Educating the Wheelers

I want a garden.

Most of our grocery bill goes to produce — fresh, frozen, or dried. Our kids will be homeschooled, so it’s an obvious project for them to help with. Our backyard is about a half acre, fenced, and there’s not a whole lot going on back there once you get past the decks and the playscape.

So why don’t I have a garden?

Odocoileus virginianus, the dreaded white-tailed deer.

Our house is on the deer superhighway right between two wooded, wild areas. There are some mornings when I’ll look out and see two dozen of them in our front or back yard. Unfortunately, our 8-10 [?] foot tall privacy fence only extends about halfway back into our backyard, it’s a 3 footer for the remaining, and they jump over that with ease.

So I can’t just slap together a nice little Square Foot Gardening square and call it a day with a little quickie experiment. Unless, of course, I want fatter and happier deer.

I don’t relish the idea of building a tall fence to enclose a garden, like all my neighbors have had to do. And I’m not sure how big I’d want to make it — I certainly don’t want to ever have to expand it once it’s up. I have too many memories of spending summers at my grandparent’s house, expanding the deer fence every year. Heh.

And then there’s the whole new-child-being-born-in-two-months thingy. I think I’ll be waiting until next year. Heh.

Audrey and I will be heading up North to my parents’ house this week for three weeks of extended family fun and vacation. We do this about 3 or 4 times a year for a variety of reasons — it’s a big vacation for Andrew, who can work work uninterrupted on whatever projects he might have in the hopper; and it’s a big vacation for me, because my folks are super-helpful with EVERYTHING and Audrey loves them and I get to relax. It’s a win-win for everyone. And since we’re gone so long, Andrew will often fly up for a weekend himself to visit us visiting. Heh.

We can usually get the flights pretty cheap, so the big frugal challenge for us is how to keep Andrew well fed without breaking the bank. [In other words, no Central Market deli 5 times a week at 15 bucks a pop for lunch or dinner, as tasty as that would be.] The food budget when Audrey and I are gone is usually much higher than when all three of us are there since I can’t do the planning and cooking.

The first thing I do is start about a month beforehand scanning the circulars for loss-leader frozen pizzas and the like, and fill the freezer with tasty, easy to heat up meals for dinner. Then yesterday, I had Andrew select a handful of recipes for me to make for him that I’ll individually package for him so he can grab them on the way out the door to work. But that sort of thing will only last a week.

He came grocery shopping with me yesterday, which he doesn’t normally do, and we got a bunch of basics for building sandwiches and tacos and whatnot, so hopefully he’ll just have to pick up mostly produce and dairy for himself while I’m gone.

So, with this preparation, he should have more breathing room for “treats” while he’s on vacation without the expense of every meal being a treat, so to speak.

We had a comment on Part I of this post asking what I think are the barebones necessities for the frugal mom with a new baby on the way.

A few obligatory disclaimers: this is what worked for us, your mileage may vary, and my list is way, way shorter than most you will read elsewhere. On the other hand, I’m not trying to sell you anything. [Though for full disclosure, I do have Amazon Associates links in this post, so decide for yourself whether I’m trying to sell you anything. Heh heh.]

With that out of the way, here’s what I learned from our experience, in rough order of importance:

• A car seat: Get a good car seat, be smart but not too cheap, if you know what I mean. It’s worth it to buy new. There are two routes you can go here at the beginning. You can get one of those detachable rear-facing guys for a hundred bucks or so that you use for about the first year, or you could get a more expensive [200-300, usually] convertible type that’ll last you until the wee one is about 5 years old. We ended up choosing the detachable one — a Graco SnugRide, I believe — and then got a Britax when she was reading to go forward facing. This is a more expensive route to go, HOWEVER — when you are dealing with the youngest of the youngins, they are always going to be falling asleep in the car on you. It is a very, very good thing to be able to just detach the seat and go rather than having to unhook them and take them out of the seat and probably wake them up. [Terri’s #2 Rule of Parenting: Never ever wake a sleeping baby unless you really, really have to. A baby’s sleep is your very best friend. Heh.]
• Diapers: Disposable or Cloth, I have no dog in that fight. Choose whatever works best for you, I’m not going to judge you, and please feel free to ignore anyone else who tries to. *** But whichever route you go, make sure you have about 2 weeks worth on hand at the beginning so you don’t have to worry about having to restock during those early whirlwind days. Don’t buy too many at the outset, because you don’t want to get stuck with a bunch of really small newborn diapers that your 10lb kid grew out of in a week! Etc. To stave off diaper rash, this is what worked for us: remove diaper, clean up with wipes, pat dry with a washcloth, apply some generic A&D style ointment, then replace with clean diaper.
• Baby Clothes: Hand me downs or garage sales are totally the way to go. Again, it’s real easy — especially in the hormone flush of pregnancy — to get all emotionally attached to that adorable 20 dollar outfit. But your kid will likely only wear it for a few months, and you don’t even want to know what all sorts of substances are going to stain and soak that thing almost immediately after you put it on him/her. Since this is your first kid, go the green/yellow/orange route so you can use them with all your succeeding kids and don’t have to do the whole “How old is your son?” “Er, she was born 2 weeks ago” dance with strangers because she’s in a blue jumpsuit, or vice versa.

  Additionally, plain clothes with no frills, ruffles or other weird things are the way to go. A nice soft cotton footie pyjama style jumper, preferably with snaps all the way down both legs will make your life easier during diaper changes. You don’t need too many, depending on how often you do laundry, though it’s better to have too many than too few if you end up having a 5-diaper-blowout day. Heh. And a nice little hat for the first few weeks is also recommended, and should be cheap and easy to find.

• Swaddling Blankets: These are awesome. We had one of those kids that needed swaddling to soothe, and unfortunately you don’t know if you’ve got one of those until they’re here, so it’s worth having them on hand just in case. And if it turns out they’re not the swaddling type, you’ll end up finding a dozen other uses for them, so it’s not a total wash. Again, the hand-me-down or garage sale route is the best way to go. Get a handful of the smaller size — around 2′ by 2′ — and a few of the larger size — around 3′ by 3′ — because they’ll outgrow the smaller swaddling blankets fairly quickly.
• Teeny Tiny Nail Clippers: Those nails grow quick, and they are razor sharp! You’ll want to get 2-3 of these to start with because if you’re anything like me, you’ll constantly be misplacing them.
• Breast Pump, Freezer Bags, Etc: If we’re going the frugal route, formula is definitely not the way to go. But, you still need to prepare for the possibility of not always being able to breastfeed when your baby is hungry. If at all possible, I’d get one before your child is born, for a few reasons. First, you might end up in a position like us when Audrey couldn’t latch at all after birth and had to be syringe and finger fed pumped breast milk and then had bottled breast milk or fed on a breast shield until she was 3 months old. I had to pump every 2 hours around the clock in those days and counted my blessings that we had a good pump. But even if your child latches like a champ from the get go, you still want to keep some spare milk in the freezer “just in case.” Go with what you can afford, but it is sort of a “you get what you pay for” market. The Medelas are worth the price, if you can swing it.
• Sling: Mine was worth its 100 times its weight in gold. [Hey, they’re light!] Being able to “hold” your baby but have both hands free … I cannot overemphasize what a huge difference this makes. Cheaper and easier and more versatile than a stroller. Plus, once you get used to it you can learn how to discreetly nurse in public while they’re in the sling, and that makes your life even that much easier.
• Nursing Tops: Speaking of nursing in public … with practice, you will learn how to discreetly nurse in any old loose-fitting top, but at the very beginning until you’re confident, a nursing top or two is helpful. But if you practice at home, you’ll figure it out quickly.
• UPDATED TO ADD: I just remembered: a rectal thermometer and some vaseline will also be handy if you suspect a fever. But nothing else is coming to me off the top of my head.

Honestly, everything else is gravy. You don’t need a changing table, you don’t need a crib — though if anyone in your bed is a heavy sleeper, you’ll want to look into getting a Snuggle Nest for peace of mind in the first few months. You don’t need mobiles, you don’t need a Diaper Genie — how hard is it to put a diaper in a plastic grocery bag and bring it out to the garbage? Plus, if you’re breastfeeding, baby poop doesn’t smell bad until they start eating other stuff. It smells kind of like sour milk. You don’t need a pack-n-play, you don’t need a high chair, you don’t need a swing. You don’t need a baby bath tub, wash them in the sink with a folded towel on the bottom like our grandparents did. Heck, you don’t even need soap for several weeks! You don’t need toys, you don’t need a special “diaper bag” — a cheap backpack from a thrift store will do you fine to hold an extra outfit or two, a swaddle blanket and some diaper changing gear when you go out.

More important than any equipment is human support. Your mom, your sister, your friend, your neighbor — a friendly looking new mom that you spy in public! — reach out! Do it! I am an extremely introverted, solo homebody in my normal life, but this transition period after your first child is born is very very rough while you adjust, and I don’t believe mothers were ever meant to go it alone. Unfortunately, with the rise of geographically-scattered extended families and the like, many new moms are isolated and life is much, much harder than it should be at first. Especially if you are a stay at home mom who’s alone with the baby 8-10 or more hours a day.

*** My #1 Rule of Parenting is to trust yourself. You are going to find that many people are both insecure and very emotionally attached to the choices that they make/made as a parent and thus see people who are making different choices as indirectly criticizing their own choices. But parenting is NOT black and white — keep an open mind, use whatever works for you and almost always, what your gut and instinct tells you will be right. Just nod and smile at the complete strangers who will come up to you and tell you that what you’re currently doing is all wrong. Why normally sane and polite people do this completely mystifies me [though I am sure it is at least partially related to what I wrote above].

As we are coming upon the third trimester for the next baby, I’ve been taking a look at what the costs associated are going to be.

Almost all of Audrey’s old clothes and swaddling blankets were yellow, green or orange, so he’s good to go for a long, long time clothes-wise. He’ll be in bed with us in the Snuggle Nest [like Audrey was] until he’s robust enough to sleep without worry of being rolled onto. Not that that has ever been an issue for us — I am an extremely light sleeper and perhaps too in tune with where the little ones are when I’m next to them. But there’s no reason not to be safe, anyways. He’ll be on the other side of me than Audrey so I shouldn’t need to worry her rolling on top of him, either. Good thing we have a big bed. The cat will just have to be content at Andrew’s feet.

Audrey’s car seat is still good [and no recalls], we never used the stroller or crib anyways [maybe we should sell them?], and my old sling didn’t get too stained, so I don’t think I need a new one of those, either.

As long as we *knock on wood* don’t have any complications with the birth, it shouldn’t be too expensive. Babies just don’t need that much. Heh.

We have pretty good insurance through Andrew’s work that would pay for the vast majority of a hospital birth for our babies. For Audrey, we went to a regular OB for about 6 months … but we clashed so bad that we “fired” him and started looking at other options.

[I’m a stocky midwestern girl, and he insisted that because I was so overweight to start with, I could only gain 15 lbs the whole pregnancy, and was a paternalistic %$&###$ when I *gasp* had gained 10 lbs over the course of 6 months. Here’s a photo of me at 9 months pregnant, where he would have been apoplectic, because I had gained around 30 or 40 lbs. I don’t even know for certain, because that last appointment with him was the last time I stepped on a scale. For what it’s worth, I was back in my old jeans and clothes before Audrey was 3 months old, so … well, don’t even get me started on that guy. Suffice to say, we kicked him to the curb.]

When we found our midwife, we were thrilled to discover that our insurance would cover 60% — because she’s “out of network” — there doesn’t appear to be such a thing as an “in network” midwife, of course. Heh. She charged a 3k flat fee for her services, so we paid less than 2k. And it was worth every penny. On the upside, this time around, we knew we’d be going the same route, so we were able to max out our Health Savings Account for this year to cover it.

My parents never talked to us about money when we were growing up. In fact, the only thing I can recall is that when we got our checking accounts in out teens, they would be on the lookout for the telltale “overdraw” notices from the bank in the mail, and laugh at us when they inevitably came. Responsibility by humiliation, I guess. Heh.

I started college at 16 and remember vividly my prof in my College Algebra course walking in one day and announcing that we would spend the day talking about compound interest, because he wished that someone had explained it to him at our age. It left a powerful impact on me — one of the few lectures I remember vividly from that year. [I also recall my philosphy professor exclaiming “God is dead!” re: Nietzsche and getting mad that no one was riled up. Hey, lady, we’re 3.5 hours into a Monday 6-10 evening class. You’re going to have to do better than that…]

Of course, I didn’t immediately apply those lessons to my life, because I was an idiot. But he was the first one to get the seed planted.

Andrew and I will be homeschooling our children, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to start talking to them about money earlier on. Some things are obvious — raise them in a frugal environment! But then there is the issue of allowance and deciding how much to let them know about the family finances. As I mentioned above, my own family kept all of that opaque and I didn’t know anything about anything until, well, my 20s after I’d been on my own for awhile and made huge financial mistakes. I honor my parents’ decision on that matter, but I don’t think I want to go down that route with my own kids.

I haven’t posted much recently because I’m pretty solidly in “pregnant and crazy” mode. If you’ve ever been pregnant — or more likely, if you’ve ever been married to someone pregnant — you know what I’m talking about. I’m overly emotional, my moods are flying and I’m totally irrational.

What does this have to do with money? Two main things, as of late. The first is that right now we’re in crunch mode on our finances — as I mentioned previously, we’re currently living on a little over 25% of our salary as we readjust to some new and possibly overeager savings plans. So how am I responding to this? By totally capsizing. It’s been awhile since I’ve felt so … driven to want to spend money. My Amazon shopping cart is full of all sorts of crazy stuff, and it’s only by sheer force of will that I haven’t actually purchased any of it. And so on.

The second prong of this fork is that something totally bizarre has happened to my taste buds. I am just not tasting things the way that I used to. I made some homemade mac and cheese the other night that I thought tasted great, and poor Andrew was totally repulsed. [Note to self: don’t make any recipes any time soon that call to add ingredients “to taste.”] I went totally overboard in the adding dry English mustard department … because I couldn’t taste it! I still can’t taste it in the leftovers, so it wasn’t a one night thing. Andrew could taste nothing but the overwhelming horseradishy mustardness.

And today I made a potato/carrot/lentil curry stew which looked awesome on the page — and I must brag, one of my Super Powers is a keen eye for what recipes will taste good when made — and I tried some, and it tastes horrible rotgut to me. All I taste is overwhelming clove/cinnamon — which aren’t even in the recipe, though are a small part of the curry powder — and nothing else. And the dinner I made previous to these two had a similar issue.

What am I getting at? It’s hard to save money when you’re throwing out food that you make instead of eating it.

It’s been a frustrating week.

We got our first direct deposit of the year, and I was in a for a minor panic. It was about 30% less than I was expecting. I knew that the new benefits enrollment kicked in on this paycheck, so I went to log in to the site and see what was up. I mean, I didn’t recall things being that different…

The benefits site was not exactly intuitive to figure things out. In fact, it gave the impression that we had unenrolled from 401k! Well, if that was the case … wouldn’t we have more money coming in than less?

One crazy-pregnant-lady-panicked phone call to my husband later and with some work, he was able to dig out the details. [I miss getting paper statements. They were straightforward.]

As it turns out, last year our new ESPP deduction kicked in at exactly the same time as our 401k maxxed out, and they are for very similar amounts. And starting this paycheck, they were both in effect for the new year.

Mystery solved.

Though I’m beginning to wonder if we’re now being way too aggressive on our savings. I just did the calculation, and our actual take-home into-the-checking account amount is less than 28% of our pre-tax salary. So, taxes, 401k, ESPP, benefits, % that goes directly to Vanguard and % that goes directly to Emigrant now account for a little over 72% of our income. That doesn’t include extra for paying down mortgage. Hmm. Now, I can squeeze blood out of a rock, but can I squeeze that much blood out of our rock? I’m not sure yet. That’s my task for this weekend, to see if we can live on this, or if we’re going to have to scale back.

Looking ahead, these are my goals for 2006:

* Give birth at home to a healthy boy end of April/early May.
* Settle on a name for said boy with Andrew
* Read and exercise every day with Audrey
* Relax and enjoy parenting/my kids

* Drop our mortgage principle by at least an extra 10k
* Up our automatic monthly emergency fund contributions an additional 25%
* Continue maxxing out our 401k and Roths.
* Straighten out our life insurance/will situation.

I think I’m sandbagging a bit, so I might have to update these later. Heh.

We had a great Christmas, and a relatively inexpensive one. Admittedly, that’s pretty easy to do when you only have one kid so far and she’s only 2 years old. She had a lot of small presents, and a fair chunk of them were from the local used toy store. I wrapped them in shiny foil-like packaging, and I think she liked playing with the boxes and bows and stacking them in different places more than she liked opening them. In fact, I’m thrilled because she wasn’t too interested in opening them. We’d cajole her into opening one, and then she would just want to play with that one, not open another. So it took us two full days of that to open her presents. I’m not complaining!

I waited until, hmm, it was either Wednesday or Thursday to get a Christmas tree since that’s when they go on big sale. I was able to get a really nice looking pre-lit artificial one for about 60 bucks. We used two cannisters of Big Lots plastic glass-looking bulbs [important with a toddler, and only 15 dollars total] and a Big Lots star for the top, 4.99. My mom donated an old hand-crocheted skirt for the bottom, so we came in under 100 dollars for a nice looking tree we can use again.