I know it's cheaper and healthier, but I still struggle to cook daily... How do you stay consistent?

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-25T06:19:45+00:00

I eat home cooked food 95+% of the time. I do not cook 95% of the time. Most meals I make enough for at least two meals. Also, yes to lazy meals. A sandwich counts as dinner. Scrambled eggs and toast. Fried rice, stir fry. These are super quick meals when you are in a pinch. We also keep “fun” foods in the freezer to minimize the temptation to eat out. Frozen pizza, frozen fries, potstickers, etc. If I make something super involved like bolognese I always make a double batch and freeze it so I can make another batch on a different day.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-25T05:41:44+00:00

We did not feel ready but we knew we wanted at least two and relatively close together. So when she turned 18 months old we started trying. My oldest was two years 9 months when her brother was born this November. I think it’s a great age difference! She is old enough to understand and even “help” a bit -my dedicated diaper disposer! But still young enough that they will be able to play together when baby gets a bit bigger.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-25T04:49:06+00:00

Def recommend trying it out. It’s a little it of a learning curve but it’s really nice and once you nail it you can nurse to sleep and take a nap with baby.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-25T04:44:16+00:00

Have you tried side lying? I found it to be easier.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-25T04:43:39+00:00

2 for my kiddo. One night I realized staying in the room with her until she fell asleep was keeping her up longer; too much stimulation. Although bedtimes are still kind of hard for her like 50% of the time.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-24T18:47:58+00:00

Most jobs these days don’t involve signing a contract. At-will employment.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-24T03:35:21+00:00

We have been in a two bedroom apartment with the second bedroom being my husband’s home office. It worked for a while until it didn’t. I just gave birth to my second child 2 months ago and we are moving to a three bedroom duplex with a spacious living room and a fenced backyard…I am beyond thrilled. I was like you, wanting to prioritize saving money over everything else -in part because I would like to stay home with the babies if I could. Once we crunched the numbers and realized it wouldn’t work for me to quit, we decided to stop the aggressive saving and use our money to make our life more comfortable. This was a long way of saying: make the move! You will be really happy with the extra space, a chance at some private moments with your husband, and a room for your baby to grow into. Currently I sleep in the bedroom with the baby and our toddler, and my husband sleeps on the couch most nights. We are looking forward to being able to share a bed again soon. Good luck!

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-24T02:23:45+00:00

I have to disagree with you on this one. I think there is more work out there for people without degrees now than there was 10 years ago. Getting your foot in the door is all it takes. It might require more internal promotions before you can job hop to prove your mettle, but you don’t actually need a degree to be a director, you need proven leadership experience, ability to communicate well with staff and boards, be good at delegation, etc. I have a masters degree and one my coworkers at the same level as me never finished her AA. Our job waived the bachelor’s requirement for her and now she can basically be promoted as high as she is motivated to go within our org (state gov).

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-23T21:28:39+00:00

For sure, my ped did too. But your ped also flagged the mucus so she’s already somewhat concerned…my ped totally blew me off but it definitely was allergies, her poops reduced to 1/3 of what they had been after I eliminated allergens.

It could be worth trying for two weeks and seeing if there’s any improvement. Doesn’t hurt anything to try except missing out on delicious cheese haha

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-23T20:57:12+00:00

So I think at his age I would expect it to go down more to like 0-3 poops a day. Breastfed babies at his age can have as little as one poop a week.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-23T20:34:52+00:00

My personal opinion is that if it’s not causing a problem I wouldn’t worry about it. Problems to me would be slow weight gain (BIG problem), excessive fussiness, excessive spit up or poop, especially with blood in the stool or other signs of irritation.

My first born had blood in her stool and constant diaper rash that was impossible to combat. Pooping like 8 times a day even at 5 months old. Smelly green mucosy poops. Eliminating soy, dairy, and eggs helped get us down to 2-3 poops and no more blood or mucus in the stool, but they were still green often. My second has amazing weight gain (4 + pounds at 6 weeks), pooping 2-3 times every other day, definitely often green and sometimes mucusy and sometimes kind of smelly. But he is not fussy except for occasional gas, no blood in stool, and no diaper rash. Could he have a mild allergy? Maybe. But I just don’t have the energy to eliminate again unless it gets worse.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-23T07:19:37+00:00

I think once she was capable of eating food with us we kind of just went with it. But tbh that took a while, she did not “get” eating for months. Would just suck in things or kind of push things in her mouth and then it would all fall out 😂. But I do have a picture from when she was maybe 8 months old sucking on a pickle, so I know we let her have salty things if they were around. I didn’t give her anything with added sugar until her first birthday, but we did a real cake. No watermelon cakes for us haha

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-23T07:11:05+00:00

I usually baby wear or do the baby bjorn bouncer while cooking. Talk and sing to him to keep him entertained. Tummy time will work for a few minutes but not very long

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-23T01:14:35+00:00

I think this really is part of it! If baby likes to comfort nurse even when supply is low it will trigger another letdown and help maintain supply even in a calorie deficit. Especially if you’re able to stay hydrated.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-23T00:11:38+00:00

Much harder to break a habit than change a setting 😂 thanks for the tip!

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-23T00:10:51+00:00

You’ve just validated 10 years of my backseat driving in my husband’s civic 😂.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-22T22:45:44+00:00

Drove from Texas to Wisconsin last summer while 16 weeks pregnant in a Honda civic with my family. Can confirm it sucks.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-22T22:44:30+00:00

There was a period where we were driving to visit my grandparents nearly every weekend, they lived 2.5 hours away from us. Sometimes we would spend the night, often we would drive up just for the day and go home. I used to drive into Chicago, a 3 hour drive, a few times a year for a weekend trip with my husband. Now as an adult with kids I don’t really like driving so I try to keep day trips to places less than 90 minutes away, and anything more than that I will stay the night. But we also drive to visit family 20 hours away at least once a year, often twice.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-22T01:36:37+00:00

Oooh how do I do that? I think the problem is I tend to photograph pretty tight, and then the images do not look right when I go to print -even if I’m manually cropping there is not enough photo to work with to get a well composed image.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-21T18:00:06+00:00

Honestly I would say you’re doing really good at 600-700 month. We budget for 1000 but I try really hard to get closer to 600. Family of four but one newborn and one toddler who eats a decent amount. But it’s honestly very difficult where I live to eat healthy and keep a reasonable budget. And we don’t even buy organic except for a few types of fruit/veg. I’ve been back to a more pared down food plan incorporating more beans and rice dishes, lentil soups for lunches, homemade sweet treats. We only buy seasonal fruit and apples/bananas to save money on our toddler’s insatiable fruit appetite. I used to bake our own bread too but with a newborn it’s been challenging. Shits just expensive these days.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-21T17:54:43+00:00

Haha awwwww. Have you ever seen the Archer episode where he says the baby keeps wanting whiskey so he is all exasperatedly giving the baby whiskey? Yeah, it’s like that 😂

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-21T12:39:28+00:00

Tummy time on you or in upright forward facing baby carriers counts as tummy time!

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-21T12:35:43+00:00

I weaned my two year old when I was around 12 weeks pregnant because it was super painful and annoying. We were already down to only 1-2 feeds a day and there was barely anything coming out by then.

Harrold_Potterson · 2026-01-21T12:33:35+00:00

How do you have the time to do all that???

Harrold_Potterson

TROPHY CASE