Sometime around this week last year we bought our house. I don’t really remember the date of our closing, although I suppose I could look it up. Matt and I have been looking back on it this week and thinking of all that we’ve done in our first year… and all that we have yet to do.

In the past year we gutted our kitchen, updated the outdated electrical, knocked down a wall and put up a header, drywalled, installed new cabinets, new countertops, new appliances, ripped out the old floor, sanded down the wood floors and painted them, installed a tile backsplash, installed crown moulding, built out new door trim to match the original trim in the house. In the laundry room, we tore down old wallpaper, put up beadboard on the walls and ceiling, installed chair rail and crown, ran electrical and plumbing to make it a functioning laundry room, installed new washer and dryer, installed a new flooring, put up wallpaper.

I painted Penny’s bedroom three times. We breathed new life into the original rope & pulley windows.

In our bedroom we built a headboard and I made new curtains.

Matt installed a new gas fireplace.

We had the tiles in our bathroom reglazed, installed a new light fixture, and had the rotted floor joists and subfloor replaced, updated all of the plumbing, and installed a new tile floor.

Our upstairs was drywalled and carpet was installed.

And we painted. Everywhere. With lots of painting yet to do.

We have a lot of finishing touches to do on the inside of the house which will occupy us until next spring. When we’ve completed all of these projects we hope to move on to the exterior of the house – repaving our driveway, putting up a basketball hoop in the backyard, doing a ton of landscaping… a TON. Tearing down the unsightly awning above the front door and perhaps building out a new doorway. Eventually our roof will need to be replaced.

Yesterday, I will admit, I was pretty down. The HVAC guy came by to look at our broken air conditioner and told us that we need to replace the entire system including the furnace. We can do it anytime between now and next spring, but it will mean dropping another five grand. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been an expensive year. We’ve spent a lot on the renovations we’ve already done, although considerably less than if we had hired them all out. We bought a new car. We had a baby and paid for my week-long hospital stay. We’ve done some very necessary traveling. Matt has bought a lot of new tools. It all has added up.

I’ve really been hankering to take a little family vacation, just a week away to a dog-friendly beach condo where the four of us can just hang out in the sun and sand and do some playing. When we have free weekends, they are typically spent tackling one of the many remaining projects, not getting out and doing some playing. I’m itching for the latter.

But when our HVAC friend dropped the bomb yesterday, I realized that little family vacation just ain’t happening this year. And maybe not next year either with all of the remaining projects we have yet to do. Instead we’ll keep spending our weekends painting and nailing and fixing things up. And I suppose I’ll just revel in our AC, do laundry in my new laundry room, and gaze up at the crown moulding.

Yeah, we could have bought a newer house with paint already on the walls and kitchen cabinets just ready to fill. But heck if I don’t love our house like another member of our family. The more sweat we put into it, the more we love it, and the more we can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s the only debt we’ve got, and one day we’ll pay off this daggone mortgage and go on one heck of a vacation.

This week is National Breastfeeding Week which is a celebration of nursing and its health benefits for mother and child. Completely unrelated to NBW, I had two separate conversations about breastfeeding yesterday with two friends who couldn’t be farther apart on the issue. It made me happy that I have such diverse friends who aren’t afraid to discuss hot topics.

Both of these people asked me how breastfeeding with Penny was going, and whether or not I liked it. Frankly, I went into motherhood pretty blase about breastfeeding, and I continue to be blase about it. I choose to breastfeed because A) Penny took to it really easily, B) I like the research behind breastmilk building a stronger immune system, and C) it’s cheaper (probably my most compelling reason, honestly)!

I’m all about people who are breastfeeding advocates, and completely understand why they are. I’m also all about women who choose to formula feed because of the many logical reasons they choose to. For me, it’s all about the cash money.

The more I started to think about it, the more I realized most of my mothering decisions so far have had to do with my thrifty New England spirit. For instance, I’m cloth diapering because I love how it is better for the environment, but I’m also doing it because the average home spends $50-75 a month on disposable diapers. Because of my very generous friends, all 16 of my cloth diapers were given to me, without me spending a dime on diapering. I’ve realized I need to pick up a few more, but with some giftcards that I’ve been given, I think I might only wind up shelling out $20 or so to round out my supply. Pretty incredible when you think that Penny can wear these same diapers until she’s potty trained. And then I can reuse them for future kids. When you add it up, that’s a hefty savings!

(I did have a higher water bill in July, probably from doing a load of diapers every day. Which is all the more reason for me to get more diapers since 14 dirty dipes is only a half load in my washing machine.)

Well if I’m not a hyper breastfeeding advocate, why am I a hyper natural childbirthing advocate? A lot of this, again, comes down to money. We just got the bills from my C-section and hospital stay which added up to a whopping $30,000. Fortunately, because of Matt’s fairly comprehensive employer-sponsored healthcare we only have to pay about 15% of the total bill for my care, Penny’s nursery stay and her EKGs. But $30,000 as opposed to $2,000 for a natural delivery? Why would anyone choose the former if they didn’t have to?

What it all comes down to is that Penny (who is currently wearing some cute, and free! hand-me-downs) won’t be carrying a cell phone in Elementary school not because I have issues with it (although I do), but because I’m too cheap to buy her one. And perhaps all the money that I’ll save by handling her poopy cloth diapers for all those years will make it possible to build that Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired house in the Tennessee countryside that I was sketching out earlier today.

What’s the driving factor behind your parenting decisions? Whatever will keep your kid from life behind bars? Whatever prevents you from being blamed in 10 years of therapy once they’re adults? Or are you just cheap like me?

Over the past… eh… week and a half, life has been spinning at an absurdly fast rate of speed. Suddenly all of these carseats started arriving at the front door, which made it absolutely necessary for me to remove them from their boxes, inspect all of their moving pieces, read all of the installation instructions (holy cow!) and proceed to vacuum, detail and wash both of our cars.

It was bittersweet cleaning out our Volvo wagon, because I knew I was ultimately cleaning it out to be replaced. The little guy has been everything we could have wanted for carting around drywall and a muddy dog over the past few years, but has now gotten to a place where it needs major repairs – repairs that are significantly more expensive than the car is worth. As of December it won’t pass inspection without those repairs, so we’re planning on replacing it, perhaps with an Outback, perhaps with something else.

We’ve put 85,000 miles on our already well-loved wagon in almost five years, which is crazy considering it was my car and I took public transportation to work for 2 of those years and was at home for another year. Matt’s jobs have always required an outrageous amount of driving, so we’ve had to face the fact that we will inevitably replace cars sooner than the average American family. It’s a bummer on the wallet, but has gotten us pretty adept at car shopping over the past few years.

This Saturday we had an appointment to test drive an Outback and a Forester; the former we decided was the car for us. We’re wagon people. We like having a five-seater with lots of storage capacity and good gas mileage. We like a car that drives well in the snow, not that that matters so much anymore. We like a car that you can put a muddy dog in and not think twice about.

But I didn’t like how the smug salesman was unwilling to negotiate down to the price I wanted. So today I called down to a competing dealership to see what the Polish salesguy could do for me. After I played a Chris Matthews-worthy version of hardball, he made me some good promises that the car we’d be special ordering would come in right at the price we are willing to pay.

I like the Polish people. They make great sausages. And sweet sugary baked goods.

I’ll hear back from my friend later this week, and I hope he has good news for me. Yeah, I want a new Outback, but more than anything I’m just gnawing at the bit with an insatiable desire to install this adorable new carseat!

Until then, I can bide my time re-reading the owner’s manual.

I really didn’t sleep last night. I may have been laying in bed for five hours, but I remember most of it, which leads me to believe that no sleep was had.

It was a late night – Matt accidentally downloaded a bad file that sent trojan viruses through the computer, which I stayed up late trying to repair. I think all is well now, but I will not be surprised if a window pops up with an African-American basketball player rapping about my credit score – I’ve already seen him once today.

When I did finally lie down for the night, Pendragon wouldn’t stop squirming around. Overall she’s a pretty mellow chica, but last night she was wide awake. There really must be something to the “sleep when the baby is sleeping” since she really, honestly kept me awake. Downside is I’m fairly certain “the baby” hasn’t slept in 24 hours.

I was up early to go to a friends house for a women’s prayer group and got absolutely lost on my way over there. So much for going into it “totally knowing how to get there.” I was calling her every five minutes for directions which seriously inhibited my driving as I’m not good at multi-tasking while driving a manual yet. I kissed the sky that I was in Tennessee as Mass drivers would have slaughtered me with my erratic behavior.

Overall it feels like a day that is challenging me to stay posicore. Just as I was about to kick the cat out of frustration, Matt texted me saying  ”Extra fun surprise coming!!” When I inquired further he responded, “Special treat.”

Instantly, out of nowhere, my mind ran to “I hope he’s won $250,000.” I’m not sure why that figure came to mind, or how exactly Matt would have won that sum of money, but that’s what I thought.

I’d also settle for a bouquet of flowers.

OR A WHOLE BOTTLE OF PINO GRIGIO ALL TO MYSELF.

Whaddya think it is? Bets and/or affirmations of the wine/$250,000 theories are welcome in the comments.

Hi all my favorite people! I’m participating in a BlogHer promotion with KFC to raise awareness and money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which you know is one of my favorite organizations ever.

Head over to this page on Verbal Intent to read more. Your comments will each raise one dollar towards Komen, so get commenting!

Who knew you guys were so into baby food? You’re like my own personal Wikipedia… AND I LOVE YOU.

Recently Matt has picked up a new hobby. Because he needed a new hobby, seeing as his upright bass, rock climbing equipment and woodworking tools get so much use. The boy is notorious for picking up expensive hobbies that require a lot of gear, including the motorcycle he’ll be getting for his birthday later this month. Then he puts all kinds of time into them at the beginning mysteriously running out of that time later on. The crossword puzzle at the back of National Geographic seems to suck up all that extra time.

Now, I can’t say anything, really. I have my own issues with hobby ADD. But my hobbies tend to cost very little money. For instance, I play my own share of instruments but always trade in an existing one for a new one at little to no cost. Or my recent hobby is making all manner of things with my sewing machine, which is a pretty cheap hobby when you buy your fabric on clearance and your mom gave you the sewing machine years ago for a birthday gift. I tend to only read books that I can get from the library, bottles of wine for under $10, and large cuts of meat with coupons clipped from the Sunday paper. Yes, “large cuts of meat” is a legitimate hobby. My favorite hobby of all time is packing my man and my pup into the stinky old wagon and driving to the beach or a big grassy park to play fetch and take a nice long walk. This is, ironically, my most expensive hobby since an 11 year old Swedish automobile is not the cheapest thing to maintain.

You would think that I would have learned to start saying “no” to Matt’s expensive hobbies, especially as he’s on the brink of starting up the most expensive one – the hog (I think as of this writing we’ve narrowed it down to a Honda). But if you heard the stories of how much fun he had when he comes back from jamming with friends on his many instruments or rock climbing in the Gunks with his buddy Brian, you’d go straight to the nearest Harley dealership and throw down your plastic for a brand spanking shiny new 2010 cruiser. If you could see the pride in his face when he nails up that final piece of crown molding, and it fits absolutely perfectly with the one next to it, you’d head to Lowes and pick up a gorgeous new table saw for the boy. He’s just that endearing.

I make him sound like a big spender, and he’s really not. It’s just that the things he researches and dreams about for years and years cost a pretty penny. But he knows that, so he waits and saves up his gift money, and then when he goes out and gets himself that gadget I can support him whole-heartedly as  he works hard everyday and gives me one heckuva great life. Plus he’s never asked to see a receipt when I return from Target.

But this new hobby he’s picked up? Recently he’s into making “mashups” which is essentially smooshing together two songs that would work really well together, mixing them up and then posting it to all manner of “mashup” websites for feedback from other mashers. He’s currently working furiously to put a Prince song together with the Supremes. I’m not gonna lie, it sounds pretty sweet.

Best thing about this hobby? All it requires is a couple hours a week with the laptop, some free software, and a set of headphones. Not bad, if you ask me.

So, Matt! Can you make me a mashup of “Streets of Arklow” by Van Morrison and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by the Beatles? That’ll keep you busy enough for me to blow a whole afternoon in the clearance section of Target! Thanks, babe!

(Speaking of things that are FREE! Have you entered to win the gorgeous Sesame Letterpress coasters? No? Time is ticking away!)