Life

W has continually asked to go to the potty in the toilet. He has been peeing at least twice a day in the toilet and some days more than that. He tried to do #2 but I'm not sure he could figure out how to make it happen. One new experience at a time aye?!

I'm really grateful that he has initiated the potty training on his own. I hadn't planned on starting to work on potty training with him until around October. I wanted to get Baby J sleeping through the night and get some rest myself before tackling such a committment. However it seems that W has other plans and that's great!

I think that we'll be able to use his stubbornness to further our efforts with potty training over the next 8 months or so. Often to get him to do things we use reverse psychology on him. Not that we are so arrogant to think this will work all the time, but it's sure working currently. Sometimes when he's getting escorted upstairs to brush his teeth before bedtime he'll say, "No brush teeth!". So we'll say, "okay" and take him to his crib. Well he freaks out and changes his mind and says, "Brush teeth, brush teeth!!". We say, "okay!" So maybe some day we'll ask him if he wants to potty in the toilet and he'll say, "no" and we'll say, "okay diaper it is" and he'll say, "no diaper!"

On another topic, frugality...we went grocery shopping at Aldi's on saturday. I'm trying to evaluate if it truly is cheaper for me to shop there almost exclusively for groceries or is it cheaper for me to use my coupons, albeit harder work, and head to Krogers. I had planned a menu for this week and then made a grocery list and I had hoped to spend $50 but I spent $53 for the week. And they didn't have I believe 3 things on my list. My budget is a bit higher but I'm really trying to see if I can get my grocery budget down to around $200 a month. I think ultimately it's going to require me to be more creative with my coupons, scour the internet frugal forums and coupon forums for more coupons, find more ways to take full advantage of the coupons out there, and figure out the "magic" behind CVS's ECB's. (Which although I'm getting the concept I still can't quite grasp how these momma's are saving so much cash there!)

I've been contemplating cloth diapering again as of late and have decided to pursue that route with Super N at this point. She keeps getting Impetigo on her butt, thighs and lower tummy and she has been on a round of antibiotics for it already but it keeps coming back no matter how often I change her. She has really sensitive skin it seems and so Jason and I are thinking cloth my be a good idea for her. I got her a wool diaper for night time, it's really cute! It looks just like a knitted sweater that goes on her butt! I also am planning on doing cloth with Baby J, but that could be short lived depending on if I can swing laundry, nursing on no sleep, and watching the other two kidlets daily. I'm keeping an open mind about my capabilities since I don't know entirely what to expect. I plan as well to let W wear some of the cloth diapers during the day that I've bought for Super N, they wear the same size. I'll just put him in a disposable at night and thus cut down on my grocery budget since I won't have to spend as much on diapers. Not sure about what I'm going to do about wipes yet. I used to use baby wash cloths as wipes when I cloth diapered W and Super N early on so I may institute that again, we'll see.

Also, last time I used cloth I went from doing the inexpensive way of cloth diapering, prefolds and simple covers or rubber pants to eventually buying pretty expensive Fuzzi Bunz (which I love btw!) But now I've decided to go back to prefolds and fitted prefolds and simple rubber pants for Super N and Prowraps for Baby J. You can't beat the old fashioned rubber pants(technically nylon) at $2-$3 a pop versus the $18 each you pay for Fuzzi Bunz! Granted I did get a great return rate of about $10 bucks a diaper when I sold them used.

At any rate, I'm currently scouring the local grocery ads in my free time, organizing my coupons, making a menu based on what's on sale currently (I think I'll try shopping at Krogers this coming weekend) and I'm somewhat planning a trip to the local CVS one evening this week to see what the ECB's can do for my budget.