Holy Budget Buster

After hearing and reading about how a lot of daycares have ridiculously long waiting lists (and being the freak planner that I am) I have already started looking into potential daycares for next year. Unfortunately neither Kristian nor I make enough to support one of us quitting our jobs to stay home full time with the baby so daycare it is.

Last night we took a tour and met with the director of a daycare that is very close to our house. Overall we both really like the facility and how they operate. We got there towards the end of the day so there weren't many infants still left but the ones that were there all seemed very happy and well taken care of. We met with one of the infant teachers who seemed very nice. For the most part I really liked the place and the location is perfect because it's right off a main street that we both have to travel to and from work so we would not need to go out of our way in the opposite direction and make our already long commutes even longer. More than likely I would drop off in the morning and Kristian would pick up in the afternoons since he's typically done with work by 3pm.

Then of course we get to the pricing part of this deal which I already knew would be expensive and I was not wrong. It fell in the range I was expecting yet I stupidly hoped maybe it would be less and I would have a nice surprise. Not so much. I'm already mentally recalculating our budget and trying to figure out how to make this work. Now if we could somehow work it so that the kid only needs to go 3 days a week rather than 5 we would save a good bit of money because that's when the price break starts. So we plan to see if one or both of our mothers could take a day each week to watch the baby and perhaps see if one of our bosses would let us work from home one day a week. We have a lot to figure out.

In the meantime I still want to check out a few more places to compare before making a final decision.

On another note I need to rant for a minute--- this morning I posted on FB about how expensive daycares are and most of the comments I've gotten so far have been very supportive except for one from a girl that I know is a stay at home who wrote something along the lines of "I hope once the baby comes you'll want to stay home with him" umm EXCUSE ME?! As if I don't WANT to stay home with my child. What a huge assumption to make! Obviously I would love to be able to stay home with my child but despite the high cost of daycare it's not more than what either of us make at work and there is no way we could afford to live on one salary.

So I very nicely responded that I would love to stay home with my child but that's not a financial option for us at the moment. Ugh. I won't even tell you what I REALLY wanted to say to her.

Here's the thing I have nothing against daycare, both my husband and I went to daycare and we turned out alright. And even if I could stay home with my kid I would probably still want to send him to daycare one or two days a week so they could learn to socialize with other kids, learn to share and so that I could have that time to do my errands. Daycare isn't the devil. If you can afford to stay home with your kid that's fantastic, I envy you. Unfortunately I cannot.

Best Sound in the World

I guess I'm now officially a member of the paranoid mommy club because I decided to go ahead and buy a Fetal Doppler so that I could listen to the baby's heartbeat whenever I wanted. I learned about this last year when my friend Kristen was pregnant. I actually got to see it action on her belly during her baby shower weekend.

After doing some searches I found these selling online for around $50 and to me being able to hear my baby's heartbeat whenever I want is worth far more than $50. Now a lot of the baby books and sites don't recommend these simply because if for some reason you can't find the heartbeat (you know due to not being a medical professional and all) it can freak a mother out. I promised myself that if I had trouble finding the heartbeat myself I would NOT freak out (yeah right) and would simply wait patiently until my next doctor's appointment.

Well my doppler arrived yesterday and I could not wait to get home to try it out. Kristian actually was in charge of moving the wand around and after a couple minutes we found the heartbeat!! Even though I wasn't worried that something was wrong it was still massive relief to hear the heartbeat again.

Tonight we decided to videotape us using the doppler to send to our parents and I couldn't resist posting. It really is the greatest sound in the world and I can't listen to it enough. I'm so glad I went ahead and bought one and now will be able to ease my mind in between my monthly appointments if I ever have a momentary freakout.



*I have to say my boobs look awesome in this video but they really aren't quite as big as they look here*

*The theory is that the faster the heartbeat the more likely it is that the baby is a girl. Not sure how much I believe that but it's fun to think about*

Have any of you bought/rented a fetal doppler to use at home?

House Tour- Office and Guest/Baby Room

So I've slacked on posting pictures of the house. Like I've mentioned my motivation level lately has been at zero. But I decided to get off my ass and go ahead and post our other two bedrooms.

First we have our current guest room, which is the larger of the two extra bedrooms. This will be the future nursery. I thought of using the smallest bedroom for the nursery but I like the idea of having plenty of space for the kid as he/she gets older and not having to switch rooms later.

As you'll see we haven't done much to this room. This was intentional, I had hoped that within a year or so we would be re-doing this as a baby room so I didn't put a lot of work into it initially. The funny thing is that we've had several overnight guests since we've lived here and I think only once was this room slept in. Most of the guests (i.e. Kristian's buddies) will just pass out sleep on the couch downstairs.

This is the bed we use to have in our bedroom before we got the new furniture. This is now the cats bed as you can see from both boys taking a nap together on it.

I love the big window that looks out onto the front of the house. We definitely need to invest in some blinds before the kid gets here. Right now the bed takes up most of the room, once we have the smaller baby furniture it will look much bigger. I hope.

Here's the closet which is a good size. We had to remove one of the doors in order to fit our old dresser in there. We plan to get rid of the dresser, turn half of the closet into shelves for books and toys and the other half use for clothes. We'll probably remove the other door and use a pretty curtain instead.

Also, the teddy bear on the bed was Kristian's as a child. His mom gave it to us when she found out we were pregnant.

Next is the smallest of the bedrooms and our "office". I use that term loosely because even though it looks like an office we really don't use this room that much, which makes me sad because I actually really love it. Neither of us work from home much and when we do we're on the laptop in the living room.

Here is our desk, that we use more for storage than actual desk-like activities. We actually plan on getting rid of this desk (since we don't use it anyway) and getting a futon instead. That way we still have a place for guests to sleep, primarily my mother who I'm hoping will come stay with us for a few days after the baby is born.

We also have a great cedar chest under the window. This was passed down to me from my mother who use to keep her wedding dress in it. Now I have my old prom dresses and other odds and ends in there. Mainly it's one of the cats favorite places to lay during the day and look out the window.

We got these great bookcases from one of Kristian's friends that is moving. They are in great condition and very sturdy and best of all FREE! They've provided so much extra storage for all of our DVD's, books, photo albums etc. If you can't tell "my" bookcase is on the left and "Kristians" is on the right.

Here is a picture of our closet, we have great closet space in this house. Since we plan to get rid of the desk we plan to also put some sort of shelving/storage unit in one half of the closet for all of our files and other items that are currently housed in the desk. The other side of the closet will remain a closet which currently holds our dressy clothes (including my wedding dress) that we don't wear very often.

So that's it for the bedrooms. We definitely have a great amount of space for what we need right now. If we have anymore kids in the future it make get a bit tight but that's MANY years down the road.

End of Week Odds and Ends

• It's this time of year when I really wish I were a teacher, what I wouldn't give to have 2-3 months of summer vacation ahead of me right now.

• On that note, I probably won't be taking any real vacation between now and December, not only do we need to save money but I need to save as much time as I can to put towards maternity leave.

• My boss pointed out the other day that I'm starting to get a bump. I will probably need to go shopping soon for some more empire waist type shirts. **I've been taking weekly pictures but rather than post one every week I'll post a group of them together so you can really see the change.

• After seeing the trailers for the Girl with Dragon Tattoo and Breaking Down movies, I'm so excited about this fall however I'm still the most excited to see The Hunger Games movie next spring.

• Speaking of books I need some good summer reading suggestions, I've been mainly reading pregnancy/baby books but want to take a break for something a bit more mindless and fun for when I'm at the pool.

• I'm also very excited about So You Think You Can Dance being back on, definitely my favorite summer show every year.

• Since we will be turning our guest room into the baby's room we've decided to get rid of the desk (that we never use and that's falling apart) in our office and put a futon in there for people to sleep on when they visit. If anyone has any good suggestions let me know.

• I've been incredibly lazy lately, I have absolutely no motivation to do much of anything other than lay on the couch which means my house is a mess and Kristian has had to break out his "emergency boxers" (which are boxers with The Simpsons on them, no lie) due to me not doing the laundry for two weeks (that is one of my chores, Kristian does a lot of other shit around the house). I can't wait to get my energy back.

• My plan for this weekend (and most weekends this summer) is to lay out by the pool, read and relax. I love lazy summer days.

Smallest Guest

Last night we had a tiny guest visiting us for a few hours.

Meet Pookie (no we did not name her).

She is now owned by Kristian's grandmother. His grandmother has been wanting a little kitten (preferably all black and female) for many months now and Kristian promised to keep an eye out for one. Well he finally was able to find one last night and prior to taking it to his grandmother's house he brought her home to meet her new cousins Wendal and Halpert and so that I could get some play time in. Wendal liked her so much he even came over and licked her a few times! Very unlike him, he's not the most friendly animal.

I had forgotten how teeny and full of energy kittens are. The girl would not stop playing and running around. But she was also very lovable and not scared at all. Anytime you held her or pet her she would immediately start purring. If we didn't already have two 4-legged children I might have kept her for myself. But alas she's now with her new owner who is already totally smitten with this little kitten.

Post I wrote on How we told our parents we were expecting

Originally wrote this on May 3rd

We finally shared the good news with our parents this past weekend. It was killing me not being able to tell my mom but I really wanted to tell our parents in person. Kristian's parents live about 20 minutes away so I knew it wouldn't be too hard to see them but my mom lives an hour away and it's not very convenient to just "drop by". So I had to come up with what I thought was a good excuse to come see her that wouldn't make her suspicious. I told her we wanted to come up to take her out for an early Mother's Day lunch on Sunday May 1. I told her it would be easier to do it then since we had our housewarming party the next weekend and probably wouldn't be able to do it on Mother's Day. She was available so we made a plan to meet at her place.

First up though was K's parents. Last Thursday night (April 28) he called his parent's house to make sure they were home (they were). We then decided to just show up unannounced (which we rarely ever do). His parents were pleasantly surprised to see us but didn't seem to suspect anything. I had decided to give both of our mothers a frame (similar to how I told Kristian) that says on it "Grandkids are the greatest gift" and then inside wrote "Picture to come in 8 months". I handed my mother-in-law the frame and she stared at it for a minute while his dad kept asking what it said. She got a huge smile on her face and was like "Really?" She then handed the frame to my father-in-law who got teary once he saw it. They both hugged us and congratulated us and started taking pictures of us holding the frame.

My mother-in-law then told me she had already started a collection of baby stuff for us!! haha. They were just thrilled and insisted we call K's sister on speakerphone and tell her, which we did and she was also very excited. It turns out the new OB practice I'm going to is the same place my SIL goes and who delivered her kids.

On Sunday (May 1) we headed up to see my mom and older brother for lunch. We went in and I gave my mom her "Mother's Day present" which included the baby frame but she wouldn't open it right away! She kept trying to show me random stuff around her condo. Finally I got her to open the present and she looked at it and goes "Finally!" and got all excited. Now I should point out we haven't even been married a year so I don't know why she said Finally like it's taken us years and years for this to happen. She then said she had a strong feeling I was going to tell her I was pregnant so that's why she didn't seem very surprised. Mother's intuition I guess.

My brother meanwhile was busy playing on his iphone and totally missed the whole exchange. It wasn't until my mom's old boyfriend showed up (to see me and Kristian) and we told him that my brother finally was paying attention and was like "Wait, you're pregnant?!" haha.

We then went to lunch and afterwards stopped by my friend Kelli's house to see her and her 7 month old son. While there I told her the good news and she was super excited and hugged all of us. She's been wanting me to get pregnant ever since she had her kid. More playmates for her son Ryan. She also gave me some of her baby books before we left to read later.

All in all it was a very fun few days sharing the news with family and friends.

Marriage- Year One

Before getting married I constantly heard/read that the first year of marriage is the hardest. I never really understood why, you have to assume most couples have been together for a while before getting married and most couples nowadays live together before getting married so why would a piece of paper and a new ring suddenly make it harder? I didn't get it and now that I've been married for just over a year I have to say that personally I still don't get it. If this past year was our hardest then we should be set for the next 50 odd years.

Now that doesn't mean that for some couples the first year of marriage isn't the hardest, so much of it depends on each couples life circumstances. Obviously if you have to face job loss, having a child, losing a loved one or any other additional major life event it will add more stressors to a marriage.

This is also not to say that Kristian and I never had our fights or disagreements because we certainly did. It's also not to say that we didn't face several very stressful events in our first year as a married couple because we certainly did. The first six months of our marriage Kristian was out of work and job hunting and I was carrying the financial load on my shoulders which IS NOT FUN. Thankfully he finally got a job and one that he loves which is even better. We also took on the fun task of buying our first home together while trying to short sell his condo. Yeah not exactly a stress free event. Oh and of course we finished out our first year of marriage with a brand new pregnancy which has been not only very exciting but very scary as well.

So was this past year hard at times, of course, but it would have been regardless of if we were married or not. Every year comes with a new set of challenges. For me personally I think the fact that we were married made going through the hard stuff easier, after all what other option did we have? We knew we couldn't and wouldn't just leave so there was no other choice but to work together to get through whatever life was throwing our way.

I think the key to getting through that first year of marriage, especially if you are living together for the first time or combining finances for the first time etc. is communication and compromise. As I said everyones circumstances are different so I'm in no way judging if your first year of marriage was your hardest but the point I'm trying to make is that if you are getting married or thinking of getting married don't be scared and don't listen to all those that try to freak you out about the first year of marriage and how tough it is because more than likely your first year of marriage won't be all that different from when you were dating/engaged. The biggest difference is that now if you can't work it out and choose to leave there are legal ramifications.

So tell me was your first year of marriage your hardest? Why or why not?