Babies on a Budget

I've actually got a category called Babies on a Budget, but I haven't been doing too much writing about how we are able to have our babies on a tight budget. I find that there are so many ways to keep the costs of raising a child under control, but that our society doesn't tend to focus on them.

In some ways I think a lot of men seem to understand the minimal needs of an infant better than a lot of women. I know this sounds odd to say, but when we went to register for Little Guy's shower my husband was shocked (and appalled) by all the aisles and aisles of baby things in Babies R Us. He looked at the wall of bottles, the rows of safety devices, the racks and racks of clothing, the multitude of strollers and car seats and on and on and on and just about walked back out of the store. I handed him the gun and we did the best we could as quickly as we could. At one of our Bradley birth classes he and a few other dads were discussing how crazy it was. I believe they made more than one comment that boiled down to the fact that there should be one best of everything. Like one great, safe car seat. One stroller that is the best there is. One type of bib, one great type of bottle, etc. They didn't feel the need for the most contemporary, hip print that was coordinated throughout the stroller, car seat, diaper bag, and crib set. They didn't feel the need to add 4,962 new gadgets that promised to make the baby cry less, sleep more and remove laundry stains. I've seen a few soon to be dads and new dads roll their eyes when it came to all the stuff that we think we need to raise a baby here. I kind of think they've got it right.

I'm going to be devoting some writing in the next few weeks to things we've done to keep our stuff and costs in check as we've raised Little Guy and as we are preparing for Baby 2. I welcome any and all ideas that you have as well!

As an aside, we were crazy warm again today. But as they say the winds of change are a blowin! It seems that a storm will be arriving sometime tonight and tomorrow will be about 25-30 degrees cooler than today.

Ah, spring in Wisconsin!
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