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Day Care Woes
I finally talked to Jen at daycare about the whole toddlers in the infant room thing. They’ve only got 4 babies now so they cut hours on one of the infant room teachers and are combining babies and toddlers (for what they say is before 8 and after 4). Every time I’m there they are combined. Claire got 15 minutes of sleep yesterday. Babies cannot sleep with 5 toddlers running around in their room. urgh. very frustrating. Not to mention that one took a flying leap and almost landed on her the other day so half the time Claire is up off the floor in Ms. Tina’s arms. I feel bad for the other full time baby as it seems he pretty much lives in the bouncy seat. The babies not only can’t stay on schedule, they don’t get to have their own curriculum and it is just nutty in there. I’m very frustrated but not sure what I can do. The economic downturn affects everyone, I guess. If I didn’t think it would cost me my job altogether, I would ask to go part time and try to work out something where Claire didn’t have to go. I know it’s only a few more months until she is 1 and then it is a moot point but still…
The weather is turning cold so i got a bundled up pic of miss claire today. I have added more pics to the slideshow posted yesterday but enjoy this pic by itself.
urgh
Some days I really wish we were financially at the point where I could stay home. Seriously. Work can be so frustrating. Looks like I won’t really be taking much if any time off for the holidays. Sigh…
BTW, a few people asked so I will just answer here. Claire has 7, almost 8 teeth. Crazy, I know! And no teething fussiness with any of them so far. Knock on wood…
Autumn!
It’s now officially my favorite time of year. The leaves are changing and the weather is rapidly cooling. We’ve even been able to have a fire going to the last two nights. Claire has been chugging right along. She isn’t full on crawling (in the traditional sense) but has learned to get around by rolling and now army crawl. Just wait til she learns how to lift that belly off the ground. She’s a very busy and curious little girl so even now you can’t take your eyes away from her because she is always after something. It’s hard to believe Claire is already 7 months old! Time has flown by.
This month has been very busy so far. We’ve had 2 GT football games already and another one this weekend. We had trivia at church last week and won! This weekend is going to be crazy. We have aussiepalooza and the tech game on saturday. I think we are going to try to go to the pumpkin patch on Sunday this week. I wanted to get a shirt for her to wear but Target is already sold out of halloween merch and christmas is in. Ridiculous. I’ve got my PMP exam coming up. I have to pass it but i’ve been such a procrastinator about studying. Hell or high water, I have to take the test on monday. Grumble.
Once that’s over everything should calm down a bit. work has been stressful and having the pmp over my head hasn’t helped. MIL and FIL are coming into town over halloween. I can’t wait for them to see how much Claire has changed.
I know I’ve been bad about actually writing in this thing. Here is hoping it gets better.
Countdown to election:15 days
Countdown to Christmas: 9.5 weeks (Side note: Straight no chaser from IU has a major label record deal for a christmas album. It drops Oct. 28th. You should get it. I will. )
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Library card
Ok. I got a library card today. I even checked out a book. “Faith of my fathers” by John McCain. I have “Obama Nation” by Jerome Corsi on hold. Why am i so excited about this? Why have I been wasting money on books and not just going to the library for them.
If and when I get to stay home with my children, I think we will do a weekly library trip. Add this to my list of goals for living a greener, cheaper life along with recycling, composting, growing my own produce, buying clothes on consignment, so on and so forth.
New car
Well, the settlement on our sentra came in at a little under 3500 dollars. Fair price although unfortunately not enough to really buy anything. It is always nervewracking to buy a car that is that old. Our car was 9 years old with 140k miles on it but we knew everything about it. The used car dealers just gave me the heebie jeebies. We ended up buying a 2000 Subaru Outback Wagon private party. I feel pretty good about it. It does have 148k miles but it’s been well cared for and is in great mechanical shape. I’ve taken care of the insurance so I’m going to use my lunch today to register the car and all will be done. Not ideal but for now that is one headache we are done with. Now to take care of the bumper sticker on the back. If i can’t get all the sticker gunk off I may have to come up with one to put in it’s place. Unfortunately most things I’m committed to would get my car keyed.
Another week half gone
As many of you know, last week was pretty rough for our family. Beyond the car accident, frustrations at work, and the pmp audit… our truck transmission decided to misbehave and my father was in the hospital over night on friday for chest pain. It seems this week has gone by without incident. They haven’t found anything of serious concern with my dad and we are having some luck looking for a car to replace the sentra. We still haven’t recieved our offer from the insurance company but we are expecting about $4000 at best. We shall see. We are hoping to only have to use about 1500 dollars of our own money to replace our car. Last night we test drove a 1999 Subaru Outback. It’s a midsize rather than a subcompact like the sentra and has 112k miles but it gets excellent gas mileage and subarus run for ever. In the long run maybe it will buy us a little bit more time until we need a new vehicle. Here’s hoping. I think Kyle will take it tomorrow to have it checked out by our mechanic. There was rear hum coming from the axle so i’m not sure what that is. Please pray that we find something soon and that the offer from the insurance company is fair.
Insult to injury
So yesterday without warning, somebody emptied out the “new mom’s room”. It was a glorified server closet. Now it’s just a server closet. Nobody told the moms anything before hand. This morning we have now been told there is “no more room” for a New Mom’s room and it has been recommended that we just use the toilet to express milk. I’m furious.
Still looking for a new car. Requirements to replace the sentra:
- Must get 30-35 mpg. That was the whole point of our old car
- Must be 1999 or newer
- Must not have more than 130k miles
- Stellarly maintained.
- Preferrably a japanese car as american cars are crap and we need it to last another 100k miles.
- Oh yeah, and all for 3500 dollars.
This is such crap. 3500 dollars is not the value of my car. Nissans and Toyotas have ridiculously high resale value. They should give me the private party BLUE bookvalue for my car as this is what it would cost for me to replace. So if you know someone selling a corolla or sentra let me know. But wait, i still can’t afford to buy it from them because 3500 will buy a 1995!
Car update
The body shop called. The damage totalled 3600 dollars which is over the total yellow book value of my vehicle. They are telling me my vehicle is only worth 3500 dollars which is crap. I went on autotrader and the only thing i could buy for what they are offering is a 1994 with 200,000 miles on it. This just isn’t right. If you are not at fault they should give you REPLACEMENT value of your vehicle. I’m really not sure what i’m going to do now. So frustrated. We are now out our car and can’t afford a car payment on a new one. We were hoping to make this car last until we could buy a new one out right. Prayer for our finances and for patience and finding another acceptable vehicle quickly would be greatly appreciated.