More than Corn

Well, I guess there is more than corn in Indiana. We went to Indiana Beach this weekend (or as Nat says, 'In-ee-ana Beach') to camp with some friends from college. We drove there Friday evening, stayed up late talking around the camp fire, and played hard all day Saturday. Nathaniel had a blast "driving" amusement park vehicles and riding the kiddie rides. We tried to do the water park, but it was a little overwhelming, so we went back to the pool at the campground. We left at about 8:00 on Saturday evening, hoping Nat would fall asleep in the car on the 2-hour drive home. He had played hard outside all day, had been up a little late the previous evening, and had been swimming. Usually in situations like that, he falls asleep on a drive home from the grocery store. No such luck. He was awake until we got home around 10:20. I don't think I've ever seen him so happy to get in his bed and go to sleep.

Now that we're quickly approaching summer, we're starting to wrestle through our plans for this fall. The baby is due sometime around the end of August or beginning of September. Rob is hoping to do a practicum this fall, which will require him to be gone for about four weeks. We're trying to figure out the best four weeks for him to be gone. We'd love for him to be home for two weeks or so after the baby is born before he leaves, and we're hoping for the majority of his absence to be during my maternity leave. Only trouble is, when is that going to be? It would be so much more convenient if we could determine the baby's ETA with a greater level of certainty.

We're also trying to figure out the logistics of his attending Chaplain's Officer's Basic this winter. He hopes to attend in January. At that point, I hope to have cut back to part time at work. Although I'll (hopefully) only be working 2-3 days a week, we'll still have to find child care for those 2-3 days. I'm not crazy about sending either our 2 year-old or a 3 month-old baby to a day care facility, not to mention the expense, and neither of our families live close. If we could afford for me to quit my job, I'd do it in a second, but that's not an option at this point, since Rob is still a full-time student. Even if he could work part time, we'd lose our health care benefits through my employer, and we definitely don't want to be without health insurance at this point in our lives. We've been there and done that a couple times, and had no major health incidents, but that was before kids. Kids make the word "uninsured" a lot scarier than it used to be. At this point, we're hoping that our families will come for some extended visits during that 16 week period. Here's hoping that everyone wants to spend an extended amount of time with the new baby...