Everyone Thursday: Intyce Boots

My husband and I have been casually discussing upgrading our home for a few months and have a saved search with our Realtor. A true “white whale” came up this week and we are looking at it tomorrow. I spoke with my friend (who is also a/my financial adviser) regarding buying and selling a home, which I haven’t done before. (We still live in my first home; my husband signed his house over to his exwife in place of alimony and had an apt before moving into my house.) She suggested that it makes you a more attractive buyer if you don’t need to wait to see your house before buying the new one. She and her husband had a short-term loan from his parents when they sold/bought and she asked if that would be a possibility for us. It absolutely would, as my parents are well-off and have helped me out financially in the past with short term and longer term loans. My parents also assisted me in buying my first home (my dad bought it with cash from his personal pension plan and I paid him as I would a mortgage, used going interest rates, etc). My husband does NOT like getting financial help from family. It bothers him that I get (and now, we get) $1,000 from my dad each Christmas. I think my parents like being generous – in fact, my dad has straight up said multiple times that since his parents and my mom’s parents did not have a lot of money and could never help them, it brings him great joy to be able to help my brother and me out now instead of leaving us money when he dies (when we would need it less than when we are growing our careers and families). In my mind, none of this is a handout – it’s a loan, I’d be glad to pay interest, we always pay them back. It seems really silly to do something like a bridge loan and pay crazy interest when my parents could help us out. And my brother has actually offered to lend us money, too, as he knew we would be looking for a larger house after our family got a little bigger this year. What am I rambling about? I guess I’m asking should I be convincing my husband that this is fine? Respecting his wishes even though I think it’s adding undue burden? Risk losing the house of our dreams because we need to sell our current house first and he’s too stubborn to borrow money from my parents? Maybe I just want people to tell me I’m right. Ha.

I’m reading Queen Bees and Wannabes (the book Mean Girls was inspired by) and it has really good parenting advice for older elementary/teens. I’m only 100 pages in and I can’t stop raving about it.

Recent Mind Blower: When you pick your kid up or walk in the door, don’t launch into the typical list of questions (How was your day? How do you think you did on that test? Did you remember that form because you keep forgetting it and it needs to be turned in!) because it’s super annoying no matter how well meaning. Imagine you’re coming home from work with an armful of groceries after a really stressful day, and as soon as the door swings open your kid is standing there with questions about YOUR day (How was work? Did you clear out all of your emails? Did you return that phone call to that annoying customer or did you avoid him AGAIN?). If it’s annoying to us, it’s annoying to them, and it will shut down all communication.

She advises to let the kid get in the car and just unwind–no questions–and wait for them to open up on their own. Or give it 5 to 10 minutes into the drive to let everyone relax and warm up before asking. It’s seems like such a “Duh” idea but I don’t wait for conversations to happen naturally. I’m in a rush, the kids get in, and I just start in on them! Like they are subordinates or something. It’s kind of awful when I step back and think about it!

If you’re interested in transitioning from Commander Parent to Advisor Parent (as we all will naturally become as our kids get older) I can’t recommend the book enough!

Tried to post this yesterday but I think my comment somehow ended up in commenting purgatory twice.

Need sleep help with my 15 month old. She generally goes to sleep w/o any issue. But she has trouble actually staying asleep. If we bring her to our bed, she’s fine and will sleep through the night. We wouldn’t actually mind if this were happening when we were all sleeping, but it’s basically now happening at dinner time or at 9 pm when we’re trying to unwind with a TV show, etc., and it’s exhausting going in, trying to get her to go back to sleep several times every evening. I think it’s time to wean her off this behavior but I am not sure how, especially since at some point when we’re all asleep, it’s so much easier to just cave because then we all sleep great till morning. Thoughts and ideas?

My two month old has a bad case of colic. She gets overtired from prolonged fussiness/screaming and can’t settle to sleep, even with lots of bouncing and rocking. We finally found that she will calm and sleep in the swing, but I’m worried about setting up bad habits. At this point she will only sleep in the swing–she wakes up after 10-15 minutes of sleeping in the bassinet. Does anyone have experience with transitioning from the swing? Will I be doomed if I continue this swing habit for the next month or so, until the colic eases? I was planning to sleep train around 4 months anyway, and thought I would transition to crib then. But my babysitter and others are horrified that I am setting up bad habits.

Anyone have experience with pumping during your car commute? I have a 40 minute car commute and am considering this but having a hard time picturing it, specifically the order of operations. I would think you would put on a hands-free bra and cones before leaving the house, plug in before driving off, turn the pump on/off during the commute, detach upon arrival… What do you wear and how do you change when you get to work? What else do I need to consider? I’m hoping this could cut down the number of times I need to pump at work from 3 to 2.