Why are kids so expensive? There’s always a new study indicating that children cost a gazillion dollars to raise. But it’s not really the diapers or the college tuition that freaks people out about the cost of parenthood. Most people realize the diapers and dinosaur toys cost money. Instead, the financial stress comes from all of the unexpected life lessons that you can’t add into your family budget the way you can account for pizza parties and piano lessons.

Here’s one example. A few weeks ago, my four-year-old ran full steam into the house to report on her daddy-daughter date that night in which she and my husband saw “The Princess and The Frog.” Her excited grin threw my mommy radar off and I wasn’t prepared for what I heard in her full report on the night’s events.

“I had a great time with Daddy except for when he had to cut me out of my seatbelt. That was scary.”

“What!?!,” I asked, not sure if I’d heard what she was saying correctly. She repeated it back again and just as I was asking why her Dad had to cut her out of her seatbelt he appeared from the garage with an exhausted look on his face.

My heart began to race as I heard the tale about how my daughter was monkey-ing around in the 10-minute drive from our house to the theatre when somehow the shoulder strap of my daughter’s seatbelt became wrapped around her and wouldn’t release due to the locking mechanism of many seatbelts. Despite the efforts of my husband, and his pal who was also there with his daughter, they couldn’t get the belt to release. In fact, the harder they tried to free my daughter from the seat belt that was wrapped around her, the more it pressed down on her 4T-sized abdomen. So, my husband did what all Eagle Scouts would do: he pulled out his pocket knife, cut her out of the belt, shrugged off the trauma, and then went in to the theatre to watch the toddler chick flick.

Needless to say, once the shock wore off and my daughter’s full body inspection proved to have no signs of damage except for a little bit of childhood trauma, I began to fret about the cost of replacing a seatbelt. It didn’t sound cheap. And it wasn’t. Lucky for me the lovely folks at the dealership took pity on us and ate the majority of the cost. We escaped with only paying $100 and a valuable but expensive lesson learned by my daughter. (I hope.) When I equated the cost of fixing the belt to the price of Disneyland tickets, my daughter suddenly had a new understanding of the concept that money doesn’t grow on trees.

Lucky for me, I am an experienced parent, so I know how these expensive lessons work. I think each of my kids have cost me a pretty penny over the years to learn a lesson.

Years ago, I was entering a busy freeway on a typical morning when I heard excessive, repeated honking. As I was trying to merge into oncoming traffic, I tried to look for a sign of an accident ahead of me or behind to me.

Where is this disturbance coming from? I asked myself as my two daughters sat in their carseats screaming about the loud noise. The sound followed me as I traveled down the freeway at full speed. As I looked around at other drivers, who were glaring at me like I was a crazed nut, I suddenly realized the sound was coming from my car. That was the sound was familiar to me because it was the panic alarm on my car! I postponed my morning plan and drove directly to the car dealership. (The people at the stop lights along the way thought I was a real jerk with all of that maniac honking I was doing at red lights.)

The expensive mechanics discovered that an important electrical panel had been water logged and was now malfunctioning. Water-logged? But we don’t allow food in the car, I said to myself. Or so I thought. The man pulled out an empty water bottle and we the truth began to unfold. One of my adorable children had accidentally knocked over an open water bottle from my cup holder and then tried to hide the evidence. Oops. That oops cost me $800.

Question: What expensive oops-moments have you had in your house?