23Nov
I am thankful for the home that we live in and for the lives that we will build here.
I am thankful for a job that makes me smile every day and for the middle schoolers who allow me to be part of their world for a little while.
I am thankful for a church that teaches about the power of prayer, the importance of family, and the strength of faith.
I am thankful for friendships that make me a better person.
I am thankful for the readers who come back here every day to journey with me, without judgment, expectations, or demands.
I am thankful for just enough money in the bank each month.
I am thankful for family who send funny emails, inappropriate texts, and who are worth everything we’ve been through to live close to them again.
I am thankful for an incredibly smart, energetic, innovative, and funny two-year-old son who reminds me every single day that life is just good.
I am thankful for the beautiful smiles, nighttime cuddles, and incredible happiness that my seven-month-old daughter brings into my life.
I am thankful for the person who kisses me every morning, says he loves me every night, and stands beside me every day.
I have a lot to be thankful for this year, but above all of those things, I think I am most thankful for the trials and tribulations in our lives because, through those experiences, I have learned to be thankful for everything else.
Wishing you and your family all the blessings of thankfulness,
Katie, Chris, Michael, and Gracie
13Sep
Having two kiddies in daycare is, among other things, not cheap. In fact, I write a $375 check every single week. Feel sorry for me. Feel very, very sorry for me. I know my checking account does.
But just like we did with Bean, we’re somehow finding a way to make it work. It’s not easy and we have to go without a lot of things (goodbye wonderful hair stylist I just found who I can’t afford to ever see again…), but we’re doing it. Our bills are paid, we’re all healthy, we’re all (mostly) happy. What more can I ask for?
To help with the costs around our house, one of the things I’ve started doing again is meal planning. I used to do it many moons ago when we first had Bean and I was, ironically enough, flipping out over how we would ever afford ONE child in daycare. But after a few months, I realized we weren’t going to be living in a cardboard box and so I got lazy and stopped. When we moved into our new house and the kids started daycare, though, I decided it was probably time to get back to the ol’ recipe book and shopping list thing so that I could scrimp and save as many pennies as I could.
For me, meal planning begins with a menu. I know some people who start with coupons and whatever is on sale, but to be honest, I don’t really have time (or the patience) to be that strategic. With a good menu, a few coupons, and a shopping list, I get our grocery bill down low enough. On Saturday mornings, I sit down at our kitchen table with a few tools. My church’s cookbook, all of my Gooseberry cookbooks (if you don’t have any of these – get one, get many of them…), my Betty Crocker cookbook, a notepad, and my envelope of coupons.
First, I begin by flipping through the cookbooks for meal ideas. Because I work and don’t get home until around 5:00, I look for quick, simple, filling, healthy meals. We do a lot of grilled meats (chicken, ribs, porkchops), a veggie, and a starch. But lately, I’ve found that I can cook a little more substantial meals and then use leftovers to make a second meal the next night. For example, last week, I put a whole chicken, potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, and garlic into the crock pot before work. That night, we had chicken and veggies with a big salad. The next night, I took what was left of the chicken and put it into a chicken, rice, and broccoli casserole. And the next day for lunch, Chris and I were able to take leftover casserole. That was three meals for two people out of that one chicken, and we probably could have stretched it one more dinner or lunch, but Chris was over chicken at that point.
When I’m hunting for recipes, I look for things that cook large quantities at one time – like that whole chicken, or I’ll make a couple pounds of ground beef for one meal and then reserve the beef for the next night. That saves me time and it enables me to cook bigger meals for our family without wasting any food.
Here is my menu this week:
Sunday night: Low Country Boil (a Louisiana classic: shrimp, corn on the cob, potatoes, and sausage all boiled together with Old Bay seasoning) and french bread
Monday night: Sante Fe chicken (in a crock pot with black beans, corn, and salsa), Mexican rice, and a salad
Tuesday night: Flank steak (marinated in V-8 juice, Worcestershire, and hot sauce), leftover Mexican rice and black beans, and watermelon
Wednesday night: BBQ ribs, homemade french fries (baked, not fried), and lima beans
Thursday night: Leftover chicken on homemade pizza and fruit salad
Friday night: Leftover night
With my recipes chosen, I make my grocery list based off of what I need for my recipes (less anything I already have). I also add fresh fruits and veggies, bread, milk, and a few other staples, like Cheerios for Bean and Chris’s breakfast. Usually, if I stick to my recipe lists, I don’t actually end up having to buy a lot at one time. I keep my panty well stocked with things like chicken broth, canned veggies, and pasta by buying it in bulk when it’s on sale. Really, the only things I end up buying on my weekly shopping trip are the necessities for dinner that week, replenishing my lunch supply, and fresh produce.
With my shopping list prepared, I go through my coupons. I’m not a big couponer, but I do keep a giant envelope on the side of my fridge and I toss in whatever coupons I find throughout the week. We don’t get the paper, but I get a lot of stuff in the mail and so I stick the whole ad down in my envelope and on Saturday mornings I clip out all the coupons. That way I’m not wasting time through the week clipping and snipping. Saturday morning, I clip all my coupons from my envelope and pull out any that are for products on my list.
Then, with my list and coupons in hand, I head off to the grocery store – ALONE. In the past couple months I have learned two valuable lessons about grocery shopping:
1. Never take your kids.
2. Never take your husband.
I leave all of them at home and go by myself. For one thing, I don’t like having to stop and explain to Chris everything I’m buying or listen to him complain about how he doesn’t like sour cream when I’ve been putting sour cream in our food for years and he’s never noticed. But for another, it takes a fair amount of concentration to save money at the grocery store. And when my babies are all over the place and my husband is throwing things like bags of Coco Puffs and four tubs of ice cream into the buggy, I’m not trying to save anything but my sanity.
On average, we spend a little less than $100 a week on groceries, but with meal planning, I’m seeing that number get smaller and smaller each week.
What about you? How do you save a few pennies in your family?
First, I’m going to apologize to those of you who tune in to my blog for things other than childbearing and child-rearing because those seem to be the hot topics here lately. But I can’t help it. Not only do I have baby on the brain, not only is it impacting my marriage, not only does it consume all my thoughts right now, but it seems like everyone I know is either pregnant or, more commonly, thinking about starting a family.
Chris and I were married at the age of 21. YEARS before most of our friends were even in serious relationships. Which means when we had our first baby, we were YEARS ahead of any of those friends again. Not that we minded. Chris and I have always kind of done our own thing. It doesn’t bother us to be different than others. And it has put us in the unique position of being the “experts” on the subject of having kids among some of our friends.
Chris and I as the experts. On parenting. I know…scary thought.
Anyway, in the past couple months I have been asked at least five times by five different good friends how Chris and I prepared financially to have a baby. When they find out that we spend $1,000 a month on daycare alone, you can see their eyes widen and hives start to break out on their chests. None of the couples could fathom ever having an extra $1,000 laying around for daycare, not to mention all the extra expenses that come with adding another person to your family. And so, each couple has asked us very politely, “How the heck do you pay for all that?!?!?”
First of all, I should tell you that $1,000 a month for daycare in our area is pretty high. We knew that. But we felt like if Bean was going to spend all day there, we wanted it to be the best we could possibly afford. So, while it strains us to keep him in such a nice center, we feel that is worth the strain. But even cutting the cost of daycare down to, let’s just say, $750 a month, it’s still a huge expense. And if you don’t need a daycare, there is still the cost of insurance, diapers, food, supplies, savings, and all the other little oddities that children require.
In short, kids ain’t cheap.
But I’ll tell you just like I told our friends, I don’t know one family who was financially ready for kids when they got pregnant. The truth is that (don’t freak out here…) kids cost so darn much there’s just no way to prepare!!! I don’t know if there’s a correct amount of money you should have in your savings account or if there’s an appropriate figure on a paycheck stub that says you’re ready. But I do know that when you say you are “prepared” to have children, what you really should mean is that you have a plan. You may not have it all together yet. You may still be working out the details. You may still wake up in cold sweats of panic in the middle of the night. But there IS a plan. That’s how we prepared financially for children. We made a plan and then we figured out how to stick to that plan as we went.
It would be a lie to tell you that we never had to cut back or cut down or cut out a lot of the expenses. Over the years since we were first pregnant with Bean, our spending habits have changed profoundly. We can’t simply just up and go out to eat, dropping $50 on a random Tuesday night meal for the two of us. We can’t simply drive away for a weekend because food, hotels, and gas all add up. We can’t splurge for no reason on things like ping pong tables and iPhones. But, it’s also not like we don’t ever get to do those things now because we have Bean, and soon little Gracie. We still get to do those things, it just takes a little more planning and strategy now. It’s not as convenient anymore to spend money.
And, you know, that’s not such a bad thing. Having Bean taught us not just how to be parents, but how to create, manage, and stick to a family budget. It taught us how to prioritize savings. It taught us to value things like health insurance and retirement plans. It taught us to look at finances not just as a day-to-day task, but as a long-term plan that we needed for our family. We needed to learn those lessons. We just happened to learn them because we had a baby on the way.
The funny thing about cutting back for your children is that you don’t even really notice it happening. I know that when we found out the cost of daycare, Chris and I about died. Where in the world would we find an extra $1,000 a month???? We didn’t have that kind of money. But little by little, we changed our spending habits and we cut out some of that extra stuff we had in our lives that we really didn’t need and by the time Bean arrived, the money was there and I couldn’t even remember what I had given up to make that happen. Because I was giving things up for my child, it didn’t feel like giving things up or sacrificing or even compromising. It just felt like we were sticking to the plan. It felt natural – stressful at times, but still natural.
Don’t get me wrong. There were times when it was really irritating and there were even more times when tightening our belt felt like tightening a noose around our marriage. I remember when we first got to Florida and I was unemployed and we were living in a terrible rental house barely able to pay our bills. For Chris’s birthday, his family sent money, like they always do. And Chris decided to take that birthday money and buy an iPhone for himself. He, of course, talked to me about it first, but then I just felt like a total loser saying to him that I thought he should put his birthday money in our savings account. But it had to be said. Here I was clipping coupons and driving all over town to find the cheapest groceries and he wanted to buy an iPhone! We had a huge fight about that one.
It’s not always easy to cut back and it’s not always painless. But what you get in return for that kind of drastic change in your spending habits makes it totally worth it. Sure, we can’t go out to eat every weekend, but this past Friday night Chris, Bean, and I sat on our kitchen counter eating pretzels, popcorn, and hot dogs for dinner. Then we sat on the couch and watched Nanny 911 while Bean brought us just about every book from his bookshelf and sang us every song he knew. There was no bath. There was no bedtime. And when Bean was just about to fall over asleep in the living room, Chris and I sat together with him next to his bed and took turns reading to him until he fell asleep. To me, it isn’t a sacrifice to give up a $50 dinner out somewhere to spend that kind of time with my family. It’s just part of our who we are. I’m happy to do it and, even more, I’m proud that Chris and I have been able to make changes like that so that our family can have what it needs.
So, if money is what is holding you back from having babies, let me tell you what I so eloquently told my closest friends:
Pashaw!
Money comes and goes. It always will. But you plan for the unexpected and you celebrate the expected. And then you cross your fingers, pray like hell, grab your partner’s hand, and jump in. It’s only money, right?
*****
Today I am grateful for my mom.
09Nov
This post is a long-time coming and is a direct order from Chris, who, in addition to all the other titles he holds in my life, now holds the title of, “Therapist.”
This past weekend I went to visit my grandmother and my parents for the day while Chris was working. Bean and I had a great afternoon with my Grandma and mom and after we said goodbye to my Grandma, we headed over to my Mom’s house to pick up a few things and then Bean and I were going to get on the road back home. My mom and I were sitting in her living room chatting about this and that and for whatever reason, I started crying. And I don’t think I stopped until Sunday afternoon. A lot of people would blame a sudden onset of emotion like that on being pregnant, but I’ve been using that excuse for things for the past couple months and this weekend I finally hung up that excuse and started taking responsibility.
The truth is that Chris has been right. I’m struggling a bit with depression, or rather anxiety, at the moment. And while I have tried everything I can to pass off what’s been going on as just being a pregnant, full-time working mother of a toddler, the whole truth is that it is much deeper than that. Pregnancy hormones have certainly contributed and I’m sure they have made some things harder to get over, but deep down I have known that this is more than just hormonal.
Before I go any further, you should know these two things about me, if you don’t already:
1. I am a people pleaser. In the worst sense.
2. I have incredibly high expectations for myself. As in, incredibly UNREALISTIC expectations for myself.
I’ve always been this way and at times it is exhausting to me, but it has never before caused problems for me, necessarily. But right now those two qualities are drowning me, one high expectation at a time.
What I discovered this weekend after talking through some things with my parents is that I have been carrying around an incredible amount of guilt ever since our move. I joke occasionally about having the guilt that all mothers feel about things, but this is different. It was such a deep guilt that I didn’t really even recognize it in myself. It almost needs another word to describe this kind of guilt.
Since our move to Florida, I have had this weight of guilt because I blamed myself for all the struggles we were having. I’m the one, after all, who asked Chris to move to Florida. And then we got here and things just fell apart. Our financial situation was so overwhelming and dark that it just seemed uncontrollable. I couldn’t get a job. I got pregnant. My student loans doubled (thanks to a repayment plan that we now can’t afford). Our house was broken into. We didn’t have health insurance. I mean, it’s been rough. And every step of the way, I blamed myself. I kept telling myself, “This wouldn’t have happened if we had stayed in Connecticut,” and what I left unspoken was the next thought, “And the only reason we aren’t in Connecticut anymore is because of me.”
Because of that guilt and my irrational need to please people, I started ignoring the problems we had facing us in an effort to pretend like everything was okay. I didn’t tell Chris exactly how bad our finances were. I stopped writing anything other than my blog, including turning down a book contract and telling my agent that I wanted to put the book on hold. I stopped taking care of things like trying to find us medical coverage and working through problems I had on a daily basis.
In short, I just shut down.
One of the biggest challenges in the middle of all of this became my lack of sleep. Because I wouldn’t face these problems on a day-to-day basis, I couldn’t hide from myself and so I found I was laying in bed all night long, wide awake, worrying. I was getting maybe three or four hours of sleep a night. The next day, I’d work all day, and by the time I got home from work I was so exhausted that I didn’t want to deal with anything when I got home either. And so, I’d go to sleep. But it was more than just a pregnant woman taking a little nap. I would come home and physically could not get myself off the couch. I wouldn’t cook dinner, I wouldn’t give Bean a bath, I wouldn’t put Bean to bed. Chris did it all and I just laid on the couch or in our bed, sleeping.
I’m certainly not saying that excessive sleep automatically means it’s depression – especially when you’re pregnant! But I know myself and I know my pregnancy and I know that the sleep wasn’t sleep from tiredness. It was sleep to avoid problems. It was a place to go where I didn’t have to deal with anything, even if that meant I wasn’t supporting my husband or spending time with my son.
And, of course, this led to MORE feelings of guilt.
It was a cycle that I just couldn’t get out of. It was Chris who finally called it what it was. He had approached the topic with me before, casually. I even did a Bellycast where we talked about depressions vs. pregnancy and it was a funny and fun conversation. But when I sat down and talked to my parents this weekend, I finally put all of this into words for the first time and saying it out loud made me realize that Chris had actually been right the whole time.
When I came home Sunday from my parent’s, I told Chris everything that I had spoken to them about. And I told him that I thought he might have been right. He told me there were two things he had noticed about me over the past several months that really bothered him. First, I seem to have lost that desire to work through anything. When things happened before, I was always optimistic. I was always sure there was a solution and that that we just had to work through things to find it. Now though I just shut down when a problem came up. I stopped answering emails, I stopped writing, I stopped opening the mail, I stopped talking to people. I literally just shut down. And I know why. We have been through so much in the past seven months that I have just run out of sunshine and hope. Isn’t that sad? I have had so many things in the past few months fall through and get worse and upset me that now I don’t even want to try to make things better.
The second thing Chris had noticed about me was a change in my faith. I have always been a believer that things happen as part of God’s plan.
“And in the past few months,” Chris told me, “I don’t hear that faith in your voice anymore. It’s like you’re just floating along when the wind blows and you can’t find your bearings.”
I couldn’t have said it any better myself, really. That’s exactly how I feel. I still have faith in my good and powerful God, but I’ve lost the faith that He will provide for us or that this is part of His plan because for the past seven months I have felt so ALONE. I have tried to stop and listen to Him speak to me through all of this and I have heard Him and seen Him in glimpses, but right now, to be honest with you, I’m just too tired to make the effort to listen to Him anymore. I still pray and I still go to church and I still serve a mighty God, but right now it feels more like I’m just watching Him work around me but that I’m not actively involved in that process. And that makes me feel far away from God. And lonely.
To talk to me, I doubt you’d even notice something was off. I’m not crying in corners or wearing black every day (though I am wearing an adorable black maternity dress at the moment…). But I know something is wrong and, thankfully, my husband and family know me well enough and love me strongly enough to call attention to what’s going on. After this weekend, I talked to both my parents and Chris and we all came up with several different plans of action. Some were to help Chris and I get through some tough financial hurdles we have and some were to help me get myself in a better place. One of those things, actually, was writing this. Chris suggested that I write about it because I use writing to think things through and even if I don’t ever end up publishing this post, at least I will have worked through it enough in my head to write it down. And one of those things is to talk to my doctor. About how I feel now, yes, but mostly about how to avoid and yet prepare for postpartum depression, in case I go through this again after I have the baby.
I’m still not sure if I’m going to publish this post. It is really hard for me to admit to myself that this is the place I am in right now, so saying it out loud is a little intimidating. But if I do post it, it will be because admitting all of these things is the first step in dealing with them. I’ve recognized them and now I’m acknowledging them. And then I’ll be able to begin working through them. And, thankfully, I’ll be able to do that with a strong family and a good husband standing beside me.
On Saturday in the middle of my 24 hour break down, my mom and dad asked me if, given all that had happened and all that was going on in my life right now, was there anyone in the world that I would trade places with? And instantly, honestly, I answered, “Absolutely not.” Life is hard. And sometimes it just doesn’t seem to get any easier. But life is still good. MY life is still good. And I’m looking forward to getting back to a place where I can appreciate that every day.
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