Compartment 14B
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Telling, sleeping, peeing, daycare, and how to beat the daily grind. 2007-10-30 - 10:52 a.m. We told part of the family about the pregnancy this weekend and I�m glad to say that the reception was a lot more gratifying this time than last. Everyone seemed genuinely pleased and not at all stunned, and no one made reference to my weight. We haven�t had a chance to tell my grandmother or father yet though, so I�m keeping my fingers crossed that I continue to avoid disappointing reactions. Certainly in my mother�s case, I think she reacted better this time (last time I didn�t really convey the depth of startlement shown, or her need to repeat �This is good news� over and over as if trying to convince herself) because she�s already a grandmother and is totally smitten with Grommet, so the thought of having another around is a bonus, not a strange concept. I�m officially at 7 weeks, 4 days now, so the sprout is probably in the neighbourhood of Carnegie Stage 15 and possibly closing in on a centimeter this week. I�m a bit tired these days, but still not suffering from the bone-crushing fatigue described in a lot of other pregnancy blogs. Grommet, by the way, is fabulous and I don�t want to think she�s being neglected here: it�s just that she continues to be adorable and smart and have issues with being able to sleep alone, and there�s only so often I can say that without getting boring. We�ve moved her onto a single-sized mattress on the floor of her new room and we leave her door open and a night light in the hallway lighting her way to our door, which is the only other one open upstairs. Since the stairs are fenced off, it�s safe for her to be moving around and we are hoping that she will eventually wake up and come to us, rather than wake up and cry for us to come get her. It�s still a new arrangement though, so we�re thinking it will take some time for her to feel comfortable enough in the new house to move around it alone at night. In terms of Grommet�s sleep though, last night, however, we had some good news and bad: she stayed in her bed all night until I went and woke her up this morning (that�s good), but the sleeping through the night meant we didn�t have a chance to assess the puffiness of her diaper mid-way through the night, and when I went in and picked her up this morning her pyjamas were soaked with pee (that, needless to say, is bad). She was a great sport about being stripped down and bundled straight into the bath though. See, here�s the thing: because she�s so petite, she fits into the same stage of diapers for a long time and her bladder outgrows the diaper capacity long before the size of her waist does. She was in size 3 for ages and we eventually bumped her into size 4 for this very reason. Now she�s been in size 4 for a long time and they are supposed to fit babies from 22 to 37 lbs. I�m not even sure she�s 22 lbs yet so technically she could still be in size 3 (16 � 28 lbs), yet even in size 4 it�s a crap shoot (no pun intended � it is pee we�re talking about, since she poops in the potty around 95% of the time when she�s home) every night we put her to bed as to whether she�ll need changing mid-way through the night or risk overflowing. Anyone else ever find themselves in this predicament? Any brand recommendations? We usually use Pampers and last night she was in the Baby Dry type that are supposed to be designed for night time. :: We are starting to think about what to do in terms of future daycare for Grommet. We don�t want to take her out of an environment that she�s comfortable in, but we do want to start, over the next couple of years, to expose her to larger groups. If we don�t, we�re afraid that she�ll be completely unprepared to deal with the raucousness of junior kindergarten. It seems like that�s far off, but she�s almost two and it�s only another 2 � years away, and I�ve been told that I should be finding out which school she�ll be going to if I want to apply for their daycare/after school care programs, since there�s a 2-year waiting list. *Gulp!* We�d really like her current daycare provider to start taking her to group activities like drop-ins sometimes, but we�re not sure that�s a realistic request, given the challenges of getting to scheduled activities with several young kids. We definitely don�t plan on making any care-provider changes in the near future, but we�ll have to start giving some thought to maybe changing things up in a year from now. Man, choosing a school and applying for daycare two years in advance? This is just one more thing I hadn�t really thought of, except as a very abstract concept, as something I�d be preoccupied with when I had kids. Also, we�re thinking that we�ll continue with the daycare 3 days a week for Grommet even when I�m home on the year of mat leave. At 93% of my salary I can still afford it, and I think it�ll be nice for her to continue to see people outside of just J and I, and nice for the new arrival to have some one-on-one time with me. When the new one reaches 6 months I think I may even have him or her go to daycare one day a week and keep the Grom home with me that day. This would help the new one adjust to being in the care of someone other than myself and hopefully help with the transition to more full-time care when I go back to work (you may recall � if not you can check the archives � that Grommet did not adjust well to daycare at all when we first tried her at about a year, and we really feel she would have been better off if we�d started getting her used to other people occasionally when she was younger). It would also be nice to give Grommet a day a week with just me and my undivided attention. In a perfect world, and assuming we can swing it financially then, starting at six months the weekly schedule would look something like: Monday, new baby goes to daycare and Grommet stays home, Tuesday to Thursday it�s reversed, and Friday they both go to daycare and I get one day a week to myself. Selfish? Maybe. But I really do want to find out if I can do another sort of job for awhile after my mat leave is up. I have the luxury of being able to take up to an additional 4 unpaid years away from my current job as �care and nurturing leave� and still have them hold my job for me if I want to come back. I want to find something to do that I like better than this job; something maybe more flexible and gives me more independence. So, that one day a week for 6 months will be time I spend on investigating that possibility. I already have a couple of ideas, and I even have a fallback which I know would earn me the same in 3-4 days a week that I currently make in 5, assuming I can find enough work to fill up those days. It�s not a greatly fun job, but it would give me a good salary and a lot more free time. Wish me luck. :: Probably no new entry until next week. Feel free to stroll through the archives �til then. Or suggest ways (legal and no pyramid schemes) I could get rich (or at least make a decent living) in the comments section. For the record �have J get a higher-paying job� has already been thought of. *grin*
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