Dick's and Dom (or Dry Soda for me)

My to-dos are mostly crossed off (yes, nesting is real) and what is left are the unknowns. In my last post I was ready to conquer the world of day care, really I don't know and cannot know whether we would prefer to have a nanny or take our child to daycare. Or, another option, my husband and I could split up the day and each work one half (including into the night), while the other is taking care of the baby and visa versa and never, actually, see one another. Now that sounds like fun. Maybe not, but it is an option. 

We visited two-day care centers and are on our way tomorrow to see the third.  Both were surprisingly nice, welcoming, focused on education -- all sounds great until you see the monthly costs --  $2000 a month and no, they do not provide diapers or wipes. Ok then.  I would tell you their names, but then I might find your name at the top of the waiting list and mine at the bottom. This day care business is cutthroat! I know quite a few women who have chosen to stay home because the cost of daycare sucks out so much of their paycheck, but are they happy? Do they miss the intellectual adult world?  Or do they relish in the time with their kids without any stresses of business details? I don't have the option not to work, nor do I think I would like that to be the final plan, but I cannot know until I am there.  How is a generation of women who have been raised to run companies and get their PhDs also supposed to balance being a mom?  Ok, I know, I am back where I started. Face the fire and move on.

Here is another on my list of unknowns: birth. So I hear, there is no real way to prepare for what you will experience. I have chosen to take the route of educating myself to a fault --- reading every book possible and taking most classes. I suggest Dr. Oz's You: Having a Baby as the best, most straightforward resource. The classes at Swedish Hospital are OK. They provide information presented to you in person that you could easily read in a book, but somehow it sinks in faster when you are in class watching, and hearing (yikes), the birthing video. There is no true way to predict what will happen during your own experience, or even when it will happen, so I have let go of the desire to plan this event and keep my fingers crossed this baby comes a week early, not two weeks late.

My unknown for today?  Will I make it to midnight to ring in the New Year? With a good long nap tomorrow I may actually do it. Nothing like a few friends gathering to watch the Space Needle fireworks, while enjoying a little Dick's Drive In and Dom (or maybe Dry Soda for me) to celebrate what is sure to be an amazing year ahead, whether we get it all figured out or not. 


A new chapter began in Leigh Canlis' life in May of 2009, when she became pregnant with her first child. Follow her blog as she documents the sometimes hilarious, and other times trying, moments of pregnancy and the thoughts of how to handle it all as a working fashionista Mom-to-be.