The Things We Do As Kids

Childhood is so full of fun, especially from the eyes of a parent. Your kid says the darndest things and you wish you had a book to write them all down in. Well there is such a book.  My Quotable Kid is something I plan on getting for C (or is it really for myself?) when she gets a little older.  But until that day comes I thought I'd share some hilarious things I've said, done and thought as a kid.


When I was very little I would throw temper tantrums by crawling under things.  End tables, kitchen tables, beds, you name it.  Any amount of coaxing would just cause me to stay under there even longer.  My kindergarten teacher called my mom one day to ask her why I was hiding under her desk.  My mom just said "Let her be, she'll come out eventually."  My grandmother recalls the day that I tried to throw a tantrum by crawling under the end table only to discover that I no longer fit.  I completely flipped out.

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My mom and dad split up when I was very young.  I remember when I was about 4 or 5 we flew on a plane to go see him.  This must have been my first plane ride.  I remember my mom explaining to me that we were going to see Daddy and with that information I came to the conclusion that my dad lived in the clouds.

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I remember being convinced that my mom had magical powers because she knew the words to every song on the radio and could magically switch the radio station in the car (I was too short sitting in the back to see her turning the knobs on the radio)

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When I was in grade school I always came home crying because the other kids on the school bus were so much bigger than I was and they would pick on me.  My step-dad got fed up one day and told me that I should pick up a stick and throw it at the next person who makes fun of me.  So I leave and go outside to play.  10 minutes later my sister runs in with a bloody mouth.

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I was about 13 years old and waiting in my mom's car in the driveway to go shopping.  My mom was inside putting around so I decided to snoop through her glove compartment.  I came across a tiny spray bottle that looked interesting.  I decided to test it out.

It was mace.  


What were some hilarious things that you remember doing or saying as a child?

Vacation Recap and Other Updates **UPDATED**

I'm back!!! It was a very busy trip to Pennsylvania and now I'm nursing a cold and sore throat that my sister passed on to me but things are going well.  First I'll start with the vacation recap.

We arrived in PA on Sunday the 4th in the evening and just relaxed in hotel for the night.  My sister and I split the cost of a hotel room and I must say that sharing one room with a teething infant and 4 year old boy is not ideal.  The next day we headed over to my grandmother's house to meet my half-sister and niece (whom I've only met once before) and my dad.  While my dad seemed to be in good spirits, albeit a little tired all the time, he looked ragged.  My 6'2" father was only 155 pounds and bone thin.  Literally, I could feel the back of his ribcage when I hugged him.  It was pretty hard to see.  But we didn't talk much about the cancer and instead chose to focus on spending time together.  He received one round of chemo and is now getting radiation every weekday.  **UPDATE** I spoke with my sister and she said that our dad was told by doctors that he has stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer, which has metastasized to the adrenal glands. He will start chemo back today, along with the radiation treatment he has been receiving over the past 2 weeks.  Unfortunately she has also researched this and found that the average life span of someone with this type of lung cancer is only 8 months.  A 5-year survival rate is less that 10%.

During the week that we were in Pennsylvania we met our great aunt and uncle for breakfast at IHOP where C suddenly decided she was interested in what everyone was eating so we had to placate her with a banana in her mesh feeder.  We also went to the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp and got a few autographs.  Being the Fearlessly Frugal woman I am I had received a free Terrible Towel months ago so I brought that with me and my sisters got 3 autographs on it for me.  I stayed a far distance behind, taking pictures and trying to get C to nap (failed) so eventually I just left and took my dad back home because he was feeling tired.  My sister had purchased Blake a Steelers helmet to get his autographs on which turned out to be a bad idea because he started asking when he could get the autographs off so he could play with it.  Shoulda bought him two, sis!

#7 is quarterback Ben Roethlisberger

The day we were supposed to go to Idlewild Park turned out to be rainy so instead we met our cousin in a nearby town to play Monster Mini Golf.  It's an indoor putt-putt place under black lights with a scary monster theme.  My sister was concerned that Blake would be scared but he was just fine.  C, on the other hand, decided she was hungry mid-game so I had to rush through so I could feed her.

The next day was bright and sunny so we went to Idlewild Park.  It was just as I remembered, as though everything had been frozen in time since I last left!  We started out in Storybook Forest where we met characters from all the traditional stories and nursery rhymes.  C had her portrait drawn at the end and we had a second copy made for our birthmom.

After that we headed over to Mister Roger's Neighborhood trolley ride.  I'm not kidding when I say that nothing changed about this ride!  It was great being able to go through the ride exactly as I remembered it but I do wish they had replaced some of the puppets with better looking ones.  Some of them are downright scary.

King Friday says "Come along, come along, to the Castle Hug-and-Song!"

Shy Daniel Tiger

Then we headed over to the rides.  C was dead asleep when we got to the carousel but because her Pappy was feeling tired and ready to go home we woke her up so she could ride her first ride with him.  She loved it!  Then our group split up, with one half going to the waterpark and the other half going to the kiddie rides.  I went with the kiddie-ride group, though C was too young to ride any of them.  We ended up staying till the park closed that night.  10 hours at an amusement park and C did very well!  Now I'm not so worried about how she will do at Disney World in December.

On the last day of our trip we headed to JCPenney to have a group family photo taken.  Miss Fearlessly Frugal used her military discount to get 7 sitting fees for free and 17 portrait sheets for only $73!  Woo hoo!

Now for the random updates, mostly about C:

• I've been a bit more relaxed about what she eats now.  After the trip to PA and having to feed her things I would never have fed her before (like ice cream and a yeast roll) I've learned that she won't choke on every little thing.  She's begun to reject plain cereal so I mix it with the pouch baby food in the morning and in the evenings she gets homemade baby food.  This week we're trying butternut squash and butternut squash with pears.  I'm also starting to add spices to her food (this week it's ginger).  Next week, because I bought white potatoes on sale, we're going to try mashed potatoes and then mashed potatoes with garlic powder.
• C can now pull herself up to a standing position, but only using items that are short like stairs and boxes.  She did it for the first time yesterday, though she falls over within seconds so someone always has to be there to catch her.  Unfortunately that's ALL she wants to do now!  No more playing with toys, now those toys are just a tool to help her stand.  Needless to say she has been taking quite a few tumbles in the past week.  Also, every time she cries in her crib now it's because she pulled herself into a kneeling position and is too afraid to let go of the edge of the crib so she just sits there and cries...and gnaws on the crib.  She's so quiet about it that we don't even know she's awake so this is how we usually find out.
• Brandon's new job has been working him to the bone and it's really taking a toll on our family.  He works 12 hour days and has to work on the weekends twice a month.  It makes me sad that he only gets to see C for about an hour in the evenings before she goes to bed.  I'd like to go back to work in a couple months but with his schedule it might be too difficult.  We are literally counting down the days until he gets out of the military (482!). 
• I was warned by the agency about not posting public pictures of C online so I took them all down until we complete finalization.  Still waiting on a date for that but we're hoping that it will be sometime in September, maybe even at the end of the month when my grandparents will be visiting.

C's First Birthday and the Books We Love

Is that crickets I hear? Alas, I must be the only weirdo to have gotten a tarot reading done.

So today I thought I would switch the focus and talk about C's first birthday party. We've got 5 months to plan it but this girl isn't the least bit crafty so it will probably take me that long just to make the banner.

I've been scouring Pinterest for some ideas and liked a few girlie themes but the one that really stuck in my mind was Dr. Seuss's Oh The Places You'll Go!  Brandon loves Dr. Seuss and though I think the books are a little long for the wee ones I do love his books too and I think that the theme would be very appropriate for C's first birthday party.

I've been hitting the Goodwill every week looking for the book and finally scored one last week.  I plan to take some of the pages out to make a banner and then I might try my hand at making these for the centerpieces.  But let's face it, I'm no Martha Stewart.  My project would probably end up looking like this

At least the cake will taste good because I'm having a professional do that.

But all this planning has had me thinking about all of the books that I want to eventually introduce C to.  I've already got some classics on her bookshelf like Where the Wild Things Are and Charlotte's Web which are intermingled with various Disney-themed books as well as adoption books.  She will grow up reading Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Beatrix Potter and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.  And perhaps one day I will show her my favorite childhood book of all time, Boy Was I MAD! which unfortunately is no longer in print because it's been replaced with this book.  My copy is old and tattered but if C likes it enough then I may buy a copy of the vintage version for her to keep. 

What books do you look forward to reading with your children?  Do they show interest in the same books that you enjoyed as a child?

The Time I Had a Tarot Reading

I want to preface this story by saying that while I am religious and do believe in God, I also believe in the supernatural and tarot reading.  Some may think it's fake or hokey and that's fine.  But this is my story of my own tarot reading and I would prefer that if you don't believe in it, please at least keep your comments civil.

I want to share something with you all that happened just a few months before we were matched with C's birthmom.  It was September 22nd (thank you Facebook for recording my posts for all eternity) and I had spent the day at a spa.  I decided to get a tarot reading done while I was there because I've always been interested in this mystical way of reading fortunes.  I had two tarot readings done prior to this, years apart from each other.  One was moderately accurate, the other was bogus.

If you're a long-time reader you'll remember that Brandon and I had given up on adoption right around this time.  I had lost my job over the summer, American Adoptions wanted us to renew our homestudy (for another $800) and we hadn't heard even a whisper about a match with a birthmom.  So we decided to put things on hold indefinitely with our adoption.  We kept our profile active with our local agency just because our homestudy was good in the state of CT for one more year.  I mean, why not, right?  But we just knew we weren't going to be matched so we spent every penny of our adoption savings paying off credit cards and my car loan.  We were planning a trip to England, spending money freely and enjoying our lives as a child-free couple.

So back to my tarot reading.  When I first met Paula I saw her as a calm yet inviting person with a soft-spoken voice.  She invited me to sit down, took down my name and birth date.  Some of the memories from our session escape me but I remember that we said a small prayer to whatever higher power we believe in, to help channel my aura into the cards for my reading.

Then it was time for the reading itself.  After I shuffled and cut the deck Paula first laid down three cards: one each for the past, present and future.  I don't remember what the cards were for the past and present but the future card was a "child" card.  Interesting, considering we had stopped pursuing parenthood.  Still, I brushed it off thinking that because we had been pursuing fertility treatments and adoption for so long and had just recently stopped that process that maybe my aura was still presenting as though we were going to have kids.  I explained all of this to Paula so she was aware that we were no longer pursuing adoption.

Then Paula used the Celtic cross layout for my tarot reading.  She had a printout where she wrote down each card and their position so that I could take it home with me.  I still have it.  In the Celtic cross layout I pulled yet another child card, and this time it was positioned next to a card that depicted a woman.  There are only 4 "child" cards in a deck of 78 cards.  The odds of that happening were less than 1%.  This gave me chills.  Paula interpreted the meaning of the cards and the layout to say that I would have a child through another woman, either though adoption or surrogacy or foster care. 

A lot of the other cards accurately portrayed my feelings and emotions during that period in my life.  Some depicted a heavy burden I was carrying (the decision to quit adoption), many depicted a crossroads between two opportunities and having to make a decision (live child-free or continue with adoption?).  The center of the layout, the immediate future, held the 9 of swords.  I looked this up later and it meant "Regret of choices made and anxiety of choices urgently needed to be made.  There's no way out of responsibility."  Highly accurate.

After loosely interpreting the cards Paula asked me what questions I had for her.  I asked her about two job interviews I would be having the next week and whether any of them would work out.  She asked for the names of the companies and wrote them on a piece of paper.  Then she took her charm, a pyramid-shaped gem at the end of a chain, and dangled the pendant over each name as she concentrated.  She told me the first job would not work out but that the second job might.  She also said that she only saw the second job as being short-term, about 9 months or so.

As part of this question Paula flipped over another card to lay in the center of the layout, where the immediate future was held.  The card was death.  It wasn't an interpretation that I was going to literally die but that my life as I currently knew it would end.  Was this a foretelling of the loss of our child-free days or of the job I currently held?  In the end it represented both.

The second question I asked was where we were going to be living.  I told her that my husband was in the Navy, we wanted to move back to Washington but ultimately we wanted to live overseas somewhere.  She said that she did not see us living overseas but if it was a dream of ours then we would have to work hard to make it work.  I told her that he wanted to live in Switzerland, I wanted to live in England.  She did not see us living in either country but somewhere in between.  France is technically the country in between the two but she said that she kept envisioning Belgium.  Very interesting.

The next part of her reading also gave me chills.  It was in regards to our more immediate move and where we would end up in the next couple years.  She held her pendant and pondered this situation and simply said "Utah".  It wasn't her answer or even a question, just a word.  I told her that Brandon was from Utah.  She kept pondering, staring off into space while holding her pendant and then said "North Carolina".  I am from North Carolina.  There was no way she would have known either of these facts and I don't have a Southern accent.  She said that she doesn't see us living in either place because we don't like them (very true) and that she sees us moving back to Washington.  She sees Brandon getting a government job, though she didn't specify what kind.

So did any of her predictions come true?

Prediction #1- Having a child through another woman: TRUE

Well, we all know how that turned out, don't we?

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Prediction #2- Job #1 wouldn't work out: TRUE

I had my reading on a Saturday and my interview was that next Monday.  On Monday morning I got a call from the company stating that they had already found someone for the position.

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Prediction #3- Job #2 might work out but it would be short-term: TRUE

I was offered this job and had only been there for 3 weeks when we got The Call about being matched with a birthmom.  I tried to have the best of both worlds by becoming a new mom and still work but unfortunately I had to take 3 weeks of maternity leave before C would be old enough to go to daycare and they could not accommodate that.  I was laid off while out on maternity leave, after only having been with the company for 3 1/2 months. At the time of the reading Brandon was due to go to a new duty station the next summer, so I interpreted the "short-term job" prediction to mean that I would have to quit my job to move.  While we almost went to Hawaii that didn't pan out and we ended up staying here.  My short-term job was short-term for an entirely different reason than I originally thought.

All the other predictions have yet to come true.  Brandon desperately wants to move back to Washington when he gets out of the military in 17 months but I am fearful of not being able to find a job and support us while he goes to school full-time.  Staying in Connecticut would be easier, even though I too would like to make it back to Washington.  And living overseas is so far into the future that we only dream about it at this point. 

As Paula was saying goodbye to me after my reading she mentioned that she kept seeing a yellow boat.  Neither of us knew the significance of this yellow boat and though we took a windjammer cruise the next month for our anniversary it wasn't yellow.  I wonder if I missed this sign in the past year or if my yellow boat is still out there waiting to reveal itself.

Have you ever had a tarot or psychic reading done?  Did any of your predictions come true?

A Couple Good Things and One Enormously Shitty Thing

I've got a new article published, How I Save on My Utility Bills During the Summer. As you can tell, I'm a little addicted to saving money. I wouldn't call myself cheap or a tightwad but when you're on one income you really need to stretch those dollars.  And I'll admit that I'm a little panicky about Brandon getting out of the military next year and having to find a job while he goes to school full-time.  Does health insurance REALLY cost $500+ a month for a family?!

C started crawling.  She did it for the first time on Saturday.  It was the day after my birthday and I had gone out with my friend for lunch when she decided to crawl for the first time.  I'm home with her ALL DAY long and she waits till I leave to crawl?  Stinker.  At least Brandon witnessed it, though he didn't think to record it for me.  Nevertheless I got some video evidence later that night.  Ever since then she has been on the go.  She's much faster now, even though it's only been a few days since she started.  I didn't realize she could perfect her crawling so quickly.  Time to baby-proof.

Oh, and last night she learned how to blow raspberries.

And the enormously shitty thing?  My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer last week.  They found a tumor the size of his fist in the upper lobe of his lung.  He started chemo on Monday and C and I are going to Pennsylvania to visit him next week.  He seems a little nonchalant about the whole thing.  I'm a little skeptical that maybe he's just downplaying the seriousness of the situation for the sake of me and my sister.  We'll just have to see how well the chemo and radiation works and hopefully they will be able to shrink the tumor enough to do surgery and remove it.  Please keep our family in your thoughts and prayers.

C Has a Lovey and I Have a Dilemma

It seems that C has finally become attached to something, besides us of course.  She has a little white security blanket that we purchased LONG before we were matched.  So anyway, this little blanket stays in her crib and she enjoys chewing on it, covering her face with it and just generally abusing the thing.  I remember so many moms telling me that it's wise to buy a duplicate when a child gets attached to a lovey, just in case the first one falls to pieces or, God forbid, goes missing. 

The problem is that I just discovered that C's lovey has been discontinued with none available on ebay at the moment.

I'm left wondering what to do.  Should I just leave it be and hope for the best for C's little blankie to make it through her childhood?  I still have my lovey from when I was a kid and it's literally in shreds.  Or should I try to find another lovey for her that I can buy two of and secretly make the swap?  This brand does have a pink lovey that says "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" so it's possible for me to get a couple on ebay that look very similar to her original one. I would love to hear your suggestions!

Below is a picture of the lovey mentioned.

A Few Random Updates

• C turned 6 months old a few weeks ago and I'm left wondering what happened to my little peanut and who this new baby is that has taken her place. She's not babbling that much, or saying consonents but instead prefers to just make random moaning sounds and practicing her vowels. No crawling yet but she wants to so badly. She can get up on her hands and knees and rock but she will either go back down to her tummy or make a huge lunge forward on her knees and face plant onto the carpet.  I've been making her baby food and so far we've introduced her to avocado, bananas, sweet potatoes and apples which she has loved and sweet peas which she has not.  This week we will keep feeding her apples and next week I think we will try peaches (I went peach picking so I need to puree these peaches while they're still fresh).  

• My weight loss journey has been great so far.  I've stayed on track and listened to my body more than I usually do.  While I count my calories every day there are some days that I just feel SO hungry all day, no matter what I eat.  On those days I choose to eat more calories instead of starving myself.  Yesterday was one such day.  My daily calorie deficit is 750 so I can eat an extra 100-200 calories if I'm hungry and still have a deficit for the day.  I never beat myself up over eating extra food on those "hungry" days.  

• Exercise is another story.  It's been in the 90's all week this week and our house lacks central air.  While we have some window A/C units we tend to close off some unused rooms to keep the air conditioning costs low.  Those rooms are where I usually work out.  Even with the A/C units running all day our house only gets down to about 75-78 degrees during the day.  So to sum it up it sucks working out right now.  Some morning I do a little strength training with my free weights and yoga mat but most days I don't work out at all.  However I do take advantage of the cooler, rainy days with workouts so I can still stay in shape.  My short-term goal is to be able to run my first 5K this fall and my long-term goal is to run in the Disney Princess Half Marathon in 2015. 

• I've been looking for ways to stay busy while at home so I've gotten back into writing articles for Yahoo! (check out my list on the right sidebar).  I'm also looking for ways to get C more socialized.  Next week we will attend a free class at Kindermusik.  I'm trying to decide whether to sign her up for those classes or sign her up for swim lessons.  I think that getting out of the house once a week will be good for both of us.

• In a couple of weeks C and I will be going on our first road trip alone.  We're driving back to Pennsylvania to visit family (the ones she saw when she was 3 months old).  My sister and nephew will be coming up from NC as well and we plan to take a trip to Idlewild Park.  This was an amusement park that we went to as kids and so we want our own children to have the experience of going.  I can't wait to walk through Storybook Forest and ride the trolley through Mister Roger's Neighborhood.  It brings back such wonderful memories!

• We still haven't finalized C's adoption yet.  We were hoping to get a date set sometime this month but with all the delays that the court has been giving us it seems that we could end up finalizing as late as September.  I'm pretty disappointed about that. 
• I finally decided to link my travel blog to this one.  It's on my sidebar under "Other Blogs".  The title is Travel Fearlessly.  Pretty fitting huh?  I'm planning our next international trip (and C's first!) to Nova Scotia next summer.  

Well that's about all that's going on for now.  Sometime this week I need to clean up the blogroll and hopefully add a few more new faces to the list.  If you're a follower and have your own blog please introduce yourself in the comment section and I'll get you added to my list!

New Article

I've written a new article for Yahoo Voices titled Living Rich on a Poor Man's Budget. Check it out!  Also click here for another money-saving article I wrote, mostly geared toward parents but many of the tips (and links) work for those without kids as well.  Happy reading!

Starting Solids

C is finally ready to start solid foods. I mean "real" foods since she's been having oatmeal cereal since she was 4 months old. About a month ago we tried avocado but the blowouts in her diaper were horrible so we stopped. It may have been the few drops of lemon juice we added to the puree (to prevent the avocado from browning, per the recipe). We don't know. So we stopped with introducing solids, spent almost two weeks clearing up the diaper rash and now we're trying again.

I do have a few questions that I can't seem to find the answer to.  Do we keep her on the cereal as we introduce new foods?  With the avocado we didn't  Now we're introducing banana and we're keeping the cereal.  Yesterday we fed her banana alone in the evening, this morning we mixed mashed banana with her cereal.  And once she's graduated to solid #2 do we still keep feeding solid #1 (the banana) or do we only feed her one food at a time?  I don't mean in the same meal but just in the same day.  I think our next food will probably be sweet potato or peas (I am making C's baby food at home).  So would we quit the banana and then introduce the sweet potato?  Or should we feed the banana at a morning feeding and then sweet potato at an afternoon feeding?  Currently C is only getting one solid food feeding per day so I know that eventually we will need to start feeding her solids twice a day.  I am really paranoid about upsetting her tummy like last time so I want to make sure I don't do that again.  Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

P.S.- For my Irish readers, at what age do you introduce steel cut oatmeal to your baby?  C's oatmeal cereal is like mush but we do have steel cut oatmeal that I would love to feed her instead.  I thought about cooking some and then blending it but again, I don't want to upset her little tummy. 

A Heavy Heart

Sweet Morgan earned her angel wings this morning. My heart is heavy with grief for her family. I cannot imagine how it must feel to lose a child. Please keep the Lastowski family in your thoughts and prayers.