My Geek Baby

In the words of Larry David, it’s “Pretty, Preeetty good.”

So after a lot of hemming and hawing and trying to find proper daycare, Jake and I found a great place to take Indira. Like most new mamas who work, it’s pretty stressful thinking about someone else comforting your baby, singing her to sleep and changing her diapers. But I didn’t realize there’s a good side too - Indie’s entertained by the other babies in their jumperoos, singing their sing-songy baby words and playing in their new baby sort of way…our provider says little ones adapt better sometimes than older kids who have already developed a fear of strangers. So we took her post-pox self to the place and despite a few tears from me, I was surprisingly relieved to learn that she didn’t cry, and in fact did very well. Instead of thinking how hard it is on me, my sister, a veteran momma of three kids, reminded me that daycare can be stimulating for babies and they actually like it. Songs, tummy time, and a few spins in the swing, followed by eating and naps. That’s a pretty full day.

I watch a lot of Home and Garden TV (HGTV) although lately our house projects have come to a screeching halt. I enjoy watching shows that have people staging their homes for sale, getting rid of the clutter and making the house ready for guests. One trick to make the house more welcoming is to bake cookies and make the house smell like grandma’s, evoking good memories in pretty much anyone who walks in. So, since we have guests checking out baby, and I’m paranoid the house smells like a giant diaper genie, I put a few “break and bake” ready-made cookies in the toaster oven right before people come over. A super cheating way to get the same effect is to drop vanilla on a baking sheet and put it in a heated oven but then you don’t have cookies in ten minutes!

Babble has an interesting post about parenting coaches; people hired to help kids learn everything from potty training to riding a bike but I wonder if this is taking away from the role of the um, well, parent? Granted, I would hire a lactation consultant if needed, and the idea of someone giving me reliable tips to get baby to sleep after a restless week of no sleep but some of these coaches sound like paid parents. Isn’t there something to be said for the first-time parents who get through the brutal phases of childhood with both them and their kids learning a lot about what NOT to do as well as what works? I understand that many parents need childcare and nannies who may help potty train their child but paying someone to help the kid ride a bike? I wonder in this scenario: where is the parent when the kid is taking the training wheels off? What if the kid falls off the bike and skins his knee after the bike teacher leaves? Shouldn’t you want the kid to look to YOU to help them through this? What’s next? A bedtime story reading, boogie-monster removal service, “Ghostbusters for tots?”

During the many conversations that Jake and I had when considering when to start a family, the question of “how do we afford this?” came up again and again. We both currently work (I’m a writer and he’s a network engineer) but there’s not a financial “leader” among the two of us. We talk. We save. We worry. But like most people, I imagine we’ll figure it out as we did when we bought our house a few years ago, which was scarier for us than committing to marriage. So along the way, we’ve created a savings plan and started contributing to it before Baby Davis was a reality. And in four months, she will arrive.

So, in thinking about savings and whatnot, I’ve decided to write out some of my current savings tricks and would like to hear from readers what they do to save up for vacations, kids, college, cars and retirement.

How I save:

1. Drive a 9-year-old stick-shift VW that gets good gas mileage and uses regular gas.
2. Work from home once a week (saving gas and lunch money).
3. Gave up highlights and go for a haircut every two-three months.
4. Cut Jake’s hair.
5. Eat in and cook most nights.
6. Rent movies more than see them in the theater.
7. Put money into savings and a retirement fund (automatically) each month.
8. Keep windows open until it is unbearably hot or cold.
9. Shut off lights when I leave a room (thanks Mom and Dad!).
10. Cut coupons from Sunday’s paper and use them before I lose them.

How do you save?

A a kid, when I took the annual Spring Break road trip south from New Jersey down Interstate 95 to Sarasota, Florida, I had books and magazines to entertain me between naps, snacks and staring out the window. Sometimes my parents played tapes of old radios shows, like “The Shadow” and it could have been 1955 inside the car. Today’s kids have iPods, GameBoy, and the like and I wonder what effect, if any, it has on their learning, their creativity, their ability to simply let their minds wander? As a writer, I’m keen on details. I love old beat up road signs at gas stations that were built decades before I was born and the interesting people who run them. Eventually I had a Walkman and began to tune into my world and tune out to my parents, but I still enjoyed the view of the areas we saw once off the beaten path of the highway. Perhaps today’s kids aren’t much different with their DVD players and in-car entertainment, but I wonder if they sense of the differences between towns and states when SpongeBob beckons. Thoughts?