Homemade Baby Food

When the twins were born, something took over my body. Instead of taking short-cuts, or making life easier on myself, I have loaded my plate, so to speak! And that's how I like it!! It is kind of like when you are at a buffet, and you keep piling things on top of your plate until you look down and see that appears you are eating your last meal. (Not like I do that or anything....well, maybe.....ok, only on cruises!) Ha, ha!

I started making the twins' food a couple weeks before we introduced rice cereal. I never made Aidan's food, until he was eating off our plates and eventually "big people" food. My reasons for making the twinks food isn't because I am against store bought baby food! I think the convenience is wonderful!! However at .97 cents for two plastic containers of Gerber baby food (on sale), I needed to find a way to reduce that grocery bill!

I have done a little (very rough) math. This is what I came up with....
Let's just say each baby eats 2 containers of food in a meal (one fruit and one veggie- I am taking the rice cereal out of the picture). If you get those on sale at two for .97 cents, that is .97 cents per meal, per baby. Once they are eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that is $2.91 a day per baby, and a total of $5.82 a day for a twin mom! This equals $174.60 a month (plus tax)! $2124.30 a year! Ouch!

I bought $3.50 worth of sweet potatoes and they lasted my boys for months!!!

So how much am I saving?

A standard jar of baby food is 2.5 ounces. So you get 5 ounces for .97 cents (on sale-remember), that equals .19 cents per ounce!

Let's compare sweet potatoes. I bought just over 5 pounds of sweet potatoes at our local farmers market for $3.50 (69 cents a lb). Those sweet pots made 66 ounces of baby food! That is about .05 cents an ounce!!

Peas....I got a large bag of frozen (fresh) peas at Wal-Mart for under $1. It made 35 ounces of food for the boys. That is under .03 cents an ounce!!

Pears, mangos, peaches, bananas, carrots, etc. You could do the math on them all!!!

Let's pretend my boys lived off of sweet pots and peas (yuck by the way, not a pea fan!). If they consumed 15 ounces of baby food a day (5 oz at each meal) that would cost me a total of only $1.20 a day to feed both boys! That is $36 dollars a month compared to $174! $438 a year!

$138 savings in one month!!!
$1,686.30 savings a year!!!!

Now, this is just for math, I know that the boys will not be living off 15 ounces of baby food a day, forever. Right now they are actually only eating breakfast and dinner- we have not fit lunch into our schedule yet. But, you can't deny the savings!!!

Watch for my first "How do I?" post coming soon! I want to share how I make, freeze, store, and enjoy making food for my boys!

Night, night!

Crashing....

This is what our computer is doing. It has to be one of the most frustrating this to do deal, and really shows our dependence on technology. I have been wanting to update, but always feel the need to include pictures with my posts. Not today. Sorry! ;) But you can go check out my sweet boy Landon over at his blog, for a recent picture!

I feel like we have a lot going against us right now. The fight with our computer issues is just the icing on the cake, so to speak. But, having a break from Google probably won't be bad for me!

Once we are up and running again, I have tons of new pictures of the boys to share!! The twins are already 8 months old, 2/3rds the way through the first year!!! They are gaining weight, sleeping better, and changing every single day!

We fly to Dallas one week from today to meet the doctors who will be performing surgery on Landon in only 2 shorts months (from today actually). I am tempted to video our journey by plane next week, just for shock value. James and I will be out-numbered! It should be interesting!!

Down time

The kids are in bed.

This makes for a happy mommy. Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love my children. I love them so much that I know I need some down time at the end of the day, time to recharge my batteries, if you will. Usually some quite time to unwind, catch up on the day's chores, read emails, time to reflect.....

....with a glass of wine. Just keeping it real.

Tonight it is Riesling. Yum.

James is watching Watchmen. Not my cup-of-tea. So, I am catching up on some blogs, and enjoying this adult time to do.....whatever I please.

The floors can wait, the laundry can wait, the toys can wait, the bottles won't wait-thanks to my hubby.

TGIF

I have a few posts I need to fisish to get caught up, but I wanted to take 30 seconds to say

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY!

It has been a long week. We have a surgery date for Landon, flights booked for our May trip and are about to book flights for the surgery. Mom had surgery yesterday on her knee. Aidan had his three year old Dr visit, complete with 2 shots.  And.....James is out of town (at least for another hour).

I don't think I have ever been so excited for him to get home. I have a bottle of wine chilled (thanks Amanda!). I have not showered in two days. I have changed 97 diapers in the last 24 hours, 96 of them dirty, and 2 blow outs.

I did not sleep well last night, because I did not have my husband in bed next to me, but instead my wonderful sister who talked in her sleep. Aidan also joined us at 445am with a bad dream, followed by Gray at 5am, and Landon at 6. (I must add Haley is an awesome aunt and sister who came to my rescue while James was gone and was a huge help with the boys). Yes, you talk in your sleep.

All. Night. Long.


TGIF

Happy Easter!

We spent Easter weekend in Savannah with James' family. Their neighborhood always has a great egg hunt for the kids and a little petting zoo, perfect for Aidan's age. The weather was perfect! We joked because it seems that everytime we have gone down south in the past year, it has rained. Not this weekend, so we were able to spend hours a day outside, James was able to golf, Aidan was able to go on countless golf cart rides and play at the park several times with his cousins (I could do without all the sand gnats that Savannah is famous for).

Our attempt at a family picture.

Trying to get one of Nanni and Papa with (some) of their grandkids. This is very typical....

Take 2

This Aidan decided to sing the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" instead. And that's a wrap folks!

Aidan was not impressed.

Teething

We are teething.

Or, should I say, they are teeth.

No, I think we sounds about right. After all, we are all feeling the pain. Literally.

These boys are rotating motrin and tylenol, and chewing on ANYTHING they can get into their little mouths. This includes hands, arms, toys, fingers, toes, and even.......

heads.

Poor Grayson.

I think he just smacked Landon. Not sure, I was adjusting my camera.

Ok, nevermind. It looks like he just wanted to help Landon out and offer his fingers. (And possibly pick a booger at the same time).

Silly boys.

Easter Egg Hunt

We got together with about 15 of our favorite 2-3 year old friends, their mommies, and some of their little siblings for our Annual Easter Egg Hunt at Cheryl's. As always, we had a great time and the kids were able to hunt eggs and enjoy a beautiful day outside. Thank god my sister was off school and was able to go with me and give me an extra hand. Things that used to be so effortless, now require back up-like unloading the car of 3 kids, diaper bag, dish to return to a friend who brought us a meal, Easter baskets, Aidan's drink, crackers and chesse for the lunch spread, and of course-my camera. It cracks me up how tired she gets after a few hours at my house!!  Ha, ha!

Landon slept almost the whole time so we sadly did not get any pictures of the 4 of us. You NEVER wake a sleeping baby twin. ;)

"Mom, I want this." He has no clue what "this" is.