I knew I couldn’t stay in the dark place for the duration of this pregnancy. That wouldn’t be healthy for me, my family, or the little nugget growing inside of me. I needed to get over the guilt/fear/anger I was feeling.
Once the idea settled in my brain that this pregnancy wasn’t going anywhere, I decided it was time for my attitude to change. But how?
Some of the reasons we had previously stated we were done with two had to do with finances, space, vehicles, and the fact that we got rid of all our baby stuff. So that’s where I turned first.
Finances: Would we have to sell our property? Could we afford it all? We don’t live extravagantly by any means. After crunching the numbers, adding in daycare costs, higher incidentals like diapers, gas, etc, we realized that based on what we were currently making we weren’t going to end up in the hole every month. Sure, we wouldn’t be putting as much money into savings as we had originally hoped/planned for, but we wouldn’t be going backwards. And of course, we won’t be making the same amount forever, so that was a nice thing to remember as well.
No bankruptcy…phew.
Space: One of the big reasons for thinking we’d stop at two kiddos was lack of space. Of course we have “space”…we live on 12 acres, but to us, our house is a bit on the small side for a family of five. And one bedroom short. Andy and I both grew up having to share bedrooms and while I don’t see anything wrong with that, he was dead.set.against.it. But we are still left with one bedroom short in our house. I reasoned with Andy that the reason he hates the idea of the kids sharing rooms is because he had to do it all through high school. He agreed. To be honest, if I would have had to share a room through those years I would hate the idea of it for our children too.
Right now, our kids are in prime room-sharing time. So what we will do is move Reese in to Rylee’s room. We will have to do some furniture rearranging, but our toddler bed will work out perfectly in there. Then, by the time Reese grows out of the toddler bed, I figure Rylee will be at the age that she’s over the whole room sharing thing so Reese will move back into the baby’s room. Of course the baby won’t really be a baby by that point. From there, we will build out our office/den into a 4th bedroom and boom, by the time the kids all need their own rooms, they will have them. That also gives us time to save money for the project.
Ok, this is totally doable.
Vehicles: Three kids means three car seats in some form or another. We don’t currently have a vehicle that will fit our current car seat configuration 3 across the back. (DO NOT TELL ME I SHOULD DRIVE THE SUBURBAN!) So of course initially we went to worst-case scenario and figured we’d automatically have to get a new car, one with a 3rd row seat option. And no, not a minivan. Could we even afford a new car? After more number crunching and research we realized that, worst-case scenario we would be able to afford a new car, we’d just need to trade in the Venza to do so. But what about a different set of car seats? No matter what the Jeep wouldn’t be wide enough, but the Venza could be. Of course this means more research…this time for widths of various car seat options. We found a combo of seats, (infant seat for the baby, convertible seat for Reese, and a booster for Reese) that should fit.
So the plan as it stands right now is an entire new set of car seats to go in the Venza. Since I’m the one that does 99.9% of pick-up and drop off I will start driving the Venza and the Jeep will become Andy’s daily driver. Obviously a new set of car seats will be cheaper in the long run that a new car.
Wow, this is all making me feel so much better.
Baby Stuff: I gave all of my maternity clothes away while I was still pregnant. That was how sure I was I wouldn’t need them anymore. As Reese outgrew clothing and gear we gave nearly all of it away. Thankfully, I will be able to “borrow” some of it back from family members I had passed it along to. Hopefully, by the time they do end up needing it for their own little ones, we will be done with it all and be able to pass it back. There will be some holes to fill in, but having to buy a few things is much more palatable than dropping a bunch of money on an entirely new wardrobe and baby gear.
And seriously…my first two kids had way more clothes than they were ever able to wear.
Slowly but surely, I started seeing that silver lining I’m always talking about. Soon enough it was clear to see that none of our plans were ruined. They were just…changed.
Changed plans I can do.
