H and I took a walk in our neighborhood last night and had to drop off something at one of our neighbor’s houses. We’re pretty good friends with them—a couple our age with a 2 year old—and the girl has known that we’ve been trying for awhile. On the walk over, we decided we would tell them our good news, even though it’s early. I’m starting to feel that telling is okay because if something goes wrong it’s not like I will be able to pretend that nothing has happened. Anyway, we told her (her husband wasn’t home yet) and she was thrilled. Then H told her it was twins, and her jaw hit the floor. Turns out our other neighbor friends, a couple also with a 2-year-old, just announced that they are pregnant with twins. They are due three weeks before us. Can you believe that??? I’m thrilled that our twins will have twins the same age in the neighborhood to play with, plus I’ll have a friend to go through this with right at my doorstep. Evidently she has been super sick—throwing up so much she can’t get out of bed—which is why we haven’t seen her yet. Our neighbors all go to the same daycare for their 2-year-olds, which is how the neighbor we talked to found out right away.
Which brings us daycare. H just about fainted when he heard from our neighbor how much daycare is, then multiplied it by two. Here we go again with the money. The rest of our walk was consumed by it. It does cost a lot, but the thing is, this is why I spent so much time advancing my career before we decided to start trying. I doubled my salary from 2 years ago, so after daycare, it will be just like I had my old job back only now I can afford the kids too. (The daycare will be approximately half my monthly salary each month.) I think this is pretty darn good, and I worked really hard to get to this point. If I had my old job, things would have been really, really tight. We should have been saving my increased salary these past two years because we didn’t really need it to live, but we had lots of house emergencies and just general things we wanted to buy and do while we could. I know we can cut back to the way we were. The thing that kills me is that H’s real problem is spending that amount of money period on daycare, whether we can afford it or not. Sorry, that’s just the cost of having kids. I don’t get why he thinks kids should be so free or cheap and puts up a fuss every time he finds out how much they are going to actually cost. We definitely can’t afford for me to stay home, so it’s funny that he would actually prefer me to stay home so we don’t spend the money on daycare rather than have the daycare and still be able to provide a comfortable living for our kids. Ugh. It all comes back to the fact that money is his worry, and I just need to leave him alone as he works it out in his own mind. I know we’ll be fine. Sure, it’ll be an adjustment, but we’ll work it out.
5 comments:
How incredible to have neighboring twins!
And yup- childcare is sooo expensive!
I guess guys just need time to "process" some of the things that we know automatically :-)
Maybe if he figured out what the $$ would look like with a one income family, he would be singing a different tune, kissing your feet for bringing in such a nice salary!? :-)
How nice to have so many kids close in age nearby!
That will make for some fun times.
Wow! That is awesome! I'm so happy that you'll have a fellow twin-mom to hang out with. I hope she gets better - yikes.
The money thing is overwhelming, but it will be so worth it to be able to relax about who is taking care of your kids, no matter what it costs! :)
Apparently,.. I'm told... that first Dadddies get coonsumed with something totally not in their control and they obsess... it's the protector thing. Then you get huge and they obsess about you and forget about the kids, they can't live without you kinds thing...then the babies come and they fall in love, it' an animal instinct then they surrender to the little fingers wrapped around his, and the little eyes following him everywhere he goes and then of COURSE babies say Da Da first... it's to keep the Man-Cub totally besotted with the little thing ;) It's nature's way.
Enjoy the journey, you will laugh about it in a few years :D
Well, I can see how the idea of twins is overwhelming, and the money is a concrete aspect of that to focus on.
On the other hand, I think it is a little quaint that H had no idea how exhorbitant day care is, even for one kid. Do guys not talk about things like this over the water cooler? Even before we started trying, I knew that a. day care is expensive and b. after-school care is just as expensive, even though it is fewer hours (at least for my friends around here).
It's wonderful that you'll have another twin mom nearby.
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