Leaving on a jet plane...I mean in a minivan....

Well, leaving on a jet plane definitely sounds more glamorous than driving a minivan, but we're taking the minivan out on it's first official roadtrip pretty soon. Plane prices were just too high this time around to fly out to Virginia to see Bob's parents for some vacation, so we've resorted to driving!

We're looking at about a 17 hour drive total, broken up over a few days. This will be a test of our patience (and Jack's!) for sure with an 18 month old in a car seat for that long. A change of scenery is always nice though, so I'm willing to do what it takes for a nice vacation to a cooler climate :) Jack thinks he was helping out in this picture by carrying his diaper pack around after sitting on top of it like a chair.

Will try to update the blog, but it may be sparse for a while until we get back!

You don't ask, you don't get

I didn't label this a "Random Thought" because it does pertain somewhat to motherhood...at least becoming a mom has caused me to learn more about the health care industry than I ever knew before, and the more I learn the more I shake my head. Of course I'm no expert in this field, preferring instead to watch the weather outside, but when you receive a bill for some medical related expense just about every day in the mail (or so it seems), you're kinda forced to sit up and take notice about why your cash flow suddenly dries up....

Backing up a little bit, when we were in Virginia, my husband worked for a large company with pretty good health insurance options. Our premium per month was reasonable but not cheap, and I had great maternity coverage when I was pregnant with Jack. In fact I think from start to finish, including all the office visits, test, ultrasounds, hospital delivery with epidural, and post-natal checkups, we paid somewhere between $2oo to $300 all thanks to our insurance, even though in some sense we were paying for more of those costs through our premium every month (of which Bob's company paid a pretty good slice).

So fast forward to this baby, and things aren't so rosy for our pocketbook this time around. Bob works for a very small company now that does not offer health insurance. They do help with a Flexible Spending Account and a certain amount per month to help us cover the cost of our own individual insurance plan, but we don't have nearly the coverage with this plan that we did with the prior insurance plan. In fact we have NO maternity coverage at all, and cannot even use maternity expenses to meet our deductible. Bob said apparently most individual insurance plans in TX don't offer maternity coverage...I guess no one figured people in Texas might want to have children without having to shell out thousands to do so?

The one good thing (and in another way not so good) is that since we don't have coverage for all of these maternity bills, we can ask for a cash discount. As our realtor reminded us when we bought our house, "You don't ask, you don't get!" I can't tell you how much we've saved by doing this. For example...if we had maternity coverage, my last ultrasound would have been billed to our insurance company for $500. We were told this was amount we owed out of pocket. Since we asked for the discount, instead of paying $500, it ended up being somewhere closer to $200! Same thing with some of the standard testing I had done at the beginning of my pregnancy...we got 50% knocked off the bill because we were paying in cash.

So the "in another way not so good part" comes in when we started thinking about the discrepancy between what we've paid in cash and what would have been billed to an insurance company. In the case of the ultrasound, about $300! Either way, there was no difference in the level of service performed whether we paid for cash or had insurance, so why is the price jacked up over 100%? If the price for us was around $200, which was probably a better reflection of the true cost of the service anyway, why isn't that the price billed to the insurance company? No wonder insurance premiums are so high! Yeesh!!!

I'd like to say I'll step down off my soapboax now, but since this problem doesn't appear likely to go away anytime soon, I might be up here awhile...

There is no learning curve....

I saw this article off CNN today called "8 Things No One Tells You About Being a Mom" that I think any mom would really identify with. At first I was skeptical that I would get much out of reading any parenting article off CNN of all places, but the author's first point really caught my attention: There is no learning curve.

She goes on to say:

"Rather, if you graphed it, it would just go up and up. By the time you master colic, it's over. All your smug expertise at changing diapers on an upright toddler becomes obsolete when she graduates to big-kid underwear. Net result: You never feel quite on top of things.

And although the firstborn breaks you in for the next, Number Two is usually so different in temperament, taste, or developmental pacing that what you learned the first time often doesn't work or apply. My oldest, Henry, would respond only to the loudest of shouts and severest of threats. But when I tried my hard-learned disciplinary tactics on next-in-line Eleanor, the slightest raised voice would make her quiver and tear up."

Boy is that the truth! It seems like you get a small window of time once you master breastfeeding to enjoy feeling like you actually know what you're doing before it's time to move on to rice cereal and solid foods, and then it's on to table food, etc etc. And I suppose I'm about to learn about baby number #2 being different than the first here in about 4 months or so!

The one great thing though about at least mastering something with your child, even if it's only for a short time, is that you can still pass those helpful hints on to other moms as their kids hit similar stages. I don't know what I'd do without my MOPS group, bible study group, playdates, this blog, and anything else where I've gotten to know other young moms! I've been encouraged and learned a lot of helpful hints from everyone else who has been in my shoes, and it's nice to feel like you can help someone else in return.

And on a completely different topic (which I am allowed to do without explanation given my pregnant state)...I am so happy to have discovered a wonderful Thai restaurant in the Woodlands called Ploy Thai Cuisine. If you like Thai, try it out...Yum....

Where has the time gone?

Boy this pregnancy has flown by...almost half way done! I was looking at a calendar yesterday as I was leaving my doctor's office and realized we're almost into July already. Suddenly November doesn't seem that far off!

It did make me start thinking about all the things left to do, and then I had a sudden moment of slight panic realizing I need to decide sometime soon whether I should go through the childbirth classes again with this baby so I can get signed up in time. What did you second time moms out there do?

We went through the classes with Jack, and even though I did go the epidural route with him, I still felt some comfort knowing that I had learned the breathing techniques in case an epidural had not been an option. Well, needless to say I'm a little rusty on them now...should I go through the classes again? I suppose I could dig out those old notes and look through them, but I think I'd break down laughing if I tried to "practice" by myself at home :)

Vickie's Voodoo worked!

I mentioned in my last post that a friend of mine tried a trick with my wrist that will supposedly tell you the sex of your child(ren). Well, after finding out this morning that we're having a girl for baby numero dos, I must say that "Vickie's Voodoo Trick" (surprisingly named by Vickie herself) seems to have some merit to it...at least in my case! I guess that still makes it very anecdotal, as with all the tricks to determine baby gender, but fun to try!

Anyway, the more this news has sunk in, the more excited I've become about it. For a long time I didn't have strong feelings either way about whether I wanted a girl or boy, but when I really started to think about it, I was quickly going to be outnumbered by three Looney men if this baby ended up as a boy. I already struggle enough now to get to see anything on television that ISN'T sports related between the hours of 5pm and 11pm, so it was really going to be tough once Jack and a little brother started vying for control as well. Phew, at least there is still hope for HGTV and occasional Weather Channel viewing (though I refuse to watch Abrams and Bettes...a subject for another post).

I was amazed at how many pictures the ultrasound tech took this morning. With Jack, we were in and out in about 10-15 minutes, but this one took about 30 minutes. Of course the only not so pleasant thing about an ultrasound is having to drink a bunch of water an hour before hand. The woman scheduling the appointment told me 32 ounces....HA! I maybe drank half that amount and was miserable. That's about as near to cruel and unusual punishment for a pregnant woman as you can get! Anyway, the baby looked great and we even got to see her with her hand up to her mouth, perhaps starting that thumb-sucking habit early on! She was very busy in there as well, which I think means my limit of calm children has been hit with Jack :)

My favorite response to this news was from a friend of ours in Austin who wrote Bob and I some notes now that he has a little daughter of his own:

"Note to Bob: That little girl will have you wrapped around her finger before you know it. Believe me...I know.

Note to Kate: When Bob says, "There is no need to buy yet another outfit for her," he is doing so because he doesn't understand that once she wears something once it can never be worn again due to the acidic qualities of female baby skin. At least that is what Erin tells me..."

I knew a clothing fund was a good idea to start now.....I wonder if Bob would believe me if I told him my skin never stopped being "acidic" as an excuse to shop for clothes?