Both Mr. Pit and I wanted to see if we could swing it financially if I didn't go back to work at all, and my work was generous enough to let me take an extra 3 months to be home with Little Pit (unpaid of course). In this time we have realized that it is a lot harder than we thought it would be to live off one income. We didn't do so well paring down our spending, even though I haven't bought clothes for myself or Little Pit, I have bought shoes, and things like diapers, wipes, and other baby things don't just arrive for free at your doorstep. We also are eating at home more, but still have date night once every 2 weeks, as well as other nights out with friends or getting take out, so our food dollars haven't gone as far as we'd like them to either.
Secondly, being home during the day and noticing things around the house that should be fixed, updated, replaced or improved upon has become a slight obsession of mine. In the 5 months of being home I have come up with the following projects.
1. Buy a new TV Console since the table the TV is on now is tippy and has a glass top, a major no-no for an almost crawler/puller-upper/walker.
2. Redo the front walkway. This all started because I don't have enough room to open the door to get Little Pit and her car seat out of the back of the car and up onto the sidewalk easily. Then it turned into re-doing the stairs and the walkway. Then I thought it would be nice to have a little retaining wall go up the driveway. Two $7,000 estimates later Mr. Pit told me to shove it.
3. Redo the back deck. We didn't take very good care of our wood deck for the past 3 years and no we either have to get it cleaned and re-sealed or torn up and redone. This was also a multi-thousand dollar project where I was also told I was out of my mind.
4. Redo the bathroom. We only have 1 full bathroom in our house and it's small, really small. So small that I get in a fight with Mr. Pit almost every night because there isn't enough room in there to brush our teeth and get ready for bed at the same time. I want to expand out into the hallway, rip out the linen closet and make the whole thing bigger. Mr. Pit won't even let me call a contractor for that one because he knows it will be too expensive to do.
5. Put on a master bedroom addition. This is actually ludicrous enough to make Mr. Pit laugh out loud.
Do you see how my brain has WAY too much time to process all these things, and how they go from a few hundred dollars to multiple thousands?! Mr. Pit thinks this is a good reason to go back to work.
So I got a bit off tangent, but the point is I have to go back to work. Not even to pay for all the things I listed above, but to literally pay our bills and keep up with the lifestyle we had pre baby. It's not like we were out partying and buying crazy stuff, but we were active and out and about and though we don't get out as often, we'd still like to be able to pay for it when we do get the time.
The 2nd, or 80th point, whatever, of this post is that it will break my heart to leave her but I know I have to. I know it will be harder for me than it will be for her, and that both of us will benefit from it in the end. I certainly am not permanently scarred from my Mother working when I was young, I actually have nothing but happy childhood memories of preschool and baby sitters and whoever I was around.
Someone tell me I will get through it...how am I supposed to leave this face!?
2 comments:
I'll just quit my job and come home and babysit!
It's hard. It's way, way hard. But you get used to it, and as long as you trust your daycare provider, it'll work out. I'm glad you found a home daycare you liked on the phone- hopefully you'll feel the same in person!!
You can do this- you really can!
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