No one ever told me that parenting a toddler was a full-contact sport.

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.

I used to think I was resourceful with money. Today, however, on a shopping trip with two girlfriends, I caught myself wondering if I was just plain cheap. Standing in the outlet for a high-end children’s clothing store, I was wincing at the thought of paying $12 for a new sweater for my son (original retail price: $35 USD). $12 would have been a great deal to me just a few years ago, but since I’ve recently become an aggressive saver, it now seemed like too much to pay.

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.

People are f-ing crazy.

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.