our day started off ok, but tess the turtle was a little cranky for the second day in a row. this morning, she got really mad at the wooden spoon, i can only assume, because it would not do what she wanted it to in regards to her teething. she would put it up to her mouth, stop, and throw a tantrum. like full on, legs kicking, face red, spoon-throwing, screamingfacebeforenoisecomesout tantrum. then she would pick it up and start the cycle again. needless to say, i took it away and gave her some tylenol. it seemed to work ok, but she remained a bit on the fussy side all day.
so we decided to venture out, so that we could explore more than mommy's cooking utensils. we drove into raleigh to visit dad, but he was busy working, and tess had fallen asleep in the car, so we drove to the horse complex to watch the show there, buuuuut they were the crazy horses (saddlebreds, morgans, and roadster show) - nothing wrong with them, just not my cup of tea, so i continued driving. i decided that since it was 3:30 i'd just venture towards durham and find something out there to do for an hour or so before rush hour.
however, right when i made it to the point of no return - aka harrison ave - i saw that 40 east was a parking lot already. not to be daunted, i exited onto harrison with plans to cut through to chapel hill road and come in the back door, so to speak, of raleigh. i was ignoring the fact that i have never EVER successfully navigated cary on my own... and i still never have. as i was confidently trailblazing through the concentrated area of relocated yankees, i got a call from jennifer inviting me to her house. excellent. now i had plans! if only i could FIND HER HOUSE...
so i did actually find chapel hill road, and we deduced that i should turn right. wrong. i should have turned left. by the time i realized this, i was well into morrisville and on my way to apex. so, i thought, i will drive through apex to fuquay, and on to jennifers! no worries! of course now tess was waking up and fussing.
and somehow, i brilliantly missed wherever it was that 54 ran into 55 in apex, and i passed 540, and i blazed right on into durham. oh for the love. never fear, i said to myself. at least i know durham. and i do. of course it's all i can do to keep tess from flat out wailing at this point, but we made it safely to southpoint before a complete meltdown of either mommy or baby. yahoo! the day is saved! not.
so then i called andrew and texted jennifer and let them know the plan. i would just stay put, safely in durham. does that sound ironic? not if you grew up there, like i did. i wear neutral gang colors. anyway, andrew said he'd get off work early, a little before 5, and meet me at the rockfish. yum! so around 5, i went to the rockfish, got a table outside in the sun, sat with my daughter, got a side salad, and waited. and waited. and waited. and... you get the picture. i waited for andrew, and as i did so, i ate my salad, being careful to pick out the sticker that had fallen off of the avocado and on to a piece of lettuce. there was no avocado in my salad. then i waited for the waiter to come back. he never did. so i went inside and asked the bartender to send him out sometime. by this point, andrew had called to tell me that now HE was stuck in traffic. great. so when my fantastic waiter returned, i ordered dessert. bread pudding, to be exact, to eat while i was waiting on andrew to get in. and i waited for 20 mins. i believe they were actually waiting on the yeast to rise to make the bread, to let it get stale, to make the pudding. i was actually getting my stuff together and tess in the stroller and about to drop cash on the table and just leave, when the waiter returned with my dessert. i told him that i wasn't going to be able to eat it and was having a hard time getting service. he left with the promise of the bill. but what returned was the manager, who comped everything (a $6 total), and boxed my bread pudding. andrew had called again at this point to let me know he was still stuck, due to a vehicle fire on the side of the road, and would be in town... sometime.
SO at least, i thought, i can just take the quick 5 minute drive to my parents' house. i would take the back roads to avoid the disaster that was 40, and be done with this fiasco in no time. wrong again. i spent 10 mins just waiting for people, who also took my "shortcut" to turn left at a stop sign. 27 cars, 12 mins, and much crying (from the turtle) later, i made it safely into my parents' neighborhood.
to wrap the story up, andrew and i got into one car, left my parents' house around 8, stopped for take out, made it home by around 9:30, and watched grey's anatomy on hulu. it didn't end so bad, but holy moly what a day. i swear i probably wasted 15 gallons of gas driving nowhere and doing nothing! yeesh!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
7 months!
holy cow, can you believe it's been 7 months (and 1 day) since my sweet, sweet baby tess was born?? for some reason, 7 months seems SOOO OLD! maybe because it's now older than half a year? i have no idea, but wow!
i've been trying to write this post for 5 days now, and life keeps getting in the way, but we got the coolest 7-month-iversary present on saturday (when she was technically 7 months and 3 days) - baby girl started crawling!
she looks like an inch-worm, and she still prefers that you just pick her up and put her close to whatever she wanted, but i'm so excited that she's made this milestone! we tried to get a video, but she started fussing during it, so i'll wait till we have a better one. the funniest thing is that the one thing that motivated her to actually crawl wasn't mommy or daddy, or even something really cool like the dog... it was my coffee mug! some days only coffee can motivate me to move too! like mother like daughter, i guess.other fun facts about the 7 month turtle:
-she loves sweet foods like oatmeal, prunes, peaches, apples, and squash, and has tepid (at best) feelings towards veggis like carrots, green peas, and green beans.
-she loves chewing on things. some of her favorites include any fruit mommy is eating, her pink pleather mary-janes, and her new rubber giraffe that nana bought her.
-she picked out her first baby doll at the store. it has long blonde hair and a pink dress. she cried and was afraid of most of the other ones, especially the freaky ones that move giggle creepily when you walk by.
-she has begun yelling and shrieking in response to excitement - at parties, to mommy, daddy, nana, and grandpa, and it's so loud it'll hurt your ears.
-she is becoming more selective about who she will go to and be content with in groups. she prefers people she knows and those who are interesting to look at but not too in-your-face.
-she hasn't been babbling much in a while, which makes mommy nervous, but all the other experienced mothers out there are telling me it's because she's working on so many physical milestones (like crawling!) and trying to pull up and walk.
-she can sit up well on her own now, and doesn't seem to notice when she tips over and SLAMS herself into the floor. it freaks mommy out!
-she loves music and pianos/keyboards, so we've gotten her one of those to play with.
-she has a book called "whose nose is that?" which she loves, because it has noses of animals which you lift to reveal the whole animal. her favorites are the puppy, pig, horse, duck, and cat.
-she loves textures, so she enjoys books like "tails" with different textured animal tails, and a new one we got her with textures around town (like a brick, a sidewalk, a tree, etc.) she also loves looking at and touching different carpets and the wicker laundry baskets.
-she is wearing clothing anywhere between 3-12 months, depending on the brand, but most of them are in the 6-9 month range.
-i have no idea how much she weighs or how tall she is now, other than to say she seems HUUUUGE to me!
getting into a daily schedule and nightly sleep schedule has been challenging this month. we start getting pretty established, and then mommy goes to work and that messes it all up. she usually likes to nap in the morning sometime between 10 and 11:30am and then again between 2-4:30pm, and occasionally she'll take another one during dinner, but that usually messes up the night time if she does.
she has a nightly bedtime routine that starts with a solid food meal around 7:30, followed by a bath (usually by daddy), a last nursing, and then she goes down into her co-sleeper around 8:30 or 9. recently, we're trying to wean her off night nursings so she'll sleep longer, but it hasn't been going too smoothly. i hear it takes a little, but two nights in a row she woke up at 1:30am and wanted to stay awake until 3am. also, each night before i go to work, she doesn't want to sleep at all. so sunday night, i got less than 3 hours of sleep because tess and i didn't get to bed (and sleep) until after 3am, and i'm supposed to get up at 5:45am. i slept through my alarm and was 30 mins late for work. hopefully soon this sleeping thing will get worked out. we're trying to have andrew comfort her during the night now, because when i'm near her, all she wants to do is nurse herself to sleep, and she refuses to just be patted back to sleep by me, but she'll do it for andrew. i know we just have to stick with it, but i'd really love to sleep for more than 3 hours straight during the night!
we have also started using formula occasionally, when we're out and about, because it's easier than always nursing or keeping breast milk frozen or cool. it also makes me feel a little better because i'm not doing any iron supplements with her (don't really thing she needs them), but the formula has iron added, so she's getting some that way. however, that doesn't seem to agree with her digestive system so well, because recently she's gone from pooping once or twice a day to much MUCH less frequently. eek! we keep loading her up with prunes, but i may have to find out if there's anything else we can do, as she seems quite uncomfortable at times.
well, she's awake now, so i must go play! ... and clean the house, and do laundry, and make lunch, etc, etc, etc.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
repost from odb for today
reading text
1 Corinthians 2:1-9 (New International Version)
devotional
http://odb.org/2010/10/20/well-chosen-words/
1 Corinthians 2:1-9 (New International Version)
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him"
devotional
When I was a kid, I learned a big word that was fun to pronounce: “antidisestablishmentarianism.” What a mouthful! I recently took the time to look it up. The dictionary defines it as “the doctrine or political position that opposes the withdrawal of state recognition of an established church.” The definition is almost as difficult as the term itself. Neither I nor my school friends knew what it meant. But using the big word made me look knowledgeable.
When the apostle Paul ministered to people, he didn’t try to impress others. In his letter to the Corinthians, he wrote: “When I came to you, [I] did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God” (1 Cor. 2:1). “Excellence of speech” is the translation of Greek words meaning “high-sounding words” or “pompous speech.” This implies using words to exalt self instead of to instruct others. Paul was a brilliant scholar who expressed the deep things of God in Scripture. Yet he did not use lofty language to elevate his self-importance.
As we grow in our understanding of God’s Word, let’s follow Paul’s example and guard against parading knowledge for knowledge’s sake. Instead, let’s use well-chosen words that build up and encourage others.
The words we speak may indicate
A heart that’s filled with pride;
But godly self-control displays
The Spirit’s work inside. —Sper
It’s not the words we know that show wisdom,
but how and when we use them.
http://odb.org/2010/10/20/well-chosen-words/
Sunday, October 17, 2010
nights
tess's nights have been interesting. when she was just home as a newborn, she hardly slept at all, especially compared to other newborns, and during the night she would eat on her regular every two hour schedule. holy cow.
then with the bili-light, which weighed so much that it would pull over her bassinet, she started co-sleeping with me on the couch near the outlet that we'd plugged the box into. she started going longer, every four hour stretches.
the co-sleeping continued for some time, and at 3 months, much to my dismay and probably due in part to the reflux, she was STILL co-sleeping, BUT she had begun sleeping for long stretches at night. 6-7+ hours, followed by 4 hour stretches, and she slept until 10:30 most mornings. people looked down on me for sleeping with my girl, but at least we were sleeping!
then somewhere between 4-5 months, we began changing her over to the co-sleeper (a bedside attachment, similar to a pack-n-play, but smaller), and the sleeping went to waking every 2 hours, with a possible 3-hour stretch in there. ugh. by the middle of the night, we resorted back to co-sleeping in the bed because i was just falling asleep nursing her. waking time became erratic, sometimes 5:30am, sometimes 7 or 9 or 10:30 with no detectable pattern. yuck.
at about 5.5 months, we'd developed a pattern, put her down around 9:30, she'd wake up around 12:30, then it was a 4-hour stretch, and then every two hours until around 9:30am. not ideal, but at least it was a pattern. however, that little sleep began wearing on me, and so andrew started trying to do a middle-of-the-night-formula bottle, which sometimes led to another 3-4 hour stretch, and sometimes didn't. her waking time again became erratic. and that's how it's been until about a week ago.
we decided it was time to move tess to her crib (upstairs - eek!) because she's getting a bit large for the co-sleeper. night 1, it worked like a charm, she went to bed up there, had a middle of the night bottle, and got up in the morning. HALLELUJAH! we were so excited. i tried to get her to nap in the crib the next day, but she just kept waking up SCREAMING and sounding like she was terrified. after several (hours of) attempts, i finally let the poor thing sleep in my arms, where she continued to wake up screaming until she felt that i was still there. we tried again that night, and only screaming continued until i just felt horrible for her and gave up. she would not sleep without being IN MY ARMS for that whole night. i felt like we'd gone back in time because we'd tried to push her to hard. i was heartbroken.
then, yesterday we went to the fair, and so there were no beds for naps. since we were there for 9 hours, not counting travel time, she spent some time in the stroller, slept in the carrier, and slept in her carseat on the way back. last night, we put her down in the co-sleeper, and she didn't wake up except to eat. early in the morning, i was tired and started falling asleep while she nursed. rather than staying in my arms, she rolled over and literally DOVE headfirst into the co-sleeper (don't worry, it's about 2 inches lower than and attached to the bed), and when i tried to straighten her back up, she did it again. so i laid her back in it, and she went to sleep. the next time she woke up, i fed her, started falling asleep, and she did the same thing! so i laid her down (not on her head), and she slept until we woke up for the day!
it's amazing when your baby just TELLS you what she is ready for! clearly, she wasn't ready to be all the way upstairs in her big-girl crib, but she didn't want to stay in mom's bed (which we are all thankful for!) anymore. what a smartie! i guess we'll do the co-sleeper until it's unsafe, which won't be long with the way she's moving around now, and then have to try making the move to the crib again.
then with the bili-light, which weighed so much that it would pull over her bassinet, she started co-sleeping with me on the couch near the outlet that we'd plugged the box into. she started going longer, every four hour stretches.
the co-sleeping continued for some time, and at 3 months, much to my dismay and probably due in part to the reflux, she was STILL co-sleeping, BUT she had begun sleeping for long stretches at night. 6-7+ hours, followed by 4 hour stretches, and she slept until 10:30 most mornings. people looked down on me for sleeping with my girl, but at least we were sleeping!
then somewhere between 4-5 months, we began changing her over to the co-sleeper (a bedside attachment, similar to a pack-n-play, but smaller), and the sleeping went to waking every 2 hours, with a possible 3-hour stretch in there. ugh. by the middle of the night, we resorted back to co-sleeping in the bed because i was just falling asleep nursing her. waking time became erratic, sometimes 5:30am, sometimes 7 or 9 or 10:30 with no detectable pattern. yuck.
at about 5.5 months, we'd developed a pattern, put her down around 9:30, she'd wake up around 12:30, then it was a 4-hour stretch, and then every two hours until around 9:30am. not ideal, but at least it was a pattern. however, that little sleep began wearing on me, and so andrew started trying to do a middle-of-the-night-formula bottle, which sometimes led to another 3-4 hour stretch, and sometimes didn't. her waking time again became erratic. and that's how it's been until about a week ago.
we decided it was time to move tess to her crib (upstairs - eek!) because she's getting a bit large for the co-sleeper. night 1, it worked like a charm, she went to bed up there, had a middle of the night bottle, and got up in the morning. HALLELUJAH! we were so excited. i tried to get her to nap in the crib the next day, but she just kept waking up SCREAMING and sounding like she was terrified. after several (hours of) attempts, i finally let the poor thing sleep in my arms, where she continued to wake up screaming until she felt that i was still there. we tried again that night, and only screaming continued until i just felt horrible for her and gave up. she would not sleep without being IN MY ARMS for that whole night. i felt like we'd gone back in time because we'd tried to push her to hard. i was heartbroken.
then, yesterday we went to the fair, and so there were no beds for naps. since we were there for 9 hours, not counting travel time, she spent some time in the stroller, slept in the carrier, and slept in her carseat on the way back. last night, we put her down in the co-sleeper, and she didn't wake up except to eat. early in the morning, i was tired and started falling asleep while she nursed. rather than staying in my arms, she rolled over and literally DOVE headfirst into the co-sleeper (don't worry, it's about 2 inches lower than and attached to the bed), and when i tried to straighten her back up, she did it again. so i laid her back in it, and she went to sleep. the next time she woke up, i fed her, started falling asleep, and she did the same thing! so i laid her down (not on her head), and she slept until we woke up for the day!
it's amazing when your baby just TELLS you what she is ready for! clearly, she wasn't ready to be all the way upstairs in her big-girl crib, but she didn't want to stay in mom's bed (which we are all thankful for!) anymore. what a smartie! i guess we'll do the co-sleeper until it's unsafe, which won't be long with the way she's moving around now, and then have to try making the move to the crib again.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
because i can't not blog about it...
i generally try to follow the thumper rule when it comes to blogging, and i like to tell my experiences, but i don't like to write entire posts about sad. however, this time i just need to get it out there.
i'm sad. and scared.
i'm sad because andrew and i tried our darndest to make an educated decision about his job, and it totally backfired. i'm sad because i want to stay at home with our baby girl, and i don't think i can. and i'm sad because i just don't know how to contribute to our finances without going back to work full-time, and that means someone else watching my child grow up.
when andrew applied for the state job, we thought that it was sort of a pipe dream. i knew he wanted to work in the theater again, and i wanted to support him, so i encouraged it, but he knew i had my reservations. first, i was worried about the time commitment. i have experienced life where andrew is consumed with theater, and it meant a lot of late nights, missed nights, weekend work, and a lot of sorry-i'm-two-hours-late-i-got-busy-and-forgot's. when we were dating or just a married couple, this was annoying, sometimes frustrating, and even argument-inducing at times... but now that we have a child, it's just not the kind of thing we need for our family.
so andrew asked about extra hours and was told that it's a 40 hour/week job, and that if he is called in on a weekend, he should take a day off during the week to make the hours right. well, we thought, as long as i'm staying home, we'll get time together whether it's on the weekend or on a tuesday, so that shouldn't be a huge deal. but we still didn't think he'd be offered the job.
then he was called back for an interview, and we started seriously considering the salary/benefits package to find out if this move was even feasible. taking the job, at its highest end of the predicted pay scale would still mean a pay cut for our hoping-to-remain-afloat-with-one-income family, but we were encouraged by looking into the benefits package. it appeared that the state family health insurance rate (while an 80/20 instead of 100/0 plan), with the state's contribution would tip the scales so that andrew would actually gross less money but once health insurance was figured into the deal, he would net about $400/month more. this sounded too good to be true to me, and i made andrew check his calculations 3 times - really. at my insistence, he even double checked the last calculation with my father. ok, we thought, this is something we can entertain... if he gets offered the job.
well then he did. and i had a mini panic attack, seeing flashbacks of the blowing rock "slave" company and our near relationship-ending time in boone. but the contract was for the high end of the pay scale, andrew called the people at the state insurance plan to ensure that we were correct about our monthly premiums, read the contract that stated his job would be 40 hours and from 8am-5pm, monday through friday (with occasional odd hours). so we decided it was nothing but a winning situation... especially with the revolving door that his previous employer had recently become, and he took the job.
he has now been working there for over a week. the first day, instead of returning home at 5:30, he got home at 7:18. we had a serious discussion wherein he promised this would not be a pattern and that he would call each night at 5:00 no matter what, to update me on his eta home.
then came the second day. andrew returned home to tell me that his boss had informed him that his hours would not, in fact, be 8-5. no, they were to be 9:30am to 6:30pm. add in the commute, and he won't be home until 7pm each night. for those of you who have or have had babies, you know that 6pm is the witching hour. at 6pm, your sweet, smiling, laughing children turn to howling demons. and that's ok, because that's when you have daddy come home as a reinforcement and mommy's sanity break begins -- at least long enough for her to make the dinner she hasn't made yet.
needless to say, two of my big fears had been realized within the first two days. oh well, i thought, i guess that just means we'll have to have breakfast together and get our daddy time in during the morning hours. and, there's always the blessing of the cheaper health insurance to make this a good decision.
then andrew went to his new employee orientation. it wasn't until today, a day after his orientation, while he was filling out the health insurance information, that he realized he had been misinformed. no, our family coverage would not be a reduced cost. in fact, it will actually cost MORE for me to be added than it would for my individual coverage - that was BETTER coverage! infuriating. "i don't understand," i said while sitting at lunch, "i thought you triple checked this?" apparently, the person andrew contacted about the state health plan was a moron who told him incorrectly. and now, we are screwed.
not only will my husband be returning AN HOUR AND A HALF later than we'd planned, and working some strange hours for calls, but the insurance actually leaves us over $100 shorter each month. this is after we've already canceled our direct tv service, trash pick-up, and all other non-necessities in hopes of me staying home. we tried to switch phone providers, but we're stuck in a contract, we thought about selling the car, but we'd have to get enough to pay off the rest of the loan on it, and that doesn't look like it's going to happen, and we can't even afford part-time daycare so that i could work more hours and bring money home, because childcare is so expensive that it wouldn't add anything to our income.
i called bcbsnc to see if they would reinstate my health insurance (since it'd end up being about $20/month cheaper for better coverage), and it sounds promising, but we have to pay two months of insurance in the next few days to get them to reinstate it, and we just don't have that in the bank right now.
i know it's bad form to spread your financial woes around your friends, not to mention the entire internet, but i'm just at my wit's end. i don't know what to do, and i feel like i'm drowning. i'm really afraid we're going to sink into financial ruin and end up getting foreclosed on or having a car repoed or power shut off, and be out on the streets. this is a really difficult thing for me - a person who's always been able to work, make money, and save money - to handle.
i feel like the only option left is for me to go back to work full time. this is really a hard pill for me to swallow because it would mean that after paying for childcare, i'd only bring home about $600/month more than we are now - which is HUGE compared to our current income, but it is such a measly amount for the most enormous sacrifice i'd ever have to make. to have someone else raise my baby girl. to only get to see her between the hours of 7pm and 6:15am... which, given that she goes to sleep at 9pm, amounts to a total of about 2 hours a day.
i just want to cry. and scream. and throw things. and punch walls. and run away.
but i can't. because i know it won't change anything... and it won't help.
i'm sad. and scared.
i'm sad because andrew and i tried our darndest to make an educated decision about his job, and it totally backfired. i'm sad because i want to stay at home with our baby girl, and i don't think i can. and i'm sad because i just don't know how to contribute to our finances without going back to work full-time, and that means someone else watching my child grow up.
when andrew applied for the state job, we thought that it was sort of a pipe dream. i knew he wanted to work in the theater again, and i wanted to support him, so i encouraged it, but he knew i had my reservations. first, i was worried about the time commitment. i have experienced life where andrew is consumed with theater, and it meant a lot of late nights, missed nights, weekend work, and a lot of sorry-i'm-two-hours-late-i-got-busy-and-forgot's. when we were dating or just a married couple, this was annoying, sometimes frustrating, and even argument-inducing at times... but now that we have a child, it's just not the kind of thing we need for our family.
so andrew asked about extra hours and was told that it's a 40 hour/week job, and that if he is called in on a weekend, he should take a day off during the week to make the hours right. well, we thought, as long as i'm staying home, we'll get time together whether it's on the weekend or on a tuesday, so that shouldn't be a huge deal. but we still didn't think he'd be offered the job.
then he was called back for an interview, and we started seriously considering the salary/benefits package to find out if this move was even feasible. taking the job, at its highest end of the predicted pay scale would still mean a pay cut for our hoping-to-remain-afloat-with-one-income family, but we were encouraged by looking into the benefits package. it appeared that the state family health insurance rate (while an 80/20 instead of 100/0 plan), with the state's contribution would tip the scales so that andrew would actually gross less money but once health insurance was figured into the deal, he would net about $400/month more. this sounded too good to be true to me, and i made andrew check his calculations 3 times - really. at my insistence, he even double checked the last calculation with my father. ok, we thought, this is something we can entertain... if he gets offered the job.
well then he did. and i had a mini panic attack, seeing flashbacks of the blowing rock "slave" company and our near relationship-ending time in boone. but the contract was for the high end of the pay scale, andrew called the people at the state insurance plan to ensure that we were correct about our monthly premiums, read the contract that stated his job would be 40 hours and from 8am-5pm, monday through friday (with occasional odd hours). so we decided it was nothing but a winning situation... especially with the revolving door that his previous employer had recently become, and he took the job.
he has now been working there for over a week. the first day, instead of returning home at 5:30, he got home at 7:18. we had a serious discussion wherein he promised this would not be a pattern and that he would call each night at 5:00 no matter what, to update me on his eta home.
then came the second day. andrew returned home to tell me that his boss had informed him that his hours would not, in fact, be 8-5. no, they were to be 9:30am to 6:30pm. add in the commute, and he won't be home until 7pm each night. for those of you who have or have had babies, you know that 6pm is the witching hour. at 6pm, your sweet, smiling, laughing children turn to howling demons. and that's ok, because that's when you have daddy come home as a reinforcement and mommy's sanity break begins -- at least long enough for her to make the dinner she hasn't made yet.
needless to say, two of my big fears had been realized within the first two days. oh well, i thought, i guess that just means we'll have to have breakfast together and get our daddy time in during the morning hours. and, there's always the blessing of the cheaper health insurance to make this a good decision.
then andrew went to his new employee orientation. it wasn't until today, a day after his orientation, while he was filling out the health insurance information, that he realized he had been misinformed. no, our family coverage would not be a reduced cost. in fact, it will actually cost MORE for me to be added than it would for my individual coverage - that was BETTER coverage! infuriating. "i don't understand," i said while sitting at lunch, "i thought you triple checked this?" apparently, the person andrew contacted about the state health plan was a moron who told him incorrectly. and now, we are screwed.
not only will my husband be returning AN HOUR AND A HALF later than we'd planned, and working some strange hours for calls, but the insurance actually leaves us over $100 shorter each month. this is after we've already canceled our direct tv service, trash pick-up, and all other non-necessities in hopes of me staying home. we tried to switch phone providers, but we're stuck in a contract, we thought about selling the car, but we'd have to get enough to pay off the rest of the loan on it, and that doesn't look like it's going to happen, and we can't even afford part-time daycare so that i could work more hours and bring money home, because childcare is so expensive that it wouldn't add anything to our income.
i called bcbsnc to see if they would reinstate my health insurance (since it'd end up being about $20/month cheaper for better coverage), and it sounds promising, but we have to pay two months of insurance in the next few days to get them to reinstate it, and we just don't have that in the bank right now.
i know it's bad form to spread your financial woes around your friends, not to mention the entire internet, but i'm just at my wit's end. i don't know what to do, and i feel like i'm drowning. i'm really afraid we're going to sink into financial ruin and end up getting foreclosed on or having a car repoed or power shut off, and be out on the streets. this is a really difficult thing for me - a person who's always been able to work, make money, and save money - to handle.
i feel like the only option left is for me to go back to work full time. this is really a hard pill for me to swallow because it would mean that after paying for childcare, i'd only bring home about $600/month more than we are now - which is HUGE compared to our current income, but it is such a measly amount for the most enormous sacrifice i'd ever have to make. to have someone else raise my baby girl. to only get to see her between the hours of 7pm and 6:15am... which, given that she goes to sleep at 9pm, amounts to a total of about 2 hours a day.
i just want to cry. and scream. and throw things. and punch walls. and run away.
but i can't. because i know it won't change anything... and it won't help.
Monday, September 27, 2010
isolation
i feel like with my last long post that i alienated lots of people, as i noticed a drastic decline in the amount of advice offered from people or hesitancy to step on my toes from friends. that's not what i intended at all, and chances are, if you even read the blog and thought about it enough to wonder if you were one of the people offering "unwanted advice" then you weren't. honestly, i value all experiences and other peoples' suggestions, the thing that bothered me was when people looked down on me for not doing things their way. but those people probably aren't concerned enough to bother worrying about a silly blog... so for the record... sorry if i hurt anyone's feelings. i was just frustrated.
as it stands now, the short-lived victories we had (going to sleep easily, sleeping in the co-sleeper instead of our bed, and sleeping for long stretches at night) are all things of the past. currently, the baby is screaming her lungs out, and i am just so tired of fighting with her to get her to go down to sleep despite the routine and all the soothing, calming things that are supposed to help, that i'm probably going to just let her cry until either she falls asleep or i can't take it anymore. not sure which will win out tonight.
but being a mom is really lonely. i feel like the friends i had who aren't "settled" no longer want me around because i am too much of an old fogey to do things like go out for girls' night, even though i would love to go! but in reality, if they did remember or want to invite me, i probably wouldn't be able to find someone to watch the baby for me to go, so who could blame them for leaving me out? i don't. and then the friends i have with children are all so busy with their own families that they don't have much time to invest in doing things together, or if we do, we spend the whole time chasing, feeding, soothing, or otherwise taking care of the children and not lots of time actually talking or "hanging out". honestly, it isn't surprising to me at all that the news has had stuff on recently about mother-alcoholics (moms who drink once their kids have gone to bed to cope with the stress) because being a parent is really hard, and it puts strains on all your support systems. your friendships change, your marriage changes, and even your relationships with your parents change.
i know that in life, the only constant is change, but this is a lonely season for me, and i sure wish i could figure out how to feel connected again.
i miss you, friends!
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