Monthly Archives: April 2009

Deciding On Our Baby Monitor

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We have spent the last few weeks deciding what baby monitor to get for Baby Beagle. Based on recommendations from various people, including friends, family, and our birthing class instructor, we had narrowed it down to two different types: a video monitor or a movement monitor.

A brief description of each:

  • A video monitor – In addition to offering the typical sound monitoring, you could also mount a small camera and watch your baby. We were at a friend’s house a few months back, and they swore by this.
  • A movement monitor – Our childbirth class instructor recommended a movement monitor. In addition to the sound, there was a device that was placed in the crib that sounded an alarm if there was no movement for 20 seconds. This was designed to warn if the baby stopped breathing. The alarm would alert the parents with the goal to reduce the chance of SIDS.

We picked out our favorite kind of each type. Here’s the one we considered of each type, as well as some pros and cons:

Video Monitor

Summer Infant Deluxe Day & Night Handheld Color Video Monitor with 2.5

Pros: Can see your baby
Cons: Only one monitor, inability to monitor babies movement, requires wall mounting of the camera.

Movement Monitor

BébéSounds Angelcare® Deluxe Movement Sensor with Sound Monitor

Pros: Two monitors (one for each parent), alerts if baby isn’t breathing, cheaper than the video monitor, room temperature monitor, built in night-light for nursery.
Cons: Requires hard surface to be placed at the bottom of the crib, alarm will sound if you forget to turn it off before removing the baby from the crib.

Our decision

We went back and forth a few different times. We loved the idea of watching our baby but also loved the idea of knowing that our baby was breathing.

In the end, we ended up going with the movement monitor.

The reason was the safety issue. While seeing our baby would have been cool, we know that first time parents are constantly getting up and checking that the baby is still breathing. This should hopefully give us some peace of mind so that we don’t have that worry, and can catch a few more winks. And since I have had no less than ten people over the last two days tell me how little sleep we’ll be getting once the baby comes (and no, hearing it NEVER gets old), I figure any little bit we can add to our sleep schedule will be nice.

We purchased it today. I think it was the right choice, but only time and the baby will tell. We’re only a couple of weeks away from the due date, so we will definitely be able to tell soon!

Easy Way To See If People Are Cutting Back

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For those who work in the 9-5 office world, I thought of an easy way to check to see if people around you are cutting back:

Open your office refrigerator.

What you’ll find might surprise you. No, I’m not talking about the unidentifiable leftovers that have been there since 2006. I’m talking about just how many more people might be using it.

I’ve noticed in my office that when I go to take my lunch out, it’s been getting a little more crowded over time. I have no problem getting my lunch IN the fridge, because I’m usually the first one in the office in the morning. But, lately, I’ve noticed that getting it OUT is a bit more difficult.

Why?

Because people are skipping the lunches out and brown bagging it. So, there’s a lot of extra lunches to wade through from people that have added theirs throughout the day.

Of course, what goes along with that is more rotten fruit, old vegetables, half-eaten leftovers, and other unimaginable things that maybe once used to be food. What IS it about work refrigerators that make people create the most awful science experiments?

What We Do To Make Things Greener

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Today is Earth Day, and it gave me pause to reflect on things that we do around our household to be environmentally conscious:

  • Use CFL bulbs - Most lamps and overhead lights in our house have CFL bulbs. We just put a new lamp in the nursery the other day, and I insisted that we purchase a CFL bulb. Luckily, Meijer (our local grocery store) had them on sale for 50% off to celebrate Earth Day so on top of being good for the planet, we saved money too!
  • Use our energy saving washing machine – When we moved in, we debated whether to get the less expensive traditional washer or the more expensive energy and water saving washer. We opted for the more expensive type, and it definitely uses a lot less water and energy. In fact, it will probably pay for the difference many times over depending on the life of the machine.
  • Use reusable shopping bags for groceries – Not only do they reduce plastic consumption, the great thing about these is that they fit as much as normally goes in 2-3 plastic bags, so instead of lugging in 8 or 9 bags a week, we typically fit just about everything in our 3 reusable bags.
  • Use a programmable thermostat – We had one when we moved in, but if we hadn’t, I would have put one in anyways had there not been one.
  • Set the thermostat lower in the winter - We’ve dialed down to a maximum temperature of 68. While it can be colder, we have learned to make sure to keep our sweatshirts handy to bundle up.
  • Recycle, recycle, recycle - Our city just began to participate in Recycle Bank, which was just featured on Oprah’s Earth Day show today. In addition to taking more types of products than any recycling program I’ve seen (as an example they take plastics 1-7, not just 1-2 like most recycling), they partner up with local and national merchants to offer rewards based on how much you recycle. As an example, you can ‘purchase’ gift cards to various restaurants or retailers like Target. They have a widget that keeps track of how much or recycling to date weighs, how many trees we’ve saved, and how many gallons of oil we’ve prevented used, but it was wreaking havoc on my site. Perhaps I’ll attempt to incorporate it when I re-design the site later in the spring.
  • Use containers for lunch – I take my lunch in a re-usable bag, and also have Rubbermaid containers for my sandwich, fruit, and carrots. We made the switch after realizing the cost, both to the environment and to our pocketbook, of using multiple plastic bags every day.
  • We added insulation to our attic – This reduces the amount of heat and air conditioning we need, and saves us money.
  • Borrow books from the library – Instead of buying lots of books that I read once, maybe twice, I’m using something that will get repeated use.
  • Wasting less food – We rarely let food go bad, wasting resources for food that’s never eaten. I used to be a lot worse at this when I was single and living alone.
  • I have a water bottle at work – I bought a stainless steel water that I re-fill at work instead of taking a bottle of water.

There is room for improvement. I would like to do other things as well, including:

  • Using natural fertilizer – I use the traditional fertilizer to keep our lawn green and weed free, but I’d like to switch to a more natural solution. Right now, they’re quite price prohibitive and not as effective, but I’m sure time will help with both of these.
  • Use more natural cleaners – Especially with baby on the way, some of the harsh cleaners are also not the best for the environment
  • Cut out paper towels – Right now, we use paper towel for cleaning and a lot of everyday usage. I hope that in a year from now I can say that we have drastically reduced our consumption of paper towel
  • Reduce our battery consumption - This one could be tough. We’re expecting the baby in a few weeks, and everything used to entertain the baby seems to run on batteries, and what I’m finding is that they all say not to use rechargeable batteries. I’m not sure why, but have started looking into this. I would dread having to buy the amount of batteries that I envision needing, only to have them be single use.

Overall I’m happy with our efforts to ‘go green’ though I know that there is a lot more that we could be doing.

Mortgage Refinancing Is Not A Viable Option For Us

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We moved into our home in June of 2007. At the time, we got a 30-year mortgage rate of 5.875%, which was pretty good since the average rate was around 6.25%. Luckily we had locked in the ‘lower’ rate a few weeks prior.

At the time, we put down 20% of the purchase price of the house. I had hoped that this would create a comfortable cushion because prices in the Detroit area had already been dropping. In fact, we purchased the house at a price 13% lower than what the previous owners had paid for it just a couple years before.

Unfortunately, the market has continued to trend way downward, and the amount of equity in our house has decreased tremendously to the point that we are nowhere near the level where we have 20% equity in our home.

If we were to refinance, I’m certain that a lender would do a new appraisal on the property given the change in market conditions over the past two years. This would definitely show that we do not have the 20% threshold of equity required to avoid personal mortgage insurance (PMI).

When I ran the numbers, we would probably be able to get a rate about 1% lower than what we’re paying now. This would save us about $225 per month. However, PMI would take away a huge chunk of it. And, if I recall, it is also not tax deductible, so I think our net cost would actually be higher for the short term.

While it’s true that PMI would be dropped at some point, it could be a long way off before prices stabilize and before we paid enough to get to that point. Too long where I’m not comfortable making the move.

Our other option would be to basically make another down payment to get us to the 20% equity level. While we have cash available to perhaps swing this, I don’t like the idea of having little cash on hand, especially in this day in age.

While I would love to write some articles about us refinancing, I simply don’t see it as a viable option for us.

Baby Furniture On The Way!

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We received good news that the baby furniture we ordered will be delivered on Thursday! Just in time for our second baby shower. Both my mom and my mother-in-law were generous enough to throw us a baby shower. The first was last weekend and the second is this coming weekend. We need the space to start putting away clothes and such, so the furniture will be great.

One thing I could not imagine is skipping the assembly fee. For an extra $25 they are assembling the furniture. I’ve heard horror stories about cribs taking hours and having parts that don’t seem to fit or are left over. The $25 was a luxury expense, but I already know it was money well spent.

All I hope is that they don’t send a delivery guy like we got for our bedroom furniture in 2007. It was a different store, but they came to put things together, and one of the guys was a complete klutz. He scratched our bed rail, the headboard, AND dropped the mirror. They had to come back to replace all three items.

Let’s just hope he hasn’t caught on with a job delivering baby furniture!

We are just about a month away!

Is The Sunday Paper Going The Way Of The Dinosaur?

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Recently, the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, the two major newspapers in the local market, announced that they would be making drastic changes due to the decline in the newspaper industry, as well as the economy. Both papers have been producing the daily paper for decades upon decades.

In the 1980’s, the papers combined a lot of operations including printing and distribution, though they had separate writers, columnists, and editorial staff. That move, at the time, was seen as somewhat dramatic, but it has since been applauded and probably saved one, if not both, of the papers. Many cities, in the meantime, have seen at least one of their major papers shut down.

Still, the papers took another revolutionary step in the last couple of weeks. Instead of doing seven day home delivery, they are now cutting back to three days. The other four days, you either have to purchase the paper at a newsstand, pay to have it delivered by mail, or read an electronic edition that displays the pages on a computer screen just as if you were reading the paper. With any paid subscription, you get seven day a week access to the complete digital edition. They also have the ‘traditional’ free web versions which are supported by advertising.

I’ve been a subscriber of the Sunday only Free Press for a few years now. I enjoy sitting down and reading through the bigger edition, and I also find that the coupons and advertisements pay for themselves.

But, with the change to three day home delivery, I’ve found that the Sunday option to my Free Press subscription is no longer available. They are forcing subscribers that want home delivery to take all three days! Right now, my subscription rate is locked in until the end of the year for about $5 per month, or $1.25 per Sunday edition. This is a savings off the newsstand price of $1.50. But after the end of the year, my price will jump to $12 per month. I consider this a $3 per copy charge.

Why?

Because even though I’m getting two extra days, I don’t want them! Let me say that again: I don’t want the extra two days of print editions. I only want my Sunday Free Press! I don’t have time during the week to read the extra editions. Most of the time since they started delivering them, it goes right into the recycling bucket. While I’m happy to have recycled, it still seems like a big waste to produce something that customers don’t want.

The funny thing is that I’ve e-mailed them about this, and have also read through the many editions of ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ that they publish regularly during the transition. Not once is the lack of a Sunday only option mentioned.

I hope that they correct this by the time that 2009 ends. I have a feeling that there a lot of subscribers in the same boat that I’m in. We are currently purchasing the paper because the price makes sense, and ‘putting up with’ the extra two days of delivery. But, once the price jumps, there could be a mass exodus of subscribers. If that happened, I would simply cancel my subscription and plan on going to the gas station on the corner to pick up the paper.

Still, it’d be much easier if they gave this customer what they want, and not force an option that is undesirable at a higher cost. I don’t think I’m the only ‘dinosaur’ that wants the Sunday paper, am I?