The Price of Children

What a difference a good night sleep, some prayer, and some antibiotics can do. :)  Things are going much better today.  The girls just look so much better and act so much better after getting some drugs. :)  We even ventured out to MOPS today which was so refreshing and soo great!  One of our MOPS mentors read us this (below) to get the day started.  It made me smile and made me remember how incredibly grateful I am for my babies....even on those triple-earache-kind-of days. :)  Hopefully it will help some other parents out there if you are having a rough day... :) 

Thanks for your prayers!!!

The Price of Children

The government recently calculated the cost of raising a child from birth to 18 and came up with $160,140 for a middle income family. Talk about sticker shock! That doesn't even touch college tuition.

But $160,140 isn't so bad if you break it down. It translates into $8,896.66 a year, $741.38 a month, or $171.08 a week. That's a mere $24.24 a day! Just over a dollar an hour. Still, you might think the best financial advice is don't have children if you want to be "rich." Actually, it is just the opposite.

What do you get for your $160,140?

• Naming rights. First, middle, and last!
• Glimpses of God every day.
• Giggles under the covers every night.
• More love than your heart can hold.
• Butterfly kisses and Velcro hugs.
• Endless wonder over rocks, ants, clouds, and warm cookies.
• A hand to hold, usually covered with jelly or chocolate.
• A partner for blowing bubbles, flying kites, building sandcastles, and skipping down the sidewalk in the pouring rain.
• Someone to laugh yourself silly with, no matter what the boss said or how your stocks performed that day.

For $160,140, you never have to grow up.

• You get to finger-paint, carve pumpkins, play hide-and-seek, catch lightning bugs, and never stop believing in Santa Claus.
• You get to frame rainbows, hearts, and flowers under refrigerator magnets and collect spray painted noodle wreaths for Christmas, hand prints set in clay for Mother's Day, and cards with backward letters for Father's Day.
For $160,140, there is no greater bang for your buck.
• You get to be a hero just for retrieving a Frisbee off the garage roof, taking the training wheels off a bike, removing a splinter, filling a wading pool, coaxing a wad of gum out of bangs, and coaching a baseball team that never wins but always gets treated to ice cream regardless.
• You get a front row seat to history to witness the first step, first word, first bra, first date, and first time behind the wheel.


You get another branch added to your family tree, and if you're lucky, a long list of limbs in your obituary called grandchildren and great grandchildren. You get an education in psychology, nursing, criminal justice, communications, and human sexuality that no college can match. In the eyes of a child, you rank right up there under God. You have all the power to heal a boo-boo, scare away the monsters under the bed, patch a broken heart, police a slumber party, ground them forever, and love them without limits, so . . one day they will, like you, love without counting the cost. We all know they grow up too soon.

Author Unknown