Day 3 without Diet Coke

Three days down, a 12-pack saved. And boy, am I paying the price.

Call me crazy, but chai tea in the morning, no matter how good it is with milk and Splenda, does not replace the bubbly goodness that comes in a can.

This is me. I am a Diet Coke addict.

This is the place where you lovingly remind me that giving up soda for Lent is not a bad thing. That pop is bad for my body and the environment. Whatever argument you've got...while I hunt down some more aspirin.

Searching for the perfect cinnamon roll

Last weekend, in a fit of inspiration or insanity - I'm not sure which - I decided my daughter and I would bake cinnamon rolls as a treat. Little did I know.


You see, I'm the girl whose idea of baking cinnamon rolls is:

1. Take container out of fridge.
2. Pop it open.
3. Place each of the eight perfectly round circles on the cookie sheet.
4. Bake.
5. Open perfectly round circle of premade frosting and coat the rolls.

It's about as healthy for us as it is for the environment. I didn't care. It's the occasional splurge when we have company.

Then I saw in a parenting magazine a recipe for cinnamon rolls. And I of course thought, if this 5 year old girl in the picture can do it, my culinarily blessed child certainly can!

So I ripped out the article, gave the rest of the magazine to the hospital, and promptly lost the instructions.

I did find a recipe for cinnamon rolls at Family Fun online. OK, it's a kids site, so how difficult could it be? I reasoned.

Difficult it's not. Time-consuming, it is. Mix. Wait 5, 15 or more minutes. Mix some more. Wait some more. For a 3 year old, it's pure torture. And starting right after dinner and not being done by bedtime made it worse. It took so long she was willing to go to bed before they were baked. And frankly, so was I.

The next morning, the cinnamon rolls waited, perfectly cooled, on their tray, and we whipped up the frosting, which my daughter proudly coated on each piece. The four of us - yes, even the little guy ate a small one - savored a roll for Sunday breakfast. I don't know whether it was the work involved or just better ingredients, but this was nothing like our quickie rolls from the tube. And with sticky faces and stickier fingers, we each ate our rolls to the last bite.

And then we packaged the rest, two by two, on plates to take to the church bake sale, the main reason for my jaunt into baking insanity. And my daughter, all of 3, puffed up her chest proudly as she told the volunteer that she made those rolls.

There could be nothing sweeter!

Life when you're un- or underemployed

If you're wallet's feeling a bit lighter lately, it's understandable, as more and more of us are losing their jobs.

Here's a little secret: You can survive. We're on month 10 of being a one-income family, and somehow we're living to tell about it.

Amazingly enough, we've not only not missed a mortgage payment but also are less than $1,000 deeper in credit than we were when this happened. And that's with having to charge a full semester of college tuition and books since we didn't qualify for financial aid.

I'm grateful that I still have a job that provides health insurance, and that we're able to make most of our bills on my salary. Even so, lots of little things came into play, and for all of those events and angels out there, we are grateful.

Don't get me wrong. It's taken a lot of work and effort on our family's part. We're more conscious about what we spend. We are more conscious about the resources we use. We scrutinize everything. We get tired of mac and cheese (OK, the over-4 contingent is). And I admit that we could do better.

But the thing is, someday, our family will get through this.

And so will you.

Related posts:

• Environmentalism is easy when you're unemployed
• 10 simple ways to go green without losing green
• Heating up your home but not your bills
• Making choices in a tough economy
• Life lessons on going green

Monday evening morale boost

Right now, I'm realizing that my beloved Jayhawks aren't looking so hot on ESPN. And I'm expecting yet another hectic week in the office. So instead of inflicting more torture on myself by watching this game, I'm hanging out at the computer this evening.

I can tell you one thing: I'm not checking out the news. Too often, it reaks of negativity. The economy. The environment. And it's too easy to get pulled down.

So for a little Monday evening morale boost, here are five posts, in no particular order, to remind you that not everything is down in this world:

• Small gifts have great impact
• Nothing says 'I love you' like grilled cheese
• Share it: A lesson in generosity from a tiny teacher
• In praise of Papa's tub
• Finding hopes among frustrations

Have a terrific week!

Toddler time - and what to do with the aftermath of babyhood

Fourteen months ago. That's the last time I held a baby the size of the little girl I cradled yesterday afternoon at the hospital.

And that afternoon, I returned home, and stared in the face of...a toddler.

There's no denying it. My baby is no longer one. He crawls. He climbs. He tries to tackle his daddy. He thinks he's a big shot for using a spoon to eat "real" milk and cereal. He wiggles around like nobody's business. And he applauds - yes, applauds - me when I get home at night from work.

There's no denying it. There's no longer a baby in this house.

Sure, the signs were there. My kitchen countertop has been reclaimed from the bottle racks and bowl of bottle pieces, long retired. The baby swing has been taken down after too many attempts of trying to climb into or out of it. Toys are already being retired, not to mention the several rounds of sizes of clothes.

But now that baby is no longer a baby, what do you do with the aftermath?

You realize as a parent that the first year is definitely resource-heavy. There's the furniture, the diapers and safety factor, resulting in child-proofing gadgets galore, not to mention the clothing that's outgrown in weeks (as in my daughter's case) or months.

But the little things add up quickly. The pacifiers - love them, or hate them - just get tossed after a fateful fall or too much chewing upon. The bottle nipples, and sometimes bottles themselves, are similarly tossed as the baby gets more demanding in his or her needs. The teething toys. The starter spoons. The age-appropriate toys you'd gotten as gifts. The list goes on and on.

And what do you do with them as a parent? Some, you can just save for future children or pass along to another parent. But others too often get tossed.

As we've approached our baby's "graduation" to toddlerhood, I've been fortunate that I've been able to help some other people out while avoiding just tossing away things the family no longer needed. Pacifiers rejected by my baby after a use or two were re-sanitized and shared with a mom of multiples. The bottles and bottle rack, rather than being tossed, were donated to my work's newborn pantry, with a few given to an expecting co-worker who was going to have to try bottles when the return to work approached. The myriad of baby blankets, particularly the swaddling ones that only really work for a month, were also donated to the cause. Clothes get the usual passing-along to a new mom or to a shelter. And I have a few rejected sippy cups - refused because they just weren't like his sister's cups - just waiting for a new home.

Sometimes, it takes a little creativity to find a new home for still-working infant supplies. But if you can help a parent save some money as well as reduce our impact on the environment, it's worth it.