Barnabas Monkeypants

It being a new year, Kristen and I decided it was again time to create a budget. This is a yearly event that, like the other standard January 1st tradition of making resolutions, is abandoned by early March. If we’re lucky to last that long.

So as I added up mortgages and taxes and student loans and childcare and those nasty credit cards, I came up with a somewhat sizable surplus, more than I expected. How could this be? I looked back at the list and amounts and suddenly realized I had forgotten something very important and very costly. Diapers.

With those added in, we were back to breaking even.

As diapers being a large part of our take-home pay will go on for the near future (although I’m hoping to start potty training in about 6 weeks to save some money), we had a decision to make, namely, how soon do we join one of those warehouse clubs?

In general, I’m not averse to such businesses, as they are the place to be if you’re ever in need of 6 pounds of walnuts. They are also the place to be if you need a case of diapers every third day.

With that in mind, Kristen tagged along with our downstairs neighbor to the local Costco this past weekend to see if it’s really worth the while. What she learned, however, is that you can never have enough tortellini. What I mean is, she walked up and down each aisle, in awe, she tells me, looking at tubs of peanut butter, a 56 pack of toilet paper, widescreen televisions galore, and, yes, 6 pounds of walnuts, and yet she returned with only one item: a large pack of sausage tortellini.

“I didn’t know what to do,” she told me when she came home, pale, trembling. “Too many different items, too many departments.” She was starting to sweat. “Containers too large.” She was slowly becoming incoherent. “Niblets.” I don’t know what that means, exactly. “Guh.” Then she passed out.

So, this weekend we’re going to head out to Costco, this time with a handy GPS and several energy bars, to sign up for their service. And with the extra money we’re going to save by paying 21 cents per diaper instead of 27 cents, we’ll have a little more room in the budget to pay down that debt. Or buy 6 pounds of cookie dough.

So other than saving money by buying in bulk, what else have we learned this week.

We learned that Henry, while still opposed to rolling over, wants to start crawling. Immediately. He’s still not particularly coordinated (he gets that from his mother), but he’s stubborn enough (ditto) when he’s on his stomach to flop down face first, splay his arms out to the side, and start moving his butt up and down, not unlike an inchworm, all the while grunting. I’d love to say that we have this on film, but every time he gets going, Kristen and I fall into hysterics and we can’t get to the camera in time. In a way, as much as I’d love him to progress onto these key developmental milestones, I want him to do this for another few weeks. All three of us need the laughs.

We learned that, although his parents dread it daily, Henry enjoys going over to Vivienne’s place three times a week for his nanny share. What that means is this: Henry’s nanny is a wonderful Transylvanian named Silvia. (No, she’s not a vampire.) On Mondays and Fridays, Henry has her all to himself. From 7:30 in the morning to 5:00 in the evening, she watches him nap peacefully and wiggle frantically. (For her, he naps like a pro, including a 3-hour afternoon snooze today. For us, not so much.) On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings, though, we drive over to the home of the other family who we share our nanny with, where Vivienne, their 19-month-old daughter awaits to give Henry kisses and run around him and say “baby, baby, baby, baby”.  Silvia’s there too, of course, to watch both of them nap or take them on walks or go to the local indoor playground. Henry loves it. He loves Silvia. He’s fascinated with Vivi. And he smiles every time Kristen drops him off in the morning and when I pick him up in the afternoon. It kills us to be away from him during the day, but as long as he continues to be happy and nap wonderfully, we’re okay with it. And Vivi couldn’t be more giddy.

We learned that Henry has, at long last, discovered his feet. I’m not sure if he knows yet that these are attached to the rest of his body, but he loves grabbing them, pulling them up to his body, shaking them, and playing with the toes. He’s not yet flexible, but I think before too long those feet are going to find their way, like everything else in his reach, into his mouth.

And we learned that (knock wood) his four-month sleep regression, where babies go from sleeping 7-, 8-, and 9-hour stretches at night back to how they slept when they were a month old, is over. In Henry’s case, it was waking up every 3 hours, demanding some food and playtime. The last several nights, however, he’s back to his old (new) ways, sleeping peacfully for hours on end and giving his exhausted parents a reprieve. Thank you, Henry. We knew you had it in you.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 10:21 pm and is filed under What We've Learned. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.