Parenthood 5 months in

This past week, Baby MoneyPenny was 5 months old. In some ways, those weeks and months have passed in an eye blink. In others, it may well have been years. It's hard to remember what life was like without our daughter - it seems like she's always been here.

The first few weeks were pricey - she came a bit early, so we weren't totally ready (although at 38 weeks along, probably should have been). It felt like every day my husband made a new run to Babies R Us. Starting to burn through our savings - even for it's intended purpose - was tough. For the first few weeks we burned through diapers at an alarming rate - we held off on the cloth diapers until we got adjusted and I healed from my surgery, and now we use a mix of cloth and paper. 

We didn't buy a lot of baby gear up front. Since every baby likes different things, we waited until we knew what we would use. The baby swing and bumbo seat were both great spends. The swing buys me 20 minute stretches of free hands, which is miraculous for a new parent.  

Since she loved the swing at my sister's house, we ended up getting the same one for home. You don't mess with what works when you are trying to get some downtime.

I had also refrained from buying a lot of clothes before she was born. Hand me downs and gifts made up her wardrobe for the first weeks of life, and after that I started shopping. I've bought both retail and second-hand, and will probably continue to do both. But as I find more secondhand sources of clothes, and  yard sale season continues, I hope that retail purchases will be to supplement gaps, rather than to be her primary source of outfits. But buying her cute outfits is fun, and I suspect we will sometimes succumb to temptation. Sale stuff though.

I went back to work part-time early, and began supplementing with formula. She ended up requiring an expensive formula because of some food sensitivities - and eventually I had to wean her.  Formula runs about $280 a month. Insurance now reimburses us for it, but it's a pretty big outlay every month while we wait for the money back.  

Severe reflux and a milk protein allergy sent us to the doctor and ER , and eventually a pediatric GI specialist multiple times. Copays and prescriptions have cost a couple hundred dollars thus far. This was far more than we bargained for.

But other than the surprises of some small medical costs, and some gear we hadn't bought up front, like the baby monitor, swing, pack n' play, and so on, the biggest cost (and one we planned for) is child care.  It's worth it though - our child is loved and well cared for at my sister's home.   That and the fact that we're finally probably going to indulge in a housekeeper 2x a month, since working has made it near-impossible to keep up.  I've managed to keep the house relatively clean, but that means that all attempts at organization and other projects have fallen by the wayside.  Which means our dining room now looks like the local dead letter office, with piles of paper breeding in the corners.  I can't manage it all, and my husband's chores focus around yard work and the projects we need done, like finishing the shelves in my daughter's closet.

So working parenthood is pricey, I'll admit.  I'm happy to be back to work, and I do like my job, despite missing my daughter.  I am lucky, she was almost 5 months when I finally went back full-time, and I get a day a week to work from home.   Every expense has been worth it.  

Still, I'd recommend to new parents to get as much second-hand as you can.  The $7 fill-a-bag sale clothes from The Children's Orchard (a used clothing chain) and bulk clothing I've gotten off craigslist are just as cute as my Gymboree indulgences.  I may not give up on Gymboree entirely, especially buying larger sizes at their end of season sales.  My daughter already has some great clothes for next summer at fire sale prices, both used and new.

And while I'm not a fan of used stuffed animals, any toy that can be washed clean is fair game at yard sales.  New toys are often not worth the price.  And our local 'used book superstore' has been a great source of children's books cheap.

When you can't buy, borrow.  Our high chair is being borrowed from my sister, and I've gotten other loaner items as well.  Kids go through gear pretty fast, so it's worth not spending too much.  That said, a notable exception is a pack n play - that's worth owning.  We used it when she was an infant in our room, and since we travel a fair bit, it's already earned it's keep.

Kids can be expensive...but they are also worth every penny.

The Local Food Project

Last summer, I had a disappointing garden year.  Intense rain, the fact that we were late to the planting season after working to build out the first three garden beds (of a planned 7-8) and pregnancy exhaustion meant that our yield was only so-so.  We managed to freeze some homemade salsa, roast some peppers, and have a few salads from our garden, but that was really about it.  

This year isn't going to be much better.  While we do have a garden planted, it's pretty small - some potatoes, tomatoes, kale, and a few other things.  We didn't start any of it ourselves, despite me being proactive about buying seeds before our daughter came along.  Thankfully, most seeds last for multiple years (and often even increase germination rates) as long as they are stored in a cool, dry place, so we're all prepared for next year. Instead, my sister and parents took pity on our sleep-deprived selves and gave us some seedlings.  

But similar rains this past June, making Massachusetts feel like a temperate rain forest, rotted many of those seedlings.  

And the remaining garden beds will have to wait another year, as will a chicken coop and chickens, our next sustainable living project.  We have some critical house projects that need to get started now that I'm back to work.  So that means that we won't be providing very much of our own food this year.  

And after an experiment with a CSA that just didn't work that well for us, I was back to the drawing board.  But food price increases are making a local diet harder.  

The downside of living in a high-population, high cost of living area in the current economy is that local food is expensive - far more so than last year.  I mean it's really expensive.  A quart of organic strawberries from the local farmstand, in season?  $6.59.  Local beef?  $8-$11 a pound. Local chicken?  $20 for a whole chicken.  A head of lettuce?  $4.

Ouch.

Since our total grocery budget (this includes personal care and cleaning supplies), not including diapers and baby supplies, is about $400-450.00 per month right now, it's clear that shopping at our local farmstand is perhaps not the most financially sustainable option.  It's still a part of our shopping repertoire, but isn't replacing the grocery store.

The farm stand does have a co-op for a cost of $50 a year, and I'm mulling over giving it a try. There's a 129-page abbreviated text catalog that I need to go through first, just to make sure there's foods that we would eat that make the purchases worth our while.

Still, local is important to us.  And so is growing our own food, now that there are signs that perhaps, someday, our 5 month old daughter will sleep more.  There's still time for a late summer garden, and some fall lettuces.

I've found a local beef farm about 2 hours away that sells in bulk, and my parents are talking about going in with us.  My older sister, in upstate NY, is willing to raise us meat chickens, and we still have some from the last batch she raised.   I make it to the farmstand about once or twice a month now, which is far less than I would like, but it will have to do for now.

With the cost of local food going up so high, it means that we're going to have to focus more on what we can grow.  So we're adding some more strawberry plants and a couple peach trees this year, and then next spring we'll break ground on the remaining 5 garden beds, and start up on the chicken coop.  It's my hope by July of 2010 we'll have chickens helping us on bug patrol, and finally that big garden we dream of.  

In the meantime there's the farmstand and the grocery store, and the occasional donation of fresh produce from family - and that will have to do.  It's not my preferred way of doing things, but it is what works now.

Does Using Cheaper Ingredients Mean Lower Quality Meals?

The other day, I was making a chicken meal in my crockpot.  As I pulled out the $2.39 bottle of white cooking wine, and the dried-instead-of-fresh basil, I started thinking about the cost of ingredients vs. the quality of food. 

I'm all about good food.  I have 2 shelves of cookbooks  - and I use them (or at least, I use them when I'm not utterly sleep deprived).  I love to cook, and I have no problem spending lots of time in the kitchen when I have the time to do so. 

But I do often cut corners on ingredients when I feel it's appropriate.  For instance, if wine was a key component of a sauce, I'll use decent wine.  If it's deglazing a pan of stuff that is then going to be cooked in the crockpot for 5 or 6 hours, the cooking wine will do.  Any qualities of the better wine would be lost in the sauce - literally.  

It's the same with things that offer similar flavor.  The particular recipe I was making called for adding kalamata olives to the recipe.  While they were a late addition, because they were being cooked in, a $3.29 jar of them had the same effect as $6 or so worth from the olive bar.  I could have done it cheaper but I sprang for the pitted kind, since I hate picking olive pits out of food.

Had the olives been part of an appetizer spread, I would have gone with the good stuff.  And having made the recipe with both jarred and olive bar-esque olives, I can honestly say there was no difference.

I usually try to make the recipe as called for the first time out.  That's my baseline.  I want to know exactly what it tastes like as called for.   After that, I start making modifications.  Little ones, at first.  Less salt, more oregano, olive oil instead of butter, that sort of thing.  Once I have the levels of ingredients to my liking, then I go further.  Skip this, add that instead.  And I always try a cheaper option 

Why am I so systematic about it?  Because I want to be sure that we're eating what tastes best.  And because cookbooks are the one exception I make to my 'no writing in books' rule.  I add notes to the pages of recipes I've made.  I love finding used cookbooks with notes in them.  And I always try the advice the notes give - someone took the time to tell their future selves, and those who come later how the recipe tastes best.  Of course, it's all subjective, and sometimes I don't love the advice given.  But often, it's the variation on the original recipe that is top notch.  

Someday, either when my daughter gives the cookbooks away after my death, or uses them for herself, someone is going to open them up and see my notes, assuming they just don't go to some trash bin.  I think that's kind of cool - that while 'The Best Recipe' has a great recipe for meatballs, I think I took it up a notch, to the really best recipe.  At least for me.  Everyone has different taste buds. 

So do cheaper ingredients make for lesser quality meals?  Sure, sometimes.  I do prefer fresh herbs, or ones we've dried ourselves (my husband is the herb-drying rock star in our home). But if there's a choice between $5 worth of dubiously fresh basil from the store or the dried, I'll often choose the dried and see if I like it.  It's always worth a try.  And since food budgets are one of the largest variable costs for most of us, it's worth it.

Unemployment Redux

This past January 31st, I left work for my maternity leave.  It was the first time I'd been jobless since I was 15 years old - a pretty scary idea, even though we'd saved and planned for it.

I had 2 weeks off before Baby MoneyPenny arrived, and then settled into my maternity leave and new parenthood.

When I was 7 weeks postpartum, my job called and asked if I would come back part time to get a project I'd worked on earlier over the finish line.  They offered to be flexible with my schedule, and pay for my Mom to come on a business trip with Kiera so that I wouldn't have to leave her. 

It was an offer too good to refuse, so I went back to work a few days later.  Since my sister is my primary daycare provider, having an erratic schedule worked, and I don't have to worry about losing a daycare slot or paying for a full-time slot.  I ended up working between 14 and 25 hours a week, with the week of my business trip being the only 40+ hour week.

But then May 31st rolled around, and the contract ended.  While I'm in the interview process for a new job, and am continuing the hunt, I'm back at home.  

We're lucky.  And we employ foresight.  Between savings and unemployment, we can afford for me to be out of work for a good long while before having to worry.  And yet, I am worried - not because we can't make ends meet, or because I don't think I'll get the job I'm currently interviewing for, but because I'm now torn between home and work (and will be for the next 18 years).  It's no longer clean for me - if I work, I leave my daughter.  If I am home, I want to be working.  

I'll still go back to work - I am not cut out to be a stay at home parent, nor is our budget cut out for it.  Which is fine, it's the choice we made. 

Over the last couple years, since we bought our home, I have been pulled between wanting to do all the renovations we desire for the home (buying a fixer-upper that requires everything from wiring to windows will do that to a person) and wanting to save every penny.  And all this while still enjoying ourselves.  

I think we've struck a good balance.  We've done some renovations, plan to do more this year, and have saved well.  I may have a crack in the old, ugly entryway flooring, but I have a healthy bank balance.  And the flooring will go, hopefully sooner than later.

It's been hard to watch friends renovate with abandon, but I'm grateful for the choices we've made.  It means I can sit here and play with my daughter guilt-free.  For now.

A MoneyPenny Update

It's been a long time since I've blogged - a bit under 3 months.  The time since my last post has hurtled by - much of it in a sleep-deprived blur.  I've started writing a few times only to realize I was too tired to put my thoughts together with any sense of coherence.  And for a while there I couldn't even bring myself to think about personal finance - when you are perpetually exhausted, even deciding what to eat for dinner can be more complex thinking than can be managed.  

But recently, as Baby MoneyPenny crossed into the home stretch of the '4th trimester'  I started getting more sleep.  As a result, I'm starting to get my groove back.  I'm reading the news, thinking about our financial life again, and adapting to our new state of normalcy.  Actually, I'm  not just adapting, I'm enjoying the Mommy thing immensely.

The transition to parenthood is amazing, exhausting, thrilling and overwhelming.  I wouldn't trade it for the world wrapped up in a bow, but it's been challenging.  And rather more expensive than originally planned. 

Worth every dime though.  

I'll be blogging more frequently now, and incorporating my new role into my posts. 

It's been too long.  It's good to be back.

A Bright Spot in the Landscape...Baby MoneyPenny

2 weeks ago today, my husband and I became parents to a beautiful baby girl.  Her arrival was a bit early and surprising - my water broke after a quiet dinner on President's Day, and shortly thereafter we found ourselves at the hospital with me being prepped for an emergency c-section.

Becoming parents for the first time is a startling experience, no matter how much you plan and look forward to it.  The sheer number of diaper changes, feedings and the sleep deprivation can make a new parent feel as though they are in their own special version of "GroundHog Day".  

And yet, it is all offset by what my husband and I call 'baby TV' - the ability to sit and stare at this amazing little person with fascination and adoration for hours.  Babies are mesmerizing. When it's your child, even more so.  

We've spent endless moments analyzing what of her traits are his and which are mine.  And yet, she is uniquely her own person too, with a clear personality already.  This is no blank slate, our daughter.

My blogging will likely be even more erratic than it has been for a while.  But there is a good reason, and I wouldn't trade my baby-watching and diaper changing for anything right now.

Welcome to the world, Kiera.  

Reinventing the Past

A recent article at The Wall Street Journal online (www.wsjonline.com) caught my eye.  

Like many of it's brethren these days, the article addresses how we are - and aren't - in the same situation as our antecedents were in 1929.  In other words, why things are similar, but not the same as the Great Depression.  

Seeing as there have been roughly a bazillion articles that addressed the same thing since late September, why did this one catch my attention?

Because of how well it started, how interesting it was, and then how incredibly thoroughly it lost me.  The article starts well enough - the author comparing the stock market stats between then and now, and the human interest of how his Grandfather and Father survived was good enough, but the purported purpose of the article was 'what we can learn' and on that topic, it failed.  

Why?  Because there's little I can take from the lessons of someone who earned their way through the depression by buying horses for $1, breaking them with the aid of their sons, and then selling them for $10.  Not because I can't learn creativity, or thinking outside of the box lessons, but because there's little practical application to be gotten from a family that had a hand pump for their water and who's youngest son had to get up at 5 to lug water to the horses.

Okay, so that the whole family helped out, okay.  But does it teach anyone how to survive where we are, and what's coming?  Not really.  Few of us are farmers these days - too few, really, but that's another blog post.  Most of us get our food from the good old grocery store, perhaps supplemented by a garden in summer.  I don't have any kids old enough to perform farm chores.  And so on.  

And it's not just the one article.  A recent issue of Money magazine suggests upping your emergency fund to a year.  I'm all for that, but let's face it - that's a slow process for most of us.  If you have 3 months in your e-fund now, and it took you a year to amass, you may not have another 3 years before the hard times hit your doorstep.  

All of the articles are great for perspective - things are nowhere near where they were in the 1930s, at the height of the Depression, when the Dust Bowl and the market collapse converged to create a country with 25% unemployment, starvation, and little hope.  

But that's not much consolation to those who are unemployed or facing layoffs with a crummy job market and mortgages to pay, families to feed, and the persistent, nagging thought that things just aren't going to get better real soon.  

So what can we do?  Really?  

Adjust expectations.  Expect to do, have and spend less.    Pick and choose the things that are really, really important, such as a particular family holiday tradition, and do those things.  No fair calling them all important either.  And look for low cost traditions you can start.  Pack some hot apple cider and cookies, and go listen to a free concert. Get involved in your community.  Volunteer. Go to the library.  Whatever floats it for you, do it.

Start a garden.  Now is the time all the seed catalogs arrive.  Order a few things and start some seedlings in a sunny window later this month.  You don't have to plant everything, but maybe a salad garden for midsummer.  There's something peaceful about gardening - and something very rewarding about making a salad from things you grew yourself.  

Network.  Go to Linkedin.com and start sending invitations to coworkers.  Update your resume and send it out to recruiters.  If you are still employed, volunteer for some extra work - even if you feel overworked already.  Try to find tasks and projects that are considered 'mission critical' to your organization.  Another good way to network is to volunteer your time for a cause you feel passionate about.  And it doesn't hurt your resume either.

Learn to cook things you normally buy.  Friday nights are often pizza night in the MoneyPenny household, but we rarely order it.  It's simple to make from scratch, and tastes great.  Miss chinese take out?  Learn to make potstickers, satay or another favorite.  It will save you money, and - here's a little secret - cooking can be great fun.  

How can you make a little money?

Sell some stuff on Craigslist and Ebay.  We all have way too much stuff anyway, so go through your closets, your cabinets, and sell.  If it's not online sale-worthy, consider a yard sale this spring.  

Babysit for friends with kids.  Become a 'mother's helper' after school if you are out of work. Apply to substitute teach.  If you have a skill, turn it into a business.  Etsy.com is a great place to see if you have something other people want.

The people who win in this economy are going to have one common thread amongst them - adaptability.  The ones who refuse to take worth that is not in their field or below their education level will pay the price for that pride.  The ones willing to cobble together a living using their creativity, networks and flexibility will be the ones who make it through.  

I can't learn a lot on how to survive in this new economy from the job tactics of someone from 1932.  What I can do is look for opportunities that others may not be filling now, and fill them.

So maybe I did get something from that article after all.

The article that inspired this post is here.