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?