The first thing they tell you when you have a girl is that you should ALWAYS wipe her bottom front to back because you don't want anything to get up in her girl parts and give her an infection. I say it's totally a moot point when she's managed to poop up and out the top front of her diaper. Fun.
I also learned my lesson about changing her on the carpet without putting anything down underneath. She's notorious for mid-diaper-change pooping. Shhh - I did not tell Andy about yesterday's *incident." The Woolite with OxyClean carpet stain remover worked such wonders that it will forever go unnoticed. That is probably the cleanest part of the carpet now!
I am also extremely proud of myself for coming up with the world's most efficient bath time ritual. It allows me to bathe both children in the bathtub at the same time BY MYSELF. Basically I get Liam undressed and in the tub, then I put Macy's bath chair in there, get her hair washed and body cleaned, take her out, dry and clothe her, and stick her in her bouncy seat while I give Liam his bath. I get Liam INTO the bath by telling him I need his help in giving Macy a bath. Whew. By the time that's over, I need a drink.
Of course, then I have bedtime for both of them. In a perfect world, Macy would go right to sleep at 7 for the night (she'll then wake up in the 10pm hour, the 2am hour, and the 5am hour for a bottle - can't wait til those get fewer and further between); however, Macy is always awake and screaming during Liam's bedtime. Once that's all over, I decide that I need an even stiffer drink.
It's difficult, but I know it'll get easier. I remember life got infinitely better when Liam started rolling over onto his tummy. At that point, there wasn't a darn thing we could do to keep him sleeping on his back. We'd just put him down for the night on his tummy and he'd sleep all the way through. For that, I can't WAIT til she's 5 months old!
In other news, we continue with Dead Passat festivities because Andy is the most meticulous car-buyer in the world. Me - when issue comes up, I like to deal with it and move on as soon as possible. I would have had a new car in our garage 2 weeks ago if it were up to me.
It was a '99 Passat with 138K miles on it (really not that bad, but 60 miles per day was aging it quite rapidly). We knew we'd be buying a new car in the next year or so. For the last couple years, every time something would go wrong with the car (for a VW, it is inevitably about $1000 a pop), I kept telling Andy that we need to cut our losses and just get a new car so we can quit facing paying more for maintaining it and fixing it than it's even worth. He finally agreed this time around when the VW service guy told us it'd be $800 to fix what he *thinks* is the problem, but could be more if he was wrong.
We went out to test-drive a Mazda-3 hatchback, a Honda Fit, a Ford Fiesta, a Ford Fusion, and a Hyundai Sonata. Andy chose all of these - the CR-V was my call, so he's calling the shots for the most part this time.
It was funny - we pulled up to my parents' house to drop off the kids so we could go out and do that and we see the same exact Mazda-3 that we were going to test drive sitting in their driveway. Apparently my older brother was there, and he'd bought that car a couple weeks ago. I'd had no idea. He let us drive his so we could knock out one leg of our trip.
LOVED the Mazda-3. After driving it, I would have been content to just go ahead and get that. The big thing for me was that, though it is a compact car, there is actually a great deal of room between the bumper and the back seat. That became my biggest concern with the sub-compact, which Andy wanted to consider since it'll mainly be used to drive him to and from work.
So many vehicles these days are made with SO little buffer between the last seat and the outside world. I just can't do it - I've seen how a rear-end collision can completely obliterate the trunk of a car, so I can't imagine putting my kids where the trunk-space would otherwise be.
In the end, we decided to go for a family sedan so that we can have something practical and safe for the family. Andy's decided on the Sonata - it REALLY looks good both inside and out and drives wonderfully.
I did put my foot down on the Ford Fiesta, purely because it's called a Ford Fiesta. Sure, it's fun to drive and handles well, but I don't want to have to say to people "we own a Ford Fiesta - but don't laugh yet! It's fun to drive and handles well!" If it had a classier name, I MIGHT consider it if we were going the subcompact route.
We'll probably go out and get it early next week (Andy STILL needs the weekend to research more stuff).
2 comments:
Replacing the Jeep was easy...I took it to CarMax literally on a whim (it was just a few miles away from where I was working then). I just wanted to see what it was worth on a straight sale since it was having frequent issues. When they made an offer we couldn't refuse (like $2,000 more than the dealer trade) with only 7 days to take or leave, I quickly did the research and we bought the car we wanted like a 5 days later. Hilary (being more like Andy...and her father as well) wanted a few more weeks to consider before Caleb was born. Of course, we bought the car on a Friday, and Caleb was born the following Tuesday. So it was obviously time to buy a car. :)
My thinking is that if you're looking at a car that has good ratings/reviews, is comfy and safe and you like it, then the only job remaining is finding a place that sells it for what you want to pay.
Of course, since we decided on a Saturn, there wasn't much to do on price since it was the same price everywhere...but I'm still with you, when 85% of the due-diligence is done, there's usually nothing new revealed in the remaining 15%. And life's too short.
Haha, I suppose our financial situations would be much worse off if we didn't have our spouses to balance us out, huh?
Luckily, the process is finally over, we don't own a Ford Fiesta, and the car is now chilling in the CNN deck.
Post a Comment