Saving money and my patience!

So I have never been the type of mom that wants things that are "all-natural" or "organic" or "kdfhausdfb free", but I am a mom that is all about saving money. This has been even more true since going from two incomes to one. So I admit, I have started looking more closely at sales, clipping some coupons, and most recently, started making my own baby food. Well really it is Jacob's baby food...but anyway. When we first started talking about starting solids, I began researching the cost of baby food. OMG!! It is ridiculously expensive. And yes, there are coupons out there to help ease the pain a bit, and yes they are more convienient, but really? So I did some research, talked to a few friends, and then dove right in. I must say it is probably one of the easiest things that I have done. With just about all of the veggies/fruits you either steam them or roast them, and then puree them in a food processor and then freeze them in ice cube trays. When the food is frozen, pop them out and store in ziploc freezer bags. So far we have a stash of carrots, peas, apples, sweet potato, and butternut squash. Jake is loving the solids so far and I love that I am saving a TON of moolah and it's an added bonus that everything is super healthy with nothing crazy added.

So now that we have saved some money, here is how we saved my patience...
For anyone that has been around Jacob, you know that he is a spitter-upper. No matter what we have done, it hasn't changed things. We have tried eliminating things from my diet, bottle only, breast only, formula only, soy formula only...but nothing changed. Although this was very annoying I had just grown to accept it. But then we started carrots...And the easy to clean milk spit-up became orange, smelly, stains everything, it is everywhere, seriously again, spit up. So off we went to get an upper GI test. For those of you familiar with this, I'm sorry you had to drink that nasty stuff. To those of you unfamiliar, Jacob had to drink this nasty looking, chalky stuff called barium. Then as he drank it and it went through his digestive system, they took X-Rays to see he swallowed and how his stomach and esophogus were functioning. Well, Jake drank that junk like a champ! And although he swallows just fine, the X-Ray showed that he has reflux. Yippee!!! I know it isn't a good thing that he has reflux, but it was great news to me, because that meant that there really was an issue and that it could be fixed and that I wouldn't have to deal with orange stains on everything anymore! :) We started the meds on Saturday and so far there is a definite improvement. He hasn't stopped spitting up completely, but it has been drastically reduced. We are happy again!

So with a little more change in my pocket and a big smile on my face I am off to face the rest of the week!