My husband and I are very careful with our money.  We eat out occasionally, but we rarely purchase “stuff”.  We cloth diaper our kids, and I breastfeed – so no formula or diaper expenses.  Our kids wear a lot of hand-me-downs, kids grow so fast and our kids don’t care about their clothes anyway.  I think grand total this year, my husband and I have spent under $200 on clothes for ourselves.  Our debt (non-mortgage) is very very low.  One of our cars is completely paid off, and the other will be soon.  Otherwise, we keep our credit card and other debt to a level that we can pay off every month.

So, why do I obsess so much about what others think about how I choose to spend our money?  Because when I do buy something, I generally buy something expensive.

Miriam’s high chair is a TripTrap chair.  Yes, I spent $250 on her high chair, and plan to do the same in the next few months on a chair for Asher.  It’s a solid wood, well constructed, adjustable chair that doesn’t have a tray – so the kids sit at the table with us.  It will work for them in their rooms later on as desk chairs, but until then, they’ll each have thier very own chair at the dining room table.  The chair holds up to 300 freaking pounds!

$250 for a chair that will last their entire lives doesn’t seem like a bad decision to me.

So, now I am in the market for a kitchen play set.  The library purchased one recently, and Miriam LOVES the thing.  However, I don’t want plastic, and I want something that is durable enough to last two toddlers (and friends) the entire length of “kitchen set play”.  It would be even better if it’s something I can put away when they are done with it for when they have kids.

When I was little, my dad put together a kitchen playset of us made of sheet metal.  He cut his hands up really bad making it.  If I were skilled, or if DH had time, I’m sure we could make one that would meet our wants and needs, but neither of those are true.

So, the play kitchen that I’m looking at is $200.  I know I could pick one up much cheaper at target, made of plastic or plywood, and have to replace it in a year or two.  Instead, I’m going to lay out the money once, and be done with it.

Terry Pratchett wrote a great explanation of wealth.  To paraphrase it, a poor man buys a cheap pair of boots because it is all that he can afford, and has to replace them every 6 months.  A wealthy man buys a pair of boots that costs 4 times as much, but never has to replace them.  They last forever.

I believe that the path to true wealth is to buy quality, not quantity.

So, I’m not going to apologize for spending a fortune on a high quality toy which will be a combination birthday and hanukah gift for my child instead of buying 9 seperate plastic toys which require batteries and will be broken within the year.

This is the right decision for us, and anyone who judges me for it can take a flying leap!  Especially that little voice inside that always judges me.  She can just shove off! 

Today was a shopping day.  For the very first time, Jason kept BOTH kids, all by himself, for several hours.  He survived, the kids survived, and the house survived.  But that isn’t the part I’m all jazzed about.

Oh no.

My mother and I went shopping.  Not only did we go shopping, we kicked some shopping ass, and I did my part to stimulate the economy, believe you me!

I bought a dress.  No, not a dress.  A gown.  An amazing gown that will make my husband forget that I am a mother of two, and see me as the goddess fallen to Earth that I am.

I also bought shoes.  Otherwise known as FM Shoes.  Oh yeah, those.

And a wrap, just in case it gets cold at Navy Pier this Wednesday, where Jason and I will be attending a wedding.

Also, jewelery. Earrings and a necklace.  Lovely lovely lovelies.

A purse.  Too hold of my necessities, what with still being a nursing mama.

And of course, appropriate foundation garments.

All in one day, and all for UNDER $200.

The dress was in fact the 3rd one I tried on. First (and only) trip to a fitting room.  And it was 50% off.

I never have this kind of luck, this is what in my family, we call Megan luck after my sister who can wear anything off the rack and buys a swimsuit in less than 10 minutes and looks amazing in!

Well, the whole shebang took me a little longer than 10 minutes, but we were home before 5, and I got everything I need to look amazing.

I should go buy a lottery ticket with luck like this!

Jen, over at beyondmom.com recently posted on her blog, in response to Sheena, from Mommy Daddy Blog, about being a “crunchy mom”. They both got me thinking, am I a crunchy mom?  I know Jen would say I am, but I’m not so sure.  I certainly don’t consider myself crunchy.  Frugal, sure.  Ethical?  I try.  But crunchy?  I dunno.  I think I just am cautious of describing myself in such a “granola” way.  I see all the ways I could be more environmentalist, and I am sensitive about being teased for being “hippy dippy”, so I’m wary.

You be the judge.  How crunchy am I?

I cloth diaper.  Why?  Because I love cloth. Cloth is cute. Sorry, but there are no disposable diapers that compare to this kind of cuteness.  Cloth is cheap. Cloth is re-usable, and I’m a big fan of reusing things.  Cloth also keeps 1 metric ton of waste out of the landfills, per child.  But, when we travel, we use disposable.  I just hate doing laundry on vacation, ya know?

I garden.  Well, actually, my husband gardens.  I putter.  He’s the one who does 90% of the work.  I occasionally pull a weed, I harvest most of the produce, and I feel proud.  This year, we are growing:

• beans (2 varieties)
• peas
• beets
• kale
• spinach
• radishes
• tomatoes (2 varieties)
• bell peppers (2 varieties)
• rhubarb
• strawberries
• raspberries
• and of course the mulberry bushes that are 20+ feet high and came with the house.

I wear Asher in a sling.  A lot.  Not because it is “crunchy”, but because it leaves my hands free so I can chase after Miriam. 

I drive a hyrbid.  It is an SUV though, so I think that works out to a regular car. 

I get a bi-weekly delivery of organic veggies and fruits from Timber Creek Farms.  If you are within 100 miles of Chicago, check them out.  I love my produce delivery.  The cost is totally reasonable, and the quality rocks!

Going back to the cloth diaper thing, I line dry them when the weather allows (which in Chicago is surprisingly rare!)  I hate how much the dryer heats up the house, and love that the sun takes out stains.

I dress my kids in hand-me-downs as much as possible.  I think I’ve bought 6 onsies total for Asher, and probably 12 outfits for Miriam.  Between family that loves to buy clothes for my kids (THANK YOU!) and friends with older kids who’ve outgrown clothes, my kids are very well dressed.  I also plan to hand the clothes on to others, as needs arise.  Waste not, want not.

We go to the library once a week, and the farmers market every week during the season.  And we walk to both, unless it is raining.  Don’t think that we get all our books from the library though!  We are bookworms and could probably start a library of our own. 

We use cloth napkins.  I just like them better, and they take up hardly any room in the laundry anyway. 

In general, I hate the idea of buying things just to throw them away.  Don’t even get me started on garbage bags – at this point a necessary evil.

I knit.  I’m not sure how that would be crunchy to anyone who has seen a real knitters stash, but I guess non-knitters would think it is thrifty, enviro-conscious, etc. 

We eat what I call “ethically”.  We don’t keep kosher, because honestly all the rules Judiasm has built up around kashrut over the years boggle me.  Chickens don’t make milk!!!  (okay, rant over)  But, we do try to eat ethically, which for us means thinking about what we eat, where it comes from, and how the food we take into our bodies becomes part of us, and comes from G-d.  We ate kosher meat, until the scandal last year.  Now, I try to buy ethically raised meat.  I don’t care if it was slaughtered in a kosher fashion if the employees weren’t treated properlly and the animals were abused before slaughter.  I do care that my food is treated well, and that we treat our bodies well.  (oh, and I love shelfish too much, I think if the ancient Israelites had known how yummy oysters are, they wouldn’t have forbidden them!)

And in the not at all crunchy section:

We follow the vaccination schedule religiously.  My mom was a poster child for the polio vaccines.  Seriously, her face was in the newspaper and on posters!  We are big believers in the power of vaccines.

I got to Target once a week.  At least.  No, I don’t know what all I buy there.  I love buying things.  It makes me happy.  I don’t buy junk, but we don’t really need all the DVD’s, books, and other chazerie that I collect.

I love kitchen gadgets.  I have a yogurt machine, a food processor, a stand mixer, a hand mixer, a toaster oven, two waffle irons (belgian and standard), a coffee grinder (which you can pry from my cold dead hands), a drip coffee maker, an espresso machine, an immersion blender, a standup blender, a rice cooker/ steamer, etc.  I could do almost all the jobs these tools do by hand, but the tools are fun damnit!

I don’t compost.  Yet.  Research is ongoing.

I love my AC.  I get very grouchy when I’m warm, so the AC is my friend.  I turned it on this week, and plan to leave it on, and set to 74 whenever I’m home until October.  However, in the winter, we keep the heat on at 68 during the day, and only 64 at night.  Like I said, I get grouchy when I’m warm. 

So, you tell me, am I crunchy?  Are you?

I need one good reason to not kill my husband.  Please.

He twittered today that his Ipod was dying, so I chatted him back and asked how bad it was. He didn’t reply.  I said that if it was indeed dying, we’d go get him a new one.  He uses the thing all day at work, and it is more than 2 years old. It’s a justifyable expense.  Not what I was planning to use our “entertainment / household” budget category for this month, but okay.

I figured that I need a few things at the mall anyway, and I could certainly use to get out.  Lord knows I can’t do a mall trip by myself with both babies.

Several hours later, my darling husband calls me.  It turns out he already went out, leaving work, and bought a replacement.  A zune.  Considering what all he does with his Ipod, a Zune is not an appropriate replacement, but Mr. Know-it-all with a history of buying inapropriate MP3 players (you think I’m kidding) and having to replace them within 48 hours (again you think I’m kidding) is sure he did just fine.

Did I mention he used up an hour of comp time to do this?  One of his 8? With which we had already discussed that he was going to take a full day off and give me a hand?  Yeah.  One of those hours.

So now, I don’t get a mall trip (which I was actually looking forward to), he blew the budget on a non-returnable item which will not meet his needs, and I lost my day of having help.

Oh, and he called to tell me all this after Asher projectile-vomited 5 times in an hour.  Each time immediatly after I got him bathed, cleaned up, changed, and changed the blanket etc.  Seriously, I’d get everything all clean and nice, and 5 seconds later, erruption.

Oh, and Mr. Helpful has to work all weekend, after working all of last weekend, and two 12 hour days this week.  In addition to his normal 8+ hour days.

And it is supposed to snow.

Well, both kids are crying again. There goes my break for the day.

Much thanks to my darling husband for upgrading me to the new version of WordPress, and in the process breaking the blog. Even more thanks go out to the helpful people at Yahoo tech support, who were able to fix it – when said husband talked them through it because he broke it so badly we couldn’t even access the back end.

It’s nice to be live again!

We are home, and glad to be so.  It’s a lot of fun to visit family and friends, but it is also very, very nice to be home.  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and are so far past tired that we are approaching it from the other side (whatever that means).

Traffic was decent, but not insane.  The weather was fairly cooperative for the drive home, and there is nowhere near the 10+ inches of snow on the ground that we were hearing about this morning.  In fact, I don’t think there is any at the moment.  Tomorrow is another matter though.

We are tired.  Did I mention that?

Oh, and I think that if we try to put Miriam in the car seat again, she will run away.  Seriously.

Love and hugs to all.  Hope I didn’t miss anything too important over the last week.  I’ll try to get caught up, but it may take a while.  For now, I’m off to bed.

I was working on dinner last night. Wait, no. DH and I were both working on dinner.  We were making tacos. Miriam was already in the highchair, and we were getting things ready to go out to the table.  Guacamole, check. Lettuce, check. Salsa, still in the fridge, let me grab it.

Yes, we eat Gringo tacos.  We are Gringos, so it’s okay.

I opened up the fridge to grab the jar of salsa, and then was suddenly seeing stars. Lots of stars. Oh, and pretty birdies too. They were dancing with the stars.  Hey, isn’t that the name of a t.v. show these days?

I was telling a story, right.

So, stars. And birdies. Then a “thunk”. There is a glass vase on the floor at my feet.  Wait a second. Doesn’t that vase live on top of the fridge for when my darling husband buys me flowers?  Yeah, it does.

So why is it on the floor?

DH started laughing, and quickly stopped himself when he saw my dazed expresion.

Apparently, the vase fell off the fridge, bounced off my skull, and then landed safely on the floor.

I got quite the headache. This morning there is a pretty lump, and still a headache.

Somebody come pamper me today.

Best email I get, every single week! http://www.thisistrue.com/

This is True is by far, the funniest, most heart wrenching, and frustrating email I get, every single week. It’s free, or you can get the ad free version for $24 a year.

It’s been around since 1994*, and has been funny every single week.

Check it out, you won’t be disappointed!

*Oops.  I was off by 10 years.

I’ve been feeling poorly for a while now.  Mostly, I’ve credited it to being pregnant and having a cold, but yesterday things went from bad to worse, so I made a doctors appointment.  It’s a good thing I did.  Turns out I have strep throat.  So, now I’m on some heavy duty antibiotics and the doc said I should rest and take it easy.  I reminded him that I have a 7 month old.  He said to try anyway.

On my way out of the office, I fell off the curb, ’cause I’m elegant like that, and couldn’t get up right away.  After a few moments of feeling completely ridiculous, I managed to heft my carcass up off the asphalt, swallowed my pride, and went back into the doctor’s office.

The nurse cleaned up my knee and gave me a kick-ass bandaid and gave me strict orders to go home and rest.

I went to walgreens, filled my ’script, and came home.

Jason, who is working from home today, cleaned up my knee again and gave me a new bandaid as I had bled through the first one in the 45 minutes I waited at walgreens for my 7 little pills.

So, now I’m sitting here with my leg elevated, and an icepack on my knee.  My toes are swollen, and my knee hurts like hell.  I can’t even bend my knee without help.

My throat hurts, my ear hurts, my knee hurts, I’m sick, and I feel like the most pathetic person on the planet.

Oh, and Jason popped in a movie for me: Fantastic 4 and the Silver Surfer.  My day just keeps getting better and better.

Even though he has to leave for work at Oh My Gawd It’s Early o’clock in the morning, my darling husband made a fresh pot of coffee for me.

He’s the best!