Preschools, Minivans, and Other Mom Trademarks

Today was a crazy day of ups and downs for me personally. I think for the other members of the family (although I haven't heard about Matt's day yet), it was pretty even keel.

Karol was very excited today because Ms. Adria was coming. Ms. Adria is our new babysitter who we found through a somewhat expensive online babysitting service (this is how it's done when you live in NYC and know NO ONE) and she was scheduled to come for the first time today.

I prepped the kids by telling them that we were going to have a new friend come over and play. Karol was very excited about this. She's been missing her DC care takers and especially her home day care best bud.

I spent the morning getting the kids fed and presentable, and trying to make the apartment look less like a tornado hit it. The sitter got there a few minutes late, and that's when the roller coaster started rolling. I foolishly left only half an hour between sitter-arrival and the actual time of my appointment, so I started stressing myself out about it around 8:30 anyway.

So I had to rush out the door, and Patrick, of course, was not cool with me leaving anyway. I had to give him an extra hug and kiss goodbye. Karol, on the other hand was like "Hi! Come play with me, I'll show you my toys!" Totally apathetic to whether or not I was there.

Hailing a cab was more difficult than I anticipated. I had to get the hang of it through out the day. It took about 10 more minutes, but I finally got a cab and zoomed across Central Park to the doc's office. I was only 8 minutes late, so not too bad.

But bad enough, I'm afraid, to have to spend over an hour there. I don't know if that was my penance for my tardiness, or if the office is usually that slow, but I had a lot of time to worry about making my next appointment with the chiropractor.

While at the examining room waiting for the doc to appear, the phone rang. Since I didn't recognize the number, I just let it go. Then I thought "Maybe that was the sitter. Maybe something's wrong." And of course slowly started freaking out inside. I called the number right back, but it was busy.

So I did a reverse look-up on the number, and much to my surprise, it was Nazareth Nursery. You may remember that this is the school that Matt and I simply adored. We've been hoping and praying that Karol would get into the one spot that may or may not exist there, depending on this and that, since our visit in March.

As it turns out, Sister Lucy called Matt right after trying me (hence the busy signal) and so I shortly got a call from him telling me that she wanted me to bring Karol down to enroll at 10am tomorrow!!! "Bring her birth certificate, baptismal certificate, and your checkbook."

I was so thrilled at this news, nothing could ruin my mood, though a lot of things tried. I don't actually have a copy of Karol's baptismal certificate, so I needed to get it faxed to me. But our phone line is messed up. So I can't get a fax. Solution? 30-day free trial e-fax service - you can receive faxes as email attachments. Whew.

But then there's the thing I needed to fax. Here's where it gets complicated.

We bought a minivan. That's right. Minivan. I should say I bought it. It's in my name, and Matt doesn't want to be at all associated with a mom-mobile. It's a 2003 Toyota Sienna. So now we have 2 cars. In Manhattan. No, we're not crazy, we're just way too busy and haven't found time to sell the other one.

So we went to a dealership, very much on a whim, last Saturday to check out this minivan I'd found through USAA's car buying service (really great way to find a car, by the way). And a couple hours later, we're driving it home. The only hiccup was that we're new here, and nothing we have says we live where we live. So I need to fax them a lease. The lease was IN THE CAR when we were there, but we didn't realize that at the time, unfortunately. So now I still need to fax them this thing.

Through the e-fax thing, I can send attachments like a fax. But to do that I need to scan a pic of the lease. And our scanner won't work. After changing a couple of inks and looking up the error message online, I gave up. The car dealership will have to wait another day.

The fax issue took up the first half of naptime, but I was actually able to get a lot of address-changing done (banks, insurance, other random places) and get everything ready with AFLAC for Max's arrival.

After that, I hung out with my babes, played games, read books, and then bedtime arrived sooner than I expected. Matt had a networking event and so I'm home alone for a while. I'm hoping today is an easier day. We'll see.