Free Parking! How it's saving me $56/month and more...

The building that I work in does not have parking available for staff. This isn't surprising, as the entire city is severely limited when it comes to parking in general. In our prior location we were privy to use of the parking garage attached to the building; however, that came at a cost of $5/day just to park there (equating to an astronomical $100/month). When our office moved this spring, I was delighted to find that the parking lot across the street from our new office cost merely $2.80/day to park in! At $56/month, I was elated to have an extra $44/month in my bank account.

As luck would have it, my "new" parking lot was in the path of impending road construction. For a week I was greeted daily with signs warning me that the parking lot would be closed the next day. I would seek out alternative parking only to find, upon arriving at the office, that the lot had not actually been closed. After repeating this process near daily for over a week, I decided to park on an unmetered side street across town, and walk to work from there.

What started as an effort to find suitable parking while "my" parking lot was closed, soon turned into a habit and I have since been parking across town and walking the half mile to work each morning, and back again in the afternoon. The inconvenience of parking that far away was rewarded though, I didn't spend anything on parking in the month of August!!

Granted, it's not quite as convenient as parking across the street, but the weather has been gorgeous and the walk has been quite enjoyable. I'm not sure that I'll be able to say the same thing when the cold winter months hit, but in the meantime I'll be parking across town until Old Man Winter makes a fierce appearance here in Vermont.

A New Era Begins - My Daughter's First Day of Kindergarten!

Yesterday marked the first day of a new era for our family, my daughter is now officially a kindergartner! The past few weeks have been riddled with excitement and anxiety for me, my husband, and especially my daughter (my two year old has been quite oblivious to the whole matter, though he has declared that he will be attending college before he goes to kindergarten himself). My daughter's fears have revolved around things like riding the school bus, how to buy lunch in the cafeteria, and exactly how much homework she will be given as a kindergartner, oh... and the follow up question, "Mommy, what IS homework anyway?". My own fears have been more centered on adjusting work schedules to accommodate having one child in school and another in daycare, figuring out how the before care works at our school, how much school lunches cost, will she feel challenged enough by the curriculum, and the rest of the minutia that goes with sending your first born off to her first day of "real" school.

Adjusting our work schedules was the part of our first day of school preparation that took the most thought. My workday will be moved back an hour; rather than starting at 8am, I'll now be starting at 7am. This will allow me to get out of work, pick my son up from daycare, and hopefully be home in time to get my daughter off the school bus. Conversely, my husband will now be going to work slightly later, to allow him time to drop my daughter off at the school's before care program, and then take my son to day care (previously I've always been the one to do day care drop off). My son's day at daycare will be shortened, as he'll be dropped off slightly later than he's accustomed to, and picked up an hour earlier than he was before. Once our changes to our work schedules were approved, the rest took little thought on my part, it was just a matter of calming my daughter's tiny nerves.

She did amazing when we dropped her off for school, she was excited to see her friends, and start her new school year. She quickly gave us hugs, and said goodbye as she ran off to her classroom. Aside from a hiccup with the school bus and her drop off after school, she had an amazing day! She was excited to tell me all about her new friends, what she had for lunch, and how much fun she had at recess!

Unfortunately, I'm already "one of those parents", since after the minor mishap with the school bus, I stopped at the school office, and then called the transit company that buses the children to and from school to inquire/complain about the issue. At least she had a great day otherwise, and hopefully the bus situation will be resolved by this afternoon when she comes home!

Milestone Reached - My Daughter's Last Day of Daycare

My daughter reaches yet another milestone today.  Today is her last day of daycare.  While part of me rejoices in the fact that I will only have one child remaining in daycare, the other part of me cries knowing that my little girl is growing up.  It’s a bittersweet time indeed.

For the past year, my daughter has only been in daycare two days a week, and has spent the remaining three work days in the care of my mother-in-law.  This pattern of care was established to accommodate my daughter’s pre-school schedule, and we maintained it this summer until this week. 

Our family is going on vacation next week, since our daycare will be closed for their summer holiday, so we’ll all be going to camp for the week.  During the two weeks following our vacation, my daughter will go to my in-laws during the day, and the next week kindergarten starts.  It’s hard to believe that she’ll be going to kindergarten in less than a month, it seems like just yesterday we were driving home from the hospital with our newborn!

She’s already saddened at the prospect of no longer seeing her daycare friends, and nervous about the upcoming changes that will occur when she starts school.  It’s been incredibly helpful, transitionally, that she attended pre-school in the same school that she’ll be going to kindergarten in.  She already knows most of her kindergarten class, since they all went to pre-school together.  I know that she will thrive once she gets back into the routine of school, but until then we’re all a little nervous about the transition.

For my husband and I, it will mean another shuffling of our work schedules to accommodate the school day, and the juggling of children to two different places.  It also means that we’ll no longer be paying for daycare for my daughter, and THAT is huge for us!!  My son’s schedule will be flexed with a later drop off time at daycare, so that my husband can get my daughter to school, and an earlier pick up time so that I can be home when our daughter gets off the school bus.  It will take time for all of us to adjust to this new schedule, though I’m sure we’ll adapt to the scheduling change much faster than I will adapt to having my baby start kindergarten!

Family Scheduling Changes

              

Saturday brought the end of my daughter's baseball schedule.  As a pre-schooler, this was her first experience with an organized sport, as well as our first experience dealing with a child's sports schedule.  To increase the scheduling difficulty, my husband was also the coach of her team. 

It was an great season, and it was amazing to see how well the children (ages 4-6) advanced their skill sets, and teamwork in a matter of weeks!!  The scheduling aspect of it was a struggle, rushing from work to pick up my kids from daycare, and make it to the field in time for practice on Wednesday nights, and they had games every Saturday morning (weather permitting).  Selfishly, I enjoyed the social aspect of her baseball commitments.  It gave me a chance to get to know the parents of many of her classmates on a more personal level, and that's the part that I'm going to miss the most.  However, for the rest of the summer it will be nice to have my Saturday mornings free again!

We have more scheduling changes on the horizon though, and we have been actively working on finding a resolution that will work for our entire family at the end of the summer.  At the end of August our daughter will start kindergarten full time.  I've been in contact with the school to determine what the bus schedule would be for her for next year.  We hadn't initially planned on having her ride the bus, but in order to get our son to daycare, and ourselves to work on time, it will work out better to have her ride the bus to and from school.

I've requested a change in my work hours with my employer, and I'm very fortunate that they were willing to be flexible.  My husband is also having to change his hours in order to accommodate our kindergartner's schedule.  At the end of the summer, my husband will start work later, allowing him to be home in the morning to put our daughter on the school bus.  He'll then take our son to daycare, and go into the office.  In the meantime, I've changed my schedule in the opposite manner.  I'll go into work earlier, pick our son up from daycare earlier, and be home in time to get our daughter off the school bus.  These changes mean that I likely won't see the children in the morning, since they'll still be sleeping when I leave for work, and my husband in turn will get home later than he does now. 

Financially it makes sense, since we won't need to have our daughter in daycare at all anymore.  The downside being that we're sacrificing family time to achieve that.  My husband will have time alone with both children in the morning, and I will have time alone with them in the afternoon, but our hours together as an entire family will be reduced. I'm hopeful that we'll be able to find a happy balance within this schedule, at least until next fall when our son starts pre-school and everything changes again!