Want vs. Wise

I WANT a Wii Fit Plus. But it'd be wiser to save the money.

I WANT a new dining room table. But it'd be wiser to wait until we move to a new house and figure out what would work in a new space. And to save the money. 

I WANT to lie around on my couch all day eating bittersweet chocolate chips and refreshing Twitter every fourteen seconds. Which is pretty much what I did today, but it would have been wiser to eat normal food, do a workout and fold some laundry. Which I ended up doing, eventually, but it would have been wiser to do it sooner. Like, before the chocolate made me crazy anxious and before I wanted to crawl into a bed that does not have sheets on it. 

I WANT to move to a new house this summer, but it'd be wiser to wait until Phillip is done with grad school - NEXT summer. 

Right? 

This is where I tell Gina (Hi Gina!) that I am TOTALLY going to call her realtor, just as soon as I have ten minutes to think and make a list of questions and psych myself up for Grown Up Phone Conversation, and where I thank Gina (Hi Gina!) for giving me all the realtor's info and for recommending her so highly and THANK YOU, GINA, I'M SORRY I NEVER EMAIL YOU. 

In the meantime, I will mope about it on my website. 

Because really. It's pretty stupid, isn't it? To want to move NOW? Well, not the wanting to move. I believe I've already established that "wanting" has nothing to do with being smart. 

We got home from my in-laws' house around 8:00 tonight. Molly was asleep in the car, and since she usually stays asleep when we take her out, the plan was for Phillip to immediately put her down while I took Jack to our room for stories and prayers. Standard Bedtime Operating Procedure. 

Except when I put Jack down in his bed, Molly's head popped up, like one of those Muppet prairie dogs. And at 9:00 they are still having a conversation. I believe they are discussing the health care bill. 

NOW. This is not a huge deal. I am, for example, 97% less upset about this than I would have been two or three months ago. After endless discussions and resolutions re: How To Get Those Kids To Fall Asleep In The Same Room, it appears the best answer is: Do Nothing. This is easier on everyone. I do not have to march up and down the stairs, blow out my vocal chords and basically turn myself into Mommy: The Horror Show. And the kids do not have to pretend that they are scared of Mommy: The Horror Show. AND they eventually fall asleep. Maybe much later than Phillip and I would prefer, but they do. It happens. Look at me sitting here: the picture of nonchalance while Molly sings the "uh oh" part of 'Crazy In Love'. 

And at naptime, I automatically put Molly down in the pack 'n play in my bedroom while Jack gets to sleep in his crib. I try, off and on, putting them down in the same bedroom at the same time for naps. This doesn't work so well. They DON'T eventually fall asleep, at least not within an acceptable naptime period. Jack is much more likely to skip his nap and Molly is much more likely to nap late, wake up late and be a total pill until a late bedtime. And maybe I should be more flexible, but there will be napping on my watch. And so, we keep the pack 'n play set up 24/7, even though we have to move it back and forth to make enough room to get into our bathroom. Even though I hate looking at it, not to mention ramming my shin into it every single morning. 

Molly hasn't woken up at three in a long time. Same with Jack. They're both being pretty good nighttime sleepers (even if one of them likes to rise intolerably early). The pack 'n play is a good alternative, and she probably won't grow out of it for a while, right? Hopefully? We are doing fine. We are managing well. Things could be better, things are not exactly ideal, but things are certainly not horrible. Our temporary fixes are holding, and I imagine when they stop working we'll find new ones. It could be worse, so much worse. 

So we should just stick it out, right? That would be the wise thing to do. 

This house is a very nice house. It lacks many of the things I would like to have in the house my kids grow up in, but I look around at almost-brand-new everything and feel like I am a horrible person to want something more or something different. I think about the Days of Yore, when nineteen people slept in one room. I think about how much money we might lose. I think about having to move twice. I think about the market and renting it out and how we survived keeping Molly in the closet for seven months - I mean, if we could do that...

I WANT a bigger house NOW. But maybe it would be wiser to wait. 

Comments

[Carrie]

I hate want versus wise. It's the worst part of adulthood. I've been dealing with this on a smaller scale- I've been dreaming of a new coffeemaker and had researched and picked one and was all excited to get it for Christmas... then we had to get new tires for the car, and since my current coffeemaker is perfectly functional, it wasn't wise to get a new one when we'd just spent so much money on the car.

Adulthood has lots of perks, I admit that, but being all responsible and making decisions about things like that stinks.

Hope you get to move soon! Unless you're planning to move to some far away suburb where I'll never get to see you. In which case, stay put :)

[Lindsay]

want vs wise...an age old problem. Goooooooood luck.

[Kate]

As far as the sleep situation, I am in the same boat with you. My kids are the same ages/genders as yours, and they share a room. They sleep just fine in there at night, but for naps, I generally have to put one of them somewhere else, otherwise nobody is going to get any sleep. I wonder why it is different for naps? Perhaps because they're not sleeping as soundly, or they're too wound up from playing to go to bed well? In any case, I either put my son on the couch, or my daughter in the pack 'n play in another room, and then they sleep fine. All of this to say: don't sweat it! I think it is perfectly fine (although not very space-saving) that they sleep scattered around the house during naps. As long as they nap, I don't care if they sleep in the bathtub.

[Kathleen]

Don't know if it will work for you, but I put my oldest daughters (20 months apart) in the same room when the younger was 1. They would bounce around and not fall asleep because they were trying to talk and play. I bought a couple of cheap eye hooks, a clothes line, and a sheet and ended up hanging the sheet from the clothes line that I hung between their 2 beds. Didn't take care of all of it, but I found when the sheet was pulled between the beds and they couldn't see each other, they almost kind of forgot the other was there. Don't know if it'll work for you, but I took 2 holes in the wall over trying to figure out how to add on to the house! Good luck!

[Redbecca]

Hey, at least your boy is still napping. Mine has taken TWO naps in the last 8 days, and he isn't even 2.5 yet!
I like Kathleen's suggestion. It would so simple and amazingly awesome if it works. I think the PnP isn't the most comfortable thing in the world, and probably doesn't give Molly the best napping experience (IMO). That mattress is so thin it can't be very comfortable long term. Our boy HATED the PnP.

[Christiana]

OMG, I am so there. I seriously want to get a bigger house (or at least add on to this one) but we so cannot afford it right now.

Glad you've got something figured out in the epping and napping dept. And she won't outgrow the PnP for awhile, so you'll be fine. :)

[Jess]

Hmph. Maybe wisdom is overrated.

[Lisa]

We've played this game many, many times. Finally I had to just tell my husband to stop looking at houses for sale unless and until he gets another job because we don't intend to live in this town forever and I certainly don't want to buy and new house just so we can sell it a year later. But if we were sure we were staying for the long haul, we'd be putting this house on the market yesterday.

[Tracy]

want vs wise is hard. but moving twice? to get to a bigger home? not my cup of tea.

that doesn't mean that I don't want some things now - but usually waiting until wanting = wise has been the best course for us. Maybe not the answer you'd like to hear though.

[Emily]

Yeah. We're there, too.

The sucky thing is that we need to make money on this house - really NEED to make money - and to do that, we need to finish the bathroom renovations and redo the kitchen and the downstairs floors. So then when the house is all pretty and nice and newish looking? We get to sell it to someone and buy a big, crappy, needs the same repairs we just made to our townhouse kind of house.

We have three bedrooms, which is awesome, but our downstairs is about the size of a shoebox. I think the kids have a square of carpet about 7 x 9 to play in and that's it. So we could use more space, just not more bedrooms.

We're trying to stick it out a whole year and try to sell in spring of '11. It's killing me, but I know it's the right thing to do. Stay put until the recession is a memory and more people have jobs and the housing market starts to look more promising. But it still blows.

[natalie]

We're in just about the same boat. Kids sharing a room, teeny tiny bathroom, kitchen the size of a postage stamp. But we're waiting it out too, even though the WANT is just so strong sometimes.I feel your pain.