A lot of musicians do it.

A lot of musicians' kids are fucked up, too, though.

That came out needlessly harshly. But you know.

Though the flexibility is definitely an easier-making thing.

I wonder how Deadhead kids turn out? There must be some of them who grew up migratory.

Circus kids have it different, because the circus is a self-sustaining community that moves together from place to place.

Hee, Jilli! Yay for teeny little brave Scouts who now have a revised impression of witchy ladies.

Yeah, ours wouldn't be as bad as touring musicians, because we at least have the stability of going to the same locations again and again.

We'd have to homeschool, but I suppose we might have anyway.

For values of "normal" that include no job I've ever had.

Me neither.

Mind you, I will be going back to work, because we can't pay the bills on one income, but with daycare (and daycare for an infant around here is 800 a month or more) and related baby costs, it's going to be tight.

(And as we're already a two-income family, it's not going to bump our tax bracket up to more than it is, and Paul's solo bracket wouldn't be a huge difference.)

We have ones in our neighborhood this year. I answered the door last weekend to a pair of teeny-tiny baby Girl Scouts, who did indeed quote Addams Family at me. After I marked down how many boxes I wanted, they scampered down our front stairs calling out "Mom! Mom! We sold cookies to the witchy lady! She's nice!"

They should film that and show it every Christmas Halloween.

Mind you, I will be going back to work, because we can't pay the bills on one income, but with daycare (and daycare for an infant around here is 800 a month or more) and related baby costs, it's going to be tight.

Absolutely. Working with a new baby is expensive. I just get frustrated when people say that therefore it's a slam-dunk to stay home. Staying home with a new baby is also expensive.

Compound as in you get a raise, and frequently the raise is a COLA raise of N% of your previous year.

Yeah, I understand. What I meant is that my experience has been, you don't get any routine raises or COLAs at all; you maybe get a promotion after a few years, or you maybe quit and find another job -- so the lifelong trend is up, but it's nothing nice and predictable like annual increases.

Absolutely. Working with a new baby is expensive. I just get frustrated when people say that therefore it's a slam-dunk to stay home. Staying home with a new baby is also expensive.

Yep. And in our case, more expensive than working with a new baby.

Man, the childcare costs are freaking me out

That was the good thing about being my own boss. When the children were little we had an actual business location and the boys went to work with me until they went to pre-school. When they were nursing they went out on service calls with me. The boys went to all kinds of offices with me. When people want their computer system fixed they don't care if you have a kid strapped to your chest.

When they went to pre-school it was about $400 a month. Bobby had hearing and speech problems so he went to public pre-school for free. That was cool.

The last 7 years I have worked at home so I just deal with the insanity of trying to concentrate with kiddy interruptions.

One of the neighbor girls hit us up for cookies. I let the boys each get a box. I didn't have any.