Ch-ch-ch-Changes

One of the things about raising kids is every time you think you have finally settled into a routine, things change. We're about to have the first big life-change for Kiddo.

Monday he starts pre-school!

I've been despairing a little because he's quite ready for pre-school. He turned 4 this month, and he's more than ready for more socializing and some structured play. He goes to his old daycare once a week, but it's pretty unstructured. And it seems I'm always tied up with the baby and poor Kiddo just needs more input and attention than he's getting. But of course, pre-school costs money.

So I got all settled in to my little internet job, and I worked out about what I should be withholding for taxes (they pay us like contractors, so we have to pay self-employment taxes). I held my breath and called the best pre-school in town, which has a branch just around the corner (we could walk it in summer). Turns out that it will cost us $12 a month more than my net pay, and they have morning openings, he's able to start right away.

Yay!

Of course, this means changes for us grown-ups too. We've never been morning people (tough with an infant, seems all infants are natural morning people). Hubby will take him in the mornings, but I need to be up to get him dressed and ready to go. I'll pick him up after lunch. I figure the baby really tries to wake me up around 6am every day, so I just need to bite the bullet and get myself out of bed instead of trying to snuggle Baby back to sleep. I'll manage, the coffee pot has a timer.

The real challenge is going to bed at a reasonable hour. In all my adult years I've never, ever been able to make myself go to bed before midnight unless I was sick or sleep deprived. I'm almost 40, you'd think I would have figured out the trick of that by now. Of course, baby hasn't established a sleep schedule quite yet (I like to let babies establish their own routine for the most part), so some days he's down by 9pm and others I'm up at 12:30am thinking "C'mon Baby, doesn't sleep sound nice?".

My plan (haha! With kids plans are tentative at best!) is to get the baby up with us at 6am and take a nap with him mid-morning so I'm not a total grouch when I pick Kiddo up. Of course, I'd also like to use those mornings to play with baby, get laundry done, do the shopping with only one kid in tow, and do some work uninterrupted by dinosaurs and lions. But really, most important will be catching that nap.

Kiddo's schedule will change, too. He's been getting up around 7:30, which is darn near sleeping in for me. So I debate whether he'll take a nap or just go do bed earlier. Part of the problem there is he's starting to outgrow naps, and the other problem is that Hubby usually works until 7pm or so, and I think it's important that the boys see their dad, even if it's just long enough to read them a bedtime story.

But I know it'll all work out. And I'm just overjoyed that Kiddo can start preschool. He's pretty excited about it!