Bargain Babies

Had to stop by Costco on my way home yesterday because we had run out of diapers with out realizing we were low. It's amazing how many diapers we go through despite Gina's, shall we say "frugal" usage of them. If I have a poopy diaper that I suggest changing it must first be reviewed to see exactly how poopy. Upon review I often receive the "denied" stamp with the explanation of "it's not thaaaat poopy". My theory has always been any poopy is too poopy. But that's why she's in charge. You see one of our biggest concerns when Gina got pregnant (aside from when are we going to sleep) was how were we going to pay for this? Gina really wanted to stay home, and I really wanted her to, as well. Plus we knew daycare would be outrageous and would probably cost more than Gina made anyway. Now 10 months, and somehow not in the red yet, I was curious how we were making it work. I started running the numbers in my head and I came to the conclusion that Gina has saved us a small fortune through her "not too poopy" mentality. Check this out: Breastfeeding - the girls now consume about 5 ounces, 4 times a day, each. That's 40 ounces a day and nearly 14,600 ounces in a year. In the early months they drank even more than that because they didn't have solid food yet, but we'll just use the 20 ounces a day for guestimation purpose. The Costco brand of formula comes in packs of about 216 ounces for $105, roughly 50 cents an ounce. That means, in one year, Gina has saved us around $7,300 by breastfeeding, assuming minimal consumption and there were no allergy problems forcing us to use the more expensive brands. Pretty cool right. Now check this out. Daycare is pretty pricey in Orange County. A lot of places run at least $100 a week (and that would be a freakin' rock bottom price). If Gina went back to work after 3 months, for two kids, we'd have spent around $8000 (probably more) by their 1st birthday. Gas would have come in to play too, as Gina worked in Irvine. Her drive was 18 miles one way, so at 36 miles a day she would have driven around 7,200 miles between the 3 month return and the girls first birthday. Let's say gas averaged $3 a gallon and her car had an average of 20 mpg like the salesman told us (it's an SUV so I'm sure he was full of it). There's 360 gallons at a cost of $1,080. Just those three things alone saved us $16,380 in the girls first year of life. And that's not even counting all of the hand me down cloths and toys we gladly accept from friends and family (even our cribs are repainted hand me downs), the free baby sitting from Grandma's, Yiayias, Theas and Aunts, the money saved by Gina making baby food rather than buying or the heavy handed "not poopy enough" policy. Twice in the past 2 years I've had someone tell me that "God only hands extreme situations to those persons who are capable of handling them". Well, thank god for my wife. Without her choices I might have had to pay for those diapers yesterday with IOU's.