Poopy Diapers, Cooking on a Budget

I feel a little bit guilty about not blogging all weekend. What can I say? After a week of being glued to my computer at work, having a whole weekend to play with a 10-month-old boy named Ben, a 26-year-old husband named Chester, and a house to tidy up, laundry to fold, dishes to wash, etc... I'd rather do a crossword puzzle (or 20) than log on for some blogging and Addiction Solitaire.

The weekend was good. We went to a thrift store on Saturday to buy Ben a push toy. Something he can push around and walk behind. For good measure, we also got him a little plastic dump truck. Then we played with him and encouraged him to walk all day Sunday. He's really doing a great job with that pushing thing. It's easier when he doesn't have pants on.. because he's short, and as he walks, he'll step on the cuffs of his pants and start to either trip on them or pull his pants down around his ankles. We've tried just rolling them up, but it never seems to help that much.

He wasn't eating a lot of solid foods over the weekend (we did have Pizza Hut on Friday night, and he ate a whole piece all by himself). His mouth is really hurting him. He has three teeth coming in at one time on top. He'd eat his yogurt for breakfast, but only pick at his pasta for lunch and dinner. Day care called this morning and said he's been pooping all morning, and the last couple ones have been full of mucus. He's been drinking a lot of formula and water, so I'm not worried about dehydration yet. I do have a call into the nurses line to run it by them, though. Update: it's nothing to worry about unless there's blood in the stool or he's dehydrated.

Ben's acting just fine though. Playing with wild abandon. Gotta love that about babies.

My mom and dad stopped by last night to deliver a Christmas present from my brother's family in Green Bay. They also brought McDonald's. But mostly they came to see The Boy. Nana and Papa hadn't seen the new crawl yet, and they certainly hadn't seen him walk behind his push toy. Ben tasted a french fry for the first time. He munched on it for a while and seemed to enjoy it.

Life's pretty good. Benji is delightful, Husband is affectionate. We managed to spend way too much from our last paychecks, though, and needed an emergency loan from my mom. I hate it when that happens. I over-enthusiastically paid bills, it seems. Anyway. Now we're on a thirty dollar budget for food this week. We're mostly going to make do with what we have, and experiment with some new recipes. Tonight before bed I'm making a meatloaf that's made with baked beans and beef. On Wednesday, I'm making a baked beans and beef casserole that has biscuits on top. Thursday, we'll make a chicken, cheesy pasta bake. Then on Friday, I'm making a tuna noodle casserole with cream of mushroom soup. On Saturday, I'll make a big batch of spaghetti, and that'll get us through the weekend.

What sucks most is that we should have known better. We were just so excited to get so much more of a paycheck for Chester (since he started his new position)... that we forgot that we still need to be careful about budgeting. It's not like we went wild and bought lots of extra stuff last week. Oh well. We'll be more careful next pay period.