Lifetime Quality

Both Homestead Mama and I grew up with parents who worked hard for what little they had, and like most folks have grandparents who lived through the depression and passed on frugality as a lifestyle. While this frugality seems to fade a bit more with each generation, H-Mama and I each have parts of our lives in which we live very conservatively and purposefully more out of choice versus need. We strive to live with less consumption both to save money but also to keep frugal habits that we can pass on to the kids. Frugal living is a muscle that must be flexed; it is all too easy to get in the habit of buying whatever you want.

I remember my father's workbench in the basement, the surface covered in decades of paint drips and nicks from tools put there by many previous owners. The edges of all the shelves rounded and softened with years of use. The vice clamped permanently onto the edge of the bench was good for many fun experiments. The smell of sawdust, paint thinner, oil, and that cool, dusty but embracing smell of basements accompanied all our activities down there. I love that scent to this day. We got to spend our precious alone-time with Dad down there, doing projects, playing, and being taught how to use tools. It was a huge treat to be allowed to help change the powdery mantle on the lantern before a camping trip, or have his big hand cover ours and guide the wood burner as we made patterns and burned our names onto mother's day projects. I got the Visible Woman model for Christmas one year and Dad spent hours at the workbench putting her together alongside me.

Homestead Mama remembers her first solo woodworking project at her dad's workbench - a boat made with scrap wood and nails. As many nails as she wanted [do you see where this is going?]. Her dad gave her the hammer and let her whack away until she felt it was done. She was so proud of her boat, and her father encouraged her wildly. She sadly, and much to her father's dismay, insisted on filling the bathtub for a maiden voyage. All the structural integrity offered by the better part of a box of nails holding the boat together was the source of the devastation of all her hopes and dreams for her beloved boat as the water rose around it and over the top of it as it failed to float. In confused desperation, she picked it up, dried it off and set it gently upon the surface of the water. It made an audible clunk as it hit the bottom of the tub, sinking like a ten-penny nail-encrusted stone.

My dad had all his paintbrushes carefully washed and wrapped in newspaper to protect the bristles and hanging in the tool cabinet. They were years old, but the bristles were in perfectly good condition due to good care. This same respect for paintbrushes was instilled in both H-Mama and I, so when we bought the Homestead we invested in Purdy paintbrushes which will last through decades of painting if you care for them well.

Over the past few years, as our own work on the Homestead has lessened, we've loaned out our painting supplies and other construction materials to friends to help out their projects. Everyone has been generous to us with their time and tools, and we are happy to pay that forward. However, I was ready to paint the new kitchen shelves and couldn't find any of our brushes. Very sad, as I assume they died a lonely and paint-encrusted death long before their usefulness should have been up. So when Homestead Mama and I went to pick her car up from its oil change site yesterday, we stopped at Home Depot on the way home to buy some paintbrushes. At $15 or so per brush, this is an expense I had hoped to not have more than once, but we now have a few new brushes to get our immediate projects taken care of. I'll build our supply back up over time so as not to crack the budget. H-Mama called in a take-away order of Indian food for our dinner and drove home with the sleeping babies, leaving me to pick up the food. I drove by the restaurant and noticed how packed it was, assumed that I had at leat 25 minutes to waste before the food was ready and headed over to the massive book sale that our town puts on twice a year to fund our library. It was torture to leave after only 15 minutes or so - I've killed entire afternoons at the book sale before - but I still managed to score a bunch of books to help me crack the mysteries of child-rearing. I'll have to play years 4 and 5 and 8 by ear since they didn't have the books from the much-recommended Ames and Ilg series for those years, but otherwise I'm good through puberty. I feel more confident in my parenting already, and at at the huge bargain of about $1.50 a book.


You can see some some crappy books fell in my bag on the way out and I was too lazy to pull them out.

Daycare Supplies

As per my New Year's resolution, I am definitely spending less than I used to. We are not in much debt, but I like it when we are totally in the black. One thing I can justify easily is play supplies for the babes. We declined to enroll Pequita in gymnastics class for a few reasons. Mostly, she is too young to really get anything out of a 'class'. The two teenage girls who were leading the class set up an obstacle course of amazingly fun equipment, and then sat and watched while the parents led their children around the course. The cost for this was $11 for 45 minutes (or $0.24 per minute, I figured out). So we'll hold off on spending $90 for 8 weeks for Pequita to frolic once a week at the gymnastics studio like she does at the local indoor playground, which is $4 for 2 hours for the same amount of fun and sometimes I can hang back and knit, if Monito is sleeping.

Since I just saved us $90 (heh heh - see how I just did that?) I could justify buying these two things. The Yukon Express 100-piece train set. Definitely not worth the original $80 price tag (to me) but the sale price of $16 it is a steal. It isn't Brio, but it is all wood pieces, comes nicely organized so we could open all the track pieces and leave in neat little ziplock bags the choking hazards (a.k.a. trees, signs, houses, etc.) We set up a circular track big enough to fit on our coffee table, and Pequita set to work dismantling it, then wanting help putting it all back together. We'll add the other bits and pieces in time - you get all this in the set.
We also bought this lovely tent and tunnel set. I'd have been happier paying $20 instead of the $30 it cost me, but all in all I think it was a good purchase for our house. With the dining room table pushed to the side a bit it fits right next to it, and welcomes in the realization that yes, our house has officially become All About the Kids. Damn. I'll just have to leave my table saw and some volumes of Proust out by the front door so the first impression visitors get is one of intelligence and industry before they are assaulted with the barrage of large primary colored toys. Fairly crappy quality, but it should last for two kids. Might need some duct tape here and there after a bit of hard play, but Pequita was immediately enchanted and lost no time diving in. Below, she is looking at Monito who I plunked down at the other end of the tunnel. She started rolling balls through it and chasing after them. Again, good purchase.Yesterday at the local kid's consignment store, we scored a ball sorter which Pequita loves, and a baby doll that she wouldn't put down the whole time browsing. And check out the little $4 vest on her and Monito's new $3 orange snowflake sweater. Both are way too big for my kids, and should fit next year too, but they don't care about fit and they are too cute to pack away.

Yeah, I know this isn't the most scintillating post, but I've not had time to write, really, what with all the playing we've been doing.

Used Baby Goods Score

Homestead Mama got a picture over the weekend of the Maya wrap sling I found last week. It was such a great price, and in a fabric I might have chosen myself. So much better for carrying around a 16+ pound baby for me than the Bjorn - she now sits happily off to the side of the pregnancy bump, which beats the heck out of most other carriers at this point. I

We went back the next day as a family to vote on a huge bag of jumbo Legos that Pequita isn't really ready for yet. Of course, with Homestead Mama along, the vote was yes. She got them all stacked in a huge cube on the coffee table so I can see how big to make the stuff sack they will live in that I decided was required for them to stay in our house. It is hard to tell just how big these are, but we'll be able to make a good sized house out of them. I'll have to be careful with Legos; I get a little, um, possessive about them when I am playing with them - I mean, supervising little kids playing with them.

I always expected to have all wooden, non-toxic toys for my kids. Seems a no-brainer. And then, like most purist parents ahead of me, I saw how my kid responded to hideous plastic toys and I caved. We caved with this set of soft plastic blocks, which are perfect for teething on - grabbable for a 4 month old, and the perfect texture to sooth sore gums. Pequita may not have anything breaking *through* her gums, but she's clearly working on some teeth. The salivating is reaching epic proportions. I am going to have to custom make some bibs for her with a cotton terry top layer, an absorbent wool lining, and a polypropylene backing. I may make and market them - we can't be the only people who cycle through new dry bibs every hour. Anyway, we got home and I started thinking about PCBs, phthalates, and the myriad toxic things that these bright blocks must be spewing into our house. I had just talked myself into returning them when I walked into the living room to witness the scene below. Homestead Mama had decided to try them out on Pequita, who was a very satisfied customer. I hope we can make up for the toxic exposure elsewhere in our lives. I've started by ordering a bunch of lead test swabs to check our old house & antique furniture for toxicity. For now, the blocks stay.