Arrivals and Departures

[jeriendhal]

So yesterday we had a conference with Thomas' teachers, setting him up for summer school again. It went much better than either Tracy or I was expecting. We'd been anxious because they had left us a note earlier in the week that Thomas was becoming "unreachable" because he's been whining about "I'm tired!" even though his sleep habits have signigantly improved. What's going to happen is that the school is going to assign a consultant to look at Thomas' homelife, and what he's doing in school and daycare, so we can try and modify his behavior by giving him consistent responses to his complaints. Overall we came out more confident than when we came in, which is a good thing.

Of course we've got another problem looming up on us to replace it. Steve, who has been rooming with us for nearly ten years, is finally moving out to live the life of heady middle-aged bachelorism with his buddy Brian and a couple of other friends. In a way this is good, because it allows Steve a little more emotional maturity, and it give us signifigantly more room for when China Girl arrives. But in the short term we're going to be in a bit of a crunch until we get the household budget settled, since he was contributing about $600 a month to it. Numbers will have to be crunched, and I'm going to see if Countrywide will give us a more favorable equity loan rate than the bank is giving us now so we can consolidate our debts a bit.

Comments

[selenite.livejournal.com]

While crunching numbers you may want to look at taking advantage of the various 0%APR balance transfer options credit card companies offer. If you play a shell game swapping the balances around you can keep your interest payments low for a few years.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. I know I'm checking to see what sort of home equity deal I can get from my mortgage lender. Consolidating our bills would help immensely.

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

Oh, good luck with all! And a belated happy birthday!

[chaypeta.livejournal.com]

I'm glad his sleep patterns have improved. It sounds like the 'I'm tired' plea is a technique he's using to get out of doing something that doesn't interest him. (My middle son would claim he felt sick and the school would have to take him seriously because legally they're in a bind to.) Good luck with the consultant. Maybe a fresh eye can spot something useful.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

We're hoping so. It's one of those things we thought he get bored of when we ignored it, like some of his other bad habits, but it seems to be really stuck this time.