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Personal finance
We bought a car! I have the pic in my camera, but haven’t uploaded it yet. I shall soon. We went with the Mazda3. It’s quite beautiful and I definitely love the bluetooth integration of modern cars. Heh. It has enough space for the baby (obviously) in the backseat and Mobi in the hatch, which was our biggest concern in picking out a car for our growing family, aside from the presence of air conditioning.
We sold our Civic! I took a final drive but I need to get a final picture of the car that’s served us so well for the last 7 years. *hug* We need to get it smogged and then we’ll be ready to pass it on to the new owner, who is our coworker. It is the cleanest and best maintained it’s ever been (new tires last year, 2nd 90k tuneup this year, fan fixed, rebuilt transmission last year, etc.) and I know it’ll treat the new owner well for years to come. If it weren’t for the lack of air conditioning and 4 doors, we could have kept this for another 10 years.
We are refinancing the house to a significantly lower rate, which will lower the total paid interest and potentially cut several years off the total lifetime of the loan (depending on which strategy we decide to go with)!
We still have to decide if we’ll be able to fix the upstairs bathroom before the baby arrives or not. If not, we can always wash the baby in the kitchen sink for several years. That sink is hugenormous, after all, and at a much better height for easy baby-washing, with a spray head even. 🙂 The issue with fixing is both money and time. Obviously, we need to save money to be able to take time off after the baby is born, but we also need money for daycare going past that, and for various baby-related costs.
And on top of everything, the Hawaii trip is a go! You’d think we were nuts but we know this will be the last vacation we’ll be able to take in a long time. And given that in our 11 year relationship history that we’ve only really gone on two other vacations (honeymoon in 2006 and Tulum in 2007), we really wanted to make one more trip for just the two of us. Plus, the tickets only cost $10 due to years of saved up frequent flyer miles. 🙂 We’ll need to book lodgings and a rental car, but it’s so nice to have the tickets for just about free.
Because I am such a skinflint, all this money spending is making my head spin and my palms sweat profusely. But I know we’ve managed to do all this very economically and with plenty of slush in our various savings accounts for emergencies, long-term savings, and planned spendings (like the car, which we’d been saving for for a while now), so I know I need to just unclench a little and breathe. Plus, the refinance actually saves us money in both the long term and on a monthly basis, so it’s the right thing to do, even with a little cash out of pocket.
Another generically-titled update
Let’s see… Back pain is increasing in proportion to weight gain, which is to be expected. Vision is definitely a little on the blurry side. Hands and feet experience some swelling for about an hour or two a day, depending on my position, but has not been as bad as the one time when I was visiting my best friend in May.
The biggest unexpected thing from the last two weeks is pain in my hands, near my thumb joint. I think it’s because I have been using my hands a lot more to compensate for the lack of ability to use my abdominal muscles to sit/stand up or even roll over. It’s amazing how the body works in unacknowledged concert; it’s only when you have reduced function in any one part that you can truly appreciate the well-orchestrated machine the body is. I’m sure some of the pain in the hands is also due to a bit of RSI that is exacerbated by the swelling of the extremities.
The baby himself has been very active, which is really fun. He seems to shift around a lot when I roll over. I think he’s been waking me up at around 6am every morning. Or maybe I’ve been waking him up? He also is fairly active after I have a meal. So far, it’s just an incredibly neat, stupefying experience, rather than a painful one, so I am enjoying it as much as I can. It’s amazing to see my belly jump around every so often. I hadn’t expected to see this much movement externally in the second trimester (which is coming to an end soon), but it’s really cool.
Our friends H&S have said we can borrow their infant carseat and breast pump, as they will be just transistioning off them when our little guy arrives, if he’s not too early, so this is great for us. We picked up some baby clothes, a floor gym thingy, and a Bumbo seat, the last of which we’ve lent to H&S for now, since we won’t need it for at least two or three months after the baby is born.
I have to go in to do the glucose test for gestational diabetes this week. Fun! 😀