Rug: I ended up buying a 6×8 remnant at a local rug store, unbound, beige, olefin, for $15. It’ll do for now, and something had to happen as Ingrid is digging the rolling, and she needed more than a 2×2 square to do it. Plus, woot, I bought local.

Sleep:  First night was okay, last night was kinda rough as she took bedtime as a nap, which is what had been happening and pushing later and later, so there were some tears (I was working, Dave handled it) and pissiness, but they got through it with cuddles and rocking and such.  Naps had some hollering (the no-tears variety) and tonight she went down at 630ish, with hardly any complaining, nursed up at around 9:45, which is totally cool, since she hadnt since 5, and has never been a nurse-to-sleeper.

I don’t think it was a growth spurt, as it was different from her teething nightwakings. Teething, she woke 6+ times to nurse, but really NURSE, and that was just two nights, and she was back to normal. Instead, it was more like bus-windshield-wipers … naps were shifting farther and farther ahead, and more and more feeding was taking place at night, over a period of a few weeks. She’s a catnapper — will take 3 30-50 minute naps a day — and doesn’t have much of a schedule (according to my Google Spreadsheets documentation) yet, but that’s cool, we’ll work it out. I also wanted to not let sleep get too far away from us before I return to work. I still have no idea when that will happen, but the older she gets the closer it is, and it’s easier to work it out now, with one of us at home, IMO, than waiting til we’re all going in different directions. Anyway. It’s working out fine for us.

On that note, I got paperwork to update our info at the uni childcare center, and I’m going to do that next week. It is SO. HARD. to find any care here, that I like to keep my options open. I still hope we can get into the place around the corner in january, but turning down a spot if it were offered say, after she was 6 months old, would be really hard. Even if we paid for the slot, and I could drop her off and work on my practicum (um, even though it’s due like two weeks after her birthday…) for a few hours a week, to work on the transition aspect, etc. And if she did get in there, and then the place here, I wonder if any of the teachers/student teachers from THERE would end up working here, so that maybe a caregiver moved with her. You never know.

With the "update your info" thing, the mail also included 3 (I think) things about my student loans, need to do the exit interview, etc… I think my grace period will go 6 months from August, since I technically took the two classes I’m doing NOW, then, which would be February… and also in the mail, the $851 bill from *JANUARY* for my 20w ultrasound, that my insurance has denied oh, half a dozen times now, and the hospital has recoded to their specifications, and they’ve still denied it, so I’m on the hook. SO PISSED. Anyway, the paperwork for the u/s, my student loans, and the childcare center felt Very Much Like a Sign. 

Honestly, I never imagined to be able to wrangle it this far, the SAHM thing, and the phone job will carry me til January, anyway (and probably later, if I’m reading the signals right, and I want to do that) and then comes the "is it better to work nights and be home all day" or "is it better to use childcare and have family time at night" and I think there are pros and cons to both, honestly. If money were no object, I think my ideal situation would be to SAHM and have like a one-day childcare situation. (Of course, this is colored by my current school situation, so that might be different if I wasn’t feeling so much academic pressure right now…) i LOVE going to storytime, and I LOVE not knowing what freaking DAY it is, or being on a clock, or having to worry about getting both of us out of the house every morning by 8 … butI also love being with Ingrid and DAVE, and not just handing her off. Right now, I’m only working 1-2 nights a week, plus class on Wednesday, and a study night when it fits in, but that’s going to ramp up as the holidays near. And if I got into the Uni childcare before the end of the semester, and while I’m getting tons of hours, I could ‘afford’ to pay for childcare, even if I didn’t use it every day, all day. And honestly? I think Ingrid would go nuts in a room with other babies. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee it. She LOVES other people. LOVES them. Especially babies. (And cats, but they aren’t people.) Granted, she usually sees them from the comfort of a wrap these days, but still. She likes people. And a few hours of daycare during the *day* means that we get family time at *night.* Which is totally important, too.

Anyway. Lots of things to think about, eh?

I changed the URL to my shutterfly albums, because I didn’t want people googling up my Most Oft-Used Screen Name and stumbling upon other shit, so it’s now snappityDOTshutterflyDOTcom, and there’s about twice as many as there were before. No ceremony pics, because I didn’t take any during it, I let the pro do that.

Here’s a question for you — so, we aren’t christian, but we do christmas, lower-case-c, and this year I ordered us family stockings, because, well, I wanted to. ANd also, with my discount, they were like 13 bucks, and you can’t even get shitty poly felt stockings at target for 13 bucks… Anyeay, I got these ones — ornaments for me, monogrammed with Mama, Deer for Dave, saying Daddy, and candy canes for Ingrid saying Tax Break. I mean, Ingrid. (and oh, the mental volleyball I played about whether or not to get Mama and Daddy or Gretchen and Dave, and how one choice wouldn’t co-opt our individuality, and the other was just fucking CUTE…) They are great, heavy wool felt, satin lined, have that retro feel, no angels or shit, relatively agnostic, save for their intended use. (Except for the blue snowflake one, with the color scheme and the 6 pointed snowflakes, it looks like a Hannukkah Stocking, seriously.) Here’s my ridiculous dilemma…. do I order the one with the tree, to complete the set of 4, so that um, if we have err, another baby? Sometime? Like in a couple years? All of our stockings match? Would #2 feel slighted if we didn’t, or honored that we planned ahead? Or just stoked that it will hold lots of toothpaste?

I think about shit way. too. much.

Dave is working a freaking 14-16hr day today, the poor guy. Worked from 8-5:30, no lunch, went straight to campus to do the hockey game (7-1, go Bears!), and back to the station to finish up his day project….. and has to BACK to campus tomorrow to do football. Football is the gig he hates with every fiber of hisbeing, propped up on a scissor lift behind the goalpost, unable to move, thus, freezing his ass off when there’s weather. poor guy.

I was visited by my SIL and MIL this afternoon, and SIL brought a bunch of clothes (which, some have sigh, butt-ruffle) and was excited to see Ingrid, since this one hadn’t seen her since she was 3 weeks old. ANd yes, they live in the same town.  Then, later, my OTHER SIL stopped in (she of the babysitting last week) with more clothes for Ingrid, these ones a little more my speed, and also to tell me that HALLELUJAH, Christmas Eve is at her house this year and NOT at MIL’s house. On the flip side, they drew names for christmas and I got my nephew’s like-a-wife, AGAIN. I swear, it’s my punishment for not letting her crash our wedding (we didn’t know her, they’d hardly been dating a few weeks, and just.. no…) Guess who’s getting a giftcard to A Certain Outdoor Retailer?  Also, Ingrid ‘got’ her daughter, so guess who’s getting books? And not a sippy cup full of a fluid that could be antifreeze, based on the color, but is considered ‘juice?’

ANd finally, I’ve been playing with PSElements for a few days with the wedding pics I took, and I uploaded them at shutterfly, for a separate level of privacy, but if you know me well enough to know my primary email addy/screen name (and most of you are) they can be found at that.shutterfly.com if you want to check them out. ANd if you don’t know that, and REALLY want to see them, email me.

Things are looking up. The wedding was great, Ingrid did FINE, and lord above, she even took a bottle from SIL, and took one last night from Dave without hesitation, so thankfuckinggod on that one. (To counter the lipase issue, I just ahve to nuke the pumped milk for 30 seconds before storing. easy peasy.) I also got some great photos and have been tweaking them and really liking photography this weekend, which is easy when you have access to the D70. Good god, I love. that. camera. I fantasize that my folks will give me one as a master’s degree/christmas present, which honestly? Is my main motivation for school right now. Yeah. Not "completion of a goal set 6 years ago" or anything, but "ooh, D70! D70!" I’m keeping up with my regular class, but my practicum is suffering badly. I kind of don’t feel *too* bad about it, because there are people in my practicum group that have been attempting to get it done for like, 4 semesters now, and they don’t even have KIDS, let alone an infant, a job, and no daycare. I’ll be on that fucking stage in May, no doubt. And once school pix season slows down, my mom is coming to spell me, so that I can do a full bore work-on-shit in daylight hours, no less, session.

Dave and I did get some weird sinus-y thing this weekend, prompting Dave to miss a few hours of work, even, and rescheduling a shoot — something he’s only done once before in the 6 years I’ve known him, and we fared okay, but I lost a school work night in the mix, after giving up a work shift to work on school stuff, even. 

The upside is that on the way to the wedding reception, I saw a sign going up at a building right around the corner, and on the way home, I just about pissed myself to see that the sign was advertising a new childcare center, scheduled toopen in January 2007. It even had — gasp! — a WEBSITE. I plugged that URL in as soon as we hit the front door, was totally excited to see that it was basically my dream situation (and literally less than a MILE from our house — the only center on the west side, which, even in a small city like this, it MAKES a difference. Seriously. Having it be on the way to work is so much better than driving all the way across town and back before work, and this would be on the way to Dave’s work, which is much more established than my situation now, so extra good.) They also are having a priority list for certain employers, and while mine wasn’t expressly indicated, it was in the drop-down list of employers when I filled out the form.  I’m also going to pass on the info to Dave’s HR person, because seriously, a west side childcare (that appears to rock) would be a great perk for the company.

And, I’m kicking ass at work, which really isn’t that hard for me, so I feel kind of silly being like "OMG, I am the BEST at eating candy" or something. I’ve been monitored 3 times now, and every time the QA people are all "Um, well, you did awesome. The end." WHich just makes it that much more possible that I can stay on after the seasonal run, and work my way into oh, I don’t know, maybe a training position? Using my degree in a non-public school environment? Keeping a great discount, working close to home, and DID I MENTION CLOSE TO DAYCARE?

Or, I could stay on nights and do the handoff like we do now,  but really, the older Ingrid gets, the more okay I am with childcare for her. As long as it’s quality, and throws around words like "montessori" and "emilio reggia" and "attachment" I’m down with it. Also, INCREDIBLY GEEKY SIDENOTE: The company that this childcare is affiliated with? Is the one that GOOGLE uses. If it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for me.

More pics coming soon, but Amity is jonesing, so here’s some baby crack:

Ha! i kill me.

1) My school stuff. My school stuff. My school stuff.

2) Lipase abundance has fucked us over.  Basically, we attributed Ingrid’s bottle refusal last week to teething, when in fact, it appears to be lipase related, and now she won’t take a bottle of ANYTHING (we even broke into the emergecny formula) for love or money. Which leads me to…

3) My SIL is supposed to sit on Saturday, but fuck, a hungry Ingrid is not a fun Ingrid. On top of the general stranger anxiety that is likely to ensue, since my SIL has only actually seen her a handful of times.  AND, on top of SIL’s assumption that we can just "tell her when she needs to eat and sleep when we drop her off" which, to my paranoid mind, leads me to think that SIL is expecting an eater and sleeper, and not a really pissed off 4 month old. And that location doesn’t matter, but, I think it really does, since all of Ingrid’s STUFF is over here.

4) and the wedding, oh fuck, I’m supposed to take pics, but they have hired a pro, thank god, so if I HAVE to, I bail. But Dave will still be working all day, and I don’t go (and this is so pathetic) I don’t get my horseradish and dill salmon. Or to be a grownup for an hour, Or to be a photog. Or to be anything other than Boobie Mama.

5) School. DId I mention school? Yeah. School.

On the upside:

Storytime still rocks. I need to figure out the transition from "storytime is over, how can we be friends now?" but that’s cool. I’m also going to an infant massage class on Friday, led by the local doula queen. I emailed her for info, and sly me, I emailed from my local mom email address, and included a sig line highlighting my local mom website, and she fell for it hook line and sinker, and thought it was way cool. I don’t know why I’m being so coy about it, because I am making zero money from the prospect, but I DO want it to get Out There, and the more people I reach, the more it gets out there, and the more connections I can make.

Beer? Is awesome.

Also, I’m kind of liking this rug….wool pile should be fairly soft, it’s neutral, but busy enough to hide puke stains, but not dark enough to show every cat hair ever, and also a modern feel, no? Also, NICE PRICE. Will still check out a few more places tomorrow, but then I might crack and buy that one.

Also awesome, seriously, my husband and daughter. I’m a damn lucky girl. Stress, lipase, and rug indecisions and all.