ONE YEAR!

2 days:

1 month:

2 months:

3 months:

4 months:

5 months:

6 months:

7 months:

8 months:

9 months:

10 months:

11 months:

ONE YEAR!

 

All kinds of things.

This morning, I checked my bank balance to see what kind of damage I had done to it.  I ordered pizza on Wednesday night, as my sister and one of our friends came over (her birthday was Thursday, so Bird and I treated her to dinner and cake), and had also spent $20 e-filing my friend Dan’s state taxes.  My checking account is about where I thought it should be – $75 over my rent – which was not great, but that is how I keep my checking account.  The more money I keep away from me, the better I am about not spending it.  Out of sight, out of mind, as it were, as if it is in my checking account, I WILL spend it.  However, my savings account was significantly higher than I thought it should be, and I looked and saw that my state tax return has already been processed and deposited.  Excellent!

Even without the state return inflating my numbers, this has been a really good month for savings.  Steve and I are working to cut out our frivolous expenses, and somehow, I have managed to save $1250 this month.  I will pay my car payment out of that, as I always do, but even that will still be a net of $800.  I don’t think Steve has saved that much, because when I get all thrifty, I rely on him to pay more for things.  This is an abnormal month, for sure, but it makes me realize that increasing our housing cost by $300 is maybe not so scary.  If I can put that much money away in a month by myself (and, honestly, I don’t even make that much money), we can surely make the extra payment together.  I should be getting my federal tax return on 2/1 (or, maybe 2/8), which will bring my savings up into a really comfortable place for a person who is about to lay down a significant chunk of money for a down payment on a house.

We got confirmation from our loan processor that we have been cleared for closing.  Final approval.  Done.  That was so easy!  It is funny how technology has made this process into something that is really quite easy.  We have never even met our mortgage guy; we’ll meet him at closing.  We just communicate by email, phone, and fax.  It’s great.  I had heard that this process was difficult, but we have had really great people working with us and they have made it so smooth.  The first mortgage lady?  Not so much.  I want to email her now to tell her that we have the money that she told us we needed before rejecting us outright, and then say, “Oh, but we won’t have it for long because we will be closing on our house on 2/16 NO THANKS TO YOU.”  But, that would be bitchy.  Right?  It still just sticks in my craw, though.  I felt so judged and so….incapable.  When, I know that we are actually quite responsible (for the most part) and capable of doing this.

It is all pretty exciting, but a little daunting.  I’m not necessarily nervous about the “homeowner” piece or the “wow, I’m actually committing to a 30 year loan with someone!” (once upon a time, that would have freaked me the fuck out), but I am nervous about the logistics.  I hate moving.  And we really have so much stuff.  Operation: Purge is this Sunday, so hopefully we can get rid of a lot of things.  We’re selling some books and movies.  We will go through our clothes and shoes.  Oh, we have so many clothes and shoes that aren’t even used.  They would be far better off at the Salvation Army than at our house.

Also, we have Operation: Party on Saturday!  Katja.  Oh, that sweet little baby of mine.  She will be one.  I can hardly believe it.  Last year at this time, I was working from home on bed rest, waiting and hoping that I wouldn’t have to be induced.  I kind of miss bed rest NOW, A YEAR LATER, because I could do fun things like make garlic toast and steak for lunch and just hang out and work when I wanted to or nap if I got tired.  Oh, the good ol’ days.  But, anyhow, it is incredibly hard to fathom that little Katja has been in our lives for 363 days.  She has grown and changed so much.  She has changed all of us, too.  I think she cemented our little family unit for us.  Rowan feels connected, now, to Steve in a way that she didn’t before.  We are a bumbling little quartet, but we are OUR quartet.  Our family.  It is pretty wonderful.  I did not necessarily expect that when we decided to have a baby, which is maybe kind of dumb, but here we are.  A family.  Something that I didn’t even know that I wanted.  I had my relationship with Rowan and my relationship with Rowan, and now we’re all intertwined.

I am nervous about having SO many people at our house on Saturday.  It is going to be bananas.  But, we’ll make do.  It was one thing when we just had family and friends, but then I remembered that I forgot to invite my aunt and cousins, and then some people were going to be in town this weekend and they got invited, too, and before I knew it, it had spiraled out of control.  It is just going to be low-key, though, for so many people.  No decorations or anything.  Just food and cake and ice cream and soda and coffee.  Conversation (if you can hear over my loud family).  It should be okay, except for the sheer number of people and the total lack of space.  Oh well.

Moving back, again, to this whole YEAR OLD thing, I have to say that I am incredibly proud that I have breastfed Katja for this long.  Pumping at work has not been as difficult as I, in my early days of crazy, thought it would be.  It’s not super fun all the time, but it is not difficult and I respond very well to the pump.  I am still pumping almost the same amount that I was when I first went back to work in April.  A little less, but not much.  I plan on continuing to do this for a while, since I clearly have a lot of milk and it would be hard to just suddenly cut back.  If Katja doesn’t drink it, I can donate milk to some moms.  I have already donated probably 600 ounces total to 4 different moms, and I will definitely do that again if I need to.  The breastfeeding part of our relationship is good.  I cannot imagine weaning her at one year.  When we started, I didn’t know if I would make it six weeks, let alone six months (my original short-term goal), and now we are at one year and it just seems silly to stop.  She does bite me from time to time, which hurts like a mother, and she still won’t sleep in her crib and must be next to me all night (though, she does not nurse all night, which is pretty nice)…but, otherwise, it is a really good thing for both of us.

Miscellaneous

Have I mentioned how stinking cute Katja is lately?

Because she is.  Adorable!

She is not yet walking, but she stands so proud on her own.  Good girl.  I hope she delays walking until we move into our new house (26 days and counting for the move; 24 days until we close), as there is more room for her to go, plus we’ll have carpet in our basement there and she and Rowan can roam and play.

And wrestle, apparently.

We close on the house in 24 days.  That’s it!  And we are going to move in 26 days.  That seems so far away, but it is really not.  It will be here before we know it.  We need to get boxes and get packing.  I’ve been holding off doing that until after we have Katja’s FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY this weekend, but since that will be here, THIS WEEKEND and all, I can’t hold off much longer.  We need to get organized; we have so much stuff!

I am also feeling better about the finances of paying our down payment and all.  We have the money, but it would be a big blow to our savings.  I did our taxes on Saturday and we’re getting a sizable refund, so now I am not so worried anymore.  Yay, child tax credit??

Books and work.

Last night, Rowan and I finished The Book Thief.  I had read this before, in 2008 (what a wonderful year for books THAT was!), and when I finished it, I was bawling.  Rowan, who was just newly six, came up to me and tried to hug me and I told her she didn’t need to, that it was a good feeling to cry like that.

Reading it again, with her, was no different.  Except that this time, we both cried.  She buried her head in my shoulder as we read about the bombing of Himmel street (SPOILER ALERT, I GUESS).  It is hard not to cry with such a strangely magical book.  How wonderful it is that there are books out there that make you love characters and then break your heart when they die!  The power of words is truly amazing.

We started this book at the end of November, and she did not like it right away.  It’s a strange book to read with a child.  A story of death and World War II.  It is vastly different than our usual books of adventurous kids going on journeys and whatnot (we will be going back to this familiar territory with our next book, Wildwood).  I told her to give it 50 pages and see what she thought, and by that point, when she met little Rudy Steiner, she was in love.  I think that Rudy reminded her of her little boyfriend, and that was part of it, but she also fell in love with the world that Markus Zusak created for us.  The world of Liesel Meminger, as told to us by Death.  She has now experienced that feeling of a good cry and can no longer make fun of me for being a cryface.

I am now reading another book about death, or rather a lack thereof, and it is really quite good.  I have a goal of buying either no books or only a handful of books in 2012, so have been checking things out from the library.  The library has an iPhone app that one can use to search titles and put things on hold — I don’t actually even need to go there until it is time to pick up my books!  It is like shopping, except without paying any money.  Amazing.  Yes, I realize that most people have utilized the wonderful service of the library for a long time, but please let me bask in my renewed love of the library system.  Looking things up online (on my computer or my phone) is not quite as fun as browsing inside a physical library, but, the convenience is unbeatable.  Anyhow, the book that I checked out is called The Post-Mortal by Drew Magary and it is about a world where scientists come up with a cure for aging, basically making people unable to die from old age (they can still die from other things, but will not age).  I am zipping along in it, and am about 2/3 of the way through in just two days of readings.  I can always tell how much I like something by how late I stay up reading it.  This is a late night book.

I was up late last night reading, and then awoke in the middle of the night to a coughing Katja.  Poor thing has a little cold right now.  She was cranky as all get-out on Sunday, with a fever to boot!, but had been a little better yesterday, except for the cough.  When I fell back asleep last night, I really fell back asleep and did not wake up on time this morning, which was kind of bad, because I had to get in and get stuff done before heading off to a meeting with our new vice president about the new organizational structures that will be implemented in our office.  It has me thinking that I am ready for more of a challenge at work.  I need to get a resume together, except that even though I work in employment, I am very bad at writing these things myself.  Selling myself in general is not a strong point of mine.  Ugh.  So, now, that is on my mind.  I am visualizing success and a significant pay raise.  The money would be nice, but the challenge and change would be better.  I would do this for a less than significant pay raise, to be honest, but I’m aiming high.  You know, aim for the moon and all of that.

Oh!  And, my morning was all out of whack so much that I forgot my pump parts at home and when I went to pump milk on my morning break, realized that that was not going to happen without some vital pieces.  I had to go home for an early lunch, pump and bring my stuff back for the afternoon.  It is so hard to go home in the middle of the day; I did not want to leave.  The only bonus was, I guess, that I got a really great parking spot in the ramp upon my return.

Dreams and other things

I used to have a dream of being a writer.  Most nerdy, bookish kids probably have such a dream, if I had to guess.  Even now, though, I think, “I could totally write a book!” and then I’ll start thinking about book plots and so on and realize that I actually do not have that big of a vocabulary and I like to write run-on sentences and I overuse commas and I recognize that maybe that would not be such a good idea for me.  Plus, despite my creativity in some arenas in life, the only time that I ever even attempted to write a novel, it as a complete Tom Robbins rip-off.  Except terrible.  A terrible Tom Robbins rip-off.  So sad.

So, I am aware that this writer dream is just a dream.

But, then, sometimes, I’ll be lying awake in the middle of the night, maybe feeding a baby or what-have-you, and I will think AGAIN that this writing thing could happen and I could be a legitimate author by writing about MY LIFE! instead of, you know, FICTION!  And I start to craft sentences in my head...I could feel my heartbeat in my teeth, and it made me painfully aware of my mortality and then, I will repeat said sentence in my head and realize that it is crap and, again, I will hang up the author dream.  Plus, you know, I do kind of write about my life (to some degree) here, and this is not exactly what one would call a POPULAR place on the internet, since really only a handful of people even know about it, and I make zero dollars here, so why would I think that being a MEMOIR AUTHOR would even be a feasible goal for me to have?  Also, who is interested in tall, middle children from large families who grew up in rural communities and have anxiety disorders and children?  That is just one way to MARKET myself.  Very good.  I know. Why do I not have dooce like traffic?  I DON’T KNOW, INTERNET.  I DON’T KNOW.

This whole….HOUSE thing… does have me a little worried about money.  We will be raising our monthly payment, though not to a level that is crazy; just to a level that is a little teeny bit uncomfortable.  Today, I was thinking, “well, I will make money writing somehow!” and then I delved into a world of “how to make money on blogging” and realized that, well, that is just not going to happen because you need to have traffic and network and also probably have talent in order to do these things.  But, again, a nice little dream.  Money paid for doing something that is fun?  (Not that my job is not fun, but, you know, work is work.)  That would be nice.  Though, I think that that sort of thing (being a “power blogger”) requires organization and planning that I don’t really want to do for this here space.

Parts of me think that I really should just give up on the dreams and focus on the realities, but, then, I dreamed about a house and a baby and a family and those things are coming true (still expecting something to go wrong on the house thing, so talk to me about that one after closing) or have come true.  So, who knows?