Happy Birthday to Me + an Update

Today is my birthday.  I honestly have to stop and think how old I am – the years just all seem to run together.  How sad is that?  After doing some simple math (I kid) I concluded that it’s the big 2-8.  It’s kind of just like any other day really; I don’t make a big deal about my birthday.  Sure it’s nice to hear from some old friends on FB on this day, my family will call, I might get a card from my husband, but since he’s in training we won’t even get to see each other unless he gets off work early tonight.  Instead I am going to take Chloe up to see my grandma this afternoon after I get off.  We do get a day off at work for our birthday, but I used mine a few weeks ago for the 4^th of July holiday, so unfortunately I am at work today.  Oh, and a gift to myself??  AF said hello bright and early this morning!  It’s no secret I’ve been bad about taking the Met.formin this past month so I had no idea what to expect when it came to my cycle.  I have been charting my BBT but that’s it.   It looked like I ovulated on CD18 so I was just waiting and waiting, and low and behold I had a semi-normal cycle of 32 days!  I’ll take that!  I don’t know if it’s the Met.formin working or if there are still traces of the Fem.ara from last month still helping out (I have no idea how that stuff works and if that’s even possible) but I’m excited!  What does this mean?  Well, it’s also no secret that I am slow to get back on the TTC bandwagon.  In theory I should call my acupuncturist and see when she wants me to start coming in.  I’m guessing any time.  We’ll do Met.formin only another cycle and then actually start up with Fem.ara again the cycle after that. 

And an update on the stressors going on in our lives, JJ is still in training and could be on this job for anywhere between 4 and 8 weeks. Then after that he could either 1) stay on that job and work on call multiple shifts a week or, OR 2) things could go back to the way they were with him hardly working at all.  I didn’t realize this was a possibility.  Bu we’re dealing with the railroad and they never make decisions that make sense.  JJ did go ahead and took that catering gig last Saturday and we stayed for the party and got to see about $5k of fireworks go off at a private home.  It was pretty cool!  For just an amateur, the show was really good. 

On the daycare front, I thought I had found ‘the one’ for us and JJ and I went and toured it on Monday.  Before going, I pulled up the street view on Goo.gle Maps and the building was not what I was expecting.  I should have known from that, but we went anyway.   They lost points with us once we were able to just walk right in the door.  No locks, no security, no one sitting at the front desk.  The director was filling in as the cook that day because two people called in sick so we had to stand among trash waiting to be taken out at the front door for about 15 minutes watching two teachers try and control two groups of older kids.  We finally got to meet with the director and as soon as she opened her office, she kicked something under her desk to hide it and grabbed a sock off her desk and threw it on the floor.  No joke.  She went over some of their policies and then gave us the tour.  The walls in the building didn’t go up to the ceiling, so even though each room was sectioned off, you could still hear others really well.  The kicker was when we walked around to the infant room where Chloe would be and the teacher looked like a crack head.  We weren’t sure if she had teeth or not!  As we walked through the gate, I think the director was going to tell us that “this stuff” (not sure what it was) is locked but before she could even say it, she realized that it was NOT locked and asked the teacher to come over and lock it right away.  I kept my mouth shut the entire time we were there, didn’t look at JJ, but as soon as we left I asked him what he thought.  He just kind of looked off into space and said “um…..” and I chimed in “I say no.”  His response was “I say hell no.”  At least we were on the same page, as I figured we would be.  But now what??  We needed something next week!  I was realizing that the good daycares were expensive and had waiting lists.  I was going back and forth between in home daycares and centers and decided to tour another center my friend recommended.  I had talked to the director on the phone a few times and finally called and scheduled an appointment on Tuesday.  JJ couldn’t come so I went by myself.  It was night and day!  I can’t tell you the relief I had when I walked in the door.  The director’s office is inside the main door with a window so you can talk to her.  But before entering the center where the kids are, you have to scan your fingerprint to unlock the door.  Points!!   The facility was so nice and clean, the staff seemed nice, educated, clean, the kids seemed much better than the other daycare, it was just all around much better.  There were actual rooms for each age and they only go up to 5 years old which I like.

Chloe is right in between two rooms.  She has to be in the infant room until she turns 1.  Even though she’s not walking yet, she’s scaling, and that’s enough for them to move her into the older room after her birthday.  BUT!  She will have some adjustments in that room.  They don’t get bottles in that room, which is fine b/c she’s pretty much off bottles now.  I’m not sure if she can still have formula in a sippy cup or not, I’ll have to ask.  They try and get the kids to eat at a table.  Haha!  That should be interesting.  And, and!!!  There are no cribs!  Do they really expect a one year old to take a nap on a cot??  Maybe you all are used to that or expected it, but I sure did not.  I was there right as the kids were going down for their naps, and one of my friend’s kids is in that room (where Chloe will end up which I think is fun) and a teacher was sitting next to her rubbing her back to relax her and put her to sleep.  And yesterday JJ went to tour it and said that all the kids were sleeping on their cots when he was there, so apparently they know what they are doing. 

It is fairly expensive in my eyes, especially when we probably won’t need it every day, every week.  So our idea is this…Chloe has to be full time in the infant room, or at least we have to pay for full time.  So I think we’ll try and keep her with the current sitter for one more week and a friend on the days the sitter can’t watch her.  Then after that we’ll put her in the daycare full time in the infant room until her birthday.  After that when she gets moved to the other room we will do part time, MWF and use the other friend/sitter we had lined up on an as-needed basis.  If we were to pay for part time daycare plus the sitter two days a week it would actually end up being more expensive than if she was just in daycare full time.  But the idea is we probably won’t need the sitter much and she will just let us pay when Chloe is there, so in the long run this way should end up being cheaper.  I don’t know, we’ll have to see how it goes.  This is all so new to us, and throwing in the unknowns of JJ’s work makes it pretty impossible to try and plan things.  But I feel MUCH better about the daycare situation.  I started crying when I picked Chloe up from the sitter Monday after seeing the scary daycare.  I just held her close to me and couldn’t imagine the thought of taking her to a place like that.  It’s hard enough that we have to do daycare at all, I want to feel as comfortable as possible with the one she ends up with, and JJ and I both feel that way with the one we chose.  We have both been very stressed the last 10 days or so and have probably snapped at each other more than ever before (we didn’t even do family pictures that we had scheduled on Sunday b/c we just weren’t feeling it).  But we are back on track and moving forward with these plans.  So that was a lot of boring update details, but I wanted to write it all down so I remembered our experiences. 

By the way...does anyone have ideas of something we can do for our current sitter who has watched Chloe for the last 9 months?  She is due with her first girl in September.  She really has been great to Chloe and we couldn't have asked for a better person to watch her.  I just wanted to say thank you some way.  Not sure if it should be a baby gift or something totally unrelated.  Anyone have a good idea?