Frugality? Meet Reality.

Here's my conundrum for this rainy Thursday morning... grab your coffee.

Though I am now back to my pre-pregnancy weight (yay!) I still feel, for all intents and purposes, FAT. Not, OMG, get-a-crane-she's-stuck-in-the-house fat. But to me, I feel large, and not in charge. Everything is just... wider than it was before. Wider is not good, especially since I have so many striped sweaters.

I mentioned a little while back how I was trying to get back in shape through running and the 30 Day Shred. This combination WORKS, at least for me, if you can stick to it. The problem is that I am back to work, and I have a 12 week old baby. Shockingly, I have much less free time than I thought I would.

Using My Fitness Pal and tracking calories, I am still losing weight, but I don't think dieting alone is enough. If you want to look toned, you have to exercise. And for me, walking isn't enough. I need to sweat the pounds away, otherwise I don't feel accomplished. I need to run.

My darling husband is back in school to get his MBA, so on top of working full-time and watching our sweet pea in the mornings, he is in class two nights a week until 10:00pm. So it's not like I can leave Em alone in the living room while I go the gym. My plan was to do the 30DS on the nights he had class, and run on the nights he was home.

But then Em decided she needs to know mommy's whereabouts at all times. The last three times I have gone to gym after she went to bed, she has cried and cried for Jon until I came home and fed her. Even if she just ate. It's like she knows I'm not in the house and she is piiiiiiiissssed.

The other problem with running after she goes to bed is that I am knock-down, ass-dragging tired at the end of the day. The last thing I want to do at 8:30pm is go back out in the cold, run at the gym, get home, shower, and be all wired up and not fall asleep until 11pm. Especially since homegirl has been eating much more frequently at night aka wakes up every 2 hours famished the past few days. Growth spurt maybe? I get up at 5:45am every day, and I NEED my sleep. I have to be asleep by 9:30pm in order to be a fully functioning human at work the next day. So until Em sleeps through the night consistently (which many people who are exclusively nursing will tell you takes a LONG time), I just can't go to bed that late.

Ok, still with me? Herein lies my conundrum, at last.

The solution I came up with is that I need to buy a jogging stroller. Em LOVES being outside, loves being strolled in her stroller, and loves looking around at all of the foreign objects in our neighborhood. So she'll be happy and entertained, and I can get my runs in even if Jon isn't home. I won't have any excuses!

But jogging strollers aren't cheap. We have a baby now, and I am trying to be good about frivolous purchases. Except for her, we buy her ridiculous stuff all the time. (Case in point, we may or may not have spent $40 on this Adidas track suit that she'll wear maybe 1-2 more times before she's too big for it. Yep.)

I am having a hard time justifying the $180-$250 it would cost to buy a stroller when I probably should be saving that money for childcare. Or groceries. Or college. Or headbands.

I thought maybe I could buy one on Craigslist to save money, but then I thought, just like cars, stroller tires wear out. And then to replace them is an added expense so I might as well just buy new.

So now I'm struggling with frugality vs. reality. I don't want to spend the money, but I'm afraid I will never be able to get back into shape without one, given our time constraints.

I need someone to tell me either a) It's fine because we'll get alot of use out of it or b) Just wait a few more weeks and Em will be sleeping better and I'll have more energy to go to the gym that I already pay for every month.

HELP!!!