You know, I don't think that the current economic situation has affected the Beserker family as much as it has others. We've always had to watch our budget closely; apparently the past ten years were just practice for where we are now. But Featured Grownups wants to know how we have adjusted our lives to make ends meet, and here are some things we do here:

* The local MOPs (Mothers of Preschoolers) group does a meal exchange that I participate in. This week, I'm making a double batch of bran muffins (taste so much better than the name implies) and seven batches of Taco Twist Soup. On Thursday, I'll take them to the meeting and swap them out for seven different meals. I save money here by buying the pasta and other staples for the recipes in bulk or on deeply discounted sales. This also saves time. Sundays are usually hectic here, and having a meal that can just be pulled from the freezer and heated up saves a lot of stress.

* Along those lines, I'm buying more meat in bulk and prepping it myself. I can buy beef at Sam's Club for $1.79 a pound, then spend about an hour grinding it and packaging it myself. The finished result is very lean (we trim it as we grind it) and much less costly! I buy chicken breasts for $.99 a pound and then skin and debone them myself before freezing them. This summer we were able to pick tomatoes and bell peppers from Smiddy's grandpa's garden; I made salsa, diced tomatoes, and tomato sauce, then diced and julienned the peppers and froze everything.

* We're setting our priorities a little differently. We have to face the fact that fresh food is more expensive, even if it is more healthy. So I really budget where I spend on produce, making sure that none will go to waste and that I get the most bang for my buck.

* Instead of taking all of my children's outgrown clothing to GoodWill, I take it to Once Upon A Child. They give cash or store credit for items in good condition and also take toys.

* I'm letting my magazine subscriptions expire and checking them out from the library instead.

* I'm borrowing when I can. Instead of buying all new books for each homeschooling year, I borrow major resources from friends or the library, and then return them when I'm done. This also means my already full storage space doesn't have to be expanded!

* I threw a Tastefully Simple party this weekend and will use the free product I earned for a wedding gift next month.

* We explore the store brand on almost everything. If the store brand just won't work, then we watch for sales on the higher priced brand.

* We have discovered that WalMart will honor prices in sale fliers for our major grocery stores, Safeway and Albertson's. So rather than running all over town to three grocery stores (each of which might have one or two items on a really good sale), I make one stop at WalMart. I still get the savings, don't waste extra gas, and have an extra 45 minutes to spare.

* I'm trading babysitting with a friend.

* We've made use of the "envelope system" for our month-to-month spending. Each week has an envelope with a set amount of money to cover gas, groceries and other necessities. When that money is gone, we're done! It makes us really think through purchases. We also try to pay with cash instead of our debit cards, because that seemed to be where we were spending a lot of unnecessary money. Eating out is a treat, not a regular occurrence.

It's all about rethinking priorities and then finding new ways to do what is truly important. We have kept our gym membership because we know we'll need a good outlet when the weather turns nasty. On the other hand, we're looking at ways to get our phone/internet bill down because we see a lot of waste there.

Frenzy feels five pounds heftier as I carry her from the eye doctor's office, and the extra weight isn't due to the new frames and lenses she is sporting. No, it's the questions and concerns that weigh on me this afternoon. I complement Frenzy on her new look as I buckle her in, and I congratulate Chaos on his reading glasses. But as I pull away from the office, I still wonder, "Did I do the right thing here?"

I have no problem setting a brand-new pair of glasses on my son's face. He is seven, and he has shown signs of eye strain after too much time spent with his nose poked into a book or his eyes glued to the computer screen. He can vocalize what's going on to me, can articulate answers for the eye doctor. His lenses are for reading and screen time only, and will ease strain placed on his eyes by those activities. I can understand that.

But Frenzy is two and a half. Yes, I've seen younger children with glasses, but they usually had an obvious issue, like a crossed or lazy eye. According to the eye doctor, Frenzy's trouble is that she's extremely far-sighted, even more so than most kids her age. Add to that the fact that she might have some albinism (we getting that checked out soon) which could could lead to some serious vision issues down the road, and you've got yourself a cute little pair of lavender glasses.

But is this the right answer for her? What would happen if she never wore them? What if she wears them every day for the next two years and still develops convergence discrepancy? What if Smiddy continues to hold to the view that no toddler needs glasses (unless they have a visible problem) and we fight about it for the next year? What if the extra attention drawn to Frenzy by the glasses affects her in a negative way? What if...?



It's a constant in parenting--the continual hope that the decision you just made was the best one you could have made, given the circumstances and the information available. There are so many options for every situation, too many options, I often feel. Yes, modern medicine and science are truly a marvel, but do we sometimes jump the gun or go too far with that knowledge? Are we better off for the advances made?

And the answer is, of course we are. We're better off, because illnesses that were once life-threatening can now be avoided altogether, because we understand more about how we work. But that's the general population we're talking about here, not my precious little girl. What if what's right for the world isn't right for her?

But what I can do is my best, and that's what I've done. So until I uncover some new information or have concrete reasons to doubt myself, I'll hand Frenzy her glasses when she gets up from her nap, and we'll pick out a matching "pretty" for her hair, because this is where we are, and we can only move forward from here.