When my son was born, my friends showered me with gifts of cute little onesies, baby bjorns, and stuffed animals galore. Had one them been a parent themselves, I remain certain they would instead have given me full body armor and a helmet.

You see, I am writing this post on the eve of my septoplasty. For those of you who don’t know, a septoplasty is a surgical procedure done to repair a damaged septum. I was not born with a deviated or damaged septum. No, my injury occurred at the hands - err, the diapered butt - of my three year old son.

Two months ago, I was very innocently lying in bed on a Saturday morning. Gavin, thrilled that it was a weekend day (what he aptly refers to as a “Mommy-Gavin Day”), bounded into my room and threw all 40 lbs of his toddler self upon me. In his pure elation, he did not consider neither his takeoff nor his landing, and he landed, diaper first, right onto my face.

My nose wasn’t broken, so I assumed all was okay. The only thing I found strange was that ever since the nose-landing incident, I suffered an unusual amount of congestion. Finally, I took myself to see a doctor who quickly assessed the situation. My septum was bent and the only way to repair it was through surgery. (He assured me that this was a very common injury, especially for those with large dogs and / or small children.)

So, tomorrow I will have my surgery. The sympathy from those around me is truly wonderful, though. When I told my Jewish mother what had happened, her reaction was, “So you’re having a nose job?” My Ex is having even more fun telling people that I am “having my nose modified.”

FML.

Here are some of my tips for making the change from spender to saver:

• Buy second-hand. You can score amazing deals on name brand items if you buy them used. I buy lots of goods second-hand and save SO much money that way. I got a like-new, low mileage, previously owned car last year and saved about $10,000 off what it would have cost me had I purchased it new the year before. I also buy most of son’s clothing at second-hand stores, getting things like Ralph Lauren polos for $3 and Baby Gap jeans for $5.
• Buy discount. For those items you need (or prefer) new, hit up discount stores such as Nordstrom Rack, TJ Maxx, Marshalls, etc. You can score some high-quality items at reduced prices - I just bought a necklace at Nordstrom Rack that retails for $250. The price I paid? $40.
• Buy real estate. That probably sounds crazy right now, but if you can afford it (and are stable in your job), now is actually a good time to buy. Interest rates are low, as are home prices, and the federal government is strongly considering increasing the first-time homeowners tax credit from the current $7500 to $15,000. Additionally, the government is considering turning this interest-free loan into a lump sum that would not need to be repaid. As in, free money.
• Buy in bulk. I don’t clip coupons, nor do I make a shopping list before I head to the store. Instead, I simply shop based on what’s at a good price when I go and stock up on items I know I’ll use. Try to avoid the multiple trips to the grocery store each week - you’ll spend more that way. Also, pay attention to the unit price of an item (usually listed in the corner of the price label) and buy it in whatever size it is the cheapest (but buy multiples of that size). The largest size is usually the cheapest, but not always. So check.
• Bring lunch and drink office coffee. This one has saved me nearly $3,000 per year. A morning latte ($3) and a sandwich for lunch ($7) doesn’t seem like a lot until you look at what it’s doing to your budget on a yearly basis. I switched to drinking coffee in the office (unlimited refills!) and bringing my lunch - anything from leftovers from the night before to macaroni and cheese with frozen edamame.

A 33-year old American woman named Nadya Suleman just had a set of octuplets, bringing her total number of children to fourteen. Fourteen! Holy hell. And, the oldest of the children is seven. She has fourteen children under the age of eight.

Just reading this story online yesterday made me want to lie down and take a nap. How does one parent fourteen small children? Suleman is not married and is on welfare - all fourteen of her children were conceived via in vitro fertilization (IVF). While I am all for women raising children on their own if they so desire, I think it is highly irresponsible to purposely impregnate oneself that frequently. And, to rub salt into this wound, the woman receives public assistance. Tax payers are supporting Suleman’s little hobby. Suleman’s mother explains that her daughter is “obsessed with children.”

So unbelievably irresponsible. No one knows how Suleman was able to convince a doctor to implant eight embryos at once, especially in a woman under 35 with six other children. The father of all fourteen kids is reportedly a neighbor of Suleman’s who had donated his sperm. However, this neighbor recently married, according to the Telegraph, and asked Suleman to stop using his sperm to conceive children. Clearly, she did not comply with his wishes.

I hope someone examines Suleman’s mental health and evaluates her ability to care for that many kids. So sad.

My soon-to-be three year old does this Jekyll and Hyde act. At school, he parades around in a dry diaper all day, politely using the potty whenever the urge strikes him. His teachers insist he is potty-trained and want to move him up to the next classroom where the kids no longer where diapers.

I refuse. Why, you ask? Well, once home, Mr. Potty Trained turns into a peeing machine. We put him in underwear - he peed right through them. We put him in pull-ups training pants - he adjusted himself such that he was able to pee outside the training pants without actually wetting himself. While very resourceful, he did wind up wetting my couch.

We make the potty available to him. We encourage him to use the potty instead of diapers / pull-ups / underwear. I’ve even bribed the kid with ice cream. (In my defense, my Ex bribed him with a pet goldfish.) Nothing.

Does anyone out there have any potty-training tips for me? I am getting really, really tired of waking up to the sound of “Uh-oh, Mommy. I peed on my bed.”

The Ex and I, ever the entrepenuers, have recently come up with a cool concept that has the potential to save families a LOT of money when it comes to buying their children clothing while at the same time, allowing them to select from a wide variety of high-quality items.

Our concept is in its initial stages of development, but if you’re interested in learning more, leave a comment with your email or website, and I’ll shoot you the link once we’re in beta. For now, I’m interested in learning how much the average person spends on their children’s clothing. Please answer the poll below (if you’re so inclined).

Anyway, my new food obsession is making my own handmade bread. The scent of fresh bread baking in the oven is heavenly! Today I made a whole wheat oatmeal bread and yesterday, I made a delicious, hand-braided loaf of challah. It was so good that me, the Ex, and Gavin ate all of it within minutes of taking it out of the oven.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups flour
• 1 package yeast
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs for challah dough
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 egg for egg wash

Recipe:

Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a big bowl. In a separate bowl, pour 1 cup of warm water, add the yeast, and let it soak for 5 minutes. Add 1-1/2 cups flour mixture to the water, beat, set aside with a dishtowel covering it. Let sit for 30 min. Add two eggs, beat, then knead in the rest of the flour mixture for about 10 minutes. Let rise again for about an hour.

Knead the dough on a floured board for about 3 minutes, and cut dough in thirds. Make three “snakes” with each and braid, pinch ends, tuck under. Let rise again for a about an hour or so while covered with a dish cloth.

Brush gently with egg wash (1 egg and 1 tsp. water), bake for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Reduce to 375 degrees and continue baking until a nice, golden crust forms.

Enjoy!

Everyday, Bluefly sends me emails with their “lowest price of the season” or “biggest sale of the year.” While these emails, taken together, signify nothing, I cannot help but panic. Did I buy my jeans at the peak? I wonder. I often feel like an investor who got duped into buying stock right before the market tanked. These emails taunt me so.

My natural recourse, of course, is to hop on their website and see if all the jeans I bought have been marked down. Instead of searching for the products on my own, though, I now simply IM the sales reps - aka “flyshionistas” - who find my goods and credit me whatever difference I am owed.

I seriously spend so much time IMing these flyshionistas that they know me. I literally had one say to me today, “Oh you’re Erica.”

Perhaps it is a sign I shop too much. Of course, once I am on the site, I cannot help but browse a little bit. You know, to check out all the new deals

So just how tall can I expect my baby to grow? Well, the rule of thumb is to double the child’s height at age two. At two years, Gavin stood 3 feet even, so that puts his adult height somewhere around 6 feet.

I like to say that Gavin got the best of my Ex’s and my genes. With regard to his stature, I am very thankful he appears to take after his 6′2 father.

Facebook has recently been removing breastfeeding photos they deem “sexually explicit” or “pornography.” These are women’s photos showing themselves breastfeeding their babies. In some of these photos you can reportedly - gasp! - see their nipples.

You know, it’s times like these that I am reminded that Facebook originated in the college dorm rooms of 19-year old boys. Are they giggling as they remove this “porn”? Emailing it to their buddies? I mean, get over it. Breasts are not sexual - they are food sources for babies. It is our society that sexualizes them…through actions just like this.

Facebook, if you’re going to remove breastfeeding photos, you really ought to remove bottle-feeding ones as well. Summed up by one of my favorite quotes, “If breastfeeding in public makes people uneasy because the breasts are considered sexual, then bottle-feeding must be the equivalent of whipping out a dildo.”

I found an awesome pair of Hudson jeans on sale for $100. Excited to receive my new treat, I rushed them to my house via 2-day delivery. They were scheduled to arrive on December 24th.

December 24th: No jeans.

December 25th: No mail due to holiday. I sit and lament lack of jeans and lack of mail.

December 26th: No jeans.

December 27th: No jeans. I send angry letter to UPS and store where said jeans were purchased.

December 28th: UPS says they “cannot locate” my jeans’ whereabouts after December 24th, the last time they were in their system. Store where jeans were purchased launches “investigation.”

December 29th: UPS arrives at our door! With a package! …..For my Ex. I conclude the jeans have been stolen. Yelling and stomping ensues. My Ex tells me I’m crazy.

My Ex is getting sick of me talking about my jeans - in fact, he claimed I was acting like an adolescent. (Admittedly, I probably am, but I don’t care.) My theory is that the jeans were stolen by a UPS worker. They came from a well-known, high-end store that puts their logo on the outside of the package. When stated in the strong form (”UPS obviously stole my jeans”), my Ex uses this theory as further evidence of my lack of logic.  He has accused me of treating this like a national security issue.

But really I just want my poor, missing jeans. Where oh where can they be?