Thanksgiving
Well, there have been some interesting developments in this whole thing. We found out that Baby M's foster mom is not looking at this as a long-term placement, and not wanting it to be a long-term placement. They told us just to let us know because they want to know if we would be interested in taking her for placement, down the road several months.
And I just don't know. Right now I'm like dude, our house is so small. I know I shouldn't complain. When we bought this house three years ago I thought we would have children like "normal" people...you know, have one a few years after moving in, and then a few years after that have another one, and so on. For like 10 kids. OK just joking about the 10 kids part. :) And after our second child was born, maybe we would be able to start thinking about moving into a bigger home. But anyway, I knew our house was small when we bought it, but we were very firm on the financial commitment we wanted to make. We were told we could qualify for a much larger loan than we wanted, but we said no, we had a budget and we were sticking to it.
So each of the bedrooms in our home are something like 10X12 feet, maybe even smaller than that. We have three bedrooms, and three kids living here plus the two of us. Our kitchen is a tiny galley kitchen and it's basically an eat-in kitchen, and each of the closets in the bedrooms and the linen and coat closets are small (no walk-in closets for us!). There is not enough room for all the food we need in our kitchen (we have barely any cabinet space), so we have a "pantry" in the basement, and also store some of our small kitchen appliances down there. Plus my husband works from home, and has an office in the basement. Plus we got lots of water in the basement last spring, and our basement is still basically gutted. So there is no hanging out in our basement, other than my husband working. It's basically like a very large storage unit under our home.
So long story short, I feel cramped here. I feel bad that my husband has to listen to the kids when they are screaming (not that that ever happens here, ahem). Obviously it makes more sense financially for him to stay home and work than, say, to rent an office somewhere. We want to move, for many reasons...but I'm not sure how far off that is in our future. First we have a lot of things we want to do to our home, such as refinish the basement, replace the terrible flooring upstairs, etc. Just because we don't feel our home is really marketable right now.
So ANYWAY, I'm not sure if having another human being living here is very feasible, with things as they are. We have a lot (relatively speaking, not like millions of dollars or anything) of money sitting in our bank account waiting to be used for renovations, but it's one of those things where we need to do things in a certain order, and getting the first thing done (electric work in our basement) has become a HUGE PAIN. Hopefully we will get it done before Christmas but at this rate, who knows. We've gotten three estimates so far and they are all over the board - about $1,000; $2,000; and $3,000 - what they heck, they are not even close to each other at all! So we are getting a few more because this whole thing has just been weird to find people that return our calls, come out promptly, and return estimates promptly. Ugh!
And I need to be thankful for the home we have, you know? It's just getting kind of difficult.
Ok, now about Thanksgiving. We got asked to do respite for Baby M for Thanksgiving and part of the day after so her FM could go out of town and do Black Friday shopping. So...we are going to have have her overnight for the first night! And I always do Black Friday shopping too...so Brian is going to take care of the baby for a few hours while I am gone. In return he is going to try to go to the Husker game that afternoon. I am going to be sooooo tired but oh well! I can go to bed at 7 p.m. that night if I want to.
And ALSO, since we are going to have four children on Thanksgiving day, we are going to host a little Thanksgiving meal. This will be my first one hosting. We will have five guests I think, plus our family of 5 and the baby, so that's pretty doable though I will say I wish I had the experience of doing this previously. Oh well, nothing like winging it! :) We decided that hosting would be easier than loading up all of the kids and their diapers, bottles, sippy cups, extra clothing, etc. and driving for 1.5 hours, and then turning around 3 hours later and driving 1.5 hours back home so they can go to their visit.
On a completely unrelated note - Y has been taking morning naps again. The problem is, he is not sleeping in the afternoon. I kept him up later today than usual for his afternoon nap, and he took a 1/2 hour nap. That's it. He is screaming again. This morning he slept for probably an hour, maybe a little more (it gets a little hectic keeping track of everything with the baby around). I don't know what to do. Maybe I'll just keep him from his morning nap even though he is a cry-baby pee pants in the mornings. I don't know how his schedule got all weird...he used to sleep so well at nap time. :( UGH. He is needing less sleep these days than his big brother does, which seems so strange to me.
Longest (and possibly most boring) blog ever.
And I just don't know. Right now I'm like dude, our house is so small. I know I shouldn't complain. When we bought this house three years ago I thought we would have children like "normal" people...you know, have one a few years after moving in, and then a few years after that have another one, and so on. For like 10 kids. OK just joking about the 10 kids part. :) And after our second child was born, maybe we would be able to start thinking about moving into a bigger home. But anyway, I knew our house was small when we bought it, but we were very firm on the financial commitment we wanted to make. We were told we could qualify for a much larger loan than we wanted, but we said no, we had a budget and we were sticking to it.
So each of the bedrooms in our home are something like 10X12 feet, maybe even smaller than that. We have three bedrooms, and three kids living here plus the two of us. Our kitchen is a tiny galley kitchen and it's basically an eat-in kitchen, and each of the closets in the bedrooms and the linen and coat closets are small (no walk-in closets for us!). There is not enough room for all the food we need in our kitchen (we have barely any cabinet space), so we have a "pantry" in the basement, and also store some of our small kitchen appliances down there. Plus my husband works from home, and has an office in the basement. Plus we got lots of water in the basement last spring, and our basement is still basically gutted. So there is no hanging out in our basement, other than my husband working. It's basically like a very large storage unit under our home.
So long story short, I feel cramped here. I feel bad that my husband has to listen to the kids when they are screaming (not that that ever happens here, ahem). Obviously it makes more sense financially for him to stay home and work than, say, to rent an office somewhere. We want to move, for many reasons...but I'm not sure how far off that is in our future. First we have a lot of things we want to do to our home, such as refinish the basement, replace the terrible flooring upstairs, etc. Just because we don't feel our home is really marketable right now.
So ANYWAY, I'm not sure if having another human being living here is very feasible, with things as they are. We have a lot (relatively speaking, not like millions of dollars or anything) of money sitting in our bank account waiting to be used for renovations, but it's one of those things where we need to do things in a certain order, and getting the first thing done (electric work in our basement) has become a HUGE PAIN. Hopefully we will get it done before Christmas but at this rate, who knows. We've gotten three estimates so far and they are all over the board - about $1,000; $2,000; and $3,000 - what they heck, they are not even close to each other at all! So we are getting a few more because this whole thing has just been weird to find people that return our calls, come out promptly, and return estimates promptly. Ugh!
And I need to be thankful for the home we have, you know? It's just getting kind of difficult.
Ok, now about Thanksgiving. We got asked to do respite for Baby M for Thanksgiving and part of the day after so her FM could go out of town and do Black Friday shopping. So...we are going to have have her overnight for the first night! And I always do Black Friday shopping too...so Brian is going to take care of the baby for a few hours while I am gone. In return he is going to try to go to the Husker game that afternoon. I am going to be sooooo tired but oh well! I can go to bed at 7 p.m. that night if I want to.
And ALSO, since we are going to have four children on Thanksgiving day, we are going to host a little Thanksgiving meal. This will be my first one hosting. We will have five guests I think, plus our family of 5 and the baby, so that's pretty doable though I will say I wish I had the experience of doing this previously. Oh well, nothing like winging it! :) We decided that hosting would be easier than loading up all of the kids and their diapers, bottles, sippy cups, extra clothing, etc. and driving for 1.5 hours, and then turning around 3 hours later and driving 1.5 hours back home so they can go to their visit.
On a completely unrelated note - Y has been taking morning naps again. The problem is, he is not sleeping in the afternoon. I kept him up later today than usual for his afternoon nap, and he took a 1/2 hour nap. That's it. He is screaming again. This morning he slept for probably an hour, maybe a little more (it gets a little hectic keeping track of everything with the baby around). I don't know what to do. Maybe I'll just keep him from his morning nap even though he is a cry-baby pee pants in the mornings. I don't know how his schedule got all weird...he used to sleep so well at nap time. :( UGH. He is needing less sleep these days than his big brother does, which seems so strange to me.
Longest (and possibly most boring) blog ever.
I have a book that might be of interest to you- Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child. Not my "bible" by any means, but LOTS of good info and tips!! Let me know if you want to borrow it!
ReplyDeleteDitto what Kim said. And that "cry baby pee pants" thing? Oh, yeah, we totally had one of those in this house for the week or two I chose to keep him from his morning nap to preserve the afternoon one. No fun.
ReplyDelete