On Coming Home.

So we're home and mostly settled in post-Mexico. Laundry's al done, and I'm getting back into the routine - including applying for work, but more on that as it progresses.

I'm finding it hard to get motivated again now that we're back. Nurse, breakfast, dishes, garbage, nurse, laundry, vacuum, lunch, nurse, nap... more of the same. I love being a stay-at-home mum, but increasingly it feels like I've been trapped. I think a change of significant magnitude is necessary. Something bigger than rearranging the furniture or cleaning out the closets. Work will be a big change, although I wish it wasn't necessary - but maybe it will be what I need. Otherwise, I'm not sure what it's going to take for me to feel comfortable in my skin again!

On Second-Hand Stuff.

As a follow up to my post on budgeting, I thought I'd mention my recent love-affair with second-hand stuff. For Tristin, I have access to a fantastic store called Once Upon a Child. If you've never been there, or don't have one in your city/province/country, the way it works is this:

1) Bring in whatever your child doesn't wear/use/play with anymore, provided that it's clean and in good condition.
2) The salesperson will appraise it, and give you cash or store credit.
3) Shop for new clothes/items/toys for your child's current developmental stage.
4) Lather, rinse, repeat! You can basically get a whole "new" wardrobe for your child every 3-4 months for around $20, if you're smart and careful!

For myself, I mostly rely on friends who are clearing out their wardrobes or buying new furniture, and then, there's always classified websites.

Now, don't get me wrong; second-handing is A LOT of work, if you want to REALLY make good. But it can be done! I've been burned a couple of times, but overall I've come out ahead - and that feels pretty darned good!

On Budgeting.

We are just now getting caught up from Christmas, which was financially more stressful than usual this year what with Wess being laid off at the beginning of December.

Budgeting is something that I struggle with almost constantly. Mathematically, it's pretty straightforward; take your income, subtract your necessary expenses, and what's left over is your laugh 'n' play, rainy day money. The problem is that while my income is greater than my expenses on paper, in reality it doesn't often seem to work out that way. There's always a bill that's a little higher this month, or an emergency situation involving pants*, or even just an extra tank or two of gas to get away and get some perspective for a couple of days. So now that we're all caught up, I'm going back to my tried-and-true budgeting method:

1) Calculate out my expenses, MONTHLY.
2) Divide all expenses by 2.
3) Pay bills/allocate moneys into appropriate accounts (e.g. rent, grocery, etc.) BIWEEKLY, based on pay periods.
4) Transfer at lease 60% of any remaining funds into long-term savings/RRSP's.

I did this before, when Wess was laid off for several months and we were living first off of my employment income, and then off of my (significantly lower) maternity leave benefits. And it worked extremely well, right up until an emergency (a real one, not a pants one**) required me to dip into my long-term savings. I'm determined to get to that point again - the point where I feel confident that we could get by for a month or two without having the heat, power, or phones cut off imminently (not that any of the above actually happened, but that's what it's felt like the last few months).

So, a 2-months-late New Year's Resolution:

To get my Budget Mojo back!




*The pants emergency: I was down to literally my last pair of pants that fit and had no holes in them (I'm sure you see where this is going)... when they burst a seam. Thankfully, the seam burst before I got to church.

**Wess's truck, our only reliable vehicle at the time, blew a tire beyond repair. Which, of course, meant that he needed not one but TWO new tires.

On Cloth Diapers.

I started thinking about cloth diapering sometime in the second trimester of pregnancy. When Tristin's dad was laid off at the beginning of my third trimester, I decided we were definitely cloth diapering, and I went out and bought stacks of prefolds and covers. Wess was hesitant about cloth diapering to say the least, but confronted with the reality of having a baby while he was laid off and I was on maternity leave, coupled with the overwhelming cost savings of cloth diapers, and he was sold on it. "Provided," he added, "that YOU do all the laundry!" (Like that was anything new.)

We kept to the prefolds until Tristin was nearly 4 months old. And, honestly, if he wasn't so HUGE (see end of previous post for his weight gain) we probably would have used them for longer. However, since he outgrew the diaper covers that I had bought by the time he was 3 months old, I decided we needed another approach: one-size diapers. After fairly exhaustive research, I narrowed my choices down to three: Happy Heinys, Knickernappies, and FuzziBunz. (Apologies; I will hotlink to their sites eventually, but I haven't used HTML in a long time and am rusty; for now, you can find them by typing the brand names into Google.) I ordered a sample of each from Heather at Cloth Diaper Outlet (www.clothdiaperoutlet.com) in order to decide which kind would make up the bulk of my stash. I came to the following conclusion:

FuzziBunz are the greatest invention ever.

For those of you unfamiliar with cloth diapering, FuzziBunz is the brand name of the original "Pocket Diaper". Pocket diapers operate on a fairly self-explanatory principle: they are comprised of a waterproof outer layer, with a fleece or microsuede layer next to baby's bottom. At the back of the diaper is an opening between these to layers, into which you can stuff an insert. The fleece acts as a stay-dry layer, since liquids pass through it easily; the insert(s) absorbs these liquids, and any overflow is kept inside by the waterproof outer. All three of the brands mentioned above are pocket diapers; FuzziBunz are by far and away the best of the three. My son's morning diaper is so wet that it weighs well over a pound, but his clothes and skin are dry. And only twice in the five months that we've been using them have we had an issue with a blowout. So I'll say it again:

FuzziBunz are the Greatest. Invention. EVER.