Are the babies on budget?

The girls turned 5 months old this weekend. As part of that milestone, I wanted to answer a question that some of my friends ask me: are the babies on budget?

Of course they are – 53% below budget in fact. Well… kind of. The only explicit forecasted budget we had was for diapers. We came across this site: http://tinyurl.com/5bbxrg, which seemed to have reasonable numbers. Edna has whittled down purchases by buying in bulk (we are talking months at a time), and the girls have taken to frugality in diapers like ducks to water. So both price and volume are doing better than expected.

But diapers are only 20% of our total cost since inception. Equipment was 40%, clothes 20%, Food 10% and the lots of other things for the last 10% (see Exhibit 1). The trick to budgets here is economies of scale (i.e., does it cost 2x as much to have two, or just a little more). We didn’t set a specific budget for these categories, but looking around the USDA, and MSN, here is a guess on where they stand.

On equipment the girls are 10% below budget for one child, or 55% below budget if you assume two kids takes twice the stuff. One great perk of living out East is that moms have their kids later in life. After having twins, they don't plan on a another set and are happy to sell you top-of-the line stuff, two at a time, at bargain-basement prices. So being connected with the Mothers of Multiples here has helped quite a bit.

These fiscally fit girls took it even one step further: they have also been self-financing so far. If you take the budget surpluses from the recreation and dining out categories (because its a lot harder to get out with the girls), we have broken even across those categories and the baby expenses. Who said children were expensive? Go team.

The girls are also 17% below budget on clothes, and 83% below budget on food (which probably assumes formula where we did not have that cost). The clothes are a little embarrassing because the other reason he girls are so fiscally mature for their age is you. The many, many gifts we received were not included in the numbers. Thanks again, I still have many of you on my thank-you list, which is getting older every month that passes by.

Valentines, eating, teeth, and splashing

Valentines

This Valentine's day the girls and I made John a Valentine. Since most of our days are quickly consumed with eating, cleaning, and playing, the girls and I took just over two days to get this done.

The girls opened presents for the first time.

Eating

And we started feeding the girls solids. This is how they each reacted. Things are going much better now.

Teeth

The theme of the family this week is teeth. John and I both went to the dentist after a two year hiatus, and Macy cut her first tooth last Saturday with her second appearing a day later. Here she is Saturday night with just one tooth. No teeth for Camy, but she likes her feet

Splashing

For the last few weeks I've been waiting for Macy to start splashing in the bath. That girl has so much spunk that I expected that she would enjoy splashing. It turned out I was right. Last night I was about to pull the plug on the bath when she gave a few little kicks that quickly progressed to flailing arms and legs, and soon we had a half empty tub and a wet kitchen. She had so much fun that I just had to laugh with her and leave the mess for later.

And here are the girls dressed up for church. I think that smile shows about how much Macy enjoyed her bath. Camy is a very smiley girl, but not for cameras.

Weeks 9-15

It has been weeks since we posted a slide show of photos. Since last show we took 541 pictures. We culled it down to about 50.

A few things you don't "see" in the photos:

- We graduated to Size 2 diapers - a milestone that reminds me they are getting bigger and don't plan on shrinking any time soon.

- Macy has discovered she can yell and loves it.

- The girls are becoming more particular about how they are held - vertical and at least 4 feet above the floor seems to be their recent preference.

- No sign of a stable sleep pattern yet, but solid foods begin this week - Edna is very excited about spoons.

OK, here are pictures

John did it again! Here are a few of my favorites anyway.







My imitation of a picture I saw somewhere (Macy's hands are always tough to control) and our hanging Camy.







After a long night, sometimes Mom looks a little scary....sorry girls. And Camy's and Macy's interpretation of a rap music video.

So that's what happened

Last week my girls and I were playing and I decided to sing to them for entertainment- for me, mostly. I'd sung "Happy Family" about a hundred times, so I was desperate to think of new material. I found myself singing

Everywhere we go

the people want to know

who we are

so we tell 'em*

We are the Tigers!

The mighty, mighty Tigers!

And if they can't hear us

We sing a little louder!l

I was trying to think of where I'd picked up the song. Then I got it- my dad's high school mascot was the Tiger. Wow. History repeats, and this is how kids end up singing their grandpa's high school fight song.

These last few months I've been surprised how much life has changed with being a mom. I feel much more included in the community. People constantly come up to talk with us, and everyone is so much more friendly. Even at church, the other women will talk with me much more, and we actually have things to talk about- kids! I've never missed being told I should have kids.

A few weeks ago John and I went up to Boston to visit Mona and Bryant again. I think this was my favorite visit with them ever. Now that we all have kids, we all have even more in common, and there is more entertainment.

This weekend John and I went into NYC to meet up with a few of John's former classmates to celebrate the Chinese New Year. They are also mothers of infants so, interspersed with discussing the latest news on Wall Street, we enjoyed mom and dads with MBAs from fancy schools crawling on the floor playing with trains and pushing buttons on plastic cars.

And we laugh more. If we join the unemployed crowd, which includes about half of our friends, hopefully we can enjoy our girls rather than feeling frustrated as in our unemployed days of the last recession.

*I may have misremembered this. In New England they probably would have used a more "propa" word such as "them", unless this was done for poetic reasons.

A Christmas Dance (by Macy)

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

This is what my girls say to going to sleep before 4AM. You'll notice that Camy is leading the rebellion, and Macy is looking to her for direction. That frown Camy pulls at the end....nice move.

Camy likes to sleep as little as possible- typically only between 4 AM and noon. Church at 9 AM is a challenge.

The girls are growing and developing as they should- lifting their heads, sucking their fists, rolling over, smiling a lot- and all their stats are right on average (except that Macy's head is slightly smallish). Both love to talk, but they each have their own distinct words. Camy likes to confidently proclaim "Ah GEE!" and Macy will engage in a conversation of "ahhh"s and "innnng"s.

Christmas Travels

A few weeks ago I packed the girls up to go out and I decided to get a few pictures of them. Macy is on the left, Camy on the right. We still love the bunny suits- good even beyond Halloween.

Our little family has been on the road! Camy and Macy got their first immunization about a month ago, then a few days later they went on their first plane trip- to Utah. We visited my family for a little over a week, then John joined us for the last few days before we all flew out to San Francisco for another 5 days to visit with John's family.

While in Utah, our girls were given a name and a blessing (sort of like Christening) by John in the chapel that was my chapel growing up. Also during this trip the girls visited three of their five living great-grandparents, all four of their grandparents, and all of their aunts, uncles, and cousins (total of 5). Their oldest cousin, Hailey, is now two. After spending a week with Camy and Macy, Hailey now carries TWO babies with her at all times and calls them "Macy" since she struggles to say "Camy"

Weeks 7 and 8 photos

A few photos from the past two weeks. Smiles are starting to surface...

**When you open the above link, click on "Slideshow" in the upper right, then click "Show info" in the upper right to see John's comments.

Homemaking & Smiles!

I took some pictures last week that I was all excited to post, then I came back to post the entry I'd written and found that John had stolen my thunder- most of the good ones were already up. So here's the boring stuff.

Now that I'm spending all day at home with the girls, I'm getting excited about all sorts of homemakey things.

I found the site that everyone uses to get these fancy scrapbookish layouts, then used the little html understanding I remembered from college classes forever ago to (mostly) fix the disaster I made when I applied the template.

I've been doing a bit of cooking- to justify the new mixer- starting with a full Thanksgiving dinner. We skipped a walk yesterday so I could make banana bread. John and I also made a cake and buttercream frosting. I've even cooked dinner a few nights and our icecream maker just made its third batch.

The girls started smiling this last Wednesday. This first-time-mom of course had a camera handy to catch a few of the smiles, which can be seen on John's entry.

I think the babies like each other, or are at least interested in observing each other. When one of the girls is screaming the other- if she isn't screaming herself- will reach for her sister. Yesterday I walked in to comfort Macy and caught Camy offering her thumb to Macy to calm her- and it worked. I thought I took a picture, but it turned out that I'd taken a video.

(I'll update with a photo or two when I get back to the other computer).