Sweet, frugal, deliciousness

I'm going to make this short because a) it's 10:45pm and I have to work in the morning, b) I'm already tired, and c) I don't have pictures to enhance this post but I don't want to forget it! I will elaborate another day.

I have for the past couple of years been searching for recipes to make my own healthy snack foods because, let's face it, I am one frugal girl. It started with granola bars (sort of) using and tweaking a recipe I found online. Then I added smooties to my everyday breakfast meals. Then a couple weeks ago my friend introduced me to homemade Lara Bars.

I had never had a regular Lara Bar, but what I tasted was so good it was immediately added to my list of things I had to eat everyday. Well tonight I added a couple of my favorite things to that recipe, chocolate and mint, and had a hard time putting it into it's dish for storage! It almost all got eaten straight out of the food processor.

I hate to end it here and leave you all in suspense, but I need to go to bed. To be continued... 

Don't wake the bears!

I have a lot I want to blog about. Updates on Josey and our family, reasons why I choose to parent the way I do, share some of my favorite recipes and new discoveries.

This is not what I had in mind for a first post, but I couldn’t get back to sleep last night without running through it in my head, so here goes!

We have a neighbor with a dog. (Can you see where this is heading?) Well, we have a few, but this one in particular is who my problem was with last night at 11:30. This neighbor’s backyard butts up to our side yard, at the end of our house where the bedrooms are located.

I haven’t had any issues with this dog. Since I haven’t actually met this neighbor, I’m going to go by what I hear. When she moved in last year, I don’t think she had a dog, because a couple weeks later I started hearing little puppy noises coming from the yard. Never annoying, mostly cute, sounding like a large breed puppy (that softened my heart a little towards it. I love large breed dogs) and it wasn’t that often I’d hear them. I decided this puppy was acceptable, because it really sounded like she wanted to be a good dog owner and a great neighbor, very considerate. Until this summer…

Now, in all honesty, I don’t think any less of this woman. I still don’t hear the dog too much, but I do more than I did last year. Maybe that’s because last year I was so enthralled in our newborn son to notice anything else and whenever sleep did come it was deep. Or maybe because last summer was hot and we had the air conditioner in the bedroom window and that covered up any barking we might have heard at night. But this summer I have been noticing that I am hearing this dog more and more. It will have a few barking spells here and there, but generally stops after a few barks. Nothing that goes on for an extended period of time. It’s like he’s barking at a cat or that he’s done doing his business and is ready to come inside, and she’s pretty good about not letting him bark for long. Great dog owner/neighbor!

This summer, as you may have noticed, has been unusually cool. I have managed to not put in the AC unit and hope to not have to. The open windows and box fan have been working great so far. So in the evening, we open windows (both ours and Josey’s) to cool down the rooms and when it’s time for bed, we turn on the fans (one in each room) and snuggle into our cozy beds. The fans themselves are pretty loud, but constant so you can at least sleep through them. In Josey’s room I also have a humidifier AND sound machine going so I can vacuum or watch a movie or whatever without waking him. Long story short, we sleep with the windows open.

The past week I’ve noticed these parking episodes fairly late at night. Last night was the one that really got me. I had crawled into bed at 11pm, Sam was going to sleep, and Josey was in his room. He had been sleeping for 3 hours. While still not sleeping through the night, he can go longer than 3 hours.

Queue the barking. When I heard it, it had woken me up. I look at my clock and it was 11:30 so I had JUST fallen into that deep sleep. Grrr. I lay there praying, “Please don’t wake the baby. Please don’t wake the baby.” Sure enough, after a few more barks, Josey wakes crying. And now Mama Bear is really awake. I might have muttered something about that dog being in big trouble to Sam. I’m pretty sure I did.

I was able to get Josey back to sleep in his bed after a quick 15 minutes of nursing, only to be woken up by him at 1am, 3am, and 5am. The whole night was thrown off. At least I didn’t hear anything more from the dog.

I have every intention of going to talk to my neighbor today about this, because it’s not the first time I’ve heard the sweet pup (see, not mad at the dog!) during bedtime hours. I’m not going to ask anything unreasonable, but I feel that between the hours of say, 10pm and 6 or 7am she should do everything she can to keep the dog inside.

So I have a couple questions for you readers (if you are really out there!):

1)      If you have a dog, how would you like to be kindly asked to keep it quiet? I’m not looking to make enemies, just make her aware that there is a sleeping babe right next door!

2)      Again, if you have a dog, what steps do you take to keep from being “that” neighbor? The one with the obnoxious dog who wakes babies up from there sleep? I can get over nap times. I think it’s unreasonable to make a dog be totally quiet during the day. A few barks are completely reasonable.

3)      If you were in this situation, what kinds of things would you say to Neighbor? Would you bring a plate of cookies along with your request to “sweeten” the deal and make friends? I’m not above bribery. I also feel like a bad neighbor for only meeting her because I have a problem with her dog!

Here’s hoping no barking happens while Josey is taking a MUCH needed nap right now!