Music, Babies and Money

I hope you like this new song I'm playing. It's Neopolitan Dreams by Lisa Mitchell and those of you who know anything about my taste in music will hopefully agree that this song fits nicely into "my" genre. :) I love Lisa Mitchell. She's an Aussie artist and former Australian Idol contestant (when she was 16! made it to the final 6!) I've always loved her song Coin Laundry, it has a fun rhythm to it and I then fell in love with Neapolitan Dreams while doing an itunes store search to see if she'd done anything new recently. I hope y'all love it as much as me. I love the bell kit in it, the bells just tug on my heart strings after spending a good 7 years of my life playing them. It's on heavy rotation on my playlist as well as "Fingertip" by Aqualung. If you want to know. ;)

p.s. "The House That Built Me" makes me cry. I know it's not the same as my story because it's just my parents living in the house that built me and I'm not broken or anything. But I cry anyways. Because out here it kind of is like I'm someone else. I hope mom and dad never sell that house. It would feel like the final nail in the coffin of the life I had and who I was... am I getting too deep for blogger now? It just came on the radio then and I got a lil emotional. lol Just sharing. :)

Baby Brainstorming

I think I've had the Baby Moment. Shock and awe! I know, me. I think because I've been spending so much time with everyone elses babies lately...whoever said they aren't contagious LIED. Because I've definitely been clucky lately (as the aussies say.) I've decided I don't want to wait as long as I did before, even if there's no pitter patter of feet in the near future. I was thinking about it and the reason I got so freaked out by the idea of having more than 1 baby was because the idea of 2 small children was overwhelming. But I really like the idea of having about a 5 year gap so the oldest is in school most days and I'll have a lot of time to spend one-on-one with the youngest. I think I could manage that. That plan would be nicer if If I'm 25/26 for #1 and 30/31 for #2. Also, if we have any trouble conceiving, it would be REALLY convenient to find that out before my biological clock starts ticking on me to boot which is another good reason to start trying in 18-24 months from now instead of 5 years.

All of that said, logically speaking, it's not the logical time to have a baby. So we'll wait. And (I think) I'm okay with that. At the end of day we'll have to look at finances at that stage and see if we can afford to have a beebs. I know they are expensive! We'd need to have at least an extra $1000/month for a baby. We have about that now, but the only way to have that much excess comfortably is to be 100% debt free which would give us an extra 250/wk wiggle room.

Okay, money-wise...how would a baby effect our ability to purchase a home? It would push that back a few years, but how many years? We could afford to do both straight away, but after all the necessities there would be little to no room for any extras. I don't want to be living paycheck to paycheck...but Chris would really like to try to move up in the company and won't be in a position to have the level of promotion he'd like for another 6-10 years anyways. If we have a baby we get to move into a bigger house too. As Chris climbs his way up the ladder, we get nicer houses as well. Houses we only have to pay $50 a week to live in... so maybe having a little beebs before we have to pay a mortgage is a good idea? I don't know. It's so much to consider.

Okay, so what about me? What about getting an apprenticeship? Getting a degree? I don't know. The apprenticeship is only for 3 years, but I don't even have one yet. If I don't have an apprenticeship by October (they usually come up in September) I'm going to take it as an official door closed. I'm not going to spend life waiting around for something to happen. I can't really afford a degree right now without any financial aid, and won't be able to for 2 more years when the aid is available to me so I definitely won't be sitting around for that either. Apprenticeships, Degrees, babies, all of it will happen on God's time and I'm having full faith that all that timing will reveal itself without me needing to micromanage it any longer. So I'm just going to continue following the path that is laid out in front of me wherever it happens to lead, even if it's nowhere close to the plan I've created for myself, and trust that path laid in front of me is God's path. :) Faith is awesome that way.