Real Talk: Daycare Daze

This week Lazy Baby has officially been in daycare for two months. Wow, it feels like much longer and much shorter at the same time. One thing that I wasn't warned about when becoming a mom was that time moves differently. Anyway, daycare, two months, right. At first, I'm pretty sure she hated every moment of every day there. For two weeks she'd scream when I'd drop her off and scream when I picked her up. Slowly she got used to it and now she seems to genuinely enjoy it (at least from what I can tell during the two small windows of time I'm there).

She has, of course, gotten sick a few times now. First with a cold, then with a rash, and finally a stomach bug. Those have been stressful, difficult times for my little family, but we've made it through. Honestly, the easiest was the stomach bug — even though it was, hands down, the grossest. I'm not 100% that it was a bug and not teething, because after two days the poops calmed down and her 8th tooth made its debut. Side note: how in the heck can teething cause diarrhea, vomiting, runny noses and all those other crazy symptoms? And why did no one tell me about it before hand?!

The sick times are a con of daycare, for sure. The only other con I've experienced (aside from LB's stuff accidentally going home with someone else twice now) is one of the women who works there grates on me real bad. I'm not going into it, because she has a stressful job that I never want to have to do myself and at the end of the day her opinions don't matter. If anything, it's all taught me to trust my mother's intuition more and more (because it has been right over this woman's "advice" a few times now).

The pros to daycare definitely outweigh the cons for us.  LB has learned so much being there and around other kids, teachers and having a structured day. She even got bumped up to the older class early! She's safe and having a great time, which is a relief. Any time she's been ill, they've called to let me know and I like that. They do school pictures and I love that, too! I can just pay $25 and get a professional photo of my baby, yes, please! When Mr. LL or I get sick, we can take her to daycare and then go home and actually rest. Before, when my mom was watching her, we wouldn't really rest. We'd help my mom or let her go home and just deal with the baby while sick. We've actually planned to take off a few days from day jobs to celebrate our wedding anniversary during the day while LB is at daycare. We're calling it Daycare Dates.

School pictures! My heart just melts when I look at this photo!

The cost is more a con than a pro, but I suppose it's really just a necessary evil. I am very grateful that we found a decent daycare that we can afford and that my mom is helping us with the cost while she can. It's sad that child care is a privilege here, and without my mom's help it would be a privilege that we couldn't afford. Thankfully we are able to manage it right now and are trying to build up some funds for if/when my mom can no longer help us with this burden financially.

Well, that's really all for now. Just thought I'd give an update on how it's been with our daycare life these days. Let me know if you have any daycare stories in the comments!

Real Talk: The Cost of Living

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash

I hate money. More specifically, I hate the lack of money my family has and how that effects us. Here's a bit of insight into our financial situation: we both work, full-time, with my job having benefits and his not having any; we both do side work for money when we can (LVBookDesign.com); we rent a 2 bedroom/1 bath house in the suburbs because it is cheaper; we have one vehicle, and we are still paying it off; we have one child in full-time daycare; we have a small amount of credit card debt from buying appliances and some furniture when we moved into this house; I am still paying off one student loan; and we have a very small savings that worries me constantly.

I'm the one who manages our money, for the most part, and I always feel like we are living hand-to-mouth. Here's the thing though – we aren't. Mr. LL and I sat down one Sunday, not that long ago, while Lazy Baby was taking a nap, and we really went through our spending, expenses and income. Even with allotting some income for us to have to spend on whatever we wanted each week, we saw that we could still put almost $100 in savings a month. More if we do side work. 

But, I still feel like we could cut costs to make our standard of living better. I've tried to cut our grocery budget to $100 a week, but I don't think this is realistic until Lazy Baby is out of diapers and no longer drinking formula. I include toiletries, diapers, dog + cat food, cat litter, etc. in my grocery budget and I loathe blogs/articles that talk about "$30/week for a family of 8!" and they aren't including that other stuff. Why in hell would not include those items in my "grocery" budget when I buy them when I buy groceries? Uh uh. That's dumb (to me, if it works fo you, great!). 

We don't go out, however, on the weekends we do fall into a bit of a fast food black hole, but that's a post for another day. We're going to cancel our TV cable that we got for my mom when she watching LB, but now that she's in daycare, we could save that $20/month.

We have a few big purchases we want to get in the not-so-distant future, the first being getting Mr. LL a vehicle that he can put a carseat in. Then, we'd like to save up a decent down payment on a house. The housing market in our area is dumb and I hate it. But we aren't even close to being ready to tackle that beast yet.

I'd also like to have the whole "6-months of income" saved up as an emergency fund. I keep trying to tell Mr. LL we need to focus on that FIRST, then save for the other things, but he's a bit more "we have it, let's get this!" at times. He agrees we need the emergency fund, but he's also really tired of not having a car (I take our one vehicle to work and he gets rides from co-workers). I get that – plus I'm tired of him not having a car, too. 

Oof, this is a bit of a rambling post. Anyway, I'm working on budgeting our finances again and if this is something you would be interested in (our system, how's it working out, etc.) then let me know in the comments.

Real Talk: Mom-bod

Imagine, if you will, that you have a really comfy, super casual sweater that you like to wear all the time. One day, you are wearing it as you sit on the couch and you absentmindedly tuck your knees in and pull this cozy sweater over your legs and sit there binge watching Supernatural (or whatever) till it’s time to go to bed as a ball of comfort. The next time you go to put on your favorite sweater, you find that it has been stretched out and no amount of dryer time is shrinking it back into shape. Sad face.

Well, that’s what happens to your body after you have a baby…CORRECTION, that is how I describe what happened to MY body after having lazy baby. My tummy skin is just stretched out and I hate it.

I’m not a thin woman, nor have I ever been in my entire life. But I was ok with my body before the baby. Mostly. I knew those lines, those curves, that skin. Now it’s just a big flop. If I look at my stomach in the mirror too long these days, I sometimes tear up. I guess I’ve just reached that age and that time in my life where no matter how much weight I lose, my skin is never going to fit my body (without surgery).

Mr. LL still loves me and my body, and I suppose that’s a comfort. I want to love my body again though. I shouldn’t be so hard on myself though, it took me 20-some-odd years to get that comfortable with my body. I’ve only had this new one for a little over 6 months. 

But right now, I hate it.

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