My little Baby Einstein was playing with her Noah’s Ark set today, and left it like this:

Oh, if only Noah had been given his own helicopter! Maybe it would have been less than 40 days and 40 nights, and maybe those doves could have had a rest!

I consider myself very lucky that we were able to ditch the expense of daycare when I switched to a part-time job. I work Monday thru Wednesday, and then have Thursday thru Sunday off. On Mondays, Cordy goes to Aaron’s dad’s house. He lives in town, is a freelance Web designer and writer who works from home, and he loves spending the day with her.

Tuesday, she goes to my friend Lisa’s house. Lisa is a SAHM with a little boy 5 months older than Cordelia. I pay her for her trouble, because well, she’s not family, so she’s in no way obligated to this little girl. It’s good for both kids – they get to socialize and deal with the fact that other kids will play with their toys, so they’d better learn to just get along.

Wednesdays are really great, though. My mom, who lives 45 min. away in my hometown, drives up to our house to spend the day watching Cordy. She willingly gives up one of her two days off a week to make the drive up. It’s just one of many reasons why I think my mom is awesome.

My mom was divorced when I was a little over a year old, and she raised me on her own while working full-time as a laboratory technician (which doesn’t pay well). She’s always been there for me for anything, and after Cordy was born, she was just as willing to help out with her, too. She was here at least once a week helping me when Cordy was a newborn, and when we needed to get rid of daycare, she volunteered to babysit.

Now, there is one odd thing about when my mom comes up to our house. If she sees something that needs done, she does it without asking. It’s something most of our family does, although that particular trait seems to have skipped me. This often means coming home to the dishes washed, our clothing washed, or some part of the house cleaned. She also often takes Cordy out and goes shopping for us, or other times shows up at the door in the morning with bags of diapers and wipes for us (she’s supplied about 75% of Cordy’s diapers thus far). This Wednesday, she bought more overnight diapers for Cordelia. I thought that was all she did, but then I found the pile of clean baby clothing and noticed the bathroom upstairs was cleaned.

We don’t ask her to do these things at all – I swear! But Cordy isn’t as clingy with her as she is with me, so my mom can get more done around here than I can. Anytime I try to clean when I’m alone with Cordelia, she throws a fit that I’m not right next to her watching the Wiggles. Mom has yet to share with me her magical skills of getting everything done while keeping Cordy happy. I really, really wish she’d let me in on the secret.

Of course, not all is sunshine and rainbows with this deal. In return for her doing all of these things, we often must listen to lectures about how cluttered our house is, how we need to spend more time doing this or that, how we need to better manage our money, etc. This doesn’t bother me – I’ve been living with that arrangement with her for my entire life, and I have to admit she often speaks the truth.

Aaron, on the other hand, really gets annoyed. The two of them get along, and Aaron often proudly claims that he is one of the few he knows who likes his mother-in-law. But Aaron doesn’t like being told that we’re bad housekeepers. Lately, he’s started washing all the dishes sitting around every Wednesday morning so my mom won’t have any to wash. He’ll also pick up any personal items lying around and put them away to keep her from putting them somewhere he won’t find them.

I’m starting to wonder if my mom is using some kind of reverse psychology on him? I mean, I don’t think she’s sitting around thinking, “OK, if I just do his chores, but do them slightly differently than him, it’ll drive him crazy! Then he’ll start doing them just to make sure I don’t mess up his system! Mwahahahaha!” But if she is trying to make him do his chores more often, it seems to be working.

I’m very thankful that we have so much help from our families. Without them, the parent gig would be much more difficult. I don’t know how those without family around manage everything, and I don’t know how my mom managed as a single mom. But I do know I consider myself very lucky for the help we do have.

** Oh, and we’re not the total slobs I’m making us sound like here. We just have a lot of clutter, and a child who likes to throw all of her toys into the middle of the floor. There’s a big difference between dirty and cluttered. And in a week it will be spotless for Christmas, because the rest of my family will be here, and there’s no way Aaron wants them to start in on the housework also.

Scene: The living room, last night

Me: Well, after an hour of crunching numbers, I’m done balancing the checkbook.

Aaron: (not looking up from his computer) And?

Me: I’ve determined we eat out too much, and it’s killing our budget.

Aaron: We knew that. So, how is our financial situation at the moment?

Me: Currently? Our 14 month old daughter has more money in her account than we do.

(Pause)

Aaron: (still not looking up from his computer) Hmmm…guess she’s buying the Christmas gifts this year, eh?

I can’t put it off any longer. Tonight I must sit down and balance the checkbook. The receipts have been stacking up, the debit card is looking worn out, and the bills are starting to menace me from their shelf above the computer. I’m also a little scared by what I see on our online account balance, because, well, I thought we had more than that at the moment.

In our family, I’ve always been the money manager. Aaron will admit without any shame that he has a serious allergy to money: when given any, he will buy stuff as quickly as possible to get it away from him. He also dislikes the tedious task of entering each transaction into the register and tracking what has cleared and what hasn’t. I love balancing the checkbook, however. Thanks to the beauty of Microsoft Money, I can track when bills are due, enter transactions with ease, and run fun reports showing me just where all of our money is going. Well, mostly fun reports; seeing that much of our money goes to gas, fast food, and Aaron’s comics isn’t so much fun.

When we were living together in years BC (Before Cordelia), I’d sometimes balance the checkbook every day. I’d collect the day’s receipts, enter them, pay any bills that we got in the mail the day before, and reconcile everything with the online account summary. I’d check off each transaction as the bank processed it, smug in knowing that every penny was accounted for.

That doesn’t happen so much anymore. I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but suddenly managing the money is much more difficult. There are stacks of receipts in the little box next to my computer, waiting to be entered.

And then there are the receipts that never make it to the box, causing me to curse under my breath while adding an entry for a purchase I have no memory of.

The bills, which at one time barely left the mailman’s hands before they were paid, are now living a dusty life of days or weeks on the computer desk before they are given any attention.

In October, I (somehow) was late on 75% of our bills. Before this, I had never once, in my entire life, missed a payment deadline. Never! Not even when I was a drunk sorority girl in college!

How did one little baby cause me to fall so far? Well, my time is certainly more precious these days. I can no longer agonize over Microsoft Money, trying to figure out if tickets to wrestling should be categorized as Cultural Event or Sporting Event.

Any time that Cordelia is awake makes it impossible to balance the checkbook, since if I stopped in the middle of adding receipts, I’d never remember where I was. I’m now forced to do my financial duties at night, when she is asleep, but this often means I’m so tired that I don’t give a damn and put it off for another night. And so two weeks will go by before I’ll even glance at the receipts box again, which by that time makes the job a full-hour of entering data and marking off items that have cleared.

To add to the “joy”, we also don’t have nearly as much money coming in now that I am working part-time, which makes it even more important to keep a close eye on our account balance.

Oh how I miss those days of running reports and casually balancing the checkbook each day. But thanks to my lack of time and forgetful mommy brain, I consider it a good month when we make most of the bill payments on time and don’t fall into the red in the checking account.

In January, we’ll be packing up the family and making our annual pilgrimage to Chicago. We have no family there, but every January there is a stage combat workshop help at Columbia College and Aaron attends to learn new ways to pretend to kill people on stage. I go along to visit the Field Museum, the Art Institute, and the Mecca they call Ikea.

Why they have this thing in winter, in Chicago, is beyond me. Do they laugh at those of us who pray for good weather, hoping we don’t have to drive the five hours in a blizzard? Our luck over the years has been so-so: three years of good to decent weather, two years of snow, ice, and subzero weather. Last year was the best year yet, which means we’re likely doomed this year.

This is also the first year we’re taking Cordelia with us. Last year my mother convinced us at the last moment that taking a 4 month old to Chicago was a bad idea. She stayed at our house while we were gone and cared for Cordy. Now my mom is coming along with us; with Aaron gone all day each day, I’ll need all the help I can get, and mom’s a great mother’s assistant.

However, I realized that I need a new stroller for the trip. Aaron thinks I’m insane. OK, I’ll admit it: we have three strollers. But each has a very distinct purpose.

The first: the Graco Quattro, or as I call it, our “SUV Stroller”. It held the car seat when Cordy was tiny, and now it’s the ultimate in cushy comfort, with a huge basket as well. But it’s also heavy and enormous – not something to cram into an already overpacked car, and not easy to carry up and down steps.

Next, the $12.99 Babies R Us umbrella stroller. Very lightweight, folds down to nearly nothing. But it’s also just barely off the ground (if there’s snow, it would never move), has no basket, and it’s rather uncomfortable for Cordy to sit in for long periods of time.

Finally, our Graco CitySport. It’s the medium stroller: not too big, not too small. But it was a garage sale purchase, and it’s starting to show its age. Wheels that squeal, a recline that doesn’t work very well, and the basket is tiny. It also folds down thin, but it’s still wide and hard to carry.

So, I’ve decided that I need another stroller for Chicago. Something lightweight, but also roomy and lightly padded for Cordy’s comfort. Preferably easy to carry and easy to fold. It has to have a basket as well, and be able to recline for naps. The seat needs to be decently high off the ground if I’m pushing it over snow. And it needs to have good steering and wheels that can handle uneven pavement. A tricked out sound system would be nice, too. Wait, I’m kidding on that last one. Maybe.

Finally, it can’t cost too much. We’re a little cash poor right now, so I’d prefer nothing over $100. Actually, Aaron would prefer nothing over $100.

And now the stroller hunt begins. I’m realizing that this stroller probably doesn’t exist, but it’s not going to stop me from scouring the web to find it. After all, if you can find a ghost in a bottle for sale, you can find anything on the web.