Four Months

Naomi,

We are four months into this parenting thing. You seem to wholly approve of  us, so the feeling is finally mutual. There was a period of about two months in the beginning when your serious faces made me think you really doubted our parenting abilities. I thought you might demand we take you back to the hospital. Lucky for us, you still haven’t figured out how to talk.

A few weeks ago we were in a store and the saleslady kept staring at us as we (I) shopped. When I caught her eye, she sighed audibly and said, “There’s nothing like seeing a well-loved baby.”

And this is what you are. Don’t get me wrong, this has been true since we learned of your existence, before we even saw your tiny, six-week old heart beating on the ultrasound, when you were nothing but the promise of you, a  little line on a drugstore test. But now, with your chubby cheeks, your happy gurgles, and your abundant smiles, you are wearing the look of being a well-loved baby.

And you’re a good one. You are very relaxed and you generally go with the flow. I fretted that with 12 aunts and 8 uncles, you might get overwhelmed easily, that all that love might totally overwhelm your little soul. I needn’t have worried so much. Uncle Phillip’s constant in-your face cooing, the jostling of little hands who ALL WANT TO HOLD YOU NOW I’M NEXT, you have taken in stride.

I know, it’s cliche to say. But you’re getting so big. You are double the size you were when you were born. Your hands are starting to explore the things we place in them. You put everything you are able to in your mouth.

About that last part: oops. Up until right before Christmas, I could say you were exclusively breastfed. No formula or rice cereal had passed your lips. Until you were sitting in my lap as I was arranging an appetizer for a Christmas party– and a drop of blueberry jam fell on your hand. Which was immediately brought to your mouth.

I was horrified. But you gave me a look of such pure, unadulterated joy I wanted to give you a whole spoonful.

Maybe at six months, girlie.

I love you.

How we: save on oil changes

Three months or 3,000 miles– no doubt you’ve heard the Jiffy-Lube slogan concerning oil changes. It’s also a load of crap. Did you know that many manufacturers don’t recommend getting the oil changed for much later, depending on the model of the car– some up to 10,000 miles?

If you’re interested in learning what your number is for your car, you can hop on over here and plug in the year, make, and model of your car. Bam! Turns out our Hyundai Elantra only needs an oil change every 7500 miles. My Honda Civic? Even better– 10,000 miles! And both of our cars are over 10 years old!

It’s important to note that this number is true under “Normal Driving Conditions,” which according to the CalRecycle website means:

• Cold weather, less than 10 degrees
• Extreme heat, more than 90 degrees
• Extreme humidity
• Towing a trailer or hauling heavy materials
• Repeated short-distance trips of less than five miles
• Extensive idling or in stop-and-go traffic

Thanks to California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) for this information!

Statistically speaking

Statistician J. Stuart Hunter

I’m in the thick of a Statistics project for an online class. It involves data on the number of pages in random statistics texts. It came with seven pages of instructions in size 12 font.

Boring. I’d like to quantify something like, how many men have ever gotten a woman to stop by yelling at her for a ride as she passes by on her bike? Now, there’s a real-world statistics project for you! Furthermore– what happens when there are complicating factors like,

1. She is 5 months pregnant
2. It is 84 degrees outside
3. She is biking uphill
4. (Oh, yeah.) She’s married? 

I e-mailed my professor. Hopefully next semester’s class will have a really awesome project to do.

How we: meal plan

whipperberry.com

MEAL PLANNING can seem scary. Especially when you type it in all capitals. My coworkers cringed when they caught me planning while eating my lunch at work. “You’re one of those people?” they asked. Gah!

But it shouldn’t be a scary thing. For one thing, it saves you time during your week. It saves you money (in spending less cash and in producing less food waste). It reassures your husband that you will eat good food that week. And, best of all, it assures that you avoid that terrible moment when you realize, driving home from a 12-hour shift, that you have nothing to eat for dinner.

Do it before you grocery shop. Set a timer. Don’t take longer than 5-10 minutes. This is supposed to make you stress out less about your week,  not cause more anxiety. (I’m sorry if it seems like I think you’re an anxious person… I do hang out with nurses all day!)

Deep breath.

1. Pick a format that works for you. A former housemate typed hers up at work. Pretty. Some people have menu chalkboards. Fancy. I use scrap paper. Scrappy.

2. Take a quick look at your week. Plan to make meals that works with the time you’ll have that day. What days will you need a fast meal? When do you have more time to try out that new recipe? Honey Roasted Plums with Fresh Thyme and Greek Yogurt? Yes please.

3. Think about what you have. What do you need to use up before it goes bad? Leftover sweet potatoes and sour cream from last week? Voila. Then think: What’s on sale? What do you want to eat? What does hubby/houesemate want?

4. Don’t forget: Breakfasts, lunches, and snacks! Ensure your marital happiness: Make sure there are breakfast options for your husband’s 5 am breakfasts. Are you getting five a day? Come on people!

5. Write it all down. God job! You now have a plan. I always feel better when I have a plan.

6. Make your shopping list based on what you need. Just what you need. Trust me. You can do this.

7. EXTRA CREDIT: Think about what prep tasks would make cooking more efficient. Do you need to soak beans for a meal on Tuesday? Write it down to-do on Monday. Do you need to thaw some pesto for your pasta on Wednesday. Does it make sense to make two meals at once– one for the allotted night, one for the next? You’re so awesome to think about that in advance. Good job.

Other tips:

• It might be helpful  to have a list of meals you like to eat. You could categorize them by the amount of time they take to make! By expense! I’ve gone too far.
• Be flexible. It’s OK if you eat your Monday meal on Wednesday because Sunday’s made 2 days worth of leftovers.

This is how we do it. Do you do it? How do you do it? Are you giggling like a 5th grader because I said ‘do it’ three times?

Wrong

I’ve been searching for knitting patterns for baby lately. Needless to say….

This will not be one of my upcoming projects…

My small companion

17 weeks

Now that the baby is moving in ways I can feel, I feel like I have a small, secret traveling companion wherever I go (becoming not so secret by the day, as you can see in the picture above!).  When baby moves it feels more like a small muscle twitch rather than the “gas bubble” my doctor described. It’s definitely distinct and it’s still catching me by surprise (and delight) when it happens.

How we: spend less on groceries

Recently a friend asked me how I manage my food budget. We haven’t always done a great job at this– in fact, we were pretty terrible at the start of or marriage and spent way too much on food (Matthew may disagree)! I have been watching my food budget shrink over the past year. Our goal has been to spend $250/month on food, with a goal to reduce this to $200/month once our CSA starts up again in June.

How have we been saving money?

1. Meal planning BEFORE you shop. A lot of people groan when I tell them I plan meals, but it really does help us to eat better. I feel more organized when I do it, and it really only needs to take five minutes at the most. I’ll dedicate more time to this on a later post.

2. Going to the store ONCE a week. Doing one large trip once a week and being insistent on using what you’ve bought for the week eliminates the small trips for impulse buys (“Let’s just have frozen pizza” instead of planning to make one next week) and last minute things (“I forgot x ingredient!” instead of making a substitution).

3. Giving into impulse buys sometimes. This may sound counter intuitive, but if you’re like me, too much restriction put on yourself will only make you spend more later (retail therapy, anyone?). You could set a guideline for yourself such as “I can have one impulse buy per trip that’s less than $5,” or “my total of impulse buys today has to be less than $7.” For example, today I went to Trader Joe’s. I bought everything exactly as it was on my list, but spent $7 in exceptions: plums, chocolate PB eggs for Matthew, and a chocolate bunny for our housemate who has gone without chocolate for Lent.

4. Keep a well-stocked pantry. For us, this means buying things when they’re on sale, and keeping dry ingredients on hand. Using dried beans over canned really helps us cut down on cost.

5. Having a dollar limit to spend each week. Some people do this by shopping only with cash. Currently, my goal is to spend $50/week three times a month and $70 once. The $70 trip is reserved for pantry stocking items (dried beans, 50-lb bags of rice, dried milk, paper goods and cleaning items), but other times for more special things (steak dinner). 

6. Eat less meat! This is one of the easiest things to do, and it can be one of the most fun. Eating more vegetarian meals will push you to cook more creatively (sweet potato burgers, anyone?) and deliciously. Who knew there were a million ways to use lentils? Alternately, use less meat in a recipe and add more veggies, particularly beans, to reduce the cost of your overall meal.

7. Go to Aldi, already. Kristen of the Frugal Girl has enumerated the benefits of shopping at this store. They use business practices that reduce prices pretty dramatically over places like Safeway– I don’t want to be paying more money on eggs in exchange for fancier in-store signage!

How do you save money on groceries?

Life, as we know it

One theme that is emerging in our life is that we can NEVER have a normal roommate moving-in weekend. In my head, in an ideal world, I’d really like it to go something like, “Here’s the (recently fully scrub-clean) place, we are so glad you’re here, let’s hang out for a while.”

Nope. That is not the Loftus way. 

Our excuses for the house being messier than normal and us being nearly wholly absentee have ranged from Matthew being in the hospital AND having his brother’s wedding the same weekend, to being right at the cusp of a new semester of school, to having our old roommate move out and moving the new one in on the same weekend.

Now our excuse is that Matthew has less white blood cells than a cancer patient. For an unknown reason. And there’s a bone marrow biopsy involved that occurred a little too close to 5 pm on a Friday to be truly sure when we’ll hear about the results. And the fact that I worked nights all weekend barely saw my husband enough to say hello in the parking lot, much less get an adequate amount of sleep.

Oh yeah. and there’s a hurricane rolling steadily in.

So we say welcome to our new housemate, we’re so glad you’re here. Please excuse the sticky spot on the kitchen floor, and excuse me if I konk out and drool a little on the couch as you enter. Come on in and make yourself at home and make sure you have a working flashlight. God’s still big and you know we’re still crazy and as long as the power holds out we’ll have a belated celebration dinner tonight, because our idea of “stocking up” is a trip to the Italian grocery involving homemade pasta sauce, much gnocchi, and a couple bottles of wine.

“² Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, ³ because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. ⁴ Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. ” James 1:2-4

Summer Reading List

I’m sharing mine in order to keep on track. I love knowing which book will be next! Let me know if you are reading anything along with me!

Christian Living/Justice Issues
Mere Christianity in progress
Christian Beliefs
Health, the Bible, and the Church
Washed and Waiting
Love is an Orientation

Anthropology
The Spirit hits you and then you fall down
Nisa

Public Health
Mountains Beyond Mountains 
Jamkhed

For Fun
The Help
Square Foot Gardening
Gifted Hands: the Ben Carson Story
The Poisonwood Bible

Baltimore History
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Not in My Neighborhood!

growing up

 

I had the pleasure of taking some pictures of my niece for her second birthday! I’m having so much fun being her aunt and watching her grow. 

 She now understands that she’s supposed to “cheese” when the camera is out, but her cheese is a little forced and worried looking.

 

With some coaxing, the benefit of a beautiful backdrop, and my finger constantly on my dusty camera, though, we managed to get some good ones.

 Stoppin’ and smellin’ the daffodils at the Liriodendron.

Happy Birthday, Chloe!