How not to budget.

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There are many aspects of being a parent that you expect. Emotionally you know that not every day is going to be perfect, tantrums will be thrown, arguments will be had and you can guarantee tears will flow. Physically you know teeth will be lost, legs will be bruised, somewhere will be cut and eventually bones will be broken. We are nearing the stage at the Castle where the onset of puberty, although possibly years away, is also a  blink of an eye away and so is "The Talk" but that's for another post (a very long post, possibly 5 pages, with pictures and audio, I'm not doing it alone! You have been warned).

But todays post is about the one closest to most of our hearts, the aspect of parenting we were warned about, the one we thought we had prepared for, the one that was the main topic of the decision (you know, who stays at home, does anyone stay at home, they do! Oh, it's me is it, right we are then). 

Yesterday was subs day for the boy child and his Beaver troop, today the fees for dance class are due, Wednesday is the girl child and Brownies, Friday her dance class fees and for both after school clubs on Monday. Now compared to some that is a short list, compared to some it's a long one but for me it's an aspect of parenting I didn't really budget for. Now before you start with the chortling at my naivety, I knew the kids would have activities that needed paying for, it's just I'm a child of the eighties and I remember everything costing about a £1.

You budget for clothes, you budget for shoes, you budget for birthdays and Christmas (ah Christmas, remember that, so long ago) you even budget for the birthday parties and subsequent gifts required for other children. But for some reason the first week of term always comes as a shock, the spreadsheet goes out of the window and the shopping list has a last minute rethink to accommodate a reduction in funds (5 different types of pasta dish anyone?). And I'm lucky! That's right dear reader, I'm lucky, because as of this moment my two haven't discovered the one thing that made my childhood a wonderful memory, they haven't discovered sport.

Time to crank the heating up because a chill just ran down my spine. Sport, wonderful, brilliant sport. With boots, kit, equipment, travel, training, matches and yep, more subs. The life lessons learned are priceless (I wish) and the friendships made can last a lifetime as they are built over a common interest, but I need to delay the beginning of this possible love affair. Over the weeks a constant dilemma has raged through these posts, the question of the stay at homer becoming a jobber. The question used to be how to find a job that would fit in with home life and the plan. If my two discover sport, if they desire to add yet another club to their weekly schedule the question changes. No longer is it which job, the new question is how many?

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