I wish I had a brilliant or at least somewhat exciting update for you, but I don’t. 

We’ve been working on the house, and trying to get everything else done in daily life that must get done, like work, errands, parent, spend time with the boys, etc.  I still haven’t started packing yet, but that is soon to change.  Joe started bringing home boxes the other day, so now that fun chore is on my plate.

I really don’t mind, but there is always way more stuff you realize you have.  I am hoping we can donate or just get rid of the stuff we haven’t used in years, and be done with it.  Like the extra microwave that has been sitting the pantry now, for eight years.  If our microwave ever broke, we had a spare.  Except it hasn’t and we have had a microwave sitting in the pantry for eight years.

I usually blog at night- but I have been so tired physically and mentally, I think I have blogger’s block.  If you don’t see very many posts here in the upcoming weeks, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth.  But with moving, fixing up the house, and the upcoming holiday season, I’m not sure how much time or motivation I will have to blog.  Please continue to check in- I know I’ll get my blogging mojo back eventually.  :-)  You can find me on Twitter, and I seem to be able to post 140 character items, much easier and regularly than actual blog posts these days.

I pinkie swear I will post pictures of the new house and the progress we have made.  Joe finished painting the boys’ rooms today, and he’s going to start on our bedroom tomorrow.  I placed the carpet order last week, and that should be installed right after Thanksgiving.  We are ordering our engineered hardwood flooring tomorrow.  We have decided on a honey hickory color which is a golden brown- not too dark or light.  We should have it around Thanksgiving.  It has to cure at room temperature for a week, so Joe should be able to install the floor, the beginning of December.

The brand we are getting has a locking system, so there is no need to glue or nail the pieces together.  Joe is optimistic he can install it in a few days, rather than a few weeks.  So it appears we are on schedule to move into the house by the end of December.  Not sure where we will end up having Christmas- in the old house, or the new one, but Ryan is already wondering about the tree this year, and how Santa will find us.  :-)  Cole has just been talking up a storm and telling us he wants Santa to bring him a dump truck.

I’m also trying to plan Ryan’s fifth birthday party, which always sneaks up on me, since it is just two weeks after Christmas.  I booked the venue this year in JULY- so that is set.  Now I just have to get save the dates out to people, and hope I’m not over the number of guests we are allowed to have.  Guess I had better double check on that.  Ryan of course, is just thrilled to be turning five.  I’m wondering where the time went, and how did my ‘baby’ become a little boy, who is just weeks away from being five years-old?

My mom is coming out for a visit the week of Christmas and will be able to spend an entire evening, and the next day with us.  I’m excited for that, and to be able to show her our new house.  Ryan and Cole are excited to bake cookies for Santa with Nana. 

So that is all we have been up to.  Stay tuned for another exciting update in the near future. 

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Joe was out of town this week- he came home a day early, so that was nice, but it has been an exhausting week. 

Since we would like to move into our new house, before next spring, I had grand plans this week to remove all of the ugly wallpaper border, and clean the walls, in the three bedrooms in our new house, so they would be ready for Joe to paint this weekend.  

We have decided to hire a professional painter to paint our living room, entry way, and dining room.  The living room has what I think is a 16-foot ceiling, but no, we haven’t measured.  There are some interesting angles in the room as well. 

Furthermore, the previous owners were hunters (no they were not related to Sarah Palin- a little shot of humor- I need it these days, ) and on these tall walls, they had a lot of their catches stuffed, (I believe taxidermy is the correct phrase for this), and mounted on the walls.  Evidently, it takes a lot of nails to hold up stuffed wild game.   I can’t count how many thick nails are in the walls, at various heights, and how many nail holes are in the walls. Did I mention, there is animal hair stuck the one of the walls, oh, about ten-feet up?

Joe is a great painter.  He is meticulous, but you have to have time to be that precise.  Even if he had the time, the nails, holes, and heights of the walls would take sometime to paint.   We found our painter, savior, who will remove all the nails, patch the holes, clean the walls (animal hair included for no extra charge), and then apply two coats of paint.  He has a crew, so it should just be a three or four day project. 

We have to get this area done because we are having hardwood floors installed by none other than Joe.  (We really are lucky he knows how to do all of these projects!)  But we don’t want to install the floor until the walls are painted.  In the master bedroom, and the boys’ rooms, we are having carpet installed, and again, we don’t want to paint with brand new carpet down.

So I thought I’d spend all day Tuesday removing wallpaper border. The border was glued, super-glued, three quarters of the way up on all the walls.  I had forgotten how much I HATE wallpaper.  After five hours, I only had three walls done in the master bedroom.  I didn’t have the right tools either, and I had the duct cleaner there as well..

Ryan had an injury from earlier in the morning, (trust me- you don’t want to know-let’s just say it was in the worst place ever for a little boy, and the teeth of his two year old brother were involved), so he was cranky (but who could blame him?)  and trying to work on a ladder removing wallpaper that is ten years old, with a cranky four-year old, and a curious two-year old who keeps trying to climb up the ladder-is not the formula to get much accomplished.  

After five and a half hours, we headed home.  I had to go to work for half-day on Wednesday, and after I picked up Ryan from school, we went back to the house, and I was able to finish the last wall in our bedroom.  I inspected the wallpaper in the other two rooms, and it was stuck on more firmly than the stuff I had just gotten off. 

After work today, and the nice surprise that Joe was home early, we went to Home Depot, to get a wallpaper scorer and some paint.  Fortunately, Joe has tomorrow off so he can get started in the master bedroom, and after the boys’ music class, I’ll start me vs. the wallpaper-Round 2.

It is a lot of work, and a bit stressful, but it will be worth it.  I can picture the rooms in the colors we picked out- the soft yellows against the wood floors and I get really excited.  The work makes me tired, but I still enjoy it.  

As the boys and I were sitting on a blanket on the floor in the living room, which is just sub-flooring right now, having a picnic on Tuesday, I knew someday when the room had been done for years, and has seen more of its fair share of living, I would always remember sitting there eating PB&J sandwiches with Ryan and Cole. We ate with badly-in need of paint-holes-in-the-walls, with animal hair stuck on them.  Not the most glamorous lunch, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

I do plan to post pictures, but I want to post before and after pictures at the same time.  In the meantime, I’ll leave you the paint colors of the rooms a paint consultant helped us pick out, since we are so awful at picking colors:

Colors for the entry way, living room, and dining room:

Yellow Freeze  &    Man on the Moon

Colors for the master bedroom:

 Baja Dunes &       Jade Tint

Boys’ Room: (they both wanted blue)

      Marguerite Blue

(color swatches from myperfectcolor.com)

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On Sunday, we had the home inspection for the house we are buying.  

If you are ever in doubt if it is worth the money on a home inspection, I would highly recommend it.  If everything checks out okay, you have just bought peace of mind and reassurance that probably, what is one of your biggest investments ever, is sound.  

I think a lot of home buyers can relate to the movie, The Money Pit, with Tom Hanks and Shelly Long, where they buy a house for a good deal, and as soon as they move in, everything and everything starts breaking, leaving them bankrupt.  If nothing else, you will know that you are not buying a money pit.

A few years ago after an inspection on a house we were buying, we realized that the pipes under the house were not up to code with the city- they were clay pipes and due to some city regulations, as soon as the house was sold, the new owners of the house (meaning us) would have to replace them.  The rough estimate- $50,000!  Needless to say, the money for the inspection, paid for itself! 

It was disappointing to realize we weren’t going to be able to buy the house, but in the long run we knew we did not want to undertake such an expensive problem!  Even though we spent a few hundred dollars for the inspection, we were made aware of the potential of having to spend $50,000!

So it was with cautious optimism, Joe and I felt on Sunday, as we had the inspection.  We felt we knew what the issues were in the house, but having had that $50,000 issue come up, before- you just never know for sure.

Thankfully, Ryan and Cole’s grandparents were able to watch them for us, so we could focus on the inspection with the inspector.  He was really thorough, and took three hours, to check every last detail of the house for us- from the top of the roof, to the last corner in the basement, and everything in between!

He mentioned the few minor issues we knew of, and caught a few more minor things that would need to be taken care of, but overall he said the house was a very well constructed house, with no $50,000 “surprises.” 

A little added bonus was the owner was there, doing some chores.  He was very nice, and hospitable, and was able to fill us in on a few things, and even pointed out that the back yard has some very nice, and healthy fruit trees!

Needless to say, we were very happy and pleased.  Our next step is to close on the loan, and in the meantime, get an appraisal.  We are trying to contain our excitement until we sign on the dotted line, but looks like this is really happening, and we just cleared another hurdle.  We are getting closer!

P.S. In case you were wondering, the picture at the top of the post,  is not a picture of the house-it is just a stock photo.

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If you remember a few months back in our house hunting,  we had found the one, but the sellers weren’t interested in selling it, so we were not able to get it under contract.

Since then, we have looked, looked, and looked some more at houses in the town we are currently living in, and also in nearby surrounding towns. We were coming up empty.  Either the houses were too small, needed major remodeling, or we just couldn’t find what we were looking for. 

I had an idea that house shopping would be like wedding dress shopping- you just know the minute you spot that perfect wedding dress.  I would see pictures of houses for sale on the Internet, and from the pictures they looked promising.  I knew the minute we drove up to a house, it would be the one. 

Uh, not really.  After two months, we were not finding what we wanted: a house that had- at least three bedrooms, a back yard on the bigger side, and room in the house to grow: translation- a basement, oh yeah, in our price range, in a neighborhood that we liked.

Evidently this is harder than I thought.  We found a house in August, that was almost the one.  It was in a nearby smaller town.  It was a few years old, but had only been lived in for a year.  It looked almost brand new.  We were really close to making an offer on it, but we hesitated.  It would have been fine for us now, but as the boys grew, it really didn’t have any more room to grow.  We both felt like we would outgrow it in five years, and it felt like we were settling for something we knew wasn’t right, but hoping it was.  

So we passed on it.  The evening we decided to pass on the house, I was checking the listings again, and a brand new listing caught my eye.  It was in the same neighborhood (that was our first choice) where we had tried to buy the first house.  We set up a showing right away.

While looking through the house, we both just knew it was the one.  It had everything we were looking for, with a few extras.  However, nothing is perfect.  The house was getting ready to be foreclosed, so it needed some work.  It needed to be cleaned, painted, new floors and carpet.  It needed a little more work than what we were hoping for, but that was the only negative.   

We made an offer a day later, which turned the deal into a short sale. This was in the middle of August, and we had to wait for the banks holding the mortgages on the house to approve our offer.  As of last week, we were still waiting.  We technically didn’t have a contract, because we didn’t want to start spending money on the inspection, mortgage application fees, etc., until we were sure the banks would approve the offer.

Last week, we were still waiting on the final bank holding the first mortgage, which is the no-brainer, because they would be paid in full.  We didn’t understand what was holding up their approval.  Turns out, they needed a signed contract to assure them, that the sellers really would be selling the house.  So as of last Thursday, we were officially under contract!

Hopefully the bank will get the approval processed- they already said they would, once we had a contract, and once they do that, we will close within 30 days.  But in the meantime, no one else can come along and make another offer on the house, while we wait for the bank. 

We are trying not to get too excited until we close (because you never know what can happen between now and then), but we definitely just got one step closer to moving.

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You can click here, to read Part I of this post. 

In order to really assess what we were dealing with, I took some of my dad’s advice.  He said you can usually spot a yellow jacket’s nest by watching them at dusk.  He said they make a bee line when the sun starts to go down to their nest. 

So later that evening and the next evening I watched.  Of course I was watching the one enterence that I knew of, and there were a lot of them entering.  I saw a lot buzzing around our tree, but I didn’t really see a spot where they were all trying to get in.

Joe and I figured the one entrance that we saw was hopefully the main one.  Not wanting to risk another episode like the one from a few days ago, we waited until it was dark and had cooled off.  Joe hung up a Rescue yellow jacket trap from the tree they were buzzing around.  I filled in the hole that I had dug, when I hit yellow jacket oil.

Then we were ready.  Joe sprayed an entire can of a white foamy wasp/yellow jacket spray into the entrance.  I watched from a safe distance.  Nothing.  There were no angry yellow jackets swarming up.  I figured the trap would be filled by the next morning.

At the risk of sounding a bit obssessed at this point, the next morning I checked the trap, and there was not one yellow jacket in it.  There were also none entering or exiting the opening to the nest.  Had we succeeded?  Maybe this wasn’t such a big nest after all.  Only time would tell.  I was cautious though.  Look what happened last time I thought the nest was killed.

A week later, happily, there is no yellow jacket activity to report.  While I am not stupid brave enough to try to dig the nest up again, even though the new can says you can as well, I think we may have solved our yellow jacket problem for now.  When it gets cold, we will dig up the area and see what is under there.  But for now, I’m just happy there aren’t hundreds of those suckers buzzing around.   

I will see a yellow jacket in the trap every day, but then they are gone, out of the trap.  It is eerie.  We have used those traps for a few years now, and always had a ton of them captured within a few days.  A week later, there is not one in there.  Could it be the yellow jackets have gotten smarter, and figured out a way to escape from the trap?  I have a vision of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds in my mind now, but with yellow jackets stinging away instead of pecking.  I do find it interesting nevertheless.

Hopefully we won’t have any more battles with the yellow jackets.

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(Note: I would have loved to added some pictures to this post, but after reading this I hope you will understand why I don’t want pictures of them on my blog.  )

The last few weeks I have noticed a lot of yellow jackets buzzing around our yard- especially by our gate- right where the boys like to play construction.

I knew I should have hung up the yellow jacket traps that we have this spring, to catch the queens, but it seemed to slip my mind. Now we are paying the price.  Yellow jackets are scavengers and fly close to the ground, looking for food.  They can also be aggressive, and unlike honey bees who only sting when they feel very threatened and die, yellow jackets can sting multiple times and they live.  That doesn’t work when you have two little boys, who aren’t scavengers, but do like to sit down on the ground when they are playing.

Last week while hanging up laundry on my clothesline, I noticed tons of yellow jackets flying into a small hole near the fence.  Yellow jackets build their nests underground.  Evidently we have a nest under there.  We bought some yellow jacket killer spray (usually I am not a big fan of insect sprays, but…) and according to the directions, we were to wait until it was dusk or dark, when the yellow jackets are less active, and then point the can nozzle into the hole, and spray away.  The directions said the spray was powerful enough to kill any other yellow jackets that were away from the nest, but who would return.  Then it said to wait 24 hours, and then you could safely remove the nest.

After spraying the nest, I didn’t see any yellow jackets for the next few days.  Yay- problem solved!  So yesterday in a moment of genius stupidity, I decided after lunch to go remove the nest…just like the directions on the can said.  Nevermind it was the heat of day, when yellow jackets are the most active, and I was in a tank top and shorts. 

I started digging with the shovel and didn’t see anything.  I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for- I suppose I thought I would see something that looked like a wasp’s nest.  All of a sudden I hit yellow jacket oil!  A swarm of them came up from the ground, and started flying right at me.  I did the only thing I could do- I screamed, batted them away with shovel, and ran my a** back to the house.  

Fortunately I did not get stung, but I was freaked out for hours.  I watched safety from the window, and cursed out the company that put those idiotic directions on their can of yellow jacket spray.  I saw the swarm eventually settle back into their nest, after they figured out the dumb lady with the shovel was gone.    Round 2- yellow jackets. 

I called Joe, and interrupted the class he was teaching and told him I needed him to bring home ammunition- Raid yellow jacket spray (the best I am told) and several more of the Rescue yellow jacket traps.  Spare no expense, I told him-this was war. 

Like any good general preparing to launch a battle,  I read up on yellow jackets on the Internet, and to my horror discovered they can have very complex and big nests underground.  Some can be several, several feet.  One picture I saw the nest was over six feet long.  It also said if the queens don’t die, and the nests aren’t destroyed, the pregnant ones stay dormant for the winter and can survive the cold winters, to emerge in the same nest year, after year, expanding the nest.

We have always had yellow jackets- a few years ago Joe got stung horribly by several yellowjackets in the front yard while mowing the lawn.  This was about six feet away from where I sprayed, so I just know, we probably have one of those huge six feet nests underground. 

Later in the day, my dad stopped by and I told him what was happening. We went back outside, and from a safe distance saw yellow jackets again, going in and out of their nest now, in two different spots, plus we saw countless ones flying by our big tree in the front yard, where Joe had gotten stung. 

We observed the enemy and formulated a plan- Clearly, I had underestimated the yellow jackets.  This was going to be much harder and more complicated than just spraying yellow jacket killer spray in one of the many entrances to their nest…

Stay tuned for Part II

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If you are like me, you might be trying to gradually replace household items in your home with more eco-friendly options.  Who wants to expose their children and family to harmful chemicals, so often found in traditional cleaning products? 

I have also been trying for over a year now, to reduce the amount of plastic bags we bring home from the grocery store.  Once I started paying attention to how many bags I was bringing my groceries home in, it was so excessive.  No wonder I always ended up with what seemed liked hundreds of bags under my sink.  Sometimes the bagger at the store, would use one bag for one small item. 

It bothers me that we still use plastic Ziploc bags, but quite frankly, they are so easy to use.  I use the gallon sizes for everything from marinades to storing art supplies in.  I use the sandwich and snack sizes for the boys’ snacks on the go, and for Ryan’s school lunches. 

But probably the biggest single factor for me in holding off replacing more household items is the cost.  We only have one natural grocery store in our town, and paper products, etc. are pretty expensive there.  My regular grocery store doesn’t have that big of a selection of eco-friendly paper, plastic, and cleaning supplies.  I suspect I am like a lot of people, who would like to purchase more eco-friendly products, but can’t justify spending double, triple, or even more on them. 

Fortunately, we don’t have to now.  There is a fantastic company, Lets Go Green.biz, which now provides many eco-friendly household products that are affordable.  In fact, after reviewing their site, many products cost less than what I have been paying for conventional items.

What makes it even more affordable, in addition to their already low prices, if you use the coupon code FRIEND during checkout, you receive an additional 25% off your order!  How wonderful is that? 

One of the best bargains they have is their new BPA-free water bottles from Camelbak.  I have seen similar BPA bottles in the sporting good store for at least $15.  Sigg BPA-free water bottles are great, but in my health food store, they run from $20-$40.  The price of Lets Go Green’s BPA-free water bottles: $12.89. With the 25% discount, they end up being $9.67.  I have yet to see them less anywhere else.  Plus they come in a variety of colors. 

I am so excited and pleased to offer a fabulous giveway from Lets Go Green.biz.  It is valued at over $37 and all the products are eco-friendly.  One lucky person will win: 

 Let’s Go Green Large Canvas Shopping Bag 

 32oz. Glass Cleaner (I have used this, and it works wonderfully!  It gets the smudges and little handprints off the windows with no streaks.  It is dye and fragrence free, non-toxic, and it is biodegradable!) 

 Recycled Bath Tissue 4pack 

  Recycled Paper Towel 3pack

  13 Gallon Ecosafe Tall Degradable Kitchen Bags  (15 count)

  Slider Gallon PVC Free Freezer Bags (10 count)

   5 Minute Shower Coach  (to help time your showers and conserve water)

   Toilet Tank Bank  (helps save almost a full gallon with every flush)

   Walnut Scrubber Sponge (made with organic walnut shells)

To be eligible to win this prize, all you have to do is go to Lets Go Green.biz, and look at their products.  Then leave a comment here, stating what product, or products you would like to try, or what product caught your attention.  That’s it!  The contest will run for two weeks, ending on July 1, at 10 PM eastern time.  The winner will be picked by a random.org, with the number corresponding to your comment number.

If you can’t wait that long, be sure to click on the Lets Go Green.biz button I have on the top of this post, or on the left hand side of my blog.  It will take you to their website, and remember to enter the code FRIEND at checkout, to save 25% off your order. 

Lets Go Green.biz also has a fundraising program that is definitely worth checking out if you have a group or organization.  If you are interested in finding out more about their fundraising programs, be sure to check out their Green Fundraising pages.

This is a terrific chance to win some eco-friendly household products.  Make sure to enter before July 1st.  Going “green” doesn’t have to be expensive, and thanks to Lets Go Green.biz, they have just made it a lot easier and affordable.  Good luck- and may the “green” be with you!

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  Before being blessed with two children (BK-Before Kids), I didn’t know how good we had it on the weekends.  If I woke up, let alone got out of bed before 9am, I thought I was missing my beauty sleep.  :-)  After getting dressed and ready to go in about 15 minutes (compared with usually an hour after kids) Joe and I would go out to breakfast at our favorite spot.

We didn’t care if the wait was an hour- we brought our newspaper with us, and could leisurely read the paper and drink coffee while we waited for our table.  After we had a nice breakfast, we would go home and do a few chores around the house. 

When you don’t have two small monkeys boys, cleaning and maintaining the house takes about thirty minutes a week.  When you have two small monkeys boys, it takes about 10 hours a week.  (Not exaggerating on this either.  On Friday it took me from 10 am to 8pm to clean the house- and that was leaving a bathroom undone.  But that is another post.)

Back to our weekends before kids.  Usually on Saturday afternoons, I would visit friends, go shopping, garden, exercise, or just hang out and read a book.  Sometimes I would cook dinner, and sometimes we would go out.  (If you are keeping track- NO cooking so far.) If we went out, we weren’t there at 5pm, in order to beat the dinner crowds- we didn’t need to time a meal down to the last millisecond, before one, or both kids had a major public meltdown, and the restaurant’s customers were treated to a baby’s shrieking cries, or a toddler screaming at the top of his lungs, “I want to go NOW!”

No, we had all the time in the world.  If the restaurant wait interfered with our plans to go catch a movie afterwards, now that was cause for concern.   Otherwise we were fine.  Oh, and the movies.  We used to love going to the movies.  We didn’t have to choose between the 4pm showing that would end before our boys’ bedtime, and oh- that is your only movie time choice as a parent.  If you go to the early evening movie after having kids, you usually aren’t home until 10pm, and you can hear the wailing coming from the house, as you turn your car down the street.

When you arrive home, you realize World War III has started in your living room.  Oops- that is just the two boys that absolutely will not go to bed for the babysitter, and the only way the sitter could calm them down was to let them drag out every toy they have- even the 1,000 piece Lego’s pack.  Which, you have just stepped on, and are trying not to let out a few choice words in front of the sitter, and the two very tired, sleep deprived monkeys boys. 

At this point the boys monkeys (yes, they have turned into monkeys now) are climbing on you, crying, and wailing that only mommy can put them to bed.  Two hours later, past midnight, you finally have achived the task- getting overtired children to bed.  You curse the d**n movie and wonder why in the world you just put yourself through that.  No movie is worth the war battle you just went through- all to get a night out.

On Sunday mornings BK,  Joe and I would sleep in again (really, I used to sleep?!), and then hang out some more, go grocery shopping (yes, we usually grocery shopped together), read the paper, and had a lazy Sunday, or hung out with family.  I liked cooking on Sunday’s, so I would make a nice dinner.  We had no time constraints, or demands on our time from the children.  Our time was completely ours, and as I write this, I can barely remember it.  Was it really only four years ago?  It seems like a lifetime ago. 

This is going to end up a pretty long post, so I am breaking it into parts.  Check back later in the week for Weekends Before & After Kids Part II. 

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I have been cleaning out closets the last few weeks, because I don’t need to keep all the baby clothes Cole no longer fits into.  I decided to consign almost all of them, and then what didn’t sell, donate to a local pregnancy center.

How hard can that be- bag up clothes and drop them off?  Evidently pretty hard if you are a sentimental, sappy mama, like me.  Every outfit, shirt, pair of pants, and shorts, brought back some kind of memory with both my boys.  I remembered the first time Ryan wore a shirt, and then remembered of course, the first time Cole wore it, on and on.  No wonder it has taken me weeks to go through everything. 

I suppose this goes deeper than an outfit- when I see the cute little baby clothes that my “babies” don’t fit into anymore, it reminds me of that time not so long ago, when they were babies.  I remember what they were like when they did fit in the clothes that I am packing up, to give away.

In all honesty, it feels like I am giving a part of their “babyhood” away.  Will I ever wish one day that I had that special outfit Ryan wore in his first picture?  Will I regret not keeping the cute overalls that Cole loved to wear?  I even thought about saving some clothes to give to the boys way down the road, when they have babies.

The thought of storing clothes for at least twenty plus years or more, snapped me back into reality.  I don’t want to become a pack rat, holding on to everything which reminds me of when the boys were babies, or toddlers, or pre-schoolers, etc.  The only reason I would be saving them, is because I would want to try to preserve a piece of those times.  I have other ways of doing that, without having to be a clothes hoarder for the next twenty years. 

As my boys get bigger though, there really aren’t that many clothes worth saving. Between all the mud, dirt, and grass stains on their shirts, and torn knees in their pants, I am happy to get rid of them. 

I do have just a few special outfits that I am saving.  My favorites are the little onesies the hospital gave them as newborns.  I look at those ever so often, and am just amazed how small they are, and that they were actually big on my babies as newborns. 

So  with the back of my car packed to the brim of all these baby clothes to donate, which are no longer needed, I feel good they have another life ahead of them.  Perhaps another mother will love the same outfits I did.  Maybe one day in the not so distance future, she will be faced with having to decide what to give away, and what to keep, and she too, will be remembering the first time her baby boy wore that special outfit.  If I could meet that mother who will receive my boys’ clothes, I would tell her to enjoy- enjoy every minute with her baby-it goes so fast. 

Getting rid of the clothes helped me realize, when the baby clothes no longer fit, and there is a beautiful child instead, in that baby’s place- you don’t need have to have bags of clothes to remember him as a baby-you just do.

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Update: 5/30/08- I dropped off the clothes along with some other baby equipment no longer needed, this morning.  I took them to a pregnancy center which helps usually younger women who are faced with an unplanned pregnancy.   I felt sad, thinking about all the clothes that I would never see again.  When the receptionist saw how many clothes and other items I had, she was amazed.  She told me they never get that many items donated, and it was a real blessing.  I took my stuff to their stock room, and they only had a few toys- no clothes whatsoever!  She just kept telling me thank you, and they would be put to such great use. 

That made it all worth while- I know I will remember my boys’ being babies, and I am so glad their clothes will have a useful second life. 

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I have about a half-hour commute to work, twice a week.  I get to listen to what I want to on the radio (no Music Together, Barney, or kiddie music CD’s.)  So I like to listen to the popular talk shows, to stay up on what is happening in the world.

During the past month, I have heard every talk show talking about stay-at-home moms who have or get an “allowance.” This is money their husbands give them to spend each week, and once it is gone, it is gone- no more buying anything.  At first I thought this only applied to a few people, but I was amazed by the calls the radio shows were receiving, and these were all on different stations.

The allowance “rules” based on the women, who called in, seem range from the wife receiving a large allowance to buy groceries, gas, and other household necessities to only $20 a week to buy “emergency” items like diapers, or to splurge on herself. 

One woman said her husband gives her $50 a week for her allowance and with this she has to buy gas, diapers, and formula.  If there is any money left over, she said she can spend it on herself, like on a haircut, or clothes.  She said with gas prices being so high though, she barely has enough of her allowance left after buying gas. 

Another woman said her husband gives her $20 a week that she can spend on whatever she wants for herself, but if she needs money for diapers, or a doctor’s appointment, she has to submit the amount to him ahead of time, and he writes a check for that exact amount.  Some women had to even get trips to the grocery store, dry cleaners, etc. “approved” ahead of time from their husbands, so their husbands would know how much gas they were using. 

The calls went on and on, and evidently there are a lot of households in my area who are doing this.  Some of the women loved it- they said it helped them stay on a budget, but some women said they hated it, but felt like they had little choice, since their husband was the one who was earning the money. 

I’m all for budgeting the household money, and maybe if a wife requests the finances be run this way, I don’t have a problem with it.  Whatever works, if both parties are happy.  I do have a problem with the whole allowance issue if the wife is not happy, or feels like she has no choice in how finances are spent, even if her husband is the sole wage earner.

Stay-at-home moms contribute so much to the family- I am sure I don’t have to list it all out.  To be made to feel like you are a teen-ager asking your father for an allowance, just seems degrading to me.  I am of the thought (and my husband is too), that we both contribute to the household, and we don’t need “permission” to spend money.  Of course we run bigger purchase items by each other, but my husband doesn’t want or demand an accounting of every dollar I spend, and I don’t expect that of him either.

I am really curious now, what do you think about this?  I would love to hear if you have an allowance, if so, is it your choice, and what are the benefits or drawbacks to this. 

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