Saturday, February 04, 2012

Sleeping, Groceries and the Mundane

Well, it appears that making sure Peanut is awake when put down to bed and falls asleep on his own has little effect on how often he wakes at night. Its made a big difference for day time naps, but night time wakings fluctuate tremendously, whether Peanut is sick, not feeling well, or what-have-you (growth spurts?). Nonetheless, he is getting better at sleeping longer stretches. As I read some place, our culture puts way too much into getting a baby to sleep through the night. Really. I'm okay getting up at night, I've decided its just not that big of a deal.

In other news, we decided that aiming for $200 a month on groceries is too little. $250 is more reasonable, we decided, and that is an average over several months. Individual months can easily fluxuate + or - $100. I've added one action to both save money and keep life simple. I buy meat once a month, and package it up in to appropriate sizes and freeze it. I've figured out what will last about a month or two, in chicken, pork and beef, and can buy it at a good price when I find it well priced. I won't pay more than $1.97/lb for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, $0.88/lb for a whole chicken, $3 for pork or beef.  I'm hoping that my gardening endeavors this summer will further reduce our grocery bill.

And the mundane... the everyday... The book group I'm apart of was reading "Wind in the Willows". Overall, I quite enjoyed the book (well, enjoying, not totally finished it yet). I'm tired of reading about Toad, who is a pompous, prideful fool, but I was told he does get over himself in the end. I'm trusting my fellow book group ladies on this and persevering to the end.

The chapter I just read was "Wayfarers All", where a Seafaring Rat shows up and tells Rat all the neat things he has been doing and where he's heading off to. Well, Rat was already disillusioned with his life as so many other animals are migrating south of the winter and Seafaring Rat's stories are too much for him. In a daze, he packs up and starts off. Luckily, Mole catches him and stops him, and is able to break him out of this trance he is in. By the end of the chapter, Rat is back to his sensible self.

I think we all reach this point at some point in our lives, where we are tired of the everyday and want some adventure. What's nice is when we have those good friends, like Mole, who remind us of who we really are, that what we truly love is right before us.

So, that's my 2 cents!

Who? Me?

2 comments:

  1. Are you really okay with it?

    My little boy was pretty easy - he started sleeping 5-6 hours a night right after we got home from the hospital. I never minded getting up at night - I'd leap out of bed at the slightest peep on the baby monitor. I had to turn it down and tell myself to give him some time before checking on him since he might just fall right back asleep. I wanted to hold him all the time and loved nursing him to sleep.

    I was sad when he decided to wean himself, but it's turned out okay. I'm praying that our next child will be as easy as the first, or that God will give us strength to survive!

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  2. Unless we have a guest (which we do now, and will have guests all of February and most of March) I leave the baby monitor off. And I let Peanut cry at least 5 minutes (the box fan in the guest bedroom protects the guests, mostly!) He almost never just goes back to sleep, and he does put himself to sleep for all naps now, and almost every bed time.

    and at 2 am, I'm not always "good" with it. but during the day, when I'm thinking coherently, I can remind myself that he will learn, eventually.

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