Reality Bites!

Reality has a way of smacking you in the face at the most inopportune moments!  As we were sitting in the twins’ room the other night, I glanced over at the “diaper supply”… only FIVE bags left!  Yikes!  The time is finally upon us that we will actually have to purchase diapers for the twins!  We made it four full months on the generosity of others and we thank all of you who donated to the cause!  The final five packages we had were returned to the store for a larger size.  That’s right… our little ones are not so little anymore.  We managed to exchange those five bags for three boxes of size twos.  No more newborn or size 1 diapers in our house… ever.  Well, I can’t really say that… Paige will be given what is left one day to “practice” on her baby dolls! 

Lucky for us, when Noah was little, we learned that the parent’s choice Wal-Mart brand diapers are fabulous!  We tried every brand with him… nothing beats Huggies newborn diapers, but after that parent’s choice won hands down!  They were the only diapers where we had no leaks and we still haven’t after five sizes!  Unless it’s our own fault of course!  I don’t think any diaper would hold three glasses of juice and a four hour dinner excursion with no extra diapers!  Oops!  Oh don’t lie… you’ve done it too!

When Noah was a baby he spit up constantly.  I mean, every bottle!   Jay and I, and even the cat (yes Noah, you threw up on the cat a few times!), got tired of it and decided to switch to soy because both Jay and I were allergic to milk as children.  The throwing up stopped almost immediately!  Because of our love for parent’s choice diapers we check the label on the parent’s choice formula.  Let me just tell you… it’s exactly the same as the name brand formulas, and even better in some areas!  I can’t tell you how much money we saved just checking the label!  Needless to say, the twins were put on the same formula from the start.  Paige still throws almost everything up… but that’s another story! 

So, the dwindling diaper supply got me thinking about what these precious angels were costing us and I’ve decided to give you a small glimpse into some of our reality.  And now that reality is upon us, here is the breakdown:

Diapers:  Noah wears a size 5 and we buy one box at a time.  A box will last us about three weeks, maybe four (I think… I don’t actually deal with that, Jay does).  Noah has begun potty training so we are hoping his diapers will disappear in the near future! We won't even add Noah's diapers and pull-ups into the equation... we'll just focus on the babies!

The twins go through roughly a box every week and a half to two weeks!  On average, they claim twins go through roughly 4702 diapers the first year!  And by “they” I mean random websites on the internet!  Let’s do some math people… 

First, let’s look at time spent.  It takes roughly four minutes on average to change a diaper.  I’m using an average because sometimes with Miss Squirmy Paige it can take you a LOT longer!  So, four minutes per diaper times 4702 equals 18,808 minutes, or 313.5 hours, or 13.06 DAYS of the first year of their life we are changing diapers!  Can you say RIDICULOUS?!

Now let’s look at the cost… Our diapers run roughly $13.97 for 96 diapers.  Yes, I know it is a penny cheaper per diaper if I buy a box of 200, but that is only going to save about $1.04 so give me a few dollars to be off in my math for my own sanity…  Now 4702 diapers translates into 49 boxes of diapers.  Multiply that by $13.97 and you can see that we will spend $684.53 in the first year on DIAPERS!  Seriously?!  On a piece of plastic that my kids can soil and throw away, it’s like buying trash bags!  We have to pay to throw our crap away in a nice neat bag, just so some dude can come along and squish it, break it open and have a cluster of open bags!  This reminds me, not only will I throw $684.53 in the trash this year, but I also buy cute little bags for a diaper pail to put my money in!  Maybe now people will understand why pee-pee diapers go in the kitchen trash and only dirty ones go in the pail!  But I digress.  If you add wipes into the equation you are looking at another $75 per year!  It’s doesn’t sound like much, but just wait till I get going here!!! 

Now let’s move on to FORMULA!  I am a firm believer that once kids reach one, all bottles and formula are GONE!  Last week when we returned from our trip to Gatlinburg with Noah (which you can read about here), we realized that we were almost out of formula, so daddy had to run to the store at 10:30 at night to get a fresh supply for Miss Dana for the week.  It was then that we realized that we had gone through two full cans of formula in 5 ½ days!  This translates into THREE cans a WEEK!  Holy cow!  Now let’s do some more math!  A can of formula costs us $13.97 (I swear parent’s choice has a thing for this price)!  Multiply that by three equals $41.91 a week, multiplied by 52 equals $2,179.32 for formula for the first year!  And this is at six ounce bottles!  Paige is already trying to get us to give her eight ounce bottles… this price is going to go up by about another $500 to $700 when that starts!  WOW!  Don’t get me started on the fact that Miss Paige Karrigan can’t seem to keep this formula in and we end up with $15 a week on our clothing, which then translates into more laundry detergent, and time doing laundry…

Which brings me to CLOTHING!  I’m a sucker for a good deal.  I laugh and say that Jay made me cheap when we got married.  He is a very humble man and my name brand self needed to be humbled!  The funny thing is it seems that I’ve surpassed him on my cheapness!  I’m constantly looking for a good deal and I LOVE consignment sales!  My children go through clothes like CRAZY!  They started in preemie, and then finally got to newborn around two months, then 0-3 around three months.  They are now four months old.  Carter is still content in most of his 0-3 clothes, while Paige is heading into 3-6 here soon.  These kids grow out of clothes SO fast, or throw up on them and ruin them, that I cannot see spending $15 per outfit just so they can wear it once and be done!  So, I buy them a boat load of cheap, slightly used clothes that will actually be useful, and then I buy them one new outfit every now and then!  I never thought this before, but this season Wal-Mart has some of the cutest little spring outfits I’ve ever seen!  Anyway… we spend about $100 per month on clothing for all the kids, including shoes and socks… shhhh, don’t tell Jay, he thinks I’m thriftier than that! 

Laundry totals out to being FIVE to SIX loads of laundry per week!  I spend all day Saturday doing laundry and sometimes, if not all the time, it runs into my Sunday!  So, for those of you wondering why I’m never around, I don’t visit, or don’t seem to have time to call… I’m doing the freakin’ laundry!  I try to do the kids’ laundry on Thursday, so that our dear nanny can fold it for me on Friday.  Then I do the other four loads over the weekend because it is the only time I have to get it done!  If on the rare occasion we end up spending our weekend away or visiting, everything is thrown off schedule and it creates a cluster of work for me, and unwanted stress!  And as any parent of multiples can tell you… getting off schedule is NOT good for our family!  We go through a bottle of laundry detergent every two weeks and our washer and dryer are running for hours on end.  If I was home, there would be a load a day.  As it is now, the dishwasher is run every single night. 

Now, just for the added enjoyment, let me talk about DOCTORS!  Yes, doctors!  Let me start by saying that I actually have fabulous insurance through my company and my children are all covered on my plan.  All of their well-visits and shots are covered 100% at no cost to me… however when one gets sick, all THREE get sick!  When you have three sick children, here is what you are looking at off the top.  We carry a co-pay of $30 on my insurance plan, which was fabulous because we never got sick and if something did happen, that $30 got us every test known to man and awesome care that you only receive when you carry such great coverage!  Since the twins were born, they’ve been sick.  I had a cold when they were born, so that was the way they entered the world.  That was followed by a stomach virus Noah brought home when he was in daycare, followed by another cold, then RSV and now they are getting over what we hope is our FINAL winter cold!  We went from paying $30 per visit for Noah when he was sick (which was once before the twins came) to paying $30 per child, per visit for three children since the great family expansion!!!  But that’s not all… RSV sent us to the ER FIVE times!  Not only do you have to pay a $30 co-pay to the doctor, but then you have to pay a $50 ER visit co-pay!  $80 per visit per child to the ER!  And don’t get me started on certain emergency rooms being in-network, but their doctors are out-of-network and you have to pay them full price, but don’t find out till after the fact!  Yes, that is what we are currently fighting!

It may sound like I’m complaining about the cost of my children, however I’m really not.  I’m just trying to give you a very small example of some of the added cost of having multiples.  This is just the tip of the iceberg; I haven’t even touched the subjects of childcare, toiletries, solid foods, car seats, strollers, toys, highchairs, furniture, and vehicles.  Imagine life when they start school, learn to drive, want to go to college!  When you have multiples everything is amplified.  The stress, the costs, the work, the headaches.  But at the end of the day, the smiles, the laughs, and the pure enjoyment of watching them grow and learn make it all worth it. 

I love my kids, I’m amazingly blessed to have them, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.  I’d pay the world twice over if I had to in order to keep them happy and safe.  Any mother would.  Jay and I are lucky.  We’ve been blessed with relatively good jobs that come with decent pay and we get by.  But next time you see parents pushing a stroller with twins, trips or quads around… take a minute to realize the stress those parents are under, the financial hardship of unexpected multiples, the strain on their marriage.  Multiples are definitely a blessing, but they come with added responsibility.  When those parents need a new highchair, need a car seat… they don’t have the cost of just one coming at them… they are looking at two, three and four!  When their kids get sick, doctor bills are flooding their desks and they are fighting with insurance companies in double.  When you see how they are raising or managing their children, don’t judge them.  Life with multiples is hard, and they are just trying to get by, just trying to get through that one moment in time, while trying to find one spare moment to actually stop and enjoy their kids, to actually stop and watch them grow up before it's too late.

Don’t feel sorry for them, they are truly happy and they know how blessed the actually are.  But keep in mind, just because life blessed them with such a great gift, there is a lot more going on behind closed doors then cute little giggling babies... they are lucky when they find the time to sit down and enjoy those smiles.

Behind closed doors, here is what we clean up every night (on a good night):

Behind closed doors, here is what we wash weekly (not including the two loads I did prior to this, or the load of random things we used while I was running these loads):

Behind closed doors, here is what we wash nightly:

Behind closed doors, here is what we hear:

Behind closed doors, here is our reaction:

Okay, so that is SO NOT our reaction, but we can pretend for today. 



And that, my friends, is a peek into our reality.  Thanks for listening to me ramble... I'm not sure I remember the point of this post now! And that's what I was aiming for!