Let the Little Things Stay Little

Today, much like any other Tuesday, our mailbox was filled with the usual junk mail. There were grocery store flyers, coupons and other advertisements - nothing special. I usually go to school on Tuesdays and my husband watches our 6 month old son. In the past, I have come home to find my living room resembling a home where a small puppy may live. Toys with teeth marks and scraps of torn and chewed paper everywhere. Also in the past, I have freaked out and said things like "You let him eat paper?! Are you crazy!? No wonder he is constipated! Do you have any idea how many carcinogens are in that paper?". Today, I looked at it differently.

Donnie is learning to crawl, er...something like that...he uses more of a scooting and rotating method to get where he wants to go. If there is any kind of paper product anywhere on the floor, he will find a way to get there. Even if you are holding him, he will find a way to escape you just so he can relish in the simple pleasures of paper fun. He clearly loves the stuff. I assume it's a fairly common obsession among 6 month olds. It makes noise and has a lot of tactile stimulation.  Sounds like a good time for a little person. Inevitably, he found his way to the junk mail. Yes, I could of put it out of reach, but I just didn't. I had been sitting on the floor trying to read the ads seconds before this video was shot.

This time, instead of ripping the paper away and watching my son scream bloody murder, I just let him play. How can I expect my son to become a confident, independent child if I am constantly hovering over his every move and taking away every fun thing he finds? I imagine that ad and magazine paper is much like the thermal paper that was recently found to contain many, many carcinogens. But, I am slowly realizing that I can't worry about every little thing. If I allow myself to worry about every item that contains a carcinogen, I might as well put him in a plastic bubble (although I love watching the movie "Bubble Boy"). I'm not going to just let him sit there and consume huge amounts of the Winn-Dixie circular, but I am not going to tear it away and hand him a toy that he is sick of playing with. Babies need to play independently and explore new things in order to learn. Maybe he's not going to learn a whole lot from chomping on some ink laden ad, but he's going to giggle and have some fun.  He is so curious these days, do I want to squash that new wonder?

I know that I can't let him play with everything that he finds amazing just because "aww! he likes it!". If he picked up a razor or electrical chord and thought it was the coolest thing ever I would still take it away as fast as humanly possible. I just think little things like paper are no big deal. I'm supervising, making sure he isn't ingesting large amounts or choking. He is learning, having a good time, and finding that he can have fun all by himself. Yes, there's chemicals in the paper, but, to me, letting my son play with some paper is pretty inconsequential. That's just my opinion. He will survive.

A New Journey

I wanted to make an introductory post for those of you newly stumbling upon my blog. You may wonder what my "topic" is. I don't have a deadset  topic that I stick to. I do have a theme. I focus on balance and objectivity when it comes to all things in life, particularly, parenting and family life. One week I may only speak about finances while another week I speak about food or music. I hope we talk about a bunch of different stuff. The point will be that there are many choices in life and no one can make the right ones for you except you. Also, many things in life are not black and white.

Moral excellence, or virtue, cannot be achieved if you are in excess or in lacking of any emotion or action. If you are in excess, it's not a virtue anymore, it is a weakness or flaw. If you are lacking, it is a vice. For example, the virtue of compassion can be callousness if in deficiency or it can be pity if it is in excess. When you find the balance between the two, that is when you find yourself in harmony with ethical and innate virtues. Your personal values usually come from your personal belief system and personal opinions. Thus, your virtues are affected by what you personally believe and hold valuable. In other words, moral excellence may mean something completely different to you than it means to someone else. It depends on who you are, where you live and who raised you. Ultimately, reaching a virtuous and moral life exclusively depends on balance in your life based on your personal opinions and beliefs.

I believe these ideas and concepts pertain not only to personal morality and virtue, but they also pertain to all aspects of life. If you are in excess or lacking in any area of your life, there can be consequences. Some consequences are smaller and more subtle than others, but trust me, they are there. But just as I said earlier, your "virtue" or life balance is based on your own personal opinions. Balance in your life looks completely different than balance in my life.  When any area of your life is too extreme in one direction, things can get ugly. 

This is what this blog is going to be about. It is my personal journey to finding balance in our family and parenting style. I want balance in how I feed, discipline, interact, teach and treat my son. I also want balance in how we spend our money and our time. I hope that you read this blog and it gives you ideas on how to find balance in your own life. Maybe the information I present is useless to you because our circumstances are just too different. Hopefully you can just read it and it will make you ponder about how you can balance things out. Balance is virtuous and when everything in life is in balance, all the choices you make will be right. I'm the mom in the middle and I like it.

Money Monday

Money Saving Tip of the Week:
Quit paying for cable. Really, stop it. Unless you have a pretty damn good reason why you HAVE to have it, why? As of last year, the average digital cable bill for a family was $75 a month and it keeps going up. $75 a month just to sit on your ass and get fat? Sit on your ass and get fat the cheap way!

If you were to cancel those hundred channels of nothing-to-watch and get Hulu-Plus or Netflix in it's place you could save around $800 a year. What would you do with an extra $800 a year? Buy yourself something nice? Take time off of work? Pay off debt? You could put that $800 in a savings account each year for five years. Then you would have $4000+interest. Sounds pretty nice to me.

HuluPlus - I'm not saying you should skip out on good entertainment. I love a good couch potato session as much as the next person. With HuluPlus, you can get entire seasons of 1000s of series plus all current episodes of many, many popular shows. Seven bucks a month gets you nearly the same content you were getting for $75. They even have cable network shows (Sorry folks, no Dexter or Weeds, no premium channels). HuluPlus is only $96 a year in comparison with $900 a year for cable.

Netflix - Okay, you wanna save money but you like your shows that appear on HBO and Showtime and you also like to watch full length feature films? Then Netflix may be the answer. You can get any show under the sun (that's on DVD, that is) through the mail. You can save $780 a year for 1 at a time or $660 a year with 3 at time. Unlimited instant streaming on many devices is also included in that. Plenty of tv and movies on there too.


Yes, there are pros and cons with whichever choice you make. HuluPlus is cheap and instant but may not carry your favorite show or be offered on your device. Netflix is affordable but you don't get to watch the current season that is on TV. You choose whatever you choose depending on what features are most important to your family. Maybe you just love your cable and don't mind renting a redbox movie from time to time. I just want to point out a few new popular choices that can give you comparable amounts of entertainment (if not more) for far less money.

Weekly Totals:

Publix - $70.64 OOP + $138.31 Saved = $208.95 (66%)
It was a 10 day ad this week. It was an awesome sale. We got alot of frozen items to have on hand for snacks. Frozen pizzas are hard to find under $4-$5 and we snagged them for $2.33. Free Heluva Good dip was also a good find for us along with Texas Toast and some pharmacy items. You have until Wednesday, May 4th if you don't want to miss it. 

CVS - $32.20 OOP+$76.07 Saved =108.27 (72%)
Yeah, I know. That's a pretty high total for CVS. You're probably thinking "Shouldn't that be something more like .05 out of pocket?". Well, I wish. I didn't plan on shopping CVS this week but unfortunately, when I went to check my ECB they were ALL going to expire. That's right, all $32 in ECB that I had stashed up. No one wants to throw away a hard earned $32 ECB. Instead, I went through the horrible ad (05/01/11) and purchased enough deals to use my ECB and replace them. I didn't want to just go in and buy $32 worth of stuff and not get any ECB back for the future. I like to roll 'em. So, I ended up spending $32 out of pocket but I got $30 in ECB back and I got a shitload of stuff (cascade, deodorant, shampoo, bodywash, laundry detergent, fabric softener). Things that we will use very quickly and definitely worth more than $32.