Big Change

Well, due to quite a few reasons, we decided to move Oliver from his preschool into another preschool. Although all that led up to it took a while, the actual transition happened quickly and was very hard on Oliver and us.

Our whole house was stressed out (Around the same time, Oliver started having possible seizures) and nobody was very happy. It was clear that he wasn't happy at his new school and every morning I had to pry him off of me crying and begging me not to leave him. It made it so much worse to know that I was leaving him so that I could essentially come home and do nothing. Also, he was thrilled to leave school everyday whereas before it was always an effort to get him to leave. In short, he was just plain unhappy and was not our happy-going wonderful little boy that he always has been.

So a week ago, we decided to just go for it and pull him out of preschool. Even though I've been unemployed, we've never wanted to take him out of school because he loved it so much, and we didn't want him to "lose his spot" in case I did find work. But, we had pretty much decided that whether he stayed in school or not, he wouldn't be staying where he was. So we took him out and now he stays at home with me.

Short term, this is saving us almost $1000 per month. That's serious money. Also, my hope and plan is to end up in a situation where I can be working from home for a while and continue to keep him here. Then, when I have an opportunity to get paid work, we will be in a position for Kati to quit her job and stay home with him. We aren't planning on sending him back to school, but of course things change. I guess I should say that we are hoping very much that we won't have to send him back to a school.

We truly are seeing this - as sudden as it was - as the very first step in finally realizing the lifestyle and household that we've been working so hard toward for almost 5 years. We had always told ourselves that once we're out of debt, one of us will stay home with him. Well, we aren't out of debt yet, but the whole reason for getting out of debt was so one of us could stay home. So, now we're presented with an opportunity to do that. Even though it wasn't exactly like we planned, one of us can start staying home with him immediately and we'll figure things out from there.

So, how's it working out so far? Wonderfully. Even the first day of staying home, he was so much happier. We were both much happier and less stressed out too. So far, Oliver and I have put together a house cleaning schedule and are sticking to it, we've figured out the schedule for preschool story-time at the library and plan on going to that, and we've got lots of ideas of fun stuff we can do during the weeks. Oh, also, I can be present for all of his therapy sessions so that we'll have some idea of what's going on with that.