On Saturday morning, I wrote the baby name blog post. Writing on a Saturday morning sounds like a peaceful exercise, but I felt like I’d just finished the NYC Triathlon. Or more accurately, a UFC title fight.
I actually wrote most of the post on the subway. On Saturday, I put it on the blog and tweaked it. The irony is that I breezed through the writing of it on the packed train, even with a homeless guy harassing a girl next to me (he called her a “wench” on his way out), but I struggled to tweak the post at home because it’s hard to tweak and type with a 38-lb Cool Baby hanging from your arms.
He had just finished breakfast and asked me to play with him. I asked him to give me five minutes to finish my work, to which he replied, “No! You can’t finish your work!” Cool Mum and the baby were sleeping in the bedroom, so I tried to keep CB quiet. The five-minute tweak job turned into more than an hour of
- CB asking me to fix his broken fishing pole
- Me explaining helium and why I can’t blow up a sinking Mylar balloon
- Me explaining boat buoyancy
- Me trying to keep him quiet without the use of duct tape
- Us playing and crashing Lego towers at alarming volumes
I am grateful to God that we are close enough buddies that he wants to have fun with me. We play all the time, and I love it (though I wish he would have just obeyed and given me my five minutes). I had my mind set on getting the blog post out early because I knew if I waited, it would never happen. I then marveled to myself:
How do you mom bloggers do it?
How do you write with one or more kids needing care and vying for your attention? Do you just write at night or do you have an activity or magic spell that you incorporate to keep the little ones occupied?
Due to a specific and neurotic list of criteria, we had a heckuva time choosing the name of the newest Cool Baby. Master procrastinators, we waited until we were in the OR to settle upon the little man’s moniker. The name got an OK from the anesthetist, and that was good enough for us.
The winning name for our new little winner is
Micah Sol Corpus
Micah had been kicked around (the name, not a person) for several months. At this point, I can’t remember if it came from a friend or Cool Mum. And it appears to match all of our criteria. By the way, thanks to all of you helped us find a name!
My only reservation is that his name may be an unlikely running joke among countertop retailers, countertop installers, and general countertop enthusiasts when a discussion comes up like:
COUNTERTOP RETAILER: “Hey, who’s calling?”
GENERAL COUNTERTOP ENTHUSIAST: “It’s for Micah.”
COUNTER TOP INSTALLER: “It’s formica? Well, remind him that heat-resistant, wipe-clean plastic laminates can’t use a phone!”
ALL: “HAR HAR HAR!”
Well, I said it was unlikely.
Sol is Latin for “sun,” which is a nice double play because it’s a homophone (have you seen that word since grade school?) for “son” and that he will be a shining star in our lives that may or may not swell into a red giant phase in 5 billion years. The inspiration came from CM’s friend, who mentioned that his scheduled C-section fell on the summer solstice.
We pronounce the name like “soul,” which sounds like the middle name that Bono would’ve given our baby if he would’ve been our friend and not avoided us in the park. It’s slightly disconcerting every time I spell the middle name for people, but if you are untainted enough to not see the problem, then just take my word on it and do not investigate further.
So, we’re pleased with the name. And in case you wanted to see a slightly cheesy picture of the Cool ‘Rents and Baby Micah, here you go!
Yesterday, June 21st, had been circled on the Cool Fam Calendar for weeks. Cool Mum was scheduled to go in for a C-section to have our new boy. We were having our baby on the 21st!
Cool Baby (now 3) was born 9 days late. There was no waiting game this time. It was refreshing to have some control over the situation. The funny thing was that we missed our June 21 appointment. The really funny thing is that it’s because the new boy was born over a week before. So much for control.
It was supposed to be our last normal weekend – as normal as we could be with CM’s torpedo belly preventing her from walking outside of a 3-block radius of our apartment. On Saturday the 12th, she would do brunch with her friends while I watched CB all day. On Sunday, we’d relax and go to church.
Well, I don’t know what CM munched at brunch, but when she got home, she felt like she was having contractions. The body goes through “practice contractions” leading up to birth, so I told CM that her uterus was just in rehearsal mode. We were having our baby on the 21st.
CB had worn me out, so I was feeling sluggish, literally laying around the apartment. CM alerted me that the contractions were getting closer together and that we should go to the hospital.
Hospital?! I protested; it was a waste of time. They would just send us back. I had good plans for the weekend. There was too much to do at work this week. We were having our baby on the 21st!
Despite my airtight logic (and because of the advice of CM’s doctor), we went to the hospital. We got there and an army of doctors and nurses attended to CM. She was the only patient in the whole labor & delivery ward. Of course, that just meant more people to tell us to go back home due to false alarm, as it was not yet the 21st.
After various tests, a nurse strolled in and declared, “It looks like you’re having a baby.” And I thought Yes, we are eventually having a baby, but then my brain caught up and realized that the smiling nurse had said “today” at the end of her news. I was not ready to have a baby “today.” I was not ready to have a baby until Google Calendar sent me an email reminder for our C-section appointment on the 21st .
But despite my lack of emotional readiness, there I was an hour and a half later, holding a freshly-wiped, squinty-eyed brand new boy up for CM to see as she laid on the operating table.
The latest in the legendary line of Cool Babies was born on Saturday, June 12 at 7:47 pm. He weighed 7 lbs, 4 oz. And he was 9 days early. The 21st would have been nice, but we just got 9 bonus days to love on the little guy. That’s cool with me. (And yes, he has a name, but that’s a post all its own.)
This recent post in NPR’s Planet Money blog points out a government report that estimates it costs $222,360 to raise a child. Some interesting quotes from the report and how they apply to us:
Housing Is the Largest Expense on a Child
One would expect families to increase their housing expenditures as they move to larger residences to accommodate children.
Yes, one would expect!
Based on expenses incurred among all age groups, housing accounted for 32 percent of child-rearing expenses for a child in the lowest income group.
We are transitioning from three people sharing one bedroom to four people sharing one bedroom, so our housing costs for raising children equals 0.
Child-Rearing Expenses Are Highest in the Urban Northeast
Overall, child-rearing expenses were highest in the Urban Northeast, followed by the Urban West and Urban Midwest. Child-rearing expenses were lowest in the urban South and rural areas.
So we moved from the sorta urban, sorta rural South to the Urban Northeast. The estimated annual expenditures for one child 3-5 years old for two regions are:
- Midway between Rural South and Urban South: $10,000
- Urban Northeast: $13,000
Dagnabbit.
Expenses Increase as a Child Ages
…food, transportation, clothing, and health care expenses on a child generally increased as the child grew older.
Well, food and health care we do not skimp on, which explains why Cool Baby is currently 25th percentile for height and 75th percentile for weight. That means that he is taller than only 25% of his peers, while he weighs more than 75% of his peers. Dude is thick and stocky.
Transportation expenses are minimal, since kids ride the bus and subway for free. I guess the infrequent cost of a new stroller could be rolled in there as well as the cost of pimping a kid’s ride.
And clothing is certainly not much of an expense because we just dress Cool Baby big and let him grow into his clothes.
So, in usual Cool Fam style, we are trying to live on the cheap- well, as cheap as a family living in Manhattan can pull off. We’d love to come way under that $222K mark for raising Cool Baby. NPR is more than welcome to follow us while we try!
I’ve been looking for brown casual shoes for months now. Last week, I finally found a good pair online and ordered them. They came the next day! Check ‘em out!
