Money Honey

I have a lot of thoughts running through my head at any given point throughout the day (and occasionally interrupting my sleep). Our lives are about to change in a big way, so it's pretty normal that I have questions and concerns and "how in the heck am I gonna...?"'s.

The biggest thing that weighing on my mind right now is the cost of daycare. There's a daycare right in the same parking lot as my work, which hello, is SO convenient. The owner was over at work the other day, asking if she could park her van in our spaces this weekend because the Challenger school is having an open house. I ran up and asked her what they charge for infants.

$170/WEEK.

That's $680/MONTH.

That's more than HALF my house payment.

I felt like crying. It was also that day that I found out from our HR department that my work only has a long term disability policy - no short term - and therefore I can't use any of those benefits for maternity leave. FMLA says I get 12 weeks off, but it's unpaid. I have just over a week of vaca/sick saved, but I can't accrue any more vaca until I take some. I'm maxed.

The daycare lady did say that if they're at capacity, she could offer me a discount (we do her insurance), so that's something. I've been seriously tossing around the idea of Nick reducing his hours to part time (he's on my insurance anyway) and he can stay home with the baby during the day and work only on the nights he hasn't got school. I kind of hate the idea, because I want to be the one that stays home - but the harsh reality is that I make more money than he does (his work truly blows) and while he's been sending out his resume like mad, no one is freaking HIRING. We simply can't afford for me to not work at this point, but I think with some clever budgeting that we could get by on my salary and a part time one for him. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that some fantastic job lands in Nick's lap before the baby comes....

I got my first baby gifts this week!! Susan sent me a box chock-full of bottle brushes, spoons, food containers, a dishwasher cage for bottle parts, a cosmetic type bag to use in the diaper bag for misc baby paraphernalia and.....I'm drawing a blank. I think that was it. The bag is SO dang cute, I can't wait to put it to use. We've started registering for some generic stuff that isn't really decided by gender (we're registered at Babies R Us so far). July can't get here fast enough - I'm dying ot know if my feelings are right (I think girl) or if Nick's right. Either way, I don't care if it's a boy or a girl, I just want to KNOW. Either way, we're having a freak. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. But I am having a tall, large footed child. I feel bad that we're passing on these genes. Perhaps they'll get some of Anne's genes and be petite. We can hope for that.