How Not To Spend Too Much at Starbucks

November 12, 2010 | 1 Comment

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Na Starbucks com um mocha
Creative Commons License photo credit: CesarCardoso

Step One.

Buy Starbucks Mocha Powder so you can make mochas at home.

Step Two.

Find a copycat recipe for those amazing Pumpkin Cream Cheese muffins.

Step Three.

Buy a like new espresso maker at the consignment shop for $7 so you can make steamed milk and espresso for cappuccinos and mochas.

Step Four.

Get yourself a Starbucks card and register it. Eventually you’ll earn one of those fancy Gold cards and they’ll give you a free drink occasionally. Also useful for keeping yourself on a budget. (Load the card monthly or weekly. )

Step Five.

Buy your Starbucks beans at the grocery store when they go on sale for $6.99 a bag and use those $1 or $1.50 off coupons that occasionally show up in the Sunday paper.

Step Six.

Don’t forget to take your empty coffee bag to Starbucks and get a free tall beverage (the bag is like a coupon).

Step Seven.

Always use your reusable mug, and make sure the barista gives you the .10 discount.

You’re welcome. :-)

Posted by carrie | Filed Under Frugality 

Things I Learned By Watching BABIES

November 11, 2010 | 2 Comments

Have you seen the documentary Babies yet?

It’s pretty adorable. If you have Netflix, you can watch it on instant play.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Anyway, since the movie is kind of an educational kind of a thing I thought I would share some gems I learned from it.

(Warning: spoiler alert.)

  • Big brothers can be mean. For example, when mom’s out back milking the ox, they might take the opportunity to slap you repeatedly in the face with a biscuit or their pants. But, they will get quite a tongue lashing afterward by Mom.
  • Babies don’t need toys. Fingers, toes, big sister’s jewelry, empty plastic bottles somebody left in the Sahara Desert… all fair game.
  • When you’re about a year old, you’ll discover another toy. If you play with it around your older brother, he will be embarrassed and try to cover it up.  Thankfully, it’s attached to your body.
  • If Grandma decides to give you a haircut with an 8″ inch knife, BE…VERY… STILL.
  • Water in short supply? Mom spit and breastmilk make fine substitutes.
  • Babysitting? Forget asking mom to pump a bottle. Your other “side” will do nicely.
  • Living in a yurt looks uber cool.
  • Hot Asian chicks look gorgeous while breastfeeding. And babywearing (in 4″ heels no less) through the streets of Tokyo.
  • Dads are sweet but can be clueless. For instance, they may repeatedly jiggle an obnoxious rattle inches above your face tying to keep you quiet during a cellphone call. They also may let you fly over your handlebars at the baby bike play park.
  • Diapers are unnecessary, but be sure to ask mom for one of those fetching belly necklaces.  All the cool Namibian kids are sporting them.
  • Siblings make fine babysitters. So do roosters. And very large cats.
  • If mom is rubbing red dirt stuff on her belly a lot, you’re about to be born.
  • Rocks are perfectly acceptable teething toys.  So are bones plucked from the desert soil.
  • Speaking of Dads again, don’t be surprised if they vacuum inches from your face while you’re on the floor, then use a lint roller to clean you off.
  • If you get a little freaked out when Grandpa starts those curious Mongolian chants at dinner, you’re normal.
  • Babies can drown in an inch of bathwater if you live in the USA. But a stream in the African desert? Totally safe.
  • Everybody knows you can totally walk a cat on a leash!
  • American parents are totally boring overprotective.
  • When you get frustrated by things, throw a play-fit, roll around on the floor and cough to see if anyone notices and comes to your rescue.
  • When mom is preparing the offal,  you should just play with your little white bucket. (Trust me on this one.)
  • Bananas are the BEST. Hand the peels and the nasty brown spots, half chewed, to mom.
  • During bath time, yaks are more fun than rubber duckies, any day.
  • Don’t hit mom. She might pull out that “No Hitting” board book and read it to you for the eleventymillionth time.  (She keeps it right next to the Dr. Sears collection.)

What was your favorite thing about Babies?

Posted by carrie | Filed Under Mothering 

Nursing Manners

November 9, 2010 | 2 Comments

It’s amazing how much stuff you forget from baby to baby.

For example, how quickly they go from being this tiny newborn for whom breastfeeding takes all their attention and energy, to this wiggly, peekaboo playing, grabby-hands creature you have to wrastle and hog-tie in order to get a good feeding in.

At 4 months, Miss Ruby has already developed some bad nursing manners. (She’s so advanced.)

Afternoon snack - 115 days old
Creative Commons License photo credit: jessicafm

Meaning my breasts look like I had a hot and heavy makeout session with Edward Scissorhands.

(In which he gets to second base.)

Big Z looked at me the other day and cringed. “That’s hurting me, and it’s not even happening to me!”

And I certainly don’t want my hubby avoiding my mammary areas in a sweet but misguided attempt to avoid causing me discomfort, so…

Time to teach baby some breastfeeding manners.

Of course, it’s really my fault for letting it get this bad. What starts off as a cute developmental milestone (oh look, she’s patting me!) quickly turns into a painful proposition involving sharp fingernails and increasingly strong fingers pushing against me (with opposing suction coming from the business end).

I can no longer read, type on the computer, or do much of anything while nursing because I have to hold her little hand so she can’t poke, prod, pull, push, scratch or see how many fingers she can suck/chew on while simultaneously being latched on.

One of my children was a dedicated “twiddler“. (Twiddler on the Boob. Sounds like a musical. ) He was so dedicated to his “free hand” activity that when I tried to stop him he would just stop nursing. It just plain hurt his feelings that I wouldn’t allow him to twist, pull, pinch and scratch my helpless “other side” while he took his meal.

He was also a determined biter. It got so bad that at 8 months old, I had to put him down on the floor and walk out of the room (while he cried for a moment) to underscore that mom is not an apple and I would not tolerate being crunched. It only took a few times and he stopped, but I learned to watch for that twinkle in his eye that came right before a bite so I could end the feeding.

I’m sure some of this behavior serves a purpose. It probably causes mom’s milk to let down faster, or makes it flow more quickly. Maybe it even puts more fat in the milk. I’ve seen cats and puppies do the same to their mommies. Even calves butt their little heads against mom to get things flowing.

Of course, teaching nursing manners is very important. Not only for mom’s comfort, but because it is one of the most important lessons in life:

That there are two people in this relationship, and if you want to keep getting the good stuff, then in the words of  Otis Redding, you got to, got to, try a little tenderness.

Like all of us, babies are just a little bit selfish. Greedy, even. We want our milky and we want it nee-owww! Reminding baby that s/he has to get food in a way that doesn’t hurt mom is frustrating for baby at first but will pay off later.

Some more breastfeeding manners I’ve found helpful to teach baby over the years:

  • Euphemisms are good. It’s not so fun when your toddler screams “I wanna nurse!” in the checkout line at Target. But nobody knows what mee-mees or nee-ners are.
  • It’s not ok to reach in, grab and pull it out the neckline of mom’s shirt.
  • Don’t go braless. Keep your nursing bra on and the other side done up- much like husbands, nursing babies can’t resist dangling participles.
  • If mom wants to be modest, you have to deal with a little shirt in your face.
  • Keep your hands to yourself. (One caveat: be careful when nursing an undiapered baby, especially a boy. They really enjoy keeping their hands to themselves. Ahem.)

I’ve also found it handy to busy baby’s hands with something else interesting. The need to twiddle something seems to peak before and right when baby develops the pincer grasp, that skill that will eventually enable him to pick old moldy raisins and lint off the carpet to eat.

In the meantime, this is why God invented nursing necklaces, but anything else will do: a small toy, or something interesting on your clothing (big buttons, appliques, a brooch, etc). I’m told that as a baby, I had a penchant for rubbing my mother’s silky pajamas while nursing.  Whatever works.

What do you think? Did your baby have bad nursing habits? How did you handle it?

Posted by carrie | Filed Under Breastfeeding