17 Weeks

These weeks are flying by. Can you believe that in just 23 weeks we will be welcoming a new family member into our lives?

When I think about it, I get a little scared. I’m barely able to keep up with anything or anyone in my current situation, how am I going to handle two kids?

Mornings are challenging. I get up around 5:45 to start my day.  Glen is not home by this time so I have to tip-toe around the house and try to get ready for work without waking Wyatt. Naturally, he usually wakes up at 6am anyway. So I usually juggle a shower and watching Wyatt in the morning and mostly that consists of letting him play in the bathroom and hallway until I’m done while I keep some-what of a watchful eye. I then step out onto everything that he took out of the bathroom drawers and cupboards and I always have to check the toilet for items as well. This occurs when he’s NOT opening the shower curtain the entire time and/or trying to get IN to the shower, fully clothed while I’m trying to wash my hair. *Sigh*

Then I usually tie my hair up and get dressed in whatever fits these days which is not much. Wyatt is in this stage of needing to do everything that I do, when I do it. So if I brush my teeth, Wyatt screams “teeth” at me the entire time until I get him his tooth brush. If I brush my hair he screams “hair” until I give him my hair brush. Of course, when it comes to using the potty, he has no interest in copying me. ZERO INTEREST! And honestly, I’m fine with that. I’m not upset that he has no interest in the potty. He’s only 19 months and I know that he won’t be in diapers when he’s 17, so this is fine for me.

I then pick out Wyatt’s clothes and diaper for the morning and attempt to get him dressed and ready for school. Attempt is the key. First of all, Wyatt hates sitting still so to get him to sit still for a diaper change is torture. Then, as soon as I do manage to get his diaper off his hand gravitates towards his boy parts. He knows that they are now free and he MUST touch them. Then he squirms and kicks while I try to fasten the diaper. Then it’s time for the clothes which I usually have to put on him while he’s standing or running around the room. After all of that, you know what he sits still for? His shoes! He knows that putting on shoes means that he gets to go somewhere good (usually) so he’s always very happy to put on his shoes and coat.

After we look appropriate for going out, I have to fix him some breakfast, pack his diaper bag and pack my lunch. All while a dog literally runs underneath my feet every five seconds. What’s up with that anyway? Since it’s been winter FOREVER in PA this year, I still have to warm the car up prior to leaving since Wyatt doesn’t wear a coat while riding in his car seat. Every morning I run out to start my car and Wyatt throws a fit because he thinks that I’m leaving without him. It’s actually kind of sweet. Once it’s warm, I shut off all the lights and we are finally on our way (around 7am) but not before Anakin says bye-bye to Cocoa and “Kinkin”.

So that’s pretty much the easy part and it sucks. Next comes the hard part. I take Wyatt to school and he’s SOOOOOOO happy. That is, until we reach “the button”. I let Wyatt push the button to get into the daycare center, which he loves, but when we are all done pushing the button Wyatt freaks out and cried “button button”. Then finally, when we walk down the hallway with everyone looking at us, he calms down just in time for the next part, Mommy leaving. As soon as I put him down he screams and cries and runs to me and hugs my legs. Large crocodile tears are running down his face and the only distraction is the teacher offering him some crackers. This is my morning. Every morning. Nothing like having your heart broken over and over and over again, the same time every day.

When Wyatt was little I used to pump in the morning AND feed Wyatt. How am I going to go through the toddler morning PLUS the baby morning? Well, I have an answer to that but we’re not quite there yet.

I’ve been researching daycares lately. I started with Wyatt’s current daycare. We pay a weekly rate of $250.00 for Wyatt and newborns are $280.00 with a ten percent sibling discount off of Wyatt’s rate only. That comes to…$26,260.00 a year. Ouch. Then I researched other daycare centers and the lowest I found was $175 for a toddler with a $200 infant combo deal of a whopping $19,500.00. So then I started asking about Nanny, and that would be about $14-$15 an hour or approximately $30,000.00. So then I thought, well what about an in-home daycare. I called somewhere around fifteen prospects and heard back from eight. Most infants start at $4-$6 an hour for in-home care plus a sibling rate. The very minimum I would be looking at would be $300 a week or approximately $15,600.00 a year. That is much more manageable than my other child care options. But then I’m reminded, or maybe I should say haunted?, by the memories of my childhood in-home day care provider. And then I remember Glen’s horror stories from when he was a child and something doesn’t sit right with me. Even though this option is affordable, I’m not 100% comfortable with a stranger watching my child and having children who are too young to really communicate with me. An even though it’s affordable, let’s face it, $15k a year is a lot of money to dish out on childcare.

Another stress that’s been slapping us in the face lately is that we have had to find last minute child care for Wyatt once every other week since January. Glen has had to use several vacation days and my parents have made several trips down to be with him.

So then came the talk, what are we going to do now? And this is where the hard decisions come into play. Am I working so that my children can go to a daycare? Am I missing out on these precious early years because of my career? No decisions have been made yet, but we agreed that me staying at home after baby #2 arrives may be a realistic option for our family. I can supplement our income by holding a part-time job in the evenings and also working on my photography business part-time. At this point, I’m not ready to leave my position and there’s really no reason too. This is especially difficult for me because I actually so really like my job and the company that I work for. I might be burning my bridges with this company which scares me. I’m truly at a crossroads in life and I’m not sure which direction I should take. Should I push through it for just a couple of years until Wyatt and baby #2 are in school? Should I stay at home with my children, which means that I’m giving up my position and career and potential future earnings? I can’t imagine that this is an easy decision for anyone and I don’t think there’s a “right” answer, which I suppose is why it’s such a difficult decision. I’m just really afraid of making the wrong decision and letting my family down.

So that’s what’s been going on recently in our lives.

Baby #2 update time!

Baby #2 is doing great! I can feel the kicks from the inside pretty regularly and I have felt kicks on the outside one time. I have a little belly now and at 17 weeks, I’m in maternity clothes full-time and feeling much more comfortable.  I think I’m still in that uncomfortable stage where people are wondering if I’m pregnant or if I gained weight, so I’m getting looks but no one dares to ask.

Glen and I went to our first centering pregnancy class. It’s a group appointment that Hershey just started to offer last year. It’s an evening appointment and it runs about 2 hours one time a month. You check in and receive your medical chart. I noticed that most of the Mom’s in my group must be welcoming their first child because my file was huge compared to theirs. You then go around the room and visit different stations at your leisure. Blood pressure, weight, pee-in-a-cup (more on this later), and then you get to sit down with an OB and have baby’s heart rate checked (160 in case you were wondering). Lastly, you sit around in a group and talk about pregnancy related topics. Last week was nutrition and medications. I had to fill out a very embarrassing food journal from the last week which included nearly everything in the “junk food” category. It was a nice discussion and it was nice to be in a class setting with other Moms.

Now for the weird…Let me go back to the pee-in-a-cup station. So, you visit a small table in the lobby with a plastic cup and a label with your name. You find your cup, take it into the bathroom, do your business and then bring the cup back out and put it on the table. OK…weird number one. Everyone can see your pee-cup and they are all hanging out in the open together in the lobby. They are only 2 feet from the snack table which is also disturbing. I was one of the last to pee-in-a-cup so it was easily noticeable to me that one cup was filled to the rim. Everyone else’s cup had about ¼ cup o’ pee or less except for one cup that was completely filled with pee. Now, I don’t really know “proper” pee-in-a-cup etiquette but I think it’s weird to fill it up…it’s not your gas tank! What if the person checking the cup struggles with the lid and has splash back do to the filled cup? I also noticed that I judge your pee-in-a-cup contents. If it’s dark yellow I get a little grossed out. If it’s barely yellow, I feel like that person should get an award for staying well hydrated. If it’s full to the rim, it doesn’t matter what the color…it’s weird!

Next weekend is my “big” ultra sound appointment, YAYYYYYYYY! We chose not to find out the gender at this time, but I’ll be happy to see my little baby squirming around. I hope he/she cooperates this time and gives us a pretty profile picture to share with you all