Month: September 2010

Nothing says “class” like accessorizing your red velour track suit with a Fendi bag. Seriously, people, how hard is it to put on a pair of jeans to wear to your kid’s open house? On the other hand, at least she wasn’t wearing pajama bottoms. I see that far too often, too. But still, is it just me, or is anyone else upset that our fashion standards have slipped so low? It doesn’t take that much to look presentable. If you have time to stop by Dunkin Donuts to get a cup of coffee before the function, then you have time to make yourself look halfway decent. And if you have the money for a designer purse? Then you have absolutely no excuse for not throwing on a pair of Levi’s.

Tomorrow is the first full day of fall! Only instead of picking out one of my favorite cardigan sweaters to wear, I’ll be throwing on a t-shirt. In fact, I had to put shortie pyjamas on the baby tonight (last week she was wearing her blanket sleeper to bed). Well, as Drew says, there’s always a little Indian summer this time of year.

At any rate, I’ve been doing some fall canning. Yesterday I put up six half-pints of spiced apples. I never had these until I met Drew. His aunt always served them with pork. Sometimes they were rings and sometimes they were tiny little apples, but they were always delicious. Then, all of a sudden, neither of us could find them in any store. I’m not sure if no one produces them anymore or if they just no longer sell them in the Northeast. So I decided to make my own, and they came out very close in flavor to the store-bought variety (“but a lot fresher,” said my wonderful husband) 🙂 Then, today I canned three pints of applesauce. I had not intended to, but the tote of Jonamacs I just bought turned out to have old apples. They were all soft and not good for snacking, so I had to do something with them.

I also have my first cold of the season. I fully intended to just power through it, but… ugh. Tonight it’s kind of kicking my butt. Hopefully if I get to bed early(ish), I’ll nip it in the bud.

The other day I weighed myself and saw a number I haven’t seen since 2000 — before I was even married! I don’t know how I did it. I didn’t need to use any of the best weight loss supplements, it just happened. So now I am a mere four pounds until the goal I set for myself before I was even pregnant with Laura! If I make it, I might go another 5 pounds, which would bring me down to my college weight. I’m sure my mom would say that I don’t need to go that far, and I guess I don’t, but… I just wonder if I can do it. I’m sure if I actually started using some of my exercise videos that would help a lot. Unfortunately I usually have about 80 billion things to do during Laura’s (brief) nap, so for now that still takes a back seat.

That’s right. And it’s not just closed for the season; it’s doors are shut for good. Yes, I think it’s safe to say that Laura is done nursing. (Woo!) I mean, come on — I think nursing a baby for 15+ months is pretty darn good. While I don’t see anything wrong with extended breastfeeding, it’s not something for me. It was time. The downside is that now I won’t be burning those extra calories. Nursing is kind of like phentermine diet pills, helping lose that little bit of weight. But that’s OK. I’ll take the trade-off.

I wish we had online grocery ordering in this area. I’m not asking for delivery; I’d go and pick up my bags, but if I could just avoid interacting with the general population, I would enjoy shopping a lot more. Maybe I just need to shop in different stores. I rarely have a problem at Stop & Shop, unless I go on the weekend when all the… well, weekenders… are up here. Then it’s just idiot central. But on a regular day, grocery shopping there moves pretty smoothly. Aldi… ugh. I love the store for their inexpensive baking staples (and their macaroni & cheese — it’s better than “the blue box”), but the store is kind of gross and sometimes the people are sketchy. Plus, I never am sure what I’m going to find there. There are some random items amid the generic cereals and canned goods. It wouldn’t surprise me to see hgh supplements. I also had to go to Shop Rite. Shop Rite has some of the best sales, but the store is poorly laid out and there is a high percentage of slow moving seniors on any given day, at any given time. But I sucked it up for my 99 cent gallon of milk. There’s no way I could have done all this with Laura and not totally lost it. A girl has only so much patience, and grocery shopping sucks it all out of me.

Today I decided to take advantage of another baby-free day (yes, Laura is being so good that my MIL kept her an extra night — she’ll be home tomorrow, though) to take care of lots of errands. Mostly grocery shopping. I was able to hit three different stores, and I was able to save some extra money thanks to the shop-hopping. It would be nice if you could just click on something like sharewealth.com and someone would share their wealth with you, wouldn’t it? But that’s obviously unrealistic, so I must still rely on coupons and weekly sales. Maybe someday I can just buy whatever groceries I want, LOL!

For the first time in ages, last night I got a solid 9 hours of sleep. Yep — count ’em, nine! I adored those blissful Zzz’s, but the only reason I got them is because Laura had her first sleepover at her grandma’s house. Drew’s mom graciously offered to take her for an overnight, and I’d have been a fool to refuse! We thought it would be doubly beneficial because first, she’d get used to sleeping somewhere new and second, it would help with the weaning process.

This is exactly how I weaned Noah: he spent an overnight at Grandma’s house. Hard to believe that 15 months ago I was looking for ways to produce more breast milk. Now I’m in the opposite position! I’d been nursing her down for naps and at night to help her get back to sleep, but it’s obvious she’s only nursing for comfort. So she’s made it happily without nursing for over 24 hours now. At this point, I think I’d be foolish to take a step backwards. It’s time, and honestly? I’m looking forward to having my body back all to myself.

Last night we had dinner at the always-delicious Landmark Diner in Ossining. We were visiting Drew’s mom and thought it would be fun to go to one of our old haunts. When we lived down that way, it was our go-to place when we didn’t feel like cooking at home. I had my all-time favorite: the Monte Cristo with potato salad. Oooh, it was so very good! Of course, after totally pigging out and savoring every last drop of maple syrup I feel like I ought to take a 7 day slimming pill. I won’t even tell you what the scale said when I weighed myself last night! Looks like I’ll be compensating this week by having salads for lunch. Yikes. It was worth it, though!

OK, ok. I’m catching slowly but surely. Well, the boys started school last Wednesday! Noah began Kindergarten and Jake started third grade. Things are going great so far for both of them. Noah loves going to school and today is his first full day. In our school district, kindergartners go to school for half a day for the first five school days to ease them in. I think the approach works really well. Noah is very much a go-with-the-flow kind of guy (in fact that’s one of his favorite sayings). I really wasn’t concerned because he was so ready for school. And there haven’t been any issues. He loves his teacher, loves his classmates, and loves learning.

Third grade is where school starts getting more serious, which I think is a good thing for Jake. They have homework four nights a weeks and it takes about 30 minutes to finish everything up. It’s not overwhelming at all — it’s just enough, I think. His class is starting to learn cursive writing. Jake has been wanting to learn how to write in cursive…. oh, since he could print, basically. His “a”s are looking good, he just needs to work on the correct slant. I’m really pleased they still teach cursive here. A lot of schools don’t bother anymore and that’s a shame.

Since we’re not that far into the year, there isn’t much to report just yet. We’re waiting for Cub Scouts to start back up and Jake wants to take one after-school program. Noah wasn’t interested just yet, so maybe in the spring there will be something that piques his interest.

It feels good to be back in the swing of things, and it’s amazing how much I get done during the day with the two of them at school. Even though I still have Laura under foot, I’m able to quickly move through my daily chores.

Let’s see… what else? Laura has her 15 month-old check up today so we’ll see how much the peanut has grown since June. After that I think I’m going to head over to Kohl’s. I’d like to pick up a few wardrobe staples for fall and I have a 20% off coupon. Maybe they will have some long-sleeve vintage t shirts (well, replicas). I’d also like a new scarf or two. We’ll see how good the sales are 🙂