Late night

I am up far too late doing school stuff and pumping so Little Monster gets fed and I can sleep.

While being the only one awake , here's what I've been pondering.

The baby is sick. We both have awful colds, the hacking discomfort kind. It just breaks my heart to hear those coughs and know there's so little I can do. I think that in the future, when I'm the boss, anyone telling me they're skipping the vaccine with whooping cough included, I'll play them the sound of a baby with it. So so sad that any baby gets a vaccine-preventable disease.

I've been thinking a lot about "leaving before you leave" and how I was clearly or at least in large part interested in teaching because of the decent-ish work/life balance that came with it. Few nights, no required weekends, same vacation schedule as kids. When I got there, to the real teaching part, I hated being belittled. I hated being bugged by parents that I hadn't updated the grade book in 12 hrs. I disliked having to teach to the test and having no say in how to teach a concept. It wasn't that I was a bad teacher. I left because I knew I would be within 5 years.

I'm back to the rotation roulette line of thought. I have ideas but I don't know if it will work to do rotations without moving. It's hard to think about it all with zero certainty. We know the spouse won't have the same job starting in June when the contract is up but with only one unsuccessful interview so far, it's hard to say what might happen. We really want to stay at least another year and hopefully 2 because we will go where I get a job and that probably means moving.

Tonight LM is swaddled in a large size Velcro blanket. It fits. The same one fit the kid at 5.5 months, and it was still kinda big on her then. It boggles my fragile mind how very different they are, those girls. Despite having the same due date they are very different both physically and in temperament.

Our dish washer is super slow. It takes 2+ hours to run one cycle. Arg. I miss my dishwasher. We should have kept it.

Childcare is up in the air and I hate uncertainties. If we have no income then we can have the girls home with the spouse and don't need the coveted infant spot. If we didn't need to keep it so badly we could skip summer childcare or scale back from full time. I wish there were other options. With both girls in full time childcare we spend less on rent in a month than childcare. It gets less spendy when the kid starts school but is still higher than our rent. And we have bargain priced childcare of fairly good quality, not anything fancy or in a center. I feel trapped by childcare costs.

In anticipation of being broke and soon, I'm applying for summer internships. I had really hoped to have the summer to hang out with the baby but it seems to be a dwindling possibility now. Le sigh.

I hope the rotten dishwasher is done running by now after 2.5 hrs. I should get some sleep.