No More Diapers

I wish this title truely meant what it indicated...that Emmaline is potty trained. Not impossible at her age but we haven't even started (we are still working on teaching her how to pull her pants on and off...)

No, this title acutally means something entirely tragic. We went to Walmart yesterday to buy more diapers for Emmaline and they didn't have the brand we've bought for the last 18 months. We generally buy White Cloud because its cheaper than the name brands but realitively quality compared to the Parent's Choice (walmart-brand) which leaves little balls of gunk all over her after a wet diaper.

So when I say there weren't any, I don't mean they were out of stock, I mean there weren't tags indicating where they would go, there were no residue packages of a size that she wouldn't fit, there was absolutely no trace of my favorite brand of diapers. They are no more, they are gone.

I'm not one for change. I find change difficult. Maybe God knows this and decided that by making me change brands of diapers I'd be taking a step in the right direction. I don't know. But using a brand new brand of diapers is daunting. Every diaper has a different absorption level and it always takes a while to figure out if a diaper is really wet or not. And the weights indicating sizes, they are always different for every brand and then they all fit different regardless of the weights...its just a mess and I'm not looking forward to the day when we run out of White Cloud diapers (which is actually within a matter of days :(

On a different note...our 'brilliant plans' may not happen the way we were expecting them to. Heres the story:

Matt wants to get his Bachelor's Degree in Aviation Science. This would involve him getting a helicopter pilot's license and doing so relitively quick (because he is out of work and we need him to get a job). But...for some reason I thought- more or less, I didn't think because if I had actually thought about it, what I was thinking wouldn't have made any sense at all- I thought that we could get government subsidized loans for the entire amout of his license (around $50,000-$60,000) all within 9 months or so. We'd use that money to get his license, he'd then get a job while finishing his schooling and after another year, he'd be done and then we'd start paying back the loan.

The problem comes in that I didn't realize that the govt will only give out $12500 in subsidized loans per year. And, that'll be broken up into semesters so we can't even ask for 12500 for summer semester then 12500 for fall semester (we did think that for a little bit). That leaves us with getting a private loan for around $50,000 (because we can qualify for some subsidized loans that would help with the rest of that).

The problem with THAT is, who in their right mind would loan us, unemployed as we are, $50,000? And, unemployed as we are, even if we got that loan, how could we afford a payment of $400+ a month untill he got a good job? (Just so you know, thats half the cost of our house...thats a lot of money!)

So, now is the time to go back to the drawing board. Matt can't honestly see himself changing his career choice and we don't really want him to. But we have to do a lot of thinking and praying to make sure that this is what GOD wants us to do and if so, we need to figure out how he wants us to get there.

But, pretty much regardless of what we decide needs to be done to get him his schooling, it looks like I'm going to be getting a job sooner than later. Sigh.

On a happier note, I promised pictures. Here are several:

Emmaline has formed an attachment with her bath towels. She wears them on her head and wraps them around her and runs around playing peek-a-boo. Its really cute. This time she was getting mad that I took it off for her to eat so ultimately, we let her wear it in her highchair. Doesn't hurt anything and made a great picture! I think in this next picture that she was trying to kiss her baby doll. She has only just recently gotten the idea that kisses happen with lips closed (I swear she doesn't get the open mouth thing from Matt and I :)

Matt took this picture only this morning. He took a video that was adorable too but the computer isn't recognizing it for some reason. I'll have to get someone to figure it out. She put Matt's shoes on and walked all over the house with them on.