery shopping, which is harder to quantify in my system. Partially it's because I bought a ton of stuff that was on Manager's Special for half price or less, and that doesn't show up as savings on my receipt. My receipt says I saved only 26%, but I know I did better. I spent two of my WIC checks and took advantage of the deal on strawberries this week. Strawberries on my cereal in the morning, yay! Between those and grapes and bananas, I got to 9.91 out of the 10 dollars my check allowed, pretty doggone good for dead reckoning on weighted products. ;-) Some other good deals were the Warm Delights desserts I got free when I found them in the clearance bin and coupon matched, the fourteen pounds of chicken for eight dollars, and the free pouches of instant mashed potatoes that also gave me a coupon to use off my purchase next time. I spent 44 dollars and went home with a trunk full of groceries, and it was good.

I still have coupons gathered for small trips to Meijer and Wal-Mart this week, but I don't know that I'll make them, what with the computer purchase and all. I do have to run to one place or the other to get birdseed, though, or I'll have a mutiny on my hands. That was the one thing I forgot today, thanks to El Nino mas Triste. You should've seen me by the end, bagging groceries with one hand while holding the paci in his mouth with the other. This motherhood thing is crazy!

A Story of Toys

This morning Robert woke up bright and early as soon as the sun was uppish at 6am, lucky us. M and I took turns as we often do, one of us sitting up with him with the other one catches an extra hour of sleep. That's the nice part of M's spring break, the historical archive doesn't open till noon, so he's been around some mornings. We went out to New Hope, the pregnancy center where we took classes and I went to clinic when I was pregnant, to say hello to our counselor and to drop off my maternity clothes. I don't need them anymore, and plus sized maternity clothes are expensive and hard to find. In the past year, we have had to rely so much on the kindness of friends and strangers and on government programs, it feels good to be able to give something back. Even if it's just giving things from my coupon stash to people who need them, or donating extra baby clothes or my maternity stuff to a mom who wasn't as lucky as I in having family and friends to help. Robert is always a big hit when we go there, they knew him when he was just a well-concealed bulge in Mom's tummy. =)

After the visit there, we dropped M off at the archive and headed home for a bit. Chatted with the next door neighbor, Robert ate and had a little nap, and I planned my coupon excursion. When he woke, we took off! We headed to Toys 'R Us first, looking for Toy Story 1 and 2, which were rereleased today and which I had excellent coupons for, but they were out. I was bummed, but as it turned out, it worked to our benefit in the end. I'm about ready to give up on Toys 'R Us, in all the times I've visited there, they never had what I was looking for. Bummer.

Our next stop was Target, and I did very, very well there. Robert was in a good mood, sleeping for awhile, then looking around, which is the best way to shop with him. I love to talk to him as we walk around the store, explaining what we're doing and how I'm using the coupons. He's an excellent audience. Target did have the Toy Story Blu-Ray/DVD Special Edition combo pack in stock, and they were running an even better sale than Toys 'R Us! Between the ten dollar discount I got from buying both together and the individual ten dollar coupons I had for each movie, I got the pair of them for 14 dollars. Not only that, but each one came with a coupon for a movie ticket to see Toy Story 3, and 135 Disney Rewards points. So for my 14 dollars, I got two DVDs, two Blu-Rays, two movie tickets, and redeemed the points to donate four plush toys to Gifts in Kind. I was quite pleased! Robert is going to love these so much when he gets older.

That wasn't the only deal we got at Target. I got the two DVD Combo Packs, two jumbo packs of Huggies (a moment of weakness, I swear!), ten bottles of Sobe Lifewater, a bottle of Vitaminwater, and a child-sized beach towel. That was 101 dollars worth of stuff, but with my two five dollar gift cards from last time, I got the whole thing for 22.87. I used the last of the gift card we got in the mail for it, and got another five dollar gift card back! That fifty dollar gift card got us 160 dollars of wonderful things. After that, we ran to the deli and picked up turkey and cheese so we can make sandwiches for the trip on Thursday and we won't need to buy fast food. I made fried rice for supper with the liquid from the pulled pork last week, which was kind of like pork-flavored Jello Jigglers till I warmed it in the microwave, but gives plain brown rice an excellent flavor. I love fried rice, you take whatever leftover meat you have, add rice, egg, half a bag of veggies, and a packet of seasoning, and it's wonderful.

TGIF!

What a crankypants morning we had! Robert thrilled me to pieces by sleeping till almost seven thirty after waking at 3 to eat, but after he woke up, oooh, it was a fractious day. The ladies at the thrift store thought it might be his tummy bothering him, since he kicked his legs a lot when he cried. It's not the craziest theory I've ever heard. Anyway, we went outside and went inside and went outside again, we walked around, we sat down, we nursed FOREVER, and nothing seemed to quite do the trick. Eventually I laid him in his crib and turned on ESPN radio for him, and he took a nap for awhile. By the time M got home, for whatever reason, the tide had turned and Robert was ready to be sweet for the rest of the day. Must be Daddy's lucky day. =)

With M home and the baby calm, I took the opportunity to make one more run to the stores for the week. I don't usually shop this often, by the way, but sometimes the stars align and a lot of stores run a bunch of good sales at once. Between that and some gift cards stretching my monthly budget, it has been a very good week! Today I hit up Meijer again to snag their 11 for $10 one more time, Kroger to double-dip on their Buy 8, get $4 off deal, and then Walgreens for free snacks. I won't go into exhaustive detail like yesterday, but suffice it to say that I got 107 dollars worth of stuff for 28 dollars, and since seven of that was gift card, 21 dollars of our actual money. And I will point out that half of that amount (and I had a trunkful of groceries, mind you) was a ten dollar bottle of gripe water that someone recommended to help ease the tummy pain in a gassy baby.

This is not going to be our best weekend, M is going to be super busy with everything he still needs to do, so it'll be sort of like a weekday around here, but that's okay. Robert and I have a lot to do, too! This time next week, we'll be up in Illinois and seeing everyone! I'm so excited, I can hardly wait!

Oh, and during Robert's nap today, I rearranged my closet storage to make it easier to keep track of my couponed non-food loot. Here is a picture of all I have!

Shopping, Shopping, Shopping!

As you may have guessed from the title of my post, today was a day for shopping. M spent all day at the historical archive, so Robert and I painted the town red. We started out at the Optimist Club meeting, where a candidate for judge executive was giving a speech. They were broadcasting it on public access television, so I had to try and keep Robert quiet through the whole thing. Thank God I brought a bottle. He got mentioned in the speech as the future of Kenton County though, which was kinda funny. I decided not to mention that we're bailing on this county as soon as possible unless I can get a job. After that, we went to Knitwits and socialized for awhile, but Robert was kinda fussy and it annoyed one of the owners, so we bailed and went shopping.

Robert likes shopping, so long as the cart is moving. We went to Target and played "How much can we make this gift card worth?" We got a lovely gift card in the mail yesterday as a present, and it was very timely because I had many coupons for Target. We went out and bought 54 dollars worth of stuff, spent 24 dollars on the gift card, and got back 10 dollars in new gift cards! It was awesome! We got cereal, and some baby soap, and diapers, body wash and some razors, and a pair of bunny ears that you will see in a picture soon.

Since Robert was still in a good mood and the weather was lovely, we went to Walmart too, with another handful of coupons. This was mostly a freebie trip. We got four free taco seasonings, three free packs of Kotex, another free baby soap, a free box of something called "Tuna Snacks," that despite its name is not for Victoria, and six cans of tomato paste for a quarter apiece. Ended up spending 1.73 there. Noted that Walmart has an unusually low changing table in the washroom, but any port in a storm!

After we picked M up and came home, I thought shopping was done for the day. But while I was feeding Robert, I read on one of my blogs about a supermegafantastic deal on diapers at K-Mart, so I had to run out there as soon as he was done. I got four jumbo packs of Huggies (and two bottles of nail polish, to make the deal work) for 13 dollars, plus I got six dollars in K-Marts rewards. So basically seven dollars for all that, or roughly four cents per diaper. So pleased! The reward for my thrifty virtue was that by the time I got home, Robert was asleep in bed, and we've got quiet peace in the house. Ahhh. =)

Shopping and Many Errands

We had a very busy day today. Robert woke up early, around 6:30, but poor M was a trooper and got up with him to let me sleep. Love! I got up a little later and we gave the baby a bath. He was so dirty. M had a paper to turn in at the university, so we all drove up there just before ten, and Robert and I got gas while M printed off his paper and turned it in. Then we all went out to Cincinnati Children's Hospital with four freezer bags full of bags of expressed milk. I think it was about a gallon and a half. I froze about six ounces every day from the time Robert was five days old until just recently when he became fully acclimated to nursing. Our freezer was chock-full of the stuff, so I got in touch with the Ohio Mother's Milk Bank to talk about donating some. Donated milk is very important in helping preemies and sick babies whose mothers can't produce milk for them, because it's so much healthier than formula. I gave the milk to the lactation consultant, then got a little blood taken for tests, just so they can make sure I'm healthy and disease free.

We left Cincinnati, went to FedEx to drop off the package of tests, and then stopped by Taco Bell for a very cheap lunch on the run. Naughty, I know, but we were starving. =) Had a very interesting experience with Cinnamon Twists that someone had forgotten to put cinnamon and sugar on. Weird! We stopped at home just long enough to feed the baby, then took M to his other school to teach, and Robert and I went to the car dealership. We said hello to the guy whose trash can I threw up in last summer (only morning sickness I ever had!). He was amused to see me again, and the baby. Our airbag got fixed (it had been recalled), and then we went to Motherhood Express.

Motherhood Express is a cool store, it's all stuff for breastfeeding, plus they have a lactation consultant on staff, and they let women come in and just feed their babies there if they're out running around. I did a weighed feeding with Robert, to see if he might be fussy because he's not getting enough to eat. In 25 minutes he scarfed down four and a half ounces of milk, according to their clever scale, so that's definitely not it! We went back to school to pick up M, and stopped in to say hello to his colleagues as well. Our last big errand of the day was at Meijer. We went to the one in Cold Springs after I had a nasty experience last week with the one in Florence. Some cashiers are just ecch! Anyway, we got 24 boxes of Hamburger and Tuna and Chicken Helper for sixty cents apiece, four packages each of free Bagel Bites and Chex Mix, six rolls of ground turkey at a dollar apiece, some frozen veggies, and splurged on Thin Mint ice cream that was on sale for 2.50 a quart. Soooo delicious. =) We ended up with 75 dollars worth of stuff for 26 dollars.

After all this traveling, Robert basically cried all evening, which wasn't very fun. We took him outside and sat with him on the grass, which distracted him for a little while, and passed him back and forth between us to try and soothe. Eventually I took him back in the bathtub, which calmed him down. We put him into bed at eight-thirty and he went out like a light. Whew! And thank God for the pulled pork, because neither of us wanted to cook anything after the long day.

March 31, the end of the month in food

Just an update from my last post, the blanket washed just fine, and the fabric softener made it smell great. I got the cheapest fabric softener whose smell didn't make me want to barf, and I figure I won't have to use it too often, anyway. I refrained from spending two extra dollars and getting the Downy Ball to go with it, so I just stood in the laundry room and knit on a new blanket until the final rinse cycle. I didn't even have to dry it in the dryer, it was practically dry after the spin cycle. And it's so pretty! I'm very pleased.

 Anyway, onto the food which is theoretically what I came to talk about. The end of March has been a pleasant embarrassment of riches, where the big difficulty has been deciding what, of many possible choices, we're going to eat. I haven't even made a food plan yet, because it's harder to wrap my mind around plenty than paucity. But hey, if I'm gonna have a problem, that's the one to have! A lot of what I've made this week has been using up stuff we already had, and snacking on new stuff. I haven't had this much fresh produce in many, many months. It's amazing to have berries and grapes and pineapples and apples all available. That's been a big part of breakfast and snacking for the past week, along with the Lean Pockets M picked up at Sam's. Those used to be a big part of our diet, but they're just too expensive for their size and nutritional value.  One is an okay breakfast, but it's certainly not a lunch or dinner. 

In playing catch-up in the last week of March, I used up cheese, chicken breasts, rice, and some other stuff I'd gotten replaced, but managed to make everything taste quite good. One big step was M's first pizza. I was going to make tomato-sauce chicken again (I know, repetetive, but I love it now), and he got the notion that what he really wanted was pizza. I told him that he should make a pizza. He said he didn't know how. I told him it was easy. He said he would mess it up. I told him not to. Finally I said I would help him, but by then he'd decided he was going to do it himself. Chicken bacon artichoke pizza is the pizza of choice around here, and it is not difficult. Somehow, though, M managed to add about twice as much water to the dough mix as was recommended, making a batter instead of a pizza dough. I was called in to consult. I ended up tossing in a lot more flour, some sugar, and some baking powder, then letting it rest awhile. M insisted on doing "the fun part" and made me grate cheese while he decorated the pizza. It turned out better than it had any right to. 

We did make one buying trip to fill out our food supply, picking up milk, cream cheese and a ham at Meijer. It may be hard to believe, but I did finally start running low on ham after freezing it all in portions and putting it into recipes and soups as needed.What's worse, though, is that I ran out of pork fat. I didn't even know how much I need pork fat until I had it available. This time I was much more careful in conserving and melting off the fat, and got a considerable amount of it to use in my cooking. It doesn't look appetizing, I know, but as Emeril says, it's the essence of pure flavor. Unless that's LSD, of course. 

I also made a good chicken fried rice and remembered to take a picture for once, so I'll toss that in here as well. This was an easy one, just plain cooked white rice, some chopped onion, frozen peas, fried rice seasoning, and a couple of leftover chicken breasts.I find that it is possible to cook everything in one pan, not counting the rice cooker, if you first heat the rice in the wok pan, then brown the chicken and remove it, then cook the onions and shove them to one side, then scramble the egg, then, when everything's getting hot enough to burn and the rice isn't quite ready, toss in the frozen peas. That cools it down just long enough. Then you toss in the rice, the chicken, the seasoning and the soy sauce, and mix it all up. Yum!