thinking about weaning

mats turns one (1!) in less than three weeks ... i truly cannot believe how this year has flown by! there are so many changes that come with having a one-year old toddler rather than an "infant".

• we bought a bike seat for the little man for his birthday - the yepp mini front bike seat at rei, paid for in part with the rei giftcard that i won from the frugal girl's giveaway last year!
• we're looking at convertible car seats since mats is reaching the height limit on his infant seat (bummer, since that one will stay in the car, meaning that when he falls asleep in it, he has to wake up when we get home.)
• since he can walk, he gets to actually play at playgrounds
• we have to find real soled shoes to put him to protect his feet walking around in public since the little leather booties he's currently in won't do much for him if he steps on something sharp
• i get to start thinking about weaning

(if you're a boy and don't want to think about nursing, go ahead and stop reading now.)

i was admittedly pretty excited about the weaning idea a few months ago, particularly just before christmas when he was teething awfully and biting up a storm. then, i was practically counting down the days. but now? i'm a bit more reticent. his nursing time is such a sweet time for us - he knows just what to do, he lets me snuggle him, i get to feel all warm and fuzzy and motherly and have set aside time to pray for him and his future, and it's a nice little break from the day. in the evenings when we're doing his bedtime routine, i'll sit in the glider in his room and read a bible story while he plays on the floor with scott, and when he's ready to have his milk and go to bed, he'll walk over to me at the chair, lift his arms to be picked up, then immediately lay down in my arms while smacking his lips and opening his mouth like a little baby bird! pretty precious.

on the one hand, i'm eager to be past this stage so that we have more freedom during the day to not have to hide out somewhere to nurse, but on the other hand, i feel like it's one of the few baby-ish things my kid does anymore. i'm not in a rush to move us past this. (although i say this and in the same thought also really hope that we're done by this summer sometime so that we can go hiking and camping and biking without a nursing cover. and so that scott and i can get a night away.)

allegedly, pediatricians ask at the twelve month appointment about your plan for weaning and i'm really not sure what i'm going to say. do i have a plan? i plan to start offering him milk in a sippy cup once he hits a year and it's "allowed" ... but i don't really plan to push the end of this. maybe my plan is to let it end naturally, as he transitions himself to milk more and me less? i guess i assume that'll happen in a timely fashion on its own. if it doesn't, then i'll start my planning.

fun with photoshop

i realized recently that because of scott's student status, we can get education-related discounts of software ... specificially adobe cs5.5 design standard, home of indesign, illustrator, acrobat pro, and photoshop.  i acquired that little bundle for myself for $229 (around $1300 without the student discount) as an early birthday present and have been having a delightful time with it.  i'm working on a project in indesign (more on that at a later date), am utterly confused by illustrator ... but photoshop.  oh, photoshop.

my first stop was to download the pioneer woman's action sets (here for the photoshop cs versions, or here if you're an elements user like my dad), look through some of her action set tutorial posts, and start playing.  for some of the actions, you just press a button and it's done, for others you get to play with settings.  i have yet to do anything other than using actions in photoshop yet, but it's an easy first step in learning how the program works since it can be super intimidating opening up photoshop for the first time.

one of my favorite pictures thus far, entitled "swinging in sunshine":
before:

and after:

i'm kind of captivated by it!  i'm sadly not sure what all steps i took - i saved it in jpg format (which deletes layer information, ie the things that tell you what you did to the picture) rather than photoshop's format (psd) so that i could post it on facebook.  clearly next time i need to save it in psd AND jpg just for good measure.  i think i used pioneer woman's boost, seventies, bring on the eyes, and sunshine ... maybe more, maybe less.

food waste "friday" #2

a month later, i cleaned my fridge for the second time.  ahem.  i think i keep telling myself that if i don't clean out the fridge, that the stuff moldering in there isn't *really* there.  i'm sure there's stuff that we threw away in the interim, but i tried to restrain myself until i was ready to take a picture, so hopefully it's fairly comprehensive.  (i did have a few failed cooking nights, which i don't think i'd necessarily count as food waste.  the saddest was 6 potatoes, 1 onion, and 2 bell peppers that turned into glue rather than hash browns for breakfast burritos.  there's just nothing you can do with that.)

not as bad as i thought it might be!  we have a cup of sauteed mushrooms that matson didn't like and that i couldn't find a cover for ($1), so they shriveled in the open fridge (whoops), a cup of cut up mango with wheat germ that mats wasn't in the mood for and that i forgot to address later ($1), a container of bitter quinoa because i forgot to rinse it before cooking ($2), some bits of baby finger food that mats kept not eating and finally got stinky ($negligible), month-old pureed spinach ($1), leftover rice ($negligible), a bit of steak fajita that got shoved to the back of the fridge ($2), and some leftover ground beef that HAD been in the freezer but was thawed for mac n cheese but not used in full and left in the fridge ($1.50).  the beef didn't stink, but it's been in the fridge for long enough that i wasn't going to risk it.

on the plus side, i get a lot of leftovers containers back!  on the down side, according to my ball-park estimates, that's $8.50 wasted.  i just checked my last post, and would estimate that one at about $6 wasted, which brings us to:

2012 cost of food waste: $14.50

score one for frugal

not in the food waste category - i haven't cleaned out my fridge since that first post three weeks ago.  oops.  coming soon, though.

in the clothing category, though, yes!  scott carries a soft leather briefcase to work and school - he has his laptop in it daily, and schoolbooks to read on the train on class days, so it gets a workout.  we got him a nice leather bag a few years ago, and it was working great until a few weeks ago when the little leather tab that holds the d-ring for the shoulder strap snapped.  not so useful without a shoulder strap (it does still have handles, but super cumbersome, especially on school/train days).

we went back to the outlets this weekend, were totally misled by signs that said, "final clearance!  70% off lowest ticketed price, whole store!"  sounds like that'd be 70% off of everything, right?  nope, just clearance items.  the first bag scott picked out was $120 after any discounts, the second bag was $70 but on the verge of being too small.  we went ahead and got it, but my thrifty self wasn't thrilled with the solution - why were we paying so much money for a bag that may not even be a good fit?

i was looking at the old bag when we got home, though, and got to thinking ... might this be fixable?  i took it to the tailor across the street from us on monday, and lo and behold - yes!  but at what cost?  $14.  kid you not.  (i had to run home to grab the d-ring, and when i got back the guy said, "okay your total will be $21."  since he had told me $14 literally 5 minutes before, though, he honored his original estimate.  i felt kind of bad because i want to support a local business and i know they need to earn their living ... but you can't change your price like that.)

so, after this fix and a nice polishing by me (the leather's looking a little worn), his old bag will be good as new, for a savings of $56 over the price of the new bag!  holla!

scott's party input

scott got home around 10pm last night from class, and as i was telling him that i had started brainstorming time for matsy's party, he very helpfully said, "i was kind of thinking a south pole theme.  bring in a couple dozen penguins.  some artic icecaps."

to which i replied, "oh that's good.  except that arctic means north.  antarctic would be south."

"it's ice, the penguins won't know the difference.  maybe some polar bears, too.  hmm, except that polar bear eat penguins."

me, "also north, so no they don't."

scott, "what, really?  you always see polar bears and penguins together.  they don't eat penguins?"

quick google break in which i confirm that i am correct - polar bears only live in the north, penguins only in the south, and that polar bears eat seals, not penguins.

scott, "well then, we won't have to worry about the penguins being eaten!"

so helpful, this husband of mine.