so far, so good...

it's only been 4 days of the 'diet'. no new purchases. not feeling any withdrawal symptoms yet either. i do have to buy a gift at some point for my nephew's baptism next saturday. will have to do some serious thinking as to what to get. he's a fourth child, so that family pretty much has everything that exists for children. also, the family is uber religious, so they already have at least a dozen crosses and that kind of paraphernalia. gonna be a toughie. i'm thinking an engraved silver cup. hopefully it'll be ready in time.

now that i'm not going to have new acquisitions to post about, this blog will probably get pretty dull. going to have to come up with more topics!

home

sadly, island shopping either just isn't what it used to be or i've become more picky about what i buy. the only additional purchases i made before we left were just for baby at lilly pulitzer:

polo shirt $34:

t shirt $20:

skirt $38:

i used to handle the household finances years ago but once i quit my job and stopped making money, husband kind of picked up the slack and i've grown out of touch with our budget. because we want to hire a babysitter to come a few times a week just to help out, we had to figure out how much help we can afford. i was a bit surprised to hear exactly how much we burn through on a monthly basis. definitely pause for thought.

so, i've decided to challenge myself to limit my monthly spending allowance to a certain amount. right now, i buy a lot of stuff, but nothing too outrageous. in the end, it all adds up and i could really cut back. i plan on starting today...june 1st. day one of a shopping diet!!

managing

having a decent holiday weekend thusfar. got a little frustrated today that we only spent 45 minutes of time doing what we (adults) wanted to do and spent the rest of the day catering to baby. she came down with a wicked fever last night and wasn't feeling so good. luckily, she's not being fussy, but to be on the safe side, we're just keeping her activities very low key (playing inside the house...meanwhile it's 80 and gorgeous outside). we arrived thursday morning and once the stores opened at 10, i hit the pavement running ready to buy everything in sight. sadly, i didn't really see anything i absolutely had to have. in the hour i had to shop before baby couldn't stand being in the stroller anymore, i bought this dress for baby at lilly pulitzer $88:

the past few days have been a blur. took baby to the beach on friday and saturday. it was a bit cool on the beach on saturday, so that's probably where baby caught a chill. there were a bunch of kids on the beach wearing a quarter of the clothes she was wearing, so i don't know. i'm always way overdressing her so, maybe she's not used to being on the cool side.

finally got back into town this morning to do a little shopping. bought this cute dress by oneill $44:

this mannequin must be 7 feet tall, because it just hits a couple inches above my knee. also, the dress has pockets which is always a bonus.

tomorrow is our last day here and i need to make the most of it. otherwise i'll go home feeling like something is missing. the fact that i've only bought these two things is quite a feat. a couple of nice things we've done while we were here was get reacquainted with the succulent donuts at the bake shop and the stop and shop pistachio gelato. mmmmm...

off to the beach

we're catching a 6:30am ferry tomorrow morning. it takes about 1hr 15min to get to the ferry. it's going to be a rough morning. after spending the whole summer at the beach last year, we decided that we didn't want to do that this year. we may be eating our words. the problem with last year was that baby was little and couldn't do very much. also, there were two other families living at the house too. husband's sister's family occupied one side of the house, husband's dad and wife occupied the middle and we stayed on the other side. it was a full house. at the time, the sister in law had 3 kids, a 5 year old, a 3 year old, and a 10 month old. she now has a fourth child who is now 7 weeks old. needless to say, they won't be at the house this summer. also, husband's dad will be having a second shoulder replacement surgery in july, so he and his wife won't be there either. we'll have the house to ourselves for most of the time, so that significantly changes the scene there. hm.

anyway, will be posting while away...

quickie

not much to report. i ran out real quick while baby was napping this morning. headed straight for anthropologie. i got this dress ($138) that i've been admiring and it fit like a dream:

i also got this top ($78) which looked good on, however when i showed it to the husband, he looked confused and didn't really know what to say. i tried to put words to his expression and asked him if i looked like a horse that just won a race and is wearing a flower wreath around my neck. he said, yeah, something like that.... so, this may not be a keeper... will have to sleep on it.

one good thing about husband is that he really tells the truth about my purchases. and i don't always agree with him, but i like that he takes a good look, thinks about it and then gives me an honest opinion. anything he flat out doesn't like, i usually return. if he wisened up, he wouldn't like anything i bought, but often he really likes what i buy. so, they're keepers!

bought a whole bunch of stuff online for baby. first from olive juice kids:

on sale for $43.95:

also on sale for $34.95 in the navy color:

and finally this to for $32.95:

these were no means bargains, but i bought them on sale for the fall. i try to buy baby's clothes a couple seasons ahead... i looked for a last fall/winters clearance clothing for baby for this coming fall, but none of the sites i usually buy from had anything good, and if they did, they didn't have anything in her size. this fall will be the first time i buy full priced in season clothing. this could get expensive considering my taste. one must have for the fall/winter for baby is a cashmere sweater. back before baby was born, her grandfather sponsored a shopping spree for at ralph lauren. one of the things i picked out was a cashmere cardigan with matching pants. it was quite expensive at $250. baby never wore the pants... but the sweater she wore pretty much every day from october until march. babycz makes luxurious cashmere clothing for little ones, however i'm not sure i want to spend the money...the double breasted cardigans run around $240. The cable knit pullovers are around $150. I actually knitted a cashmere roll neck pullover last summer for baby... but it ended up being too small for her by winter. my second mistake was i used needles that were a bit smaller than i should have which resulted in a very thick, sauna-like sweater. i should just undo the sweater and wind it up into balls because the yarn itself, i think, came to about $120. cashmere in any form is expensive!!!

anyway, a few notes on baby. she is her mother's daughter. she saw a cat for the first time today and she totally lit up and was completely fascinated by it. like her mom, she's an animal lover. she is finally sitting down to eat. we got her a booster seat that sits right on one of our dining chairs and she's been pretty good about sitting there. score! her appetite for food is also increasing. she loves pasta and meat sauce, ham and cheese sandwiches, strawberries, cheese melted on a bagel, yogurt... now if i can just get her to like milk....

i know why the caged bird doesn't sing

i think i've figured out why moms or women with kids don't go around complaining about how hard motherhood is. 1) people who don't have kids don't want to hear it... that's why they are enjoying life without kids 2) no one wants to sound like a stupid crybaby and 3) people who have kids don't want to hear about it because they have their own problems...and probably think to themselves "don't get me started!"

this week has been a little better than last week. although today, i've reached my limit on tolerating that high pitched whining sound that baby is so fond of making lately. it really hits a nerve that sends me fantasizing about shoving a wad of duct tape in her mouth. my patience lately has been very short. maybe meditating will help? i've finally taken to going to bed a couple hours earlier than i regularly do. that has helped with not feeling tired, but not so much with my sense of calm or my attitude.

i think the main thing i'm missing in my life right now is a sense of joy. there is no joy. where is the joy? when will i begin to feel it? what if it never comes? that's a really depressing thought. what good is becoming a mother if there's no joy. what's the point?? can anyone really answer that? interestingly, the amount of money i spend a week is a good barometer of how i feel... it's an inverse relationship.... more money=bad mood, less money=good mood when will i learn that retail therapy doesn't work!!

the latest

this past weekend, we went on a shopping spree for baby. we bought a booster seat for one of our dining chairs since the high chair is currently collecting dust. we also bought santa's sleigh's worth of toys.

this 'super spiral play tower' is a bit of a monstrosity, but i knew the entertainment value would outweigh the unsightliness of it.

i've become mildly obessed with the happyland line of toys.. they're the european equivalent of fisher price's little people toys.

my first happyland purchase a couple weeks ago was this veterinary office and set of people...

turned out that these were a big hit with baby. she especially enjoyed putting the people in and out of the little vet clinic. so of course we had to buy more!

i got this farm set which is so adorable.. however baby wasn't as into it as much the original vet clinic set. oh well...

then we saw this bath toy and had to get it:

then today i did a little shopping...

bought this super cute top for baby at mulberry road by egg baby $38:

that's about it... i've been itching to buy myself something lately, but haven't really seen anything i liked. found a nice pair of chanel sunglasses at saks, but couldn't justify the purchase because i don't really wear sunglasses. i have a couple of nice pairs already, but am just not a sunglass type of person. i.e. husband never leaves the house without his sunglasses.

oh, i'm such a dingaling...i wrapped up the quilt very beautifully and then i remembered that i forgot to take pictures of it, but then i didn't want to unwrap it and mess it up... so, it'll have to be an undocumented project... since it took less than a week to make, i'll be making more and try to remember to take pics next time.