remiss

Yes, it has been well over two months since my last post. But I am pregnant. Which means I am tired. And nauseated. And cranky. Did I mention cranky?

The crankiness is not so bueno for my mood to go hunting for used stuff. Ugh. I just wanna throw my hands in the air and go buy a bunch of STUFF from Target. So I have sometimes. I have cheated big time on my own rules. Oh well. Things I have bought whilst cheating: new pregnancy jeans. I did look at goodwill, no dice. A coupla books from Barnes and Nobles. There, I said it. And it will probably happen again. Some birthday presents for people. I should have looked on ebay, or etsy, but have I mentioned I am a procrastinator?

Oh well. And to be fair, I will admit that new things will be bought for Christmas. I really want to get the babe a train set, but I have looked over and over at Once Upon a Child, and they NEVER have it. And also we'll probably end up getting some new stuff for our family. But we are going to be getting items that donate a percentage to charity. There's a lot of cool stuff out there that does this- google it, people. And lastly, we pick a needy person or two off the tree at church every year, and I am not going to give this person or child something used. I think it's important to give something they themselves could not go out and get.

smug karma

So in a rare expedition without the baby, I went to the mall last week to enjoy one of my favorite pastimes. Drinking coffee and reading magazines and books without buying them at Barnes & Nobles. I know, it's not totally kosher, but I do purchase a coffee, right? I don't know what it is about that place, but I could spend hours there. Anyhoo, I really made this an out-of-the-house event and went so far as to put on a new/used pair of jeans from Goodwill with the smug satisfaction of paying $8 for a $60 pair of Gap jeans. Well, my smugness wore off as I walked into Barnes and Nobles. I set off the alarms walking INTO the store. The guy behind the counter looked me up and down and said "Are you wearing new jeans?" I blushed, and said no. He held out a pair of scissors and said "Go to the bathroom and cut out the tag, I bet your jeans are new." Oh boy was I embarrassed. I thought about explaining that no, they aren't new, they are new/used, but that would be rambling, which is also embarrassing. I hung my head and took the scissors. Sure enough, their previous owner apparently never walked through those store detector thingies, cause there it was, the security tag. Oy.

Here's the real kicker. That was the first AND last time I'll ever wear those jeans. I gathered up about 6 bags of clothing, shoes, and purses to give to the Salvation Army. Well, of course I didn't get the bags out the night before, so the morning they were coming to pick up the stuff I was scrambling to get it all out on the curb before 7:30 am. If you haven't guessed by now, I put my new/used favorite jeans out. How? I don't know. I don't remember doing it, but I must have stuffed them in a bag last minute somehow. I guess my inner gloating over such a great find really came around to bite me in the ass!! Who knew there was smug karma???

p.s. here is a picture of the jeans. obviously NOT on me :)

onesie is the loneliest number

So it didn't seem that long ago that everyone was getting married. We were going to about 3 or 4 weddings a year, and I don't even want to talk about the bridal showers. Now everyone is having babies!! I mean EVERYONE. It's getting ridiculous. Wait, let me count out the new babies in my family/friends lives for the past year... 8 new babies, and about 5 current pregnancies. That I know of. And the only thing worse than a bridal shower is- you guessed it- a baby shower!! They are wretched parties, and I hate them. Of course everyone loves their own party, but going to other people's showers is a terrible way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The games, the terrible finger sandwiches, the lack of booze, and then the oooing and awwwing over package after package of receiving blankets and onesies. Bleh. But I digress.

In light of this huge baby boom, I had to come up with something to give people that followed the "rules." This is hard because people generally don't enjoy the combination of new baby and used stuff. I totally understand this. My solution was to go to Once Upon a Child, buy a bunch of barely used baby onesies, and embroider the names of the babies on them! They turned out so cute and got such a good reception, that I decided to branch out and do a bunch for a craft fair this past weekend. My very awesome cousin, Laura, sent me a humungeous box of onesies (some brand new!) that I made great use of. I made about 20 girl/boy/unisex to put out, and optimistically printed out 50 order forms for people who would like to customize.

What an utter failure. The day started out with a downpour, which quickly turned into blazing humid heat, accompanied with winds that could rip yer panties right off. There were maybe 10 people who blew past my booth. Of those 10, maybe around 3 took an order form. Of those 3, ONE person bought a onesie. Yes, I sold a grand total of one onesie. Sigh.

My next move is to sell them online. Sometime this week I'll set up a store on etsy.com and see how it goes. In the meantime, does anyone need a onesie?

bathtub poo

The baby had his first poo incident while being bathed. I'm seriously considering a new bathtub. Because who knows who may have pooed in a used one? It may have been waaaay worse than vaguely innocent toddler poo. I say vaguely innocent because he may have eaten some dog food yesterday, I'm never certain. Anyway, so maybe a new bathtub is in order.

Just kidding, folks! We have a house built in 1865 with the original tub. That means generations of babies probably pooed in it. Which gives it character, when you really think about it.

Half Time!

So it's been about 6 months into our life experiment! Yay, half-way done with the year. And June just flew by. It was a busy month and I can't believe we're wading into the deeper end of July. My workload increased so we hired a part-time nanny, which just makes me feel old saying that. It doesn't seem that long ago that I was the babysitter.

Our baby turn ONE YEAR OLD!! Unbelievable. I feel like we *just* had a newborn, and now we have a toddler. Well, a pseudo-toddler since he refuses to do any unaided toddling. We had an awesome birthday party with awesome friends and family. We asked on the invitation for people to consider bringing imperishables for the local food pantry instead of presents. (Poor baby- but he doesn't know any better yet!) He still got quite a few gifts, but our food pantry donation idea was a success! This was our little way to force some of our rules on friends and family, who apparently like to watch us do it, but don't like to participate in general.

To review the last 6 months, I think we've stuck to our rules pretty well. I will admit I may have wandered too close to the dollar bins at Target (they sing a siren song to me...) and we have on occasion bent a rule to fit in something we needed. Grill cover? Sure, that's "something for the upkeep of the house." New dog bed? Well, where the heck do you find a decent used one?? Gross. Storage containers? I did look online. No luck! And how else do I store all the baby clothes? I won't even begin on the amount of new stuff bought to rebuild our deck (again, upkeep of the house, right?). And we totally went off our rule book for our trip to Japan. So maybe we could have done better, but we could have done a heck of a lot worse. We have not purchased new clothes, new books, new movies, new home decor, etc. We have borrowed, found, fixed, and bought used a lot of things that last year we would have bought new. So half-way through I say not too shabby! I just need to be prepared for 6 more months.

cheater, cheater, sushi eater!

So I'm back from Japan, and just letting you all know... we cheated! But it was scheduled, planned cheating, and pretty much a necessary evil. We had to bring back presents for our nieces and nephew, moms and dads, brothers and sister-in-laws. Well, we didn't HAVE to I suppose, but it's always good to bring back a little something so everyone knows they were being thought of from across the world.

We also had to get something for baby and for... US! I haven't bought anything new in so long, and I forgot that shopping "high" that I get. Not pretty. It's that edge of greedy, greedy, mine, mine, mine feeling that lasts until you unload the bags from your car. I have to say I didn't miss that feeling. I do love the feeling I get when I pick out gifts for other people, though. That's a fun one. Because you get to feel the pleasure of trying to choose something you think they'd enjoy, and then the pleasure of giving it to them. We kept the souvenirs for ourselves to a minimum, and chose to take a ton of pictures instead. We got a wall hanging that we are planning to put over the bed, and we got husband and baby matching happi coats, which are festival wear. Just in time for baby's first birthday!

But I think that will be the end of new things bought for us for quite a while. I have to go get baby some toys for his first birthday- Once Upon a Child style.

p.s. the pictures above include one of the busiest shopping areas in Tokyo, and a couple of beautiful gardens, which I preferred to be honest.