Artificially Sweetened

Brain, semi-located

Most of the boxes are unpacked. And glory glory hallelujah, we finally have both internet and a landline.

Both Pepito and his mommies have been enjoying the new house.

Looking out at his new backyard.

Proudly walking (not independently, thank g-d) amidst the boxes.

Peering through the “chubby kat” cat door.

The house has a semi-finished basement room, which we call the playroom. Here’s the “adult” side. I got this on Saturday at a yard sale for $60 – delivered.

And while the mommies play pool, the boy can play with his toys… A lot of these were left for us by the previous owner.

My friend MC is right: move is a four letter word. Go give her some lurve, she has been through hell lately. I hate it when things don’t work out for my friends.

I started my new job on Monday.  So far… so good.  I am a little nervous about the expectations people have of me – after waiting a year for someone to start, it’s easy for that person (um, me) to become supergirl, the imaginary solution to all problems.  On the other hand, the position has been vacant for a long time, and I’m basically starting from scratch (well, from scratch with an office full of files going back to 1973), so anything I do will be better than the nothing that was happening before, right?

I have to choose an insurance plan, or negotiate a pay raise (already, I know: I am supergirl) that would enable me to stay on Pili’s excellent insurance and spare new employer the expense of covering me.   Amazingly, for a very small, rather financially challenged organization, they are paying my whole premium. This may change once they discover what I will do to their insurance costs…

Last year, Pili paid $3800 dollars for the privilege of having me on her insurance.  If Employer paid me $4000 extra, I would happily stay on her coverage.  Of course, Pili’s employer’s contributions to my health care are not tax-deductible – in fact, they are counted as additional income and she is taxed on them!   

I am usually pretty good at figuring these things out, but for some reason, my eyes have been glazing over on this decision.  Tomorrow I will find a detailed current benefits & costs list for Pili’s insurance and post the new options and the current plan here and let you all tell me what to do.  I also have to find out how diabetes and pump supplies are covered under the different plans… most of them have a 50% co-pay for non-generic perscriptions.   I am terrible at swallowing pills, and the generic version of my anti-depressent pill is not coated, so it always gets stuck in the back of my throat and tastes nasty.  In order to avoid tasting battery acid in the back of my mouth all day, I have my doctor write that one DAW and pay extra for the name brand.  But I may get depressed all over again thinking about how much that stuff will cost me with a 50% copay. 

Finally – I swear this isn’t strictly a mommy blog…  although I know it sure looks that way at the moment.

But our boy has started doing some really incredibly cute things.  He’s cruising all over the furniture, and he loves to push his little walkie thing around.  He has also started kissing.  Last night, we were reading Whose Knees are These and when we got to the last page with the picture of the baby, he kissed it over and over again.

This morning, he was occupying himself with his second favorite passtime – pull-all-the-books-off-the-shelf – (his first favorite is pull-all-the-shoes-off-the-rack) and he pulled out The Happiest Toddler on the Block.  After studying it for a while, he started kissing the little girl on the cover.  By the time I got the camera out though, he was trying to eat the dust jacket.  I hope it’s true… you are what you eat!

This post is already reeedicuklously long, so I will not get into the Great Sleep Wars of 2007 that have been waged around here.  Except to say, please tell me about how you and your partner fought bitterly disagreed entirely had very difficult times deciding what to do with a child who Does Not Like to Go to Bed.  Even when he is Very Very Tired.