Applying for Preschool & Other Life Changing Decisions

Wrote the check and dropped it off on Monday for LO to start 2x weekly preschool in the Fall. She's #8 on the list of 9 open spots. Phew. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to those free mornings already. Sure, I may just go to work, but what I can accomplish without her in one morning is approximately equal to 6 mornings with her. So, I may drop my hours again and then I'll have one morning a week to myself! Glee does not even begin to fully express my feelings about this.

Of course, since we are talking about moving, possibly this summer if the stars align, whether she'll actually go or not is questionable, but at least she's on the list!

Yeah, moving. Not on my list of things I really want to contemplate, but the 45 minute one-way commute (when traffic cooperates) is really starting to wear on DH, and in addition to his crazy long hours negatively affects the time we get to spend together and the time he gets to spend with LO both before and after work.

Good news, or bad, I'm not sure, is that our next-door neighbors house is already on the market for less than we'd like to price ours, but our neighbor two doors over on the other side is listed for probably twice what we can get for ours. We haven't talked to any agents yet (to either help us sell our house, or purchase in the new area) since we're still trying to figure out the area into which we'd like to move and whether we have to compromise between decent school systems and proximity to DH's office. (This despite the high likelihood that LO will at least start out in a private school.)

We've been doing a lot of looking at the houses listed on Realtor.com, and there are some certain deal-breakers (a house at the top of our price range should need to have much, if any, work done - especially not painting or ugly wallpaper removal) for both of us, and some things that, even though they bother only one of us, will remove the listing from consideration.

That last bit brings me to the discussion about how I'm trying to see things in our house as a potential buyer would, and frankly, it's a little depressing. We'll have lived here 8 years in March, and there are still areas which need first time attention, and other areas which need attention in a re-do way. I'm thinking the walls and trim need to be repainted at least on the 1st floor, but it seems foolish to spend that kind of money (Believe me, with a 2 story foyer we will be hiring someone. I don't do scaffolding!) if someone who buys it doesn't like the color.

And the clutter, oh God, the ever loving clutter that seems to accumulate overnight and then grows roots where it landed. When I look at pictures, I don't want to see clutter, no one imagines their lives surrounded by clutter: they imagine themselves dressed super-chic, cooking a magnificent dinner in a gourmet kitchen with no mess whatsoever while the children in designer clothing play happily on the floor with educational fair-trade wooden toys or do homework at the breakfast table and an irresistibly handsome husband walks in the door and beams at his exceptional family. That may be over the top, but you get the idea. To be honest, if clutter and mess was an ideal, Pinterest would be a bust!

Another Life Changing Decision hanging out there....trying for #2....still on hold. I still have a feeling that LO should have a sibling, and time is certainly tick-tocking away for me, but that sense of urgency I had six months ago is gone. Maybe my feelings about this will change but for now I'm 100% happy to leave it up to chance if we decide to go that route. DH thinks we will have problems again but is unwilling to pursue help again (our initial efforts seem to have had more of a negative effect on him than I); I'm more optimistic since once my cycles returned post-weaning LO they have been about as regular as I remember from before I started Depo-Provera. So, who knows. Either one of us could be correct, or we could both be. But in any case, we're leaning towards 5 bedroom houses so that there will be more than one guestroom, and still allow LO and any potential sibling their own rooms.

So, that's where things are - yay for preschool and time for myself 2x a week, but boo for the possibility of the prospect of moving (and the likelihood that all the good preschools in our new location have already been filled up by the time we make a decision).