Children Are Expensive

From Mr. Handsome…

After reading the title of this post, I’m sure all of you are thinking to yourselves, “No kidding–thank you for sharing this, Mr. Handsome Genius.” But unfortunately, Ellie just doesn’t understand that sometimes you have to be willing to spend a little extra money for the children. Let me recount a recent conversation at the breakfast table that illustrates my point.

“Ellie, I’m thinking we should be more prepared for emergencies now that we have two children,” I said between bites of oatmeal.

 “I think that’s a great idea,” she replied. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well I should have plenty of tools around in case the baby crib breaks,” I explained. “It would really be awful if we had a crib emergency in the middle of the night. I was thinking a new drill, table saw, planer, jointer, and chainsaw would sort of be the bare bones emergency tools.”

Ellie put down her cup of coffee and laughed. “Jointer, planer, chainsaw? Are you planning on cutting down a tree and building a new crib from scratch?”

“One can never be too prepared,” I said. The one thing I didn’t think through was that at the time of this conversation, Littlest Buddy was sleeping in a pack n play in our room. Ellie intelligently reminded me that my tools wouldn’t be useful.

“And aren’t those the exact tools that have been on your wish list since we got married?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

I leaned back and sighed. “Yes, and I’ll admit that they were once wishes, but now they are essentials.”

Ellie rolled her eyes. “How about we compromise with a new hammer and some nails? Maybe a screwdriver too.”

As I’m sure you readers can see, Ellie just doesn’t understand that having kids is expensive and that you have to be willing to spend the necessary money to raise them. I decided to bring up a few more items that we needed.

“A healthy diet is essential for growing children,” I stated, playing to her love for healthy food. “We need to order a bigger blender so we can make our own baby food.” She matter-of-factly informed me that our current blender is the perfect size for making baby food. Then she accused me of wanting a bigger blender to make bigger milkshakes.

I shrugged. “Well now that you mention it, that would be another perk,” I replied. Ellie rolled her eyes again.

“And what about new leather seat covers for the front seat of my truck? Babies are messy, and we need to protect the seats.”

“Honey, the children sit in the back. And you wouldn’t possibly be talking about the fancy leather seat covers I saw you googling yesterday, would you? The ones that cost almost as much as the truck itself?”

“Spit-up travels far, and you can’t put a price on peace of mind,” I said. Ellie rolled her eyes a third time and got up to walk out of the room.

“One more thing,” I called after her. “I was thinking that a pool table would be a great activity for Little Buddy and I to do together”

“Little Buddy isn’t even tall enough to see over a pool table,” Ellie called back.

“I don’t suppose now is a good time to discuss a new big screen TV? You know, so the children can watch their educational videos more clearly?”

I could hear Ellie groaning in the next room. “I think the best thing ‘for the children’ is for us to end this conversation before you spend every penny of our savings.”

Hopefully you readers you are with me on this. Ellie just doesn’t understand how expensive raising children is.