We were doing better for about a week, week and a half, but he woke up screaming again twice last night :(
My wife told me she always wanted 3. I had always thought about it more practically, knowing 1. I wanted multiple kids, 2. depending on how old I was, and 3. depending on what i and my future partner could afford. Well I didn't have the money to get married and start having kids as young as I wanted to, and my wife and I are both teachers, so those put constraints on 2 and 3 of that list lol. We ended up having 2 and are not planning on having any more. We didn't have our first until I was 31, and fertility issues post-c section (along with covid hitting when it did) delayed baby number 2 for 3-4 years later than we wanted it to happen. Maaaaybe if the first birth wasn't so traumatic and the 2nd baby came 2-3 years later like we wanted instead of 5.5 years later, maybe we wouda decided to go for a third. But money wise with both of us beaching teachers, it's really kind of hard to know we'd be able to do it financially. Had we had more money and gotten married younger, I woulda been cool with 4 or even 5 kids if that's what she wanted. But time/money meant that was never in the cards. I knew I always wanted at least 2 kids though.
My daughter rolled over for the first time the other day. I played the song Rollin by Limp Bizkit and she dances and smiles to it.
Trigger warning: Sexual assault on a minor. So this morning I went to take my dog for a walk and while I was out I got stopped by a news reporter who let me know he was investigating a story that had just broken in our neighborhood. Turns out this guy named Michael (who I’ve seen several times over the years) who lives here has been sexually assaulting a young boy who lives with him for years. Michael is not the kids’ parent, it turns out, but someone his parents hired from a website called “Sitter City” who LIVES with the kid. Where the parents are I have no idea. I saw this guy with the kid all the time over the last few years and I am kicking myself so hard right now because I ALWAYS wondered about the nature of their relationship. Any time I saw them together (riding bikes or down at the neighborhood beach) the kid was always yelling at him, running away from him (or riding his bike even faster to get away), swearing at him, all kinds of red flags and obviously now a cry for help in hindsight. I never even knew the guy wasn’t his father until just recently (and to add to that, I don’t think I ever once saw any other parental figure, just Michael). Michael was never not near the kid when he was out and about. I think I explained it away in my head as him just being a “helicopter parent”. The weirdest thing about their adversarial relationship was that Michael always seemed unfazed when the kid would yell and scream at him and run away. I think I explained that away in my head as “well maybe the kid’s defiance is par for the course and the guy’s just used to it or something” and now I really, really wish I’d have paid closer attention. Last summer I was out for a walk with my own son when we passed by their house and the kid was out front. Michael was out there with him (like he always was) and the kid ran up to us because my son was riding his new electric scooter and he wanted to know if he could give it a go. I remember thinking how surprised I was that he was so nice and polite because I’d only ever seen him yelling at this dude. So my son lets him ride the scooter and then the kid tells my son he can show him how to jump it and pop a wheelie. He does so and the moment he does, Michael yells to him that he needs to come back to the house now and give us back the scooter. The kid kind of hung his head and then asked excitedly if we were going to be walking for a while and maybe he could go grab his bike. Soon as he says this, Michael yells from the porch that no, you need to come back now. So the kid slumped his shoulders again and told us he had to go. He said “maybe I’ll see you around” to my son and my son said “yeah, maybe” and then he walked away. I am reading this article now and just agonizing over this interaction. That boy was trying in his own way to ask anyone for help, to make it known to anyone here how unhappy he was and how scared, but he just didn’t know what else to do or say and I am sitting here knowing in my heart that we all failed this poor kid. I want to step back into that moment last summer and tell him yes, you absolutely can come on a walk with us and ride your bike and get away from this monster and be a child and I’m so sorry. Wherever you are now, kid, I am so, so damn sorry. I’m about to go pick up my children from the bus stop, hug them tight and never let go. Nanny charged with alleged sexual assault of child in West Bloomfield for years; more victims sought
Wow that’s very intense. I’m gonna read the article, but like you pointed out it seemed obvious he was the parent or guardian. WTF kinda parent hires someone from a website to be a guardian? If that’s what I’m reading it as
Yeah and the reporter told me that the only reason the guy got caught is because the police department in another city further away received an anonymous tip about this guy abusing some other kid. That led them to where he lives in my neighborhood. Once they went inside the house they apparently found loads of evidence of other children he’s also abused. Photographs and everything. So now I’m wondering if there were any other children in my neighborhood being victimized. It would seem, based off of all of that, the parents hired him to be a full time live-in nanny in the neighborhood. It’s just that I also literally never once saw the parents so I can’t help but wonder where the hell they even were. I had a long discussion with my kids when we got home about stranger danger all over again. My daughter asked me “what do I do if I get kidnapped and I didn’t even know I was being followed?” My mind went to some very dark places and I still don’t really know how to answer that.
Just got our daycare’s full calendar for the year and did the math, and they will have been closed for 56-1/2 days by the end of the year for the love of god someone tell me this isn’t normal
My grandma and aunt will take turns watching the baby starting tomorrow when my wife goes back to work. I’ll be with her during summer break. But she’ll be going to daycare when the 2026-27 school year starts. Not looking forward to those bills…
Still wasn’t enough to beat the Standard Deduction for me. I also don’t have State income taxes though
Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think you need to itemize to deduct childcare? Or maybe it’s a tax credit actually…
Folks - the last three months are kicking our asses. Since Thanksgiving, my 8-year-old daughter has had Covid, Strep, the flu and worse, has been in and out of the hospital four times since New Years Day due to severe stomach/constipation issues. Yesterday she saw a pediatric GI doctor who ordered blood tests, urine tests and an ultrasound and most were normal but they think she may have a UTI? Still awaiting results from a urine culture (which is apparently different than a urine test?). On top of that her normal pediatrician told us last week to limit her diet (no dairy, no gluten) for a week while also doing MiraLAX twice a day and exlax to help with constipation so she lost eight pounds in 7 days (which the gi doctor was not pleased our pediatrician told us to do all that). If that weren’t enough, My 11-year-old son has also had Covid, Strep and most recently, Flu B over the weekend. He seemed to be all better on Tuesday but late last night both his legs started cramping so bad he couldn’t walk. This morning we called his pediatrician and she said we needed to get him to the hospital for fluids because it sounds like viral myositis. So we take him to get fluids this morning thinking we’ll be here for a few hours and go home but due to his blood results (very high CK levels) they’re keeping him overnight to monitor him. He’s doing a lot better and we’re hopeful we’ll be going home early in the morning as they’re confident he should be fine by then. We are lucky that it’s nothing super significant with either of them but man, it’s just been one thing after another after another after another.
I would bring up/ask any and all of them about long covid. GI issues have been a big thing with long covid, a lot of covid surviving in the GI tract and all that. And on top of that, our pediatrician told us they were seeing a lot of GI issues with the flu this year.
So I just double checked my taxes just to be sure, and we did get $656 in tax credits for childcare costs. I too thought it was entirely nonrefundable but I guess not?
That said, they did do x rays on her twice in January and they were certain stomach pain was due to constipation. They could see tons and tons of backup. When she went to pediatrician last week, she didn’t even bother to xray her because she said she could feel it in her stomach (hence the MiraLAX and exlax 2x per day + diet restrictions) When my son was around that age, he too, had to go to the ER a few times due to constipation. Elementary students don’t shit, haha.
Cross posting this from the 90s nick thread but just wanted to say that we found a channel on Pluto that plays 90s nick cartoons (and seems to exclusively show Hey Arnold and Rugrats for the most part right now lol) how great it has been seeing Hey Arnold again and having my son watch it and really enjoy it. I hate getting old man yells at cloud but the cartoons we had are really just so much better than a lot of the overly safe slop we have today. He's still a litttttle too young to get everything out of the show, like the silliness parts of it play better to him then the emotional beats still, but that's okay, he's hooked so I know he can come back to it later on as he gets older and is more of the same age of the kids in the show. But it had me thinking about if there were any more modern shows that touch on themes like some of the old 90s nick shows did and google led me to Craig of the Creek and Steven Universe, so maybe I'll see if we can stream them on any of hte ones we have and see if he likes them