we went to our tax appointment today.
a little bit of history: after last year’s tax appointment, we’re determined to NOT GET FUCKED by the government and AMT again. so we immediately go out and buy a house. and then we have that baby. and we make her extra cute so they get the picture: WE HAVE DEDUCTIONS. LEAVE US ALONE.
and plus, we make her extra small: WE HAVE HUNGRY BABY. LEAVE US MONEY FOR FOOD.
so, we go into our appointment today, loaded with everything we could have possibly done. the appointment takes a really long time. this is never a good thing.
after putting in all the numbers and everything, click whirrr pop ding! out spits the number.
i am aghast. i am stunned. i see it, but the information can’t actually make it from my eyeball to my brain stem.
let me be clear: i’m not expecting a windfall, but with all that we’ve done, i’m hopefully that it’s less than last year. ideally, much less than last year.
not more than TWICE AS MUCH as last year.
TWICE AS MUCH.
more than. and some.
holy crap.
it turns out that all the stock options i exercised as well as the stock i sold to cobble together the down payment on the house so we’d have a reasonable mortgage payment end up fucking me over as they get recorded as standard income. which again causes AMT to screw me.
where are we going to get all that money? that’s like as much as several starbucks baristas make in a single year. i probably could cobble together that much, but that would be ALL MY MONEY. which doesn’t seem to be a good idea, to get rid of all your money. does it? i recall some other short people showing up around here with their hand out. sure, i could probably get a HELOC loan out of my house, but how many years is it going to take me to pay that shit off? christ, i just can’t pull that much money out of my arse. sell the miata? sell a kidney?
suddenly i’ve got visions of us losing the house. we thought we were being so good and so careful, and instead we’re another one of those subprime casualties: buying a house that we couldn’t really afford. instead of buying we should have just rented a place somewhere, while i go shuck burgers or work as a night watchman.
our minds reel. we are morose for the rest of the afternoon.
a few hours later, our accountant calls. she says that she was rechecking the figures because she thought it was a strangely huge bill. it turns out that she found an error, and our bill is a little less.
by THIRTY FOUR THOUSAND DOLLARS.
i wept all over again. we still have to pay a huge chunk, but never before have i been so happy to pay so much money.
newsflash: snapper is not a large baby.
i guess it’s to be expected. it’s not like i’m anything but stick skinny. but although she’s been on the low end of the percentile, when her growth curve started slowing at her four month appointment, it planted the seed of worry in our head. but given how much she’s grown since then, she surely must have caught up and be fine by now!
the six month appointment verdict: 12lb, 2oz.
which plunges her off the charts on the small end. doh! the doc says that he’s not sure whether we should all be worried or not. clearly she’s going to be a small baby for the aforementioned reasons. and maybe she just doesn’t have all the extra extra extra fat that most of the other really chubby babies have at this age. she’s certainly growing and alert and behaviorally very advanced.
but just not very big.
i was trying to rationalize it and then getting caught at my insistence that americans are just too damn fat and the same size inflation that causes banana republican to not carry pants that are smaller than 30” waist is the same thing that’s causing snapper to be judged against a scale that is used for corpulent 18lb four month-olds.
then hmc talked some sense into me, and if we can get snapper’s weight up so she has the extra fat in case she needs it, there’s no harm in it. she might be fine without it, but she’ll definitely be fine with a little more meat on her bones.
so now were giving her extra bottles and even doing crazy things like adding olive oil to her solid food. mmmmm yummy calories!
maybe if she wasn’t using all her food to just make more cuteness.
oh snapper, maybe some day i’ll learn to incrementally write these as the month goes on and not try to remember everything that happened in the last month and scrabble down vague remembrances. not that everything you do isn’t eminently memorably. it’s just that i’m… old.
thankfully, this was the month of big steps!
one: teeth!
you were already busting out teeth at the end of last month, doing the teething gumming thing. even though it seemed a little early, you couldn’t wait and then BAM there they were, two little icebergs in your ocean of gums. let the gnawing begin.
two: holding!
three: food!
this is also the month that you started eating food. FOOD! while the first couple of times were pretty puzzling to you, you’ve now really started to take to it pretty well. we’re amazed at your quick adaptability.
on the down side, it looks like you’re developing a little bit of stranger anxiety. whereas previously you didn’t mind who carried you around, now if it’s anyone but me or mommy, you’re now a screaming mess. hmm. more to come on this, i’m sure.
