BadTomatoes

Samuel is two years old today!  Still no Internet access at home (and it may be two weeks yet before there is), so photos and so on will be late arriving, sorry.

This morning he got up around 7 a.m., where he found all the toys that live at Grandma & Granddad’s (we are staying here at the moment) and started playing with them before he could get to any presents.  Eventually we were able to get his attention long enough to give him his presents (”wow” to pretty much everything), and he seemed to like everything (including the train & book from Grandma & Granddad).

Unfortunately, I had to work today, so Liv dropped me off while Samuel stayed with Grandma.  Later on Liv and Sam visited (Great) Granny for a while, and then had lunch with me at Raumanga Valley Park (a bit boggy, but nice).  After a nap in the afternoon we had a little detour looking for a new bed for me & Liv and then came back to Grandma & Granddad’s for dinner.  Sam had a swim in the spa, then a good dinner, then blew out candles on his cake (another one!) before having a story and heading off to bed.

All-in-all, he seemed to have a pretty good day.  Thanks also to everyone that SMS’d or called him to say “happy birthday”.

In brief:

• We moved.
• I was promised a home phone line and Internet connection either the day we moved or a couple of days later.  A week and a half later the phone line appeared and the Internet order has had to be redone.  Moral: avoid TelstraClear at all costs.  I’ll rant about them elsewhere, later.
• Samuel and Tobey (born on the same day) had a combined birthday party last Saturday, and then we went to Regan’s first birthday party at Butterfly Creek on Sunday.  Sam’s actual birthday is, of course, this Thursday.

More on all of these exciting developments, including photos, once we finally get an Internet connection at home.

A couple of years ago, Olyvia and I decided that we’d move from Whitehills (as a complete aside, what gives with the older-than-it-used-to-be-and-no-house imagery in the Google map?) to somewhere cheaper to try and save towards buying a house.  We really liked living there, but with Samuel on the way and going back to one income again we felt it was time to move on.  For various reasons, we ended up moving to Waitakere to live with Olyvia mother.  The original plan was to stay here for a year and then move on, hopefully buying a place of our own.  When she then decided to go to Europe for 8 weeks, we adjusted the plan to reassess things after that (early April).  When that time arrived, some factors weren’t what we expected and so we put off decision-making another three months, using that time to consider what we wanted to do.

We’ve decided that we can’t start work on our ideal long-term home at this time.  So what we’re looking for is somewhere to live for the next two to three years - we’d like to be somewhere more permanent by the time Samuel starts school.

We’ve looked a lot at our financial situation, at what mortgages are available, and what a house would cost.  Even for a reasonably rural 3-bedroom house, we’re likely to need a mortgage of around $250,000 to $300,000.  That’s at the upper end of what we can afford at the moment.

What irks me most is that nearly all of what we’d be paying in mortgage payments would be interest.  Out of $2,500 per month, we’d start off paying around $2,250 in interest and about $250 per month off the principle itself (this would gradually increase as the principle decreases, of course, but in three years doesn’t change significantly).  That $2,250 in interest is just as much ‘wasted’ money as rent is - the only difference is that the profit goes to the bank rather than the landlord.  If we can find a place to rent for less than what we’d be paying in interest, and put aside the rest of what we would otherwise be paying for a mortgage, we’d be better off.  (It’s more complex than this, of course, but this is basically what it comes down to).

This doesn’t take into consideration the largest wildcard - capital gain.  If whatever we buy goes up in price $10,000 in a year, then that’s another $800 or so a month that we’ve gained.  This could definitely change the equation.  However, it relies on the price going up, and certainly not going down.  Neither of us are financial experts, and we’re certainly not close followers of the housing market.  However, it does seem to me that in the next three years house prices could stay the same or even go down (especially if the US economy continues to struggle).  Neither of us are really comfortable taking that risk at this time.

There are other advantages to owning - we can do whatever we like to the place, there’s no landlord to kick us out, I can claim a few more expenses (because wherever we live will also be my office).  However, there’s more flexibility with renting - we can leave whenever we like (no waiting for a buyer or for the market to be in the right state), and we can adjust the amount we save if necessary (if the Euro/NZ$ exchange rate cuts my income, for example).  Considering that we have zero interest in remodelling, and we’ve never had a landlord kick us out, these come out fairly even.

At the end of the day, we decided that neither of us really have our heart set on buying at this time, and we’d rather spend a little more time renting (but living with the mortgage budget, so our savings properly increase) for the next couple of years.  If things go to plan, or at least close to it, then we should have a deposit around $50,000 rather than $20,000, which will reduce the amount of interest we end up paying (and it’s possible that Olyvia might be interested in doing some paid work by the time Samuel goes to school, which would obviously make the largest difference).

So we’ve started looking at rental properties.  We’re completely sick of living in Auckland - there are a few advantages, but so many negatives (cost, too close to fast food, too crowded, too noisy, not enough space, …) that we were ready to move back to somewhere more rural within a month or two of living here.  It also makes a lot more sense to be closer to Whangarei and Whangaparoa considering that we travel there a lot.  So the aim is somewhere between Albany and Whangarei, probably not much further north than Warkworth.  We’ll probably move in three or four weeks if we can find somewhere suitable quickly enough.

We’ll still visit Auckland occasionally - visiting Debbie, going through to visit the Kellys, visiting Poppa/Nanna, but will mostly go back to leaving Auckland for those that like it.  At first we’ll probably be travelling a little more, since Samuel will probably finish off his current term of swimming, and I’ll play out my current netball season.

If you have any thoughts, as always, let us know (in the comments here, or via email).

So it’s been over two weeks since Samuel switched to sleeping in a bed.  The first two nights went really well.  Unfortunately, things haven’t really continued that way (at night; during the day has been ok, although we’re still staying with him until he’s asleep).  On the Thursday he started getting up shortly after getting put to bed in the evening, and that has continued most nights since.  We decided to let him get up once and then put hi back to bed and stay with him until he is (mostly) asleep.  That works, but it takes 30 to 90 minutes, so we unfortunately lose a good part of the evening (and dinner is quite delayed).  I tried just repeatedly putting him back to bed a couple of times, but after putting him back 20 or 30 times he was just getting more upset and therefore awake.  We might change this system soon, since nothing really seems to be improving.

He sometimes wakes during the night, but when put back to bed goes back to sleep pretty quickly.  I think this will stop on its own.

The mornings aren’t great, either.  Sam wakes up between 5am and 6:15am pretty much every morning.  We used to get up around 7:15am.  It’s possible that he was waking up around that time before and just staying quiet in the cot, but I don’t think he would have been quiet for two hours.  Maybe he woke up and went back to sleep, but he’s not willing to do that now.  So this means that Olyvia and I are getting up some time between 5 and 7 these days.  I still work until the same time at night, so this means some pretty short nights.  We’re still trying to figure out what we can do about this.

Now, I understand that many people have things much worse than this.  Until now, Samuel has always slept pretty well, and we have had over a year of 12 hour (7pm to 7am) sleep, with sometimes 3 hour naps during the day.  We’re grateful for that, and just hope that we can get back to something close to that.

Samuel changed to sleeping in a bed yesterday.  He had his last night in the cot on Monday night, and attempted to have a nap in the cot on Tuesday afternoon (turned out that there wasn’t any sleep).  After that, we took the side rails off the cot, and swapped the foot for the shorter end.  It’s not quite a ‘real’ bed, but it looks more-or-less like one, and we didn’t feel that buying a new bed for him made sense at this time (and anything bigger wouldn’t fit well in the room).

It was just me & Samuel home for the first try (Olyvia was at the gym).  He’d seen the bed during the day (and found that it’s a good platform to jump off, and that he can now get to both sets of windows in his room), and didn’t seem concerned at all about the change.  He said goodbye as normal, and apart from one little cry (which sometimes happens anyway) all was well.

I always check in on him just before I go to bed (11:30 or so) - normally turning him around, tucking him in, and so on.  When I did this, I found that he’d fallen to the floor at some point, but hadn’t made (nearly) any noise doing so (or we would have heard him), and hadn’t woken up as a result.  I’m sure this won’t be the last time!

I put him back in the bed (he didn’t wake up at all), and the rest of the night passed without incident.  This morning he woke up around 7am as normal, and after talking for a little while he opened his door and came and found me (Olyvia was out again, this time picking up the Kelly kids).  He was quite happy and the morning started off as well as ever.

I knew that the real challenge would be his nap, since the only time he has trouble going to sleep at night is when he’s sick, but during the day he’s not always convinced that he needs a nap.  I put him to bed around the normal time (he was clearly tired), but he wasn’t happy about it.  A minute or two after leaving the room, he came out, and so I put him back, explaining that he had to stay there.  We repeated this with varying gaps between him appearing maybe a dozen times.

He was getting a little upset, so I decided that the tough stance could wait a while.  I put him in bed, and read him a story (he happily stayed in the bed for the story).  That mostly calmed him down, but I stayed next to the bed for a while until he was basically asleep anyway.  Leaving the room, the squeaky door (I must remember to oil it!) woke him up, so we repeated this.  Next time went fine, and he drifted off to sleep pretty quickly.

He woke up a bit over an hour later (a short sleep for him, but not completely unusual).  I heard a thump (I work in the room next door) and went him to find him on the floor.  I’m pretty sure he was getting up and slipped rather than falling out while asleep - he was immediately happy and awake.

All went well again tonight, so hopefully the transition continues smoothly!