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April 03, 2007
Short Hair
We trimmed the back of her hair over the weekend. Neither of us is a professional hairdresser, so it is a bit crooked. Her hair had some curls; but of course, we didn't take any picture before we trimmed them off.
Yesterday we went to the park again. Katy was on the swing for 40 minutes. There were hardly any kids, so it was not too bad. After she got off, her daddy showed up at the park, so back to the swing she went. She was there for probably anotehr 10 minutes. We had to pry her off. Big tantrums ensued. Good thing there were two of us there.
Today we tried a different strategy: we went to a different park. It seemed to work really well as the playground equipment was different, she was happy to check things out. I think this park has more kids her age, so she seemed to interact more with other kids as opposed to being intimidated by older kids at the other park. So maybe that is what she wants: a little variety. I guess we will be checking out different parks in the neighborhood from now on.
By the way, we forgot to mention this when we said S is Katy's favorite alphabet: she wrote an S in the bathtub a few weeks ago. She can't do A or B, but she sure can do S.
Last post we also mentioned that Katy's mom brought home just enough to cover the daycare expense. I suppose we could elaborate a little as this involves Katy and one day she will probably be wondering why we are doing things we do. Thus, I am writing this for her benefit.
We choose to bring home just enough so that we can reduce our tax bases and also check to see if we are able to save one income after the daycare expense. Seems very logical: if you have to pay for daycare when you go to work, then save whatever is beyond the daycare and other associated nuisance (taxes).
Both of Katy's grandmas were stay-at-home moms, so we thought that would be nice to do one day. We talked about paying off the house so life would be much easier when we had kids someday, preferably two years from whenever we had such a discussion. That didn't work too well as this "two years" is more like a rolling two-year period; we have given up on that idea.
Our new plan is to save enough money so that it will generate, ideally, the average of our incomes. Pretty noble goal, no? Well, our incomes keep climbing but our savings are still at the mercy of the stock market. So on a good day, it will be like ten years from now that Katy will have a stay-at-home parent. She is probably in junior high by then, maybe a little late for her. On a bad day, the plan will take about sixteen years or so to complete, and it is too late by then. Especially if she is going to college and we will definitely need the second income to pay for the college, if we choose to pay. Our contingent plan is to cut back hours or become a freelance if needed. The contingent plan looks quite appealing on a bad market day. Supposedly, when you have enough, you are more likely to weather market fluctuations. We don't have enough so we don't know if it is true.
Both of us work in a rather [financially] conservative, risk-averse profession, so it is important to us that we have saved enough to allow one parent to stay at home. Unfortunately, what may be the best for Katy may not be good for the entire family. The idea of having just one person working is simply too risky. What if something happens to the "breadwinner," would the other person be able to go out find a good paying job the next day? No, not without recent work experience. And please don't say that we are too pessimistic; we work for the insurance companies, we are aware of statistics of bad things happening to good people. We don't want to be one of those statistics. So yes, even if one of us is practically working for the daycare, it is still worth our while to keep working.
However, *this is very important*, it is our decision based on our experiences and information available to us. So, if one day Katy or her significant other decides to stay at home for the child(ren), we will support her decision as her experience will vary - as long as she is not asking us to finance it. We are not to judge others.
Posted by Mike at April 3, 2007 08:22 PM
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