learn from my experience!
There are so many things I wish I had known before getting pregnant and having a baby. Not huge, life changing, schmoopy stuff like "I wish I had spent more time counting my baby's eyelashes because they grow up sooooo fast." More practical stuff. Usually pretty short and sweet. I feel like I should start writing them down as they occur to me, and then when a friend is pregnant and wants advice, I'll have a lot of the good stuff ready.
A lot of these actually apply to non-pregnant/parenting people too. Or they apply to people who want to help out pregnant/parenting people. Like if you want ideas for how to help a friend, or a gift to buy.
So I'm going to tag these entries "nice to know".
1. Maternity tank tops. Maternity tank tops are essentially regular tank tops only longer, or longer in the front. If you have a long torso, like me, and prefer more coverage, like me, you will never stop wearing maternity tank tops, and you will wish you had them your entire life. I am wearing a maternity tank top right now, and I weigh 15 pounds less than I did when I before getting pregnant. It fits wonderfully. It fit wonderfully when I was 9 months pregnant. Maternity tank tops are amazing.
I'm wearing this one!
2. Most people in my socio-economic bracket use a substantial portion of used/hand-me-down clothing for their children. This means that the bought new stuff is more precious. People love to buy and give baby clothing as a gift, especially the teeny stuff, because it's the cutest, but because babies zip through the tiny sizes, and while they're wearing them they're mostly lying around doing nothing (and not eating solids), it's really easy to get free or cheap tiny clothing. Anything six months or smaller, I would say.
However once you get to 12 mo, 18 mo, and 2T sizes, it becomes a different story. Kids are feeding themselves tomato sauce pasta, blackberries, and apple juice; they're running and crawling in the dirt and sand at the park; they're grabbing markers; plus they just stay in these sizes much longer, so they put more wear on them. This all translates to it being much, much harder to get looks-like-new clothing used or handed down in these sizes.
To that end, if people are asking you for ideas for things to buy, try to encourage purchases in the larger sizes if people want to buy new clothing. Even 2T shirts are still pretty cute, actually, and they generally don't cost any more than the little 3mo stuff. And don't buy new clothing yourself in the smaller sizes; you can pick up immaculate stuff for free or cheap on Craigslist and Freecycle or through your own friends and family.
3. An addendum to that is not to eschew (free) stained stuff. This becomes the makings of worry free outfits. When I take Pippa to the park, I put her in khakis that it looks like someone spilled bleach on long ago and a t-shirt where I couldn't get the tomato sauce stain completely out. When she loses her balance and falls on muddy patches, I don't lose my cool at all. We don't have any markers or finger paints or things like that yet, but when we do, that's what I'll put her in also. And there are also ways to hide stains. She has a yellow shirt that has marker stains on it, but if I put a dress or overalls over the shirt, it completely covers the marker stains.
Hiding stains is tiring work.
Or pajamas/night clothes. Who sees pajamas? Most of the time it's just you and the kid. The kid doesn't care at this age. If it's a minor stain, there's no reason for you to care either. Some nicer pajamas for purposes where you want to have the kid in pajamas out so that when you get home you can go straight to bed without changing (like if you expect the kid to fall asleep on the way home because you'll be going home late) are nice.
I would never pay for stained clothes though. Again, people give them away on Craigslist, Freecycle, and through the grapevine.
Ok, that's enough tips for today, but I'm always thinking about these things, so hopefully I'll have more to share later. :)
---
Today is St. Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, martyrs of China. We celebrated with a beef and broccoli stir fry with rice. (I followed that recipe only I added green onions and ginger, and I used red vinegar instead of black vinegar. It tasted just like very good Chinese take-out.)
I haven't written about liturgical eating lately because I've been more casual about it lately, but I want to get back to planning more formally. The Husband's schedule is so crazy that I never know at the beginning of the week for sure what times he'll be working and what days he'll be off. He often gets switched from one shift to another at only a day or two's notice. Maybe I'll make a planning post for August.
For July I definitely want to try to mark Bl. Kateri on the 14th. Other ideas in a more casual way are shell pasta for St. James on the 25th (the scallop is more traditional of a symbol, but I don't like scallops enough to justify the cost) and nachos for St. Ignatius on the 31st (Nacho is a nickname for Ignacio).
---
Tomorrow I'm going with my cousin-in-law to a wholesale sashimi-grade fish place and maybe a Japanese supermarket. SUPER EXCITE. They are only a few blocks away from each other (Angel Seafoods and Fujiya if you know Vancouver).
We (the cousins and us) are going to have a sushi making party next week so this is to get supplies for that. I also want to get enough salmon to make gravlax based on the Make the Bread, Buy the Butter book's recipe. Because of potential parasites, ideally you should freeze wild salmon before any serving method where it will be consumed raw, so I might as well buy the fish already frozen from Angel Seafoods.
I'm wondering if they will have any frozen spot prawns already prepared for eating as neta. I didn't have a chance to buy live prawns during the season. From what I hear, spot prawns are mean little SOBs and trying to cut them up yourself often results in getting your hands cut up unless you wear gloves, so if I had prepared them myself I would have done a shrimp boil. The Husband is not super into shellfish so it was hard to justify spending $14/lb on live prawns, even if they are locally caught and bought from the boat that got them. Maybe next year if my parents come to visit during prawn season, because I know my mother would love them. But anyway, I would like to try them and see if the taste is really better than other prawns and worth the price.
So other than ebi (prawn) and sake (salmon), I don't have anything particular I want to get. I'll look around and see what's there. Ingrid (my cousin) has all the sushi making equipment for doing rolls, so probably I will need to get the makings of some creative rolls. Anyone have any favorite rolls? The wilder the better.
I would love if I could recreate a vegetarian roll I ate once. It was artichoke heart, cream cheese, sundried tomato, brown rice, rice paper, and pumpkin seeds. Soooooo tasty.
A lot of these actually apply to non-pregnant/parenting people too. Or they apply to people who want to help out pregnant/parenting people. Like if you want ideas for how to help a friend, or a gift to buy.
So I'm going to tag these entries "nice to know".
1. Maternity tank tops. Maternity tank tops are essentially regular tank tops only longer, or longer in the front. If you have a long torso, like me, and prefer more coverage, like me, you will never stop wearing maternity tank tops, and you will wish you had them your entire life. I am wearing a maternity tank top right now, and I weigh 15 pounds less than I did when I before getting pregnant. It fits wonderfully. It fit wonderfully when I was 9 months pregnant. Maternity tank tops are amazing.
I'm wearing this one!
2. Most people in my socio-economic bracket use a substantial portion of used/hand-me-down clothing for their children. This means that the bought new stuff is more precious. People love to buy and give baby clothing as a gift, especially the teeny stuff, because it's the cutest, but because babies zip through the tiny sizes, and while they're wearing them they're mostly lying around doing nothing (and not eating solids), it's really easy to get free or cheap tiny clothing. Anything six months or smaller, I would say.
However once you get to 12 mo, 18 mo, and 2T sizes, it becomes a different story. Kids are feeding themselves tomato sauce pasta, blackberries, and apple juice; they're running and crawling in the dirt and sand at the park; they're grabbing markers; plus they just stay in these sizes much longer, so they put more wear on them. This all translates to it being much, much harder to get looks-like-new clothing used or handed down in these sizes.
To that end, if people are asking you for ideas for things to buy, try to encourage purchases in the larger sizes if people want to buy new clothing. Even 2T shirts are still pretty cute, actually, and they generally don't cost any more than the little 3mo stuff. And don't buy new clothing yourself in the smaller sizes; you can pick up immaculate stuff for free or cheap on Craigslist and Freecycle or through your own friends and family.
3. An addendum to that is not to eschew (free) stained stuff. This becomes the makings of worry free outfits. When I take Pippa to the park, I put her in khakis that it looks like someone spilled bleach on long ago and a t-shirt where I couldn't get the tomato sauce stain completely out. When she loses her balance and falls on muddy patches, I don't lose my cool at all. We don't have any markers or finger paints or things like that yet, but when we do, that's what I'll put her in also. And there are also ways to hide stains. She has a yellow shirt that has marker stains on it, but if I put a dress or overalls over the shirt, it completely covers the marker stains.
Hiding stains is tiring work.
Or pajamas/night clothes. Who sees pajamas? Most of the time it's just you and the kid. The kid doesn't care at this age. If it's a minor stain, there's no reason for you to care either. Some nicer pajamas for purposes where you want to have the kid in pajamas out so that when you get home you can go straight to bed without changing (like if you expect the kid to fall asleep on the way home because you'll be going home late) are nice.
I would never pay for stained clothes though. Again, people give them away on Craigslist, Freecycle, and through the grapevine.
Ok, that's enough tips for today, but I'm always thinking about these things, so hopefully I'll have more to share later. :)
---
Today is St. Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, martyrs of China. We celebrated with a beef and broccoli stir fry with rice. (I followed that recipe only I added green onions and ginger, and I used red vinegar instead of black vinegar. It tasted just like very good Chinese take-out.)
I haven't written about liturgical eating lately because I've been more casual about it lately, but I want to get back to planning more formally. The Husband's schedule is so crazy that I never know at the beginning of the week for sure what times he'll be working and what days he'll be off. He often gets switched from one shift to another at only a day or two's notice. Maybe I'll make a planning post for August.
For July I definitely want to try to mark Bl. Kateri on the 14th. Other ideas in a more casual way are shell pasta for St. James on the 25th (the scallop is more traditional of a symbol, but I don't like scallops enough to justify the cost) and nachos for St. Ignatius on the 31st (Nacho is a nickname for Ignacio).
---
Tomorrow I'm going with my cousin-in-law to a wholesale sashimi-grade fish place and maybe a Japanese supermarket. SUPER EXCITE. They are only a few blocks away from each other (Angel Seafoods and Fujiya if you know Vancouver).
We (the cousins and us) are going to have a sushi making party next week so this is to get supplies for that. I also want to get enough salmon to make gravlax based on the Make the Bread, Buy the Butter book's recipe. Because of potential parasites, ideally you should freeze wild salmon before any serving method where it will be consumed raw, so I might as well buy the fish already frozen from Angel Seafoods.
I'm wondering if they will have any frozen spot prawns already prepared for eating as neta. I didn't have a chance to buy live prawns during the season. From what I hear, spot prawns are mean little SOBs and trying to cut them up yourself often results in getting your hands cut up unless you wear gloves, so if I had prepared them myself I would have done a shrimp boil. The Husband is not super into shellfish so it was hard to justify spending $14/lb on live prawns, even if they are locally caught and bought from the boat that got them. Maybe next year if my parents come to visit during prawn season, because I know my mother would love them. But anyway, I would like to try them and see if the taste is really better than other prawns and worth the price.
So other than ebi (prawn) and sake (salmon), I don't have anything particular I want to get. I'll look around and see what's there. Ingrid (my cousin) has all the sushi making equipment for doing rolls, so probably I will need to get the makings of some creative rolls. Anyone have any favorite rolls? The wilder the better.
I would love if I could recreate a vegetarian roll I ate once. It was artichoke heart, cream cheese, sundried tomato, brown rice, rice paper, and pumpkin seeds. Soooooo tasty.