Sweet Benny (Benedict Reid Uebbing) is now 3 days old after a whirlwind of a weird labor ending in a surprise c-section and almost 10 solid pounds of chunky baby goodness.
Some stats on our newest arrival:
Has allegedly cried once when surprised by hiccups. He and I are still in hotel hospital which I *finally* understand to be a lovely place because:
1. so many kids at home that it’s spa like in comparison
2. I’m not breastfeeding this time around, so I don’t have a starving, dehydrated nursling on my hands requiring round the clock feedings and needed to be monitored, weighed, and poked at by nurses at all hours of the night (I am proficient in many things; alas, lactation is not one of them)
3. the recovery is decidedly different following a surgical birth. And honestly, not all the differences are bad!
My pelvic floor was trembling in anticipation of this large, large child’s imminent journey through. That being said, OUCH. There is new pain and previously unexperienced pain, and it’s an all drugs on deck sort of situation, and I’m sort of amazed by how much I can’t do.
I’m trying to enjoy this forced furlough before plunging back into real life where I’ll be forced to explain to Zelie that I will no longer be carrying her majesty upon my hip as her exclusive mode of travel. Also, where I’ve been for the past 4 nights. Am expecting to be slapped repeatedly in the coming weeks…
Any c section veterans out there who want to chime in, I’ll happily take the advice and best practices. It’ll keep me from stress-googling.
Meanwhile, full birth story blog post coming soonish…maybe…it’s just there are so many Hallmark movies and so few remaining days of December…
For now enjoy some photo evidence of the sibling meet cute:
(First in a series of essays this month on minimalism and its particular relevance to family life.)
(Update 1/14/19: Once I got a few episodes into the show, they introduced storylines involving cohabitation and homosexuality, so consider this your content warning and get ready to skip over a couple episodes. Womp womp.)
I’ve been an armchair minimalist since before minimalism was a buzzword. 8 moves and 5 kids in less than 10 years of marriage means I’ve honed the fine art of “do we really need this?” to a science.
Netflix launched a new series this month, and it’s fantastic: Tidying Up with Marie Kondo (of Life Changing Magic fame) Kondo is warm and gracious and my kids get a kick out of hearing spoken Japanese. The families she works with – at least so far – have been anxious to cooperate with her process and seem genuinely happier at the episode’s conclusion. There is no bootcamp style shaming or furtive confessional-style camerawork: the couples are taught Kondo’s signature method and timeline for tidying, and then seemingly left alone for days at a time to put her methods to work.
The footage of the process and of the interaction between the families has a distinctly different vibethan most reality shows; rather than encouraging strife and plot-driving tension, Kondo reminds the couples to focus on their own possessions rather than haranguing their spouses.
What I most appreciate about the show – and the process of tidying she espouses – is that it is custom fitted for each home, and for each family.
The first episode featured harried millennial parents of young toddlers and the requisite piles of laundry and dishes and toys – and chaos. When they’d completed their month long tidying endeavour, the couple were communicating better (their early scenes did seem a little overwrought with domestic tension, but the dishes! I get it!), enjoying their kids more, and seemingly more content with their already beautiful and perfectly serviceable home.
The next episode featured an older couple who were empty nesters and, frankly, hoarders. Their completed space still produced a mild panic reaction by my standards, but they did a ton of work in only 6 weeks, undoing decades of neglect and recreational shopping habits as they worked together to sort through their belongings.
Both families had clearly different styles and spaces and were in totally different stages of life; both benefited from learning that stuff, however little or much you have, won’t make you happy.
Minimalism, to me, is the idea that less is more, and that stuff can’t make you happy.
That stuff is actually value neutral, and that the space we inhabit and the things we bring into that space should be working together in harmony to increase the value in day to day living, not competing to suck it away.
A bigger family like mine is going to have a greater variation of sizes of clothing, but not necessarily own more clothing overall.
I’d venture to say that our family of 7 owns fewer total items of clothing than the average American family of 4. Because that’s what works for us. I’m the main launderer in the family, and just by the numbers, I can’t keep on top of 15 pairs of pants and 20 shirts for each family member. As our family size has increased, our net number of items of clothing per member has dropped. Seems counterintuitive, until you remember that even with more kids, you still only get 24 hours in a day. Once I figured out that I didn’t have to live normally, i.e. surrounded by mountains of toys and bins and bins of extra clothing, it was a huge relief.
Having more stuff doesn’t increase happiness beyond a certain point. At some point, you hit peak satisfaction. Peak satisfaction is probably closer to sustainability than we realize. Once you have your basic needs for food, shelter and clothing met, happiness actually levels off fairly soon thereafter. A family living in a 4,000 square foot house is not appreciably happier than a family living in 1,200 square feet, at least not in ways that can be directly correlated with square footage.
So what does this look like, practically speaking? But first, a caveat. Minimalism treads on privileged ground. It’s not just for the rich or upper middle class – I believe that almost anyone can benefit from it – but it does presuppose a level of security. Self-reflection is a luxury. I give thanks for the stability that enables me to calmly assess our circumstances and adjust as necessary. Not everybody lives in this kind of privilege. I also want to avoid falling prey to the false morality trap. You know what I’m talking about, right? Organized people are not “better” than disorganized people. Clean and well dressed people are not superior to dirty and disheveled people. People who eat conventionally grown produce are not inferior to people who buy organic. In a society that is becoming increasingly untethered from objective moral values, pseudo values have swept in to fill the vacuum, and they’re pretty whack. And minimalism, while it can compliment your values, is not itself a value.
Minimalism begets time:
I read a lot of books. I also write a lot. I also cook at least two, sometimes three meals each day for seven people. I can’t – I don’t want to – spend hours every day picking up toys and books and throw pillows and dirty underwear. An hour or two of that each day is more than enough for me. As such, we don’t have all that many of any of those items, dirty underwear exempted.
There are five throw pillows in our house. Two on each of our couches and one on a chair. I guess if we have a sixth child we might…I kid, I kid. I don’t know why we have so few. I just know that the ones we have, I mostly like, and I don’t mind picking up five pillows off the floor every day. Five feels like a manageable number of pillows to me.
We have 16 dinner plates. About half that many bowls, because I guess my kids can break anything, even Corelle. We use a dozen mason jars for drinks, have a cupboard of 10 coffee cups, all of which I actually like, and there is a shelf of glass barware for fancier stuff than water. Down below we have a single kid’s drawer: 10 plastic plates, 6 stainless steel cups, 6 water bottles (all missing lids), and 2 of those magic silicone toppers that make any cup a sippy cup. Zelie still drinks bottles, and we have 4 of those, and 4 nipples.
Our kitchen is small, a 70s-style galley layout. I’ve had friends comment on how small, but honestly, I don’t really mind it now. I wish I had more counter space sometimes, but for ordinary life, it’s actually fine.
Obviously if we were hosting dinner parties for the high school track team every Thursday night we’d need to own more dishes, and I’m sure as my kids age, we will! But right now? 16 dinner plates is enough. And it means the sink is never overly full of dishes, and that I have time to do stuff besides dishes. Like pick up dirty underwear.
Minimalism begets contentment:
About that galley kitchen. I don’t love it. When we moved in it was a dark brown cave with mustard linoleum accents. I’d love to blow out and rip down and bust through all the walls and surfaces, but the budget won’t permit it, maybe for twenty years or maybe ever. In the meantime, I’m a domestic engineer who spends 90% of her life working at home, and I want to feel good in my space. So month by month, one $30 can of paint at a time, we’ve changed the way it looks and feels.
Slapping a coat of paint on something isn’t minimalism, per se, but slapping a coat of paint on something in order to make it work better for you rather than trying to shop your way into contentment? Totally. I rarely bring new non-consumables into my kitchen, because there isn’t space for much, but also because I like the way it looks now. A cupboard shelf with matching (and allegedly indestructible) white dishes is actually really attractive, even when the shelf they’re sitting on is dated wood, and the countertops cheap composite.
Don’t misunderstand me here, I’m not saying that you have to have plain white everything in your kitchen, lined up in uniform columns like a control freak (raises hand), just that when you are intentional about what bring into, or keep, in your daily environment, it makes you happier.
You’ll be less tempted by what you see on Instagram or the aisles of wherever, not because you have achieved monastic temporal detachment, but because you are content. It’s easier to forgive my kitchen for its other shortcomings when I’m not opening drawers that are exploding with logo-tatted water bottles from our insurance company or whatever.
And listen, if your closet floor is invisible beneath layers of rejected or dirty or wrong size clothes and there are bent wire hangers crammed on the rods, holding stuff you haven’t worn since college, then of course you’re going to feel like you need – want – to go shopping.
Set yourself up for contentment by only hanging onto what you love. That’s my version of “sparks joy.” And yes, I love our NoseFrida, for reasons that are less aesthetic and more functional.
Minimalism begets domestic tranquility
Marriage – ay, there’s the rub. “But my husband collects x,” or “my wife wants to have a two year supply of y on hand, at all times!” you may be thinking.
Fine, great! An intentional, curated collection of just about anything can be beautiful in its own way. If he has a garage full of ski gear or a shed full of tools, why not line everything up and mount some hooks to store stuff vertically, and make the space look more like a nicely merchandised end cap at REI and not the scary multi-neighbor garage sale? And recycle the old and broken stuff while you’re at it. You are not going to hit the jackpot on antique road show or one day coach an amateur ice hockey team, half the members of which will have nothing to use but your old dirty gear from 1998, so it’s a good thing you held onto it.
Try sitting down with your spouse and making a list of things that you already own that bring you joy. I can imagine for me it really would be a few pairs of Kendra Scott earrings I love that I’ve received as gifts. For Dave, it would probably be camping gear and some of his barware.
There’s nothing wrong with owning stuff, especially when you’re hanging onto it because it serves your family and makes you happy.
But those garbage bags full of used baby clothes that may or may not come in handy down the road? Those aren’t serving your family right now. And they could, in fact, be serving another family at this very moment. Same with old equipment for sports you don’t play anymore. Books you’ve read and don’t plan – realistically – to re-read in the future. Clothes that probably aren’t going to fit again or, if they do, will be aged beyond usefulness or stylishness.
One of the best places to start with a spouse who’s less inclined to letting things go is to start with the positives: what having, say, an emptier garage or basement or unstuffed dresser drawers or kitchen cabinets could help provide for your family. More space to play and grow. Maybe room to carve out a spare sleeping space (in the basement, probably not the garage but YOU DO YOU) for an introverted child who is currently sharing a room or for hosting overnight guests.
(I’m going to cover the marriage dynamic extensively in an entire future post, so stay tuned.)
I’m not going to pretend like this concept is super intuitive for everyone to apply. I really think some people are just born collectors (cough cough my eldest son’s horrifying top bunk), and others are more prone to frequent Goodwill . How you were raised factors in, too. How much money your family makes. Whether or not you travel a lot, move frequently, host regularly, etc.
Kondo, while not preaching minimalism in her method, per se, seems to have a tremendous grasp on how to help different personalities embrace and apply her method (which does tend towards minimalism in its essence, I think, because I think most of us hit our hedonistic threshold with stuff much sooner than our linen closets would have us believe) no matter whether they want to have a whole room stuffed full of crafting supplies and musical instruments or if they prefer to live in more austere quarters.
The biggest sell for our family to start – and keep – living this way for so long has been the time freedom. I can clean my entire house in under an hour, no joke. And by clean I mean stuff is organized, de-loused, and re-homed, not that it’s scrubbed and shined. My floors, baseboards and shower tiles will tell you the real story of how “clean” things really are around here. Tidy, though? Anyone can do tidy, I promise.
Our Italian living room/dining room/guest room/play room. Rome was the true birthplace of my minimalism. I owned 4 dresses, 3 pairs of jeans, 10 shirts, and 4 sweaters. The kids had 2 pairs of shoes each. We had a single canvas bin of toys. It was totally crazy and totally liberating at the same time.
One of our kids has struggled heroically this year with emotional regulation. I can say heroic now because I recognize the delicate wiring that comprises his arousal system and the unique qualities of his personality. Another child may sail effortlessly through the school day, hopping into the car afterwards brimming with energy and good nature; his tank is full, he spent a full day interacting with his favorite thing in the entire world: other people! He will happily (usually) do his chores and skip outside to play for hours until dinner. Homework, however, is another matter.
This other child though? I see him visibly sagging from the weight of the school day as I pull up to car line, his small shoulders telegraphing a message to me from the curb: I’m done. I’ve handled pretty much everything I’m able to handle today, and I need you to recognize that.
For months I ignored that message, or couldn’t translate it properly. Tantrums erupted daily after school, sometimes stretching for hours past dinnertime and ending only with sleep. We consulted with teachers and saw a counselor and modeled play therapy techniques at home and made plodding progress (again, not linear) and finally, what hit me after months of hard was something his therapist scribbled on a sheet of notes: “remember, this is not something he is doing, this is who he is.”
That single sentence reframed a year of difficulty and in all frankness, resentment on my part.
It wasn’t something he was doing. It was simply who he was. Not adaptable like his brother or fiercely independent like his sister. Sensitive and intelligent and utterly and profoundly exhausted by a day out in the world. My expectations had to rest in the reality of him. He needed little more in the afternoon beyond a snack and to melt into my arms for some quiet time on the couch. And he needed me to simply offer it and not dwell on the disappointment – my disappointment – that asking for anything more, like chores or activities, was asking for the moon. At least for now.
Another child has demonstrated a seemingly infinite capacity for mischief this year, and our house bears visible witness to it.
I can continue to live in willful ignorance of this and leave all the Sharpies in unlocked drawers because none of my other kids would have drawn on the kitchen cabinets with permanent marker, refusing to become one of “those” houses who childproof to the point of ugliness, or I can save myself the heartache of more broken treasures and destroyed tubes of mascara and put everything out of his destructive reach.
Every human person is a mystery. They have a particular mission they’ve been given to share with the world, and they are comprised of a surprisingly disparate collection of parts and pieces that don’t necessarily add up by human standards.
I’m not sure I would have gone with that particular trait and that specific weakness, I can muse critically, mentally scoring God’s craftsmanship in one of my children while wiping something unmentionable off a surface that should be out of reach, a masterpiece which must have taken long, careful minutes of intelligent strategy and persistent effort to achieve. This one’s going to end up on one side of the law or the other, as they say.
Or I can keep my eyes and ears open and maintain a sense of curiosity and even sometimes in rare moments of benevolence on my part, wonder.
It really would be a dull, efficient world had I designed it. But there would never, ever be poop in a place you weren’t expecting poop.
4. Self-acceptance is a beautiful, instinctive thing*
I hope this memory of my preschool daughter sears itself into the depths of my long term memory: looking down at her suddenly too-tight jeans and her adorably bulging belly preventing the buttoning of what buttoned yesterday, and exclaiming with joy “Wow mommy, I’m growing! This is great, I need new clothes!”
I look at her dumbstruck. Impressed. Wishing I could frame things that way. Granted, a child’s growing body is healthy and normal and expected. But shouldn’t an adult body also be released from the shackles of a static self image?
Every time I glance in the mirror and excoriate my reflection for not reflecting high school Jenny’s youthful visage back at me, I burn the miserable neural pathway of wistful nostalgia in a little deeper. What if I could expect – and therefore accept – a changing body?
I don’t mean an acceptance that tosses the eye cream and hangs up the gym shoes; that’s resignation by another name. It would be for me, anyway.
I mean an acceptance that bravely expects change. An acceptance that is untethered from the frantic message of marketers and advertisers and the tiresome echo chambers of social media and is deeply rooted in this gospel truth instead: you are fearfully and wonderfully make, and it is good that you are here.
I watched my little daughter bloom from a miniature preschooler this year to a sturdy little kid, arms and legs lengthening even as her torso blew past those size 4 skinny jeans (also, skinny jeans for toddlers? I judge myself. But also, that’s all you can find in most stores.) She was delighted to embrace her new body, knowing instinctively that it is good to grow and stretch and change. No playground bully or Instagram filter has told her differently, yet. I pray that when one does, she will be able to see the lie for what it is and turn back to reality.
*(Mental illness notwithstanding, of course. Depression, anxiety, and other pre existing conditions in our brains that precede self awareness can certainly interfere with an intrinsic self acceptance. Original sin is a real buzz kill.)
Finally, and most importantly of all of these, I look back over these past 12 months and see a distinct theme woven through all the smaller parts of the story, and it is this: that I am not in control.
I am not in control. You are not in control. None of us can hope to execute the perfect list of New Year’s resolutions because none of us can say for certain what the coming year holds.
I can fill a whole bullet journal with goals, set a dozen intentions for the coming year, fill a spreadsheet with data tracking my progress, but I don’t have all the necessary information at hand.
I can’t see the illnesses and heartaches, the financial stressors, the windfalls, the knock down drag out fights or the quiet moments of sorrow in the middle of the night.
All I can control, in the end, is me. Me, and how well I love the people around me.
Motherhood is searing this into my soul one stomach virus and night waking and parent teacher conference at a time, and I’m a very slow learner. As my cramped soul expands to consider the possibility that maybe this thing, too, can be good, I’m learning my lesson. Maybe this thing I didn’t expect and this situation I certainly didn’t ask for can be meaningful on some level, can be redeemed somehow, was what God intended for me all along.
I can imagine my heavenly audience of intercessors gathered around whatever God’s version of Facebook Portal is, waiting to see how I’ll respond to the situation at hand: Will she scream? Rant to her husband? Pull the soiled sheets off the mattress a little too violently? Write a scathing review online?
Sometimes the redemption exists only in my own heroic (ha) effort to resist throwing an adult temper tantrum when someone, say, stabs a hole in the couch. Because someone is going to stab a hole in the couch, okay? And then they’re probably going to cram it full of orange slices or snotty Kleenex. The only real variable here is time. Time, and whether or not mommy is going to add a new word to the family vernacular when she finds it.
But that variable is huge. And as I reflect on the gift of another year given, fully aware that I’m promised nothing beyond today, I hope to make better use of my time. Not simply becoming more efficient and productive, but accepting reality for what it is: a gift from a good Father Who is watching and waiting to see what I’ll make of it.
Not all my kids, but an approximation of what the checkout guy at Trader Joe’s sees when he sees all my kids.
Another retrospective New Year’s post, just what the internet needs! For your enjoyment I think I’ll break it into two installments since said internet has destroyed our collective attention span. You’re welcome.
I sighed this morning, as I leaned over the kitchen counter this morning waiting for my espresso to drizzle out another shot of “sorry you’re not sleeping these days,” and scrolled through my blogfeed reader – remember those? I still use one! (And sometimes I read paper books. Subversive, I know!)
I was reading through another “goals I nailed in 2018” post, mentally congratulating the author but also wondering if maybe I’m doing something wrong.
Gone – for now, at least – are my days of setting lofty S.M.A.R.T. goals in January and having a list of successes to look back over at the year’s end. I can point to a few small things that I’m doing better, to patterns of healing and growth in the emotional and spiritual realm that are no small matter, but not really to things that I’ve accomplished, per se.
Any growth this year has happened to me rather than through me. It has consisted more of accepting and embracing circumstances as they come to pass, and less of setting out to conquer x and actually, well, conquering x.
And it’s not linear. It’s a hot, embarrassing mess. Cut to scene one of me angrily scrubbing kitchen counters with a diaper wipe on one of the interminable days between Christmas and New Year’s Day this year, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand and feeling such irrational anger at the hand we’d been dealt for what felt like the umpteenth year in a row: barfing, fevers, night wakings and not a single family event attended.
Crumpled in the wake of sickness was the calendar of holiday festivities I’d eagerly consulted in my mind’s eye as November melted into December, the anticipation buoying me along through one more school lunch packed, one more pickup, one more last minute costume assembled, one more late night of work.
Soon, the cursor was all but hovering over January 1 and we’d accomplished seemingly nothing over our Christmas “break,” instead trading night shifts and shampooing vomit out of carpets and picking up yes another prescription. (We’re not re-selling these online, we promise.)
I was feeling sorry for myself as I scrubbed that counter, despite having just read a stirring essay by a father of 9 with cancer, whose piece contained a hyperlink to the blog of a mother of 7 with cancer who had died of said cancer. “We can all take a lesson in contentment from the pages of her book; what she would have given for one more day, week, month of ‘ordinary time,’” he wrote.
I paraphrase. All that to say, I’m a sh*t and I know it.
Thank God He is training me via a thousand paper cuts and not a severe and mortal blow. At least not yet.
1. Flexibility
I cheerily responded to an email from my spiritual director in late December (but pre-Christmas, notably) that Advent had been “surprisingly joyful, actually! We’d had some illnesses and some difficulties but it was going to be smooth sailing from here on out and we were so looking forward to Christmas.”
You can probably see where this is going.
The lesson here for me was one I’m always exasperatedly trying to impart to my children. Guys, be flexible! That’s just life in a big family.
“Flexibility!” I apologized to my crew, dipping a washcloth in cool water and laying it on the 3-year-old’s inferno of a forehead and texting our regrets to a long-awaited Christmas party with my other hand.
“Flexibility,” I shrugged, sending Dave solo to 4 pm Mass on Christmas Eve while I sat couch duty with 3 fevers burning and what sounded like an entire infirmary of coughing. The newly Tamiflu’d preschooler lay across my legs like an electric blanket, eyes dull and pitiful.
“Flexibility,” I reminded myself with jaw clenching, running another load of laundry on Christmas Day. And another. And then another.
By the time December 31st rolled around, I was stiff and aching from the effort. Both parents were. My own flexibility exhausted, I emotionally assumed the fetal position, snapping at simple requests and drinking more coffee than was wise or helpful.
I had learned the lesson, or so I thought. I could be flexible. Fun, even! Okay, plan B, we’ll stay home and light all the candles and order pizza!
But flexibility on my terms, that’s what I wanted.
God wanted to equip me, I think, with the superpower of inconvenient flexibility.
That was not on my Amazon wishlist.
And as readily as I can admit that, gosh, that kind of adaptability would sure come in handy leading this big ‘ol family as the mom, my human nature shies away in horror from the work required to acquire it. And so He keeps assigning the reading, sending home the assignments, so to speak. Not because He is an awful taskmaster who wants me to suffer, but because learning this thing will be a profound help to my long term happiness and holiness, not to mention my family’s.
2. Be open to unexpected gifts
Having as many babies as I’ve had has demonstrated to me that every baby is ground zero, every person a new starting line. I’ve gleaned some some time-tested lessons from baby to baby, but each new person who joins the family has necessitated a sort of amnesia of expectations. I have loosely affixed goal posts in my mind, but the new addition is welcome to blow past them in his or her own way. Number one needed a paci attached almost surgically to his person at all times and slept on a tight schedule I could set a watch by; number two was almost physically attached to my person at all times and slept almost never, as far as I can remember.
By the time number five started babbling mama and baba and taking mincing steps all over the house and dropping her second nap all before the age of one, I trimmed my sails of expectation and resigned myself to a child who was determinedly mobile months before any of her siblings were. It wasn’t remarkable in any sense other than this: it was her.
This was simply who she was, and she was revealing herself to me in a way that none of the books or blogs I’d read or even her own siblings could have. I’d mentally steeled myself for the horrifying spectacle that is newborn sleep with four other children in the house. She showed up and slept through the night by week 6. Right now she is contentedly eating mini marshmallows at her high chair beside me and I’m congratulating myself because I did the responsible thing and pre-shredded them for her.
I’m a much better mom for her than I was for her older siblings, simply because I’ve studied more. Learned what hills to die on (sleep, always) and what hills to forfeit to the battering winds of what actually works (this time, bottles). I begged God to make breastfeeding easy for me this time around, and in the reality of Zelie’s circumstances He answered me big time by simply removing it from the picture altogether.
Never rule out the possibility that God wants to answer a prayer, perhaps did answer a prayer in a way you never expected.
(to be continued in part 2)
Just imagine I lysol wiped the entire cart first and there’s an invisible brightly patterned stretchy cart cover lovingly positioned beneath her. And that she’s not barefoot. Voila, firstborn status achieved!
I love this time of year more than any other. I look forward to this particular stretch for months, such that when it does finally arrive most years, I’ve perhaps overplayed my enthusiastic hand just a tad.
This year, being that I am neither nursing, pregnant, nor newly postpartum, I’ve had the chance to look around and take an honest inventory of where we’re at as a family and come to the conclusion: I can try adding in some little extras this year.
We were talking customs and family traditions as an office the other week and I maintain that mine was the weirdest and least liturgically sound: my siblings and I would gather in the family room on Christmas Eve after the littlest kids had been put to bed, and we would crowd around the newest non-believer in Santa and let them in on the secret. Wrapped in an unfortunate poinsettia apron and knighted with a roll of wrapping paper, we would solemnly induct him or her into “the Christmas club,” making them promise to protect the secret of Santa for the little ones who still believed, and just generally making a big fuss over their entry into adulthood. There was a real oath we made them swear and everything.
Were my parents even aware of our antics? Did they model the Christmas Club for us in any way? No. No, I really don’t think so. If memory serves, they were probably crashed out upstairs with a newborn, my mom exhausted by the previous month of effort to find, buy, and wrap presents for everyone.
In fact, a significant focus of the Christmas club in future years would come to be our procurement of trinkets and the stuffing of all the stockings, the last-minute late night wrapping of some – and eventually, most – of the family’s presents, and of course the careful gnawing of reindeer carrots and the splashing and nibbling of Santa’s milk and cookies.
So my expectations for holiday season 2018 are … modest.
I can plan and execute the perfectly curated holiday scenario, but I can’t select which memories will make their way down into their little hearts.
That’s part of the beauty of childhood, I’m coming to find as a mother of slightly older kids. There are so many sensory experiences to choose from, especially as a Catholic, and different things will stick with different kids. And the things they’ll stubbornly choose to hold onto? Totally not my call.
One might remember the sticky wax dripping from the Advent candles we’ll light every night at dinner, singing a verse of “O Come O Come Emmanuel (yes, again, put your fork down and stop eating until we’re done) Another will just remember that mom didn’t really seem to cook for the entire month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and gosh, we ate a lot of crock pot chili that time of year.
Like, a lot.
Which I’ll totally present to them as a our small effort to scale back and simplify and make the little sacrifice, and not solely due to maternal holiday fatigue.
Some of the tried and failed activities of years gone by: making personalized Christmas ornaments, and homemade Jesse tree + ornaments crafted lovingly each morning as the corresponding Scripture passage was read aloud. We got 17 days in before everybody’s enthusiasm evaporated, mine first. Now we have a ziplock bag of tattered yarn and construction paper creations that has spent 4 years in Advent decor exile, and this year I’m giving myself permission to toss the thing and admit Jesse tree defeat.
My sister and I were recalling our childhood advent calendar – a quilted fabric banner which hung on the fridge with numbered pockets for each date, a traveling star moving from space to space until finally arriving at the top – baby Jesus! – on Christmas eve.
I can’t believe mom made that, my sister recalled with awe, shaking her head in wonder.
“Mom didn’t make that, she bought it at that weird craft fair held at the high school every year.”
We regarded each other solemnly and laughed. Our memories, too, are tinted rose by the beautifying and forgiving mists of time.
Absent are the Christmas mornings filled with wailing and gnashing of teeth over awful presents or unfairly distributed loot; the indignity of being prodded and brushed and stuffed into itchy tights to suffer through a long, cold Dan Schuette-fied liturgy in the gym, exiled to the overflow crowd of which we always seemed to be a part, shifting our feet miserably in puddles of dirty melting snow as we stood on the edge of the basketball court.
I dreamily recount my own fond memories of “the Christmas club” which, at the time, was almost certainly born of necessity, my mother tossing up her hands in exhaustion and flinging rolls of scotch tape and dollar store wrapping paper at her adolescent children at 9 pm on Christmas eve. Which, if you’re reading, mom, is deeply comforting to your now thirtysomething daughter who is exhausted by the prospect of providing your grandchildren with all the comfort and joy this holiday season.
When I say I can do more this year, what I mean is that I can be somewhat intentional in my direction for our family celebration. But I can’t guarantee that the highlight of the season won’t be yogurt tubes for breakfast, lunch, and every snack between.
“Remember when mom used to give us Go-gurts to help us enter into the penitential season of Advent? So we’d always be a little bit hungry and think of the Holy Family journeying to Bethlehem, unable to find shelter?”
I can imagine my extremely literal 6-year-old pointing out to his brother one December night in the future, perhaps over beers, that “mom was probably just really tired and all she bought was yogurt that year.”
Touche, future John Paul. You found me out.
Some plans for executing said intention?
More family time doing spent nothing more than snuggling on the couch with candles lit. Maybe we’ll pray a decade of the rosary. Maybe we’ll just stream the James Taylor holiday station each evening.
More nights where I surprise them with thermoses of hot chocolate and we jump in the car for an impromptu drive through the fancy neighborhood for light peeping.
More focus on little details like candles always lit, Christmas jammies worn for a month straight, the occasional daily Mass as a family, and tiny fake Ikea Christmas trees in bedrooms.
I want to sit back and enjoy this season, in order that they get to really enjoy the season. Less planning, yelling, and scrubbing, and more saying yes to marshmallows and requests for movies and my participation in coloring time. Letting them touch the nativity scene figures if they want to, the real ones from Italy, and smudge up my perfect holiday decor.
They’ll still probably choose to remember fondly, during Christmases to come, the butt joke we weren’t quick enough to bleep out from the beginning of Home Alone instead of a charming homemade craft their loving mother slaved over, and that’s okay. This time of year was never about me, after all.
Motherhood is nothing if not a slow suffocation of the ego, the self annihilating and oddly liberating realization that you are not, after all, the center of your own universe.
No better time to put that knowledge into practice than the most wonderful time of the year.
Last summer I reached out to my internet buddy and running-mom extraordinaire Colleen Martin and beseeched her to impart some of her wisdom as a seasoned boy mom in the tech era. She’s not super seasoned as in old, mind you, but she is super seasoned as in holy 6 boys, batman! And one sweet girl sandwiched in the middle.
I’m bookmarking my own blog here to reference in a few short years when my kids reach phone hankering age (let’s be honest though, despite attending a low tech classical Catholic school with zero screens permitted among the student body, our 8 year old is already badgering us for a phone. Oy.)
Colleen, thanks so much for sharing how your family handles screens:
Jenny asked me to write this post awhile ago, before summer had even started, but I think having waited this long and made it through another summer (aka screen season) has given me more food for thought to write this now. So I guess procrastination does pay off sometimes!
But not when it comes to family rules about screen times.
It’s never too early to discuss expectations, set rules, and enforce them even if it means being the mean parent. I recently came across this quote:
Scary, isn’t it? These times we live in are full of screens. (Screen time, just to clarify, for us, is tv, movies, video games, tablets, computers and phones…anything with a screen.) It’s called social media because it’s literally how kids (and adults) have social lives. Gone are the days of bike riding through the neighborhood and ending up sleeping over at some friend’s house. We may feel like we can’t let our kids be kids like we were because of all the terrible and disgusting stories of abuse we hear from the people we trust most, that we have to keep them safe and a lot of time that means indoors … and if your kids are anything like mine, indoors = boredom = asking for screens. That’s the hardest part about summer, I think, the perpetual boredom unless we take them somewhere to do something. So we are a little more lax on the amount of time our children can be on screens, as long as they have been active for most of the day. Phil and I like to relax at the end of a long, busy day by watching a little TV, and I’m fine with my kids doing the same. We all need some downtime, ya know?
We have some great (pretty strict) screen rules during the school year for our kids:
Any school-aged kid gets ZERO screen time during the school week.
On weekends, they can have individual screen time during the baby’s nap time and then at night, we will let them watch a movie/tv show together.
The little preschool guys get a half hour show each evening, after dinner and bath time, and it’s something completely preschool appropriate.
The bigger kids can usually be found watching this with the little kids, but I’m cool with letting them all sit together if they want to see the same episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for the 17th time. We always say it’s time for a “little kid show” and make sure it’s nothing any of the school-aged kids would ever choose for themselves, though I often hear them trying to convince the 2 year old to pick Spongebob or Power Rangers. Umm, no, but nice try! We are not monsters and do allow exceptions to every rule when it comes to things like important sports games on tv, etc. The kids know what the standard rule is and enjoy the occasional treat.
Little kids are easy to deal with when it comes to screens. Just don’t give them free access to it. Be in control and get them into a good routine. Decide what you want to do for your family and that becomes the norm. There are going to be seasons in family life when the kids have more screen time due to whatever else is going on at home (illness, sports schedules, travelling, new baby, etc.) and as much as I have wanted the ideal screen time rules, flexibility is key to not feeling discouraged. There’s not one right way for every family, and little kids = little problems so they are a good “trial run” for what comes ahead.
Tweens and Teens, that’s what comes ahead. (And they are awesome!)
The hard part of policing screens in our house comes when they are tweens and teens. Our kids all go to school and are involved in tons of sports and lessons (which is also helpful in keeping them active and off screens). Because of this busy family life we lead, once a child reaches the age of 13, they become a babysitter. Since we have no home phone, this also means the 13 year old gets their own cell phone. With this phone comes a whole new set of rules (I swear we are fun parents, we just are really trying to get these kids to heaven!) We buy them an inexpensive smartphone but then make it dumb. Ha! We want our kids to be able to call, text, and have some apps on their phone, but we don’t give them any data so that they can only have internet access while at home on Wifi and we don’t give them our Wifi password. We also make all phones “live” on the kitchen counter, and they are never allowed to bring their phones upstairs.
My kids are far from perfect (like their mother) and get their phones taken away for any violations. The removal of individual screen time is actually a go-to punishment in our house, that way the kids lose the choice of what to watch/play but the parents aren’t punished because we can still put on a family movie when everybody just needs some chill time and forced family bonding.
Once our kids go to the Catholic high school, they are required to have a laptop because most of their books are electronic now. So not only are they reading textbooks online, but they are also writing their papers online, using Google Classroom, taking notes in class on their laptops, and communicating with teachers via the internet. It’s a whole new world and a whole new set of worries for parents. I can’t say “You’ve been on your laptop for three hours, get off!” because he is just doing his homework and studying. (But also fooling around and watching a dumb youtube video here, googling a sports score there, you get it.) As it is with adults, it’s hard for teens to stay focused on the task at hand (homework) when you have the whole wide world at your fingertips. So how do we try to watch everything they’re doing online?
I’ve written about why we started using Covenant Eyes before, but it has been a real lifesaver for us. It’s a tool that allows parents oversee what their children (and each other if desired) are doing online without actually having to stand over their shoulders. t’s a tool that opens the door for communication and also blocks dangerous sites. Kids just log in to Covenant Eyes before they can get online, and it tracks their usage, and sends a weekly report to the account user (the parents). Sometimes I dread opening the report on Tuesday morning to find out my teen has been watching dumb YouTube videos at 9 pm when he said he was studying, but honestly I’d rather know about his mistakes then have no clue what he’s doing online. At least this way, he knows he’s being checked in on, and that alone is an easy way for him to avoid temptation.
I definitely dragged my feet on this for too long, not wanting yet another issue to have to think about, but when one of our tweenage kids googled an inappropriate word on the iPad, we knew it was time to take the plunge. The monthly subscription for a family is $15.99, and even less for an individual or couple. It’s so much easier to never get hooked on pornography than to try and break the habit, and we want to give them their best chance at fighting that battle. Covenant Eyes gives them the freedom to be online while also helping them make good choices, and that’s priceless once you have kids on screens so often. Perhaps I should work in their Sales Department because I love them so much!
I feel that just like every parent, we are constantly trying to evaluate the new social media tools and keep up with current internet trends while also helping our kids get to Heaven. We don’t allow a few things that we feel can easily cause trouble, like sleepovers, hanging out at people’s homes we don’t know, and being online without supervision. We’re just doing our best to keep them safe and happy and holy, and our screen rules are part of the process. Like I said before, starting with screen rules when they’re young is easy, but it’s important, because it sets ground rules for the rest of their lives. Will they binge on video games while at a cousin’s house? Yup. Will they find disturbing images online when they’re at college. Of course. I can’t worry about all the possible scenarios that might occur, I’d go crazy.
I know they are human and all I can do is try to make them the best humans I can while they are under my roof. Lots of love and fun and freedom comes alongside rules and chores and boundaries. Communication is key and the ability to have fun together is huge as well. We try to be Yes parents whenever we can, so that our Nos are serious enough to be understood.
You need to decide what is important in your home, and start setting the ground rules now.
Don’t be afraid to go against the culture if it means raising quality adults, that’s literally our job.
Screens aren’t evil, so find a system that works for you and hopefully I’ve been able to share some good tips and tricks. I don’t have all the answers (I haven’t even had a college kid yet!) and I don’t pretend to. I’m just over here trying to raise good kids to survive this present world and to one day make it to heaven in the next, same as you.
This is the first year where we’re feeling like we can creep past bare minimum mode – just a single toe over the line, honestly – and attempt to do a little something extra for Thanksgiving.
I’m not hosting or even cooking all that much this year, so no doubt that inflates my sense of wellbeing. If you have a nursing baby who is under 6 months old, are pregnant, are postpartum to any sort of baby at all, have a child with special needs, a husband who works 120 hours a week, etc etc etc, then just stop reading and look away, you’re already maxed out on awesome acts of service.
If you are a mom to older kids and have this thing down already, then won’t you tip your hand and let us freshman have a peek at what you do to help your kids connect with the deeper meaning of this special holiday?
In years past, our friends who live closer to downtown Denver have bundled up early in the morning and brought Starbucks to the homeless people who congregate near the cathedral. I love that idea, but we’re a little far out in the suburbs to execute it. We do have some homeless people around, but no specific concentration where we could seek them out. It’s more like you’ll see someone at an intersection here or there. Our parish food pantry hosted a frozen turkey drive…yesterday. So that’s a miss for us, too.
I conducted a casual poll of mom friends asking for ideas and came away with some good suggestions: bringing treats to homeless people, passing out coffee, delivering donuts or sandwiches, handing out breakfast burritos, going to a park with hand warmers, hats and mittens, assembling blessing bags, etc. to distribute to panhandlers at intersections and freeway on ramps.
Some businesses will donate their products if you ask. A few businesses my friends said they’d had success partnering with:
Jimmy Johns: will sell day their day old loaves for $.50 a piece
Starbucks: will sometimes donate coffee with advance notice; will provide creamer, sugar, cups and lids at no charge when you order a coffee traveler
Dunkin Donuts: will sometimes donate with advance notice
Krispy Kreme: will donate day old donuts with advance notice
I’m guessing many fast casual chains and coffee places would be willing to donate, especially bread places like Panera, etc, where if they don’t sell that day’s offering, they aren’t able to sell it the next morning.
I love the idea of giving food at Thanksgiving, especially since it tends to be a time when we as Americans overdo it in the consumption department. I also think it’s a super relatable way of doing charity with kids. Kids understand being hungry. Kids understand having an empty tummy, and the immediate gratification of someone handing you something good to eat because they love you.
If the idea of serving on Thanksgiving itself is overwhelming, I think taking back Black Friday as a day to serve instead of shop is pretty awesome.
I’d really like to take our kids to a nursing home or retirement community to visit with the residents and provide a little comic relief. I worked at a nursing home while I was in grad school, and it made a lasting impression on me. Most of my residents just wanted someone to talk to, and would light up whenever a child – especially a baby – came onsite. Many lived far from their families and had visitors only once a year, or even less frequently than that. It was so life giving for them to just sit and visit with someone, even if it was only me or one of the other staff members. I will never forget the kind of relational poverty I witnessed there. Now here I sit with a bumper crop of my own children and I’ve yet to make good on my vow to return and visit nursing homes one day when I became a mom. Maybe this year’s the year.
Finally, I don’t want to rule out serving within the home itself. Especially where little kids are involved, I’m forever underestimating what they’re capable of, and they’re forever surprising me with their competence. (Well, and other things. There are other surprises, too.)
Inviting them to set the table, peel potatoes, peel and cut apples for pie, fill a pot with water, use a pitcher to fill water glasses at the dining table, etc are all valuable and super #Montessoriandyouknowwhat ways to let kids participate in and contribute to the family economy, and not just for the holidays.
So I’m all ears guys, what does your family do that has become a tradition? What are you hoping to try out this year? Have you had any memorable flops, like taking toddlers to the soup kitchen and violating food safety standards (ahem Luke cough cough)? Anything you’d do again? Anything you’d advise against, at all costs?
Let’s start by stating the obvious: finances are pretty personal, and as such, everybody’s circumstances are going to look a little different. What seems like an insane amount of risk/exposure looks like daily life for another family. What seems like a nice, healthy income starts to seem a little anemic once you figure in the cost of living and housing in a hot market.
We started riding the Dave Ramsey train before we got married. We read through Total Money Makeover as an engaged couple, knocking out tens of thousands of dollars of debt (almost all of it student loans) in our first 5 years of marriage. We cash flowed our first two babies, lived in sketchy rentals, drove a single car, side hustled, etc, etc. We were ALL IN. And it worked really, really well until we pulled up our roots, sold all our worldly possessions, and moved half a world away to Rome.
After we returned to the US the following year and added baby number three to the mix, we started to see our debt snowball lose momentum. We had sold our (paid off) sensible sedan before our big move, and we found ourselves needing a car to live in the suburbs with 3 kids. We bought a well-used minivan and just like that we had a car payment again for the first time in years.
Time and babies have continued to pile up, and now we’re five kids deep and living in a wonderful home of our own that we hope to be buried in, because that’s about how long it will take us to pay off the mortgage.
We’re mostly happy we bought, except on the day that the mortgage payment is due.
I get a lot of questions about how we “afford” so many kids, and the short answer is: we don’t.
We’re probably overextended from a financial perspective. And yet, we have never gone without.
Working for the Church isn’t exactly lucrative, but it sure is nice getting sent to Rome every year or two for one reason or another.
Having kids is a pretty tremendous upfront cost, but hand-me-down baby stuff comes in handy for subsequent arrivals.
Daycare is exorbitant, but working from home during early mornings and late nights makes it possible to live on one-and-a-half incomes and avoid it.
A good Catholic school is expensive, but having a larger family enables us to apply for – and receive – generous financial aid.
All that to say, things seem to have had a way of working out. As I creep more solidly into my mid-30s, I’m happy we didn’t wait to have kids, or space them further apart.
I’m grateful we weren’t in a position where we felt like we had too.
I think being from large families ourselves, we both accepted early on that having kids meant going without certain things, and saying yes to being uncomfortable. I don’t mean like settling for mediocrity or being reckless, but just having a baseline level of familiarity with the unknown and a little bit of risk.
We’re both working like crazy to get our income up and to pay our debt down, but in the meantime, we’re still having babies, making memories, and learning how to perform a bunch of basic home repairs courtesy of Youtube.
What we don’t spend on lessons, activities, sports, and toys we definitely do spend at the grocery store and in doctor’s copays. We aren’t really saving for retirement or college, but I imagine we’ll get around to it once we’ve finally paid off my degree.
This has ended up forcing us to depend on God in a tangible way, and we’ve seen Him do some pretty remarkable things for us financially over the years.
I feel like it’s worth mentioning that we’ve been committed to tithing ten percent of our income for most of our marriage; it really does seem to open up space for God to work. I don’t mean like He’s magically multiplying our dollar signs (but come Lord Jesus, have your way with those), rather that there is room for Him to work because we need Him to work. We feel a little crazy making that first line item in our budget His, but we’ve never regretted spending “too much” on God.
(Some great causes to give to: FOCUS, the International Missionary Foundation, China Little Flower, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Classical, and CNEWA.)
Do I worry about how we’ll be able to continue to afford Catholic school? Yep. But I volunteer as much as I’m able, support our school financially as best as we can, and gratefully accept the financial aid they offer us, one school year at a time.
Am I worried about what would happen if one of us were to die young? Definitely. Our life insurance premiums are a priority in our budget, even while we’re still paying off those student loans.
I try not to get too far ahead of the present when I think about our family, the future, and what we’ll need when we get there.
We’re trying to strike a balance between prudence and generosity, and to work as if everything depends on us but, you know, trust like everything depends on God.
I will say my stress over finances has decreased as our family size has increased, and I have no earthly reason for that. I guess I’ve mellowed with age? Or perhaps it is the repeated exposure to divine providence; presenting the Lord with one need after another and watching Him come through, time and time again, in a spectacular variety of ways.
If you have any specific questions feel free to ask them, and I’ll try my best to answer in a way that’s helpful. Obviously this isn’t an exhaustive list of all the expenses of having kids, and people have different priorities and consider different areas of the budget to be less negotiable than others. Eager to hear what other big or bigger than average families experience in the realm of personal finance!
This purported ancient Chinese proverb is usually ironically bestowed as more curse than blessing. We are certainly living in them, we Catholics in these waning days of the summer of 2018.
I feel an almost crushing burden of confusion, more than anything else, when I spend too much time going down rabbit holes and clicking over to related content, my mind swirling for somewhere firm to land. I told a friend this morning that I’ve had the sensation of my brain, not unlike an airplane, circling the airport looking for an open runway and, finding nowhere safe to land, being forced to remain in a frustrating holding pattern. I feel like I’m running out of fuel, to add insult to injury.
But when I ponder these days of crises with a more sober and serious disposition, I am forced to admit that my lived reality, my day-to-day tasks and struggles and responsibilities, remain almost maddeningly the same: deepen my own interior life. Be faithful to my vocation – and to the sacred vows I made. And teach my children the Gospel.
All else is, as they say, vanity.
And perhaps if I spent overly much time before July of this year letting priests and bishops and “the hierarchy” carry water for me, spiritually speaking, that time has passed. I cannot rely any longer on my own nasty little habit of clericalism, assuming the best of men of the cloth.
Are there good and holy priests? Of course. Real saints among us. And devils, too? Yes. Aren’t we finding out how very many…
And yet, what is this to you, and to me? Will a holy priest get me to heaven? Not if I don’t avail myself of the Sacraments of which he is a humble custodian, pursuing my own path of holiness with the aid of the mysterious sustenance Christ left for our earthly sojourn. A wicked priest is, too, only a humble custodian of God’s mercy, no matter the delusions of grandeur or murderous arrogance he may harbor.
I keep coming back to the thing I know to be true in these difficult times: Jesus.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. As I am not without sin like the first two, I find myself wanting to cling to the best practices of that last guy and live as closely by his example as possible.
How did Joseph become a saint?
He lived with Jesus and Mary.
He was probably rarely outside of their physical presence, and he carried their spiritual presence with him like a flame in his heart at his work table. How often he must have paused in his necessary, earthly, mundane, exhausting work to take a cool drink offered by the little boy Jesus, to share a quick visit with Mary and feel the consolation of her gentle hand on his aching back. His sole concern as their provider and protector was to do his work to the best of his ability so that they would be fed, clothed, and sheltered for the glory of God.
Are my responsibilities as a mother much different? Can I push aside my immediate responsibilities to fret over what more I should be doing besides working quietly to the absolute limits of my human frailty to provide for the family whom God has entrusted me with? Maybe you’re not a parent. Maybe your current vocation is to a classroom full of children or a conference room full of employees, or even an auditorium full of fellow students. But I feel certain that we are each being called to emulate Joseph to the best of our abilities, executing our work on earth with as much care and humility as possible.
I cannot hope for Mary to hand me a cool drink of water or offer a clean cloth to wipe the sweat from my brow while I toil in the laundry room downstairs, fighting spiders and acedia to fulfill my daily duties, but I can turn to her in the rosary. I can align my heart with hers, praying for her Son to intercede in the lives of those other sons of her heart, her priests, that they would become more conformed to His passion.
I can’t open my arms for toddler Jesus to come running full tilt to leap in after a long day in the woodshed, but I can open my arms to my own children, pulling them into my lap to pray through the Scriptures, or bringing them along for the world’s fastest and least reflective visits to Jesus, fully present in Eucharistic Adoration.
I can go to Joseph. The first disciple of Jesus Christ in so many ways. I can love what he loved and live for what he lived for: the Mother, and the Son.
I’ve talked about finances here on the blog a time or two, but I’m ready to talk a bit more frankly. After the financial fiasco that hit our sewer line last week drained our itty bitty emergency fund (but could have been much, much worse, as you know if you follow me on Insta), I decided the time had come to officially call the postpartum period closed for business.
(And by that I mean the period of making declarations along the lines of “I just had a baby, so I deserve this carry-out iced coffee.”)
I possibly do deserve that coffee, but I can throw a handful of ice cubes into the conveniently-cooled mug that has been sitting on the kitchen table since breakfast and call it good.
In the name of transparency let’s address the reality that yes, we are solidly middle class. We have health insurance and wifi and my husband has a job that compensates him fairly for his work, and yet, we are still basically paycheck to paycheck. We do live in an expensive housing market, and we do have a large family, so that tightens the belt a bit right off the bat.
Could we cut back and be a bit more financially sure-footed? I think so. Which is what I’m aiming to do for the next four months, between now and Christmas.
We are not likely going to be getting massive pay raises any time soon, so I have to take a clear eyed look at the budget and admit why it isn’t working better. One word: convenience.
It’s convenient to buy already-shredded cheese. It’s convenient to buy disposable diapers, and baby food in pouches, and sparkling water in cans that could possibly have paid off one of my student loans by now if I had a dollar for every can of LaCroix I’ve ever guzzled. But looking backwards in carbonated regret is no way to live one’s life.
But, I mean, it’s embarrassing. I live a life of relative ease – luxury, even, by much of the world’s standards – and yet when faced with a potential home repair quoted (thankfully, erroneously) into the thousands, my life as I knew it flashed before my eyes. Would we pull the kids out of school to pay for it? Sell one of our cars? Get a second job at night for a couple months? Take out (yet another) credit card?
Thanks be to God, the company who quoted us the repair ended up being shady. So what could have cost us $7,000 ended up costing about a tenth of that.
Still, it was a wake up call. I want to be a better steward of our resources, and to help alleviate some of the pressure of being the primary provider from Dave’s shoulders.
I also just don’t want to worry about money any more. It’s fun to eat out and carry around a paper cup of steaming, liquid alertness. But I imagine it’s more fun to be able to go grocery shopping any day of the month, and to have a failed transmission be an annoyance rather than a tragedy.
Want a peek at where we’ll be cutting back? Here are the things on the chopping block:
My gym membership. OUCH. But not really. I prefer walking to swimming, it turns out, and if my body ever feels sufficiently recovered from birth, I think I’d prefer running even more. Swimming is great, but it wasn’t getting the weight off, and it’s a huge time suck to get a workout in. Minimum 75 minutes to get there/get in and out/swim a mile. Plus, we can’t afford the kids club for 5 kids, so I can only go at 5 am or 9 pm.
Takeout coffee. I love Starbucks. I know better and I have tasted better, but what can I say? As a dog returns to its vomit…
Eating out, period. We go on 2 dates a month because we swap childcare with one of my sisters. It’s awesome, but I think we’re going to pull back to eating at home first and then springing for “coffee or cocktails” for the scope of this project. (Date night funds come from a separate cash category than eating out. I’m aiming for $50/month or less for date nights).
Buying crap at Arc/Goodwill/Craigslist. I am an amazing thrifter. My kids have great shoes, I’ve scored some killer furniture deals, and we have a great and growing classic chapter books library. But I can get dangerously loose at the Arc. One thing leads to another and before I know it I’ve got awesome Nike soccer cleats for the next 2 seasons and another adorable Aden and Anais swaddle in organic muslin and 3 cute tops for Evie in my cart and…you see where I’m going with this. I might have to swear off the thrift stores entirely while we’re in belt tightening mode, so alluring is their siren call to me. I think thrift stores are for me what Target is to most moms.
Speaking of Target...well, not Target specifically, but brick n mortar stores, period. I’m going to take our local grocery store, King Soopers, up on their offer of 4 free uses of their curbside delivery program.
When I’m walking through a store, I tend to toss in unplanned items that I forgot to add to the list, plus the occasional box of diaper wipes just because can you ever have too many diaper wipes on hand? No, no you can not. But maybe I can slum it with a different and cheaper brand than the Huggies Naturals I’ve been faithful to since we brought home baby number one. Not gonna do the math on that one, because hindsight! It’s blinding! I am also hoping shopping only one time per week at a single store will help trim costs.
Starting/cooking dinner earlier than 4 pm. I am a notoriously reluctant cook. And I lose steam as the day progresses. A day that starts out with a hot breakfast may well end with frozen waffles, or some other convenience food that doesn’t actually fill anyone up. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth at 9 pm and a whole fourth meal’s worth of snacks before bed. This morning I made the Pioneer Woman’s Sunday Night Stew at 10 am, and now it’s done same as I am.
Finally, we’d like to contribute to our parish capital campaign to renovate our ugly church, but haven’t been able to see much wiggle room in our budget. Suddenly things are feeling a bit looser.
I’m curious to see what other people’s “luxuries” are. I assume if you have internet access you have at least a few of them in your life. Maybe a whole lot fewer than we do, or maybe more. Are you debt free? We’re hoping to become so eventually – using that smart financial program you’ve seen me chatting up on IG, Wallet Win. Have you paid off your student loans yet, or would you like to do so before your kids start incurring their own? Kicked your Starbucks habit? Whipped up 101 different rice and beans recipes you’re dying to share with me?
