I’ve seen a few bloggers do posts like this in the last few days, and I love it for a few reasons. It’s a great way for me to look back in a few years and remember what my year was like. It’s also a great way to point out some favorite posts from the past year to any new readers!

January

I wrote about my struggle with pregnancy weight gain and accepting my new body shape. I started eating in the style of the Real Food movement, something I am still doing today. I started answering questions on Formspring, and kept doing so even when it felt like everyone else was dropping out. To date I’ve answered almost 3500 questions! That’s a whole lot of talking about myself :). Baby was going to arrive in a few moments and I knew the time would go by in a blink, so I started thinking about the post-partum period.

February

I talked about Good/Better/Best, and I’m still working to do better each day. We stressed about what we would name T1. I admitted that I pee my panties a little bit sometimes. We had a snow day in Dallas (very rare) and I went exploring in a wooded area near my house, coming frighteningly close to getting lost!

March

I gave you a tour of our apartment at Villa Miranda in Dallas. I made baklava for the first time, something I would most definitely like to do again. My stomach exploded with stretch marks, a part of my pregnancy that is still with me to this day. I had maternity photos taken by my friend Bethany! I devoted a post to my caring and devoted husband. I was showered with love at my baby shower. This was an exciting month, but the highlight was most definitely finding out that we were moving to Chicago!

April

I wrote about how I had been preparing my body to have a baby. I tried live blogging general conference, something I’d like to do again in the future but probably won’t happen now that I have a baby to entertain! I was getting so little sleep that it started to consume my thoughts, which of course led to a post here on That Wife. I wrote one final letter to T1 in embryo. Finally, T1 arrived! I wasn’t producing enough milk, which starved our son, and so I started supplementing with formula and wrapping him in a biliblanket to treat the jaundice which resulted.

May

I posted the story of T1′s birth, and tried to answer your birth questions. I wrote about how we are paying for our expenses while at business school, even though TH isn’t currently working. Stopped breastfeeding. Ignited a whole lot of controversy why I wrote my interpretation of the LDS views on mothers working outside the home. Highlighted ways that blogging had made me a better person. I had the first of many awful OBGYN appointments. My diet changed once again as we drastically cut back on the amount of meat we consume.

June

We used cloth diapers! I wrote candidly about what post-partum recovery is like. Let’s stop using “retard” and “gay” is derogatory terms! We buzzed T1′s hair, which made you all a little crazy. I realized that mommy blogging kind of sucks sometimes. Yet another sucky OBGYN appointment. That Food Diary was launched. I showed what it’s like to take care of a 4 month old. We had a little family outing at the Dr. Pepper Festival in Dublin. I took a little break from blogging.

July

I fed the missionaries, which was a big deal because it was my first experience trying to cook a meal for guests and manage a baby at the same time. I caught on to the idea of voting with my food dollars. We flew to Washington for T1′s baby blessing. T1 had two notable firsts, swimming and laughing. I became obsessed with the farmer’s market.

August

I’m a baby-wearin’ mama, and changed my eating habits even more drastically. We found an AMAZING apartment. Sadly, this caused us to give up cloth diapering. I spent time with e-friends at a pool party at my apartment building, a soda shop in Dallas, and in Boston.

September

We moved to Chicago and suffered through weeks and weeks without internet. I was able to spend some time with long-time reader Sophia and the Chicago bees. I attempted to save money and dye my hair myself, which was most definitely not a good idea. I grossed a whole lot of people out by creating a placenta print and posting pictures of the process. I came to terms with being a self-taught photographer. That Wife Book Club was launched! We struggled with juggling our baby at church, and I talked about postnatal cuddling. No internet was stressful, but TH not having a passport weeks before we were set to leave for Europe was most definitely a low point for us.

October

We went to Europe!!! (A trip I still need to post about in full.) I stressed about greeting my in-laws with a kiss, they introduced T1 to solid foods. I advocated for less helicopter parenting. T1 dressed as the Sleep Bandit for Halloween. My parents came.

November

T1 gained two teeth. I dressed up as the housing bubble and TH was a mortgage backed security for a University of Chicago MBA party. I officially lost 25 pounds. I attempted to go to Ikea alone with a baby, which was a very bad idea. We spent Thanksgiving in Washington after the wedding of TH’s best friend brought to the Pacific Northwest.

December

We want to shave T1′s hair yet again. I finally finished revamping my Jenna Cole sites. I pulled off a holiday party for That Wife blog readers, with about 10 people in attendance, and vowed to do that no more than once a year. I posted my thoughts on motherhood so far, T1 started crawling, I spoke in church, we joined some CSAs, and I showed what it’s like to run around after an 8 month old all day. We didn’t buy T1 anything for Christmas, and we decided we won’t be telling him Santa is real. We flew to Utah for 7 days and spent some time at a house in Heber City with my parents, we were spoiled by the amount of gifts we received and I felt a little guilty because I am so fortunate. Our entire family loved this way of spending Christmas enough that we’re considering repeating it next year.

I just finished Cheap and added my thoughts. If you haven’t stopped by to contribute click here to do so. I’m changing the book club link you see on the right to point to the Nurtureshock discussion post. Christmas break should be the perfect time to get some reading done!

And the Book Club pick for January will be The Culture of Fear. It’s 10 years old by now, but I think it should prompt some interesting discussions in light of the current craziness over TSA security procedures that we are dealing with now.

This discussion thread will run through the end of 2010, feel free to comment below and contribute at any time between now and then. I’ve had some questions about how this works, and some confusion regarding why I put up these posts at the beginning of the reading period instead of the end. My goal isn’t to have one day of commenting frenzy, but to let people add their thoughts as they move through the book. The discussion is a little bit more organic that way, and it often means I don’t have to think up “prompt” questions to get things going because people take care of that on their own! If you have suggestions for any changes you think I could make to the way I do things, let me know and I’ll continue to refine the process.

The non-fiction book club has definitely been a success for me thus far though. I haven’t done this much reading in a long time (sad I know) and I feel like I’m making some really positive changes in my life regarding how I think and act, which is why I like reading non-fiction so much in the first place!

This month is Nurtureshock, and I expect that we’ll have a lot of discussion (and a bit of discord) in the comment section. It should be a good time, and I am looking forward to reading through it again.

The central premise of this book by Bronson (What Should I Do with My Life?) and Merryman, a Washington Post journalist, is that many of modern society’s most popular strategies for raising children are in fact backfiring because key points in the science of child development and behavior have been overlooked. Two errant assumptions are responsible for current distorted child-rearing habits, dysfunctional school programs and wrongheaded social policies: first, things work in children the same way they work in adults and, second, positive traits necessarily oppose and ward off negative behavior. These myths, and others, are addressed in 10 provocative chapters that cover such issues as the inverse power of praise (effort counts more than results); why insufficient sleep adversely affects kids’ capacity to learn; why white parents don’t talk about race; why kids lie; that evaluation methods for giftedness and accompanying programs don’t work; why siblings really fight (to get closer). Grownups who trust in old-fashioned common-sense child-rearing—the definitely un-PC variety, with no negotiation or parent-child equality—will have less patience for this book than those who fear they lack innate parenting instincts. The chatty reportage and plentiful anecdotes belie the thorough research backing up numerous cited case studies, experts’ findings and examination of successful progressive programs at work in schools.

If you love the book like I do, you might like the Nurtureshock website as well.

Have you been reading Cheap? I know Sarah, Cristin, Andrea, and Claire have (maybe others, I’m going by the comment section of the post) and I’m pretty sure they would agree with me that this is a book that makes you want to make some changes, which is why I like non-fiction so much. I’ll be putting up a reminder post about the discussion in the comments section in about a week or so — basically when I finish the book myself.

It’s time to choose the first book of 2011, because I know a lot of you are using the library like I am and I want to make sure you have plenty of time to reserve the December book. Do you have Nurtureshock yet? I guarantee you it’s worth the read. That Husband and I are obsessed with this book and we plan on basing a lot of our parenting strategies on the information that they present. I’m going to make the Nurtureshock reading period from November 15th through December 31st so we can be on a monthly schedule in 2011, which should make it a lot easier for everyone to keep track of when we are finishing one book and moving on to another.

I’m going to present 5 options to vote on, the top 3 performers from the last vote, and 2 more of my choice. Click on the image to visit the Goodreads page for each book and get an idea regarding what it is about.

This is the discussion thread for Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. Comment below to join the conversation, no need to “sign up” as part of the book club to do so. If you comment on this post, you are part of the club!

A review at BoingBoing

The NYTimes review

Huffington Post article

The High Cost of Buying Cheap on NPR

American’s Pay the Price of Getting Things Cheap on NPR

A roundtable discussion on Cheap (this is really good if you want to take the time to read it and I think it will really influence our own discussion below!)

An Atlantic correspondent uncovers the true cost-in economic, political, and psychic terms-of our penchant for making and buying things as cheaply as possible

From the shuttered factories of the rust belt to the look-alike strip malls of the sun belt-and almost everywhere in between-America has been transformed by its relentless fixation on low price. This pervasive yet little examined obsession is arguably the most powerful and devastating market force of our time-the engine of globalization, outsourcing, planned obsolescence, and economic instability in an increasingly unsettled world.

Low price is so alluring that we may have forgotten how thoroughly we once distrusted it. Ellen Ruppel Shell traces the birth of the bargain as we know it from the Industrial Revolution to the assembly line and beyond, homing in on a number of colorful characters, such as Gene Verkauf (his name is Yiddish for “to sell”), founder of E. J. Korvette, the discount chain that helped wean customers off traditional notions of value. The rise of the chain store in post-Depression America led to the extolling of convenience over quality, and big-box retailers completed the reeducation of the American consumer by making them prize low price in the way they once prized durability and craftsmanship.

The effects of this insidious perceptual shift are vast: a blighted landscape, escalating debt (both personal and national), stagnating incomes, fraying communities, and a host of other socioeconomic ills. That’s a long list of charges, and it runs counter to orthodox economics which argues that low price powers productivity by stimulating a brisk free market. But Shell marshals evidence from a wide range of fields-history, sociology, marketing, psychology, even economics itself-to upend the conventional wisdom. Cheap also unveils the fascinating and unsettling illogic that underpins our bargain-hunting reflex and explains how our deep-rooted need for bargains colors every aspect of our psyches and social lives. In this myth-shattering, closely reasoned, and exhaustively reported investigation, Shell exposes the astronomically high cost of cheap.