Frugal vs. Cheap

Since I've been on maternity leave, the "C word" has been tossed around like a chicken in a tornado, sometimes in reference to my own spending habits, more often in reference to my husband's. I'm starting to think some folks* don't get the difference, specifically those who call me cheap, so I thought I'd elucidate them on some major differnces between the two.

Frugal is clipping coupons from the newspaper to use at Safeway; Cheap is dumpster diving behind Safeway.
Frugal is going to a matinee to see a movie; Cheap is being a grown-ass person and sneaking into the theatre.
Frugal is buying shoes at Ross; Cheap is stealing shoes from Payless.
Frugal is buying a Costco size box of Huggies; Cheap is using Safeway brand diapers.
Frugal is buying dinner using your Marin Express; Cheap is having a dinner date at Burger King. With a coupon.
Frugal is using an at-home kit to dye your hair; Cheap is dyeing your hair with Kool Aid.
Frugal is buying a regular coffee at Dr. Insomia's; Cheap is bringing your own coffee to Peet's.
Frugal is cooking chicken and meat at a BBQ; Cheap is ordering 5 Costco pizzas for a birthday party.

So you see folks, I'm quite on the frugal end of the spectrum. I do spend money, I just spend it wisely. I mean, who cares if I drink "2 buck chuck" at least it's better than Old E. And really, who knows the difference if I have a phone at home or not, I really don't answer phones anyway. And is it so bad to sell coupons on craigslist that I get for free? It's all in the perspective.

*You know who you are. Do I need to name names here?

Month Four

SweetPea! You turned four months old yesterday!

First, sorry for the late letter. We went on a hike yesterday with Dakota and his mom, and even though we kicked both their booties (figuratively, of course, since I'm sore as all get-out today too) when we got home we were both ready for a late lunch and a nap. At 13lbs 10ozs, you are quite a bit of extra weight to carry. Not as much as being pregnant, but I can feel how much more of a workout I get when I take you out in your carrier.

My Angel, this month you have developed so much more use of your arms and hads, it's incredible. At the beginning of the month you would clasp your hands in a vice-liek grip, just holding onto your own fingers as tightly as possible. Then you slowly started reaching for things in front of you, and now, you can grab anything within your reach. You have a little cow toy you play with all the time, and your fishy swing is once again renewing your interest as you gaze at those little fish for hours, watching them spin above your head. You also are in the habit of holding onto one boob, while nursing on the other. I'd have to say this is one habit we'll have to break you of, at least in public, pretty soon. Speaking of nipples, you are also starting to gum me like an old man, and if something distracts you while you've got a hold on me, you turn your head and stretch it out about six times longer than I think God intended me to be. It hurts, but you look so happy it's hard to complain.

You're sarting to get a little scared of strangers. I've brought you to the gym with me to work out, and every time I pick you up you're crying. I'm hoping soon you'll be like the other little kids and play with strangers, but maybe you're just like Mommy and it will take a little bit longer for you to warm up to some people. Because Luv, when I have you in my arms and we're out shopping, you talk and babble and smile at everyone, and people's faces just light up to see you paying attention to them. People stop us in the street constantly to say how beautiful and happy you look, and how your laugh makes their days.

We showed you a DVD of about 200 of your pictures this month. It's weird, I don't think you recognize yourself. You know the face, of course, but I don't think you realize yet that it belongs to you. When you were watching the video, you started laughing at the pictures of you crying, and you smile at yourself on the TV. You are quite infatuated with the TV in general. If I ever need to take a shower or make dinner and you are fussy, I know I can snap on the boob-tube, and you'll be entertained. I try not to let you watch it too much, since I'd rather prefer that you read, but sometimes we gotta do what we gotta do. You are pretty interested in books already, especially the ones with pictures of other babies. My wish for you, my Luv, is that you develop a joy of readign from the time we have spent, and will spend in the coming years reading books and making up stories together. It will serve you so much better than a love of TV.

Well Ducky, your Uncle B is supposed to come over today to take some photos of you in your monkey suit for Halloween. Guess we should start getting ready. I have to admit one thing though. At night, after I'm finished nursing you and you are sleeping so peacefully in my arms, sometimes I just hold you, and stare at how incredibly beautiful you are. Every day I can't believe that I could love anything as much as I love you, and I treasure this time we've been able to spend together. You'll understand one day.

I love you.
Mommy

Cloudy, Cloudy Day

I'm walking up a long, wide, winding staircase. On either side are ornately carved wooden banisters, the kind you see wealthy folks sliding down in the movies. The stairs are carpeted in a rich burgungdy colored Persian pattern with forest green and gold accents, and it is so thick it feels like walking on a cloud. I look behind me to see where I came from, but the bottom of the stairs is shrouded in deep black shadows. Up ahead, I hear the din of a party, muted laughter, glasses clinking, and I can faintly see the stairs ahead lit in the soft yellow glow of candles.

A friend calls out to me, and I reply that I am almost there. I quicken my pace on the stairs, but the light never gets brighter, the laughter never gets louder, and I never reach the party. I am perpetually trying to make it up those stairs to where everyone else is having fun, but my world is just darker, more quiet, and more lonely than everyone else's.

I'm starting to feel that familiar cloud covering my world again. I think the adrenaline and hormones from having the baby have dropped off, and my one reliable pal, Depression, is visiting again. So sorry for the lack of posts lately, things just aren't as funny as they used to be, and sorry in advance if I am pissier than normal, but that's how it flares up in me. I have a temper normally, but I have no patience at all right now, everything annoys me or makes me cry, so I choose to stay on my self-administered exile rather than alienate all you good folks.

Maybe I can find something to write about that isn't all a rant.... Maybe. Taryn is the one light in my life at the moment, but it's not fair to put such pressure on a baby angel like that. I'm working on finding out how to make myself feel better without the meds, just might take me a while.

Brand Spankin' New Sexy Bitch of a Phone

Can I brag for a second?

I usually buy the cutest but cheapest phone I can find whenever my contract comes up for renewal, actually now that I think about it, I think I've always gotten them for free with those "instant rebate" specials they always have going on to sucker people who bought crap phones 2 years ago to renew their contract and get another crap phone.

But this year, I was brave.

The real reason I bought the phone is that I'm having issues with not having anything of my own anymore. I mean, P took over "our" computer (that really was mine first), he took over my car (and now I have to drive his ugly-ass forest green mommy car), Taryn has pretty much staked her claim on my boobs, the dogs took over my bathroom (since you-know-who doesn't take them out as much as he should, and they have to pee somewhere since they have no manners and I can't feasibly walk both of them myself while I hold the baby).

So there you have it, I'm greedy as all get-out. Whatever.

My first idea was to just buy a new car. Then I started researching child care costs, had a heart attack, and downgraded my sights to a new laptop.

But I wanted a MacBook (the black one) and looking at the pricetag on that one gave me an annurism and burned out my corneas, so I settled on a new cell phone, since I was due for one anyway, seeing as my last POS drops pretty much every call I've gotten in the last four months, and it's ugly, and the camera sucks, and I don't have enough memory to download more than a couple ringtones.

And I'm so impressed with this new beauty I have. It's a Cingular 3125, one of the STRTrec (I'm not a dork, that's probably wrong) phones. I can check my email, and IM people, and download all the songs and pictures I want. the camera still pretty much sucks, but it also has an mp3 on it so I can go to the gym and look super-cool with my little ear-buds, and not have a reason to skip my cardio. I can look at pdf, and word and excel docs, I pretty mcuh could torch my 'puter and live off the effervescent glow of this phone for the rest of my life.

Never heard of it, eh? That's because it first became available in September 2006.

And now I'm cool.

So there.

Ferber: Love to Hate 'Em

For the first two months of Taryn's life, I completely subscribed to the idea of wholeheartedly parenting her, holding her when she cried, comforting her when she needed it, feeding her when she was hungry, etc.

Then one night, when Pedro was out playing poker with his friends and I was left alone all night with the baby, for the ump-teenth time in a row before she learned to sleep at night and she was screaming her little lungs out because she was hungry and tired, but too tired to eat, and too hungry to sleep, I felt the last of my patience fly out the window like a puff of ganja on a windy day. It was one of those moments, when you have to decide: is my sanity worth sticking to my ideals, or can I let them slip just this once and take a break from being super-me and react like a normal person?

So I put Taryn in her crib, closed her bedroom door, and went downstairs to drink a beer (Dark, of course. For milk production. I swear).

And though I thought my heart would break hearing her pitiful wails through the baby monitor, I comforted myself with the knowledge that she wasn't in pain (besides a grumbly belly), and she wasn't wet or cold or otherwise in a state that I could do anything to help her. And I promised myself that at exactly five minutes I would go back upstairs and comfort her as well as I could, but at the moment, I just needed to step away.

I needed time to calm myself down, because you have to understand at that point, I hadn't slept for more than 2 hours in a row for probably 4 months. And you may be thinking, "But Taryn was only 2 months, what gives?" And if you have ever been pregnant, I will remind you of waterfalls, lakes, rain, and puddles. But if you have never been blessed with a watermelon sitting on your bladder 24 hours a day, and 2x the normal amount of blood pulsing through your system that needs cleaning and such, I'll let you know that the last trimester is hell on your aching bladder, and I couldn't go more than a couple hours without a run to the ladies room, and could only make it to 2 hours if I was alseep for most of it.

So four or five months of being sleep deprived, and having a human hanging on your body more hours of the day than not, a husband that is MIA, a mother who works nights, a best friend who was a gimp (love ya T!), coffee for breakfast and lunch/dinner at 3pm, and hot-ass California weather, and hopefully you may have a better understanding of how desperate I was for a break from the crying (As a side-note for those of you without kids, crying peaks between 6-8 weeks in newborns, normally).

And at about 4 1/2 minutes, I went back upstairs and stood outside her door poised to rescue my darling baby from her sea of salty tears when suddenly ... the crying stopped.

So I waited.

And waited.

And finally realized that she had cried herself to sleep.

I also realized that Ferber might have had something going in his little "Cry It Out" idea. Because though some kids can wail for hours, Taryn isn't one of them, unless something is really wrong. And when she gets so tired she can't eat, and won't settle down to sleep, I've found that one of the best things I can do is to put her down, let her wail for 3 or 4 minutes until she conks out, and after 10 minutes or so of fitful sleep, she's calm enough to nurse, then sleep for much longer when her belly is full.

Don't get me wrong, I've done this three times in the last 6 weeks, since that one fateful night, and each time (like today, like right now) she will only sleep for a short time before she is awake again, and ready to start over. So I don't see how this is a long-term solution, but it works for us when nothing else will as a short-term solution.

I do think that people who do this regularly have something else going on, I mean, from what I've read, it's supposed to take only a few nights for the child to learn that crying won't bring mommy or daddy in, so they just go to sleep, but really, do I want to teach my baby that she can't count on me coming to comfort her when she crys? I want Taryn to know that when she needs me, I'm there. That's my job right now, and I am helping her learn to sleep in other ways.

And maybe I'm wrong, I mean, obviously Dr. Ferber has a massive following, or else I wouldn't know him from homeboy down the street, but I think I'd rather teach my baby not to be a spoiled, egocentric, sissy-brat, than to deal with the realities of her growing up without a sense of trust. We'll see.