Scribbles in the Dark

Spent an hour today looking for 6yo's school portraits that never made it home. I have the digital copy that I paid extra for, but I also bought $30 worth of prints, where are they Lifetouch you f***ers?!

Went on the Lifetouch website and it turns out that the whole "You must order by Picture Day!!!" thing is not only a lie but a scam; if you wait until after Picture Day, you can buy just the digital on their website and make your own prints and not worry about "did they get lost in the mail? Did Child lose them somewhere between the classroom and the house? did I just hallucinate writing that check???

I am Prepared for next year, you con artists.

my son has decided that he does not like going to sleep.

he likes sleeping just fine, but actually getting quiet and closing his eyes and transitioning from awake to asleep? no. that is just not on.

it's been all of a sudden, too. this time last week he had a pretty solid self-regulated sleep schedule: monday through friday, coming home from day care he'd fall asleep in the car, wake up about half an hour after we got home to eat and get a clean diaper, then cheerfully go right back to sleep. he's not sleeping through the night yet, but that's at least half because i hear him stirring and feed him about every four to five hours - i know he can go at least six because he's done it before. even on the weekends, taking naps during the day he'd let me rock him a bit and go right to sleep. this worked fine for him until about thursday of last week.

now? HELL NO.

so we're going to try this sleep training thing. i need to get him on an evening routine that's more complicated than 'fall asleep in the car' - which sucks, because that means i'm going to have to wake him up when we get home at night, so there goes MY evening routine. god knows when i'll get bottles washed or my own dinner eaten... so we'll do the whole bath-book-bottle-lullaby-bed routine every night, and hopefully it'll work and he'll learn that when he's tired he should go to sleep, not scream at me. (in the past that's been his reaction, when i'm trying some foolish thing like changing his diaper when isn't it obvious he's trying to sleep? so then i'd stop, and lay him down and hold his hand or cuddle for a minute, and back to sleep he would go, quite content. but now he does the whole yawning, eye-rubbing routine and then won't go to sleep.)

ugh. parenthood.

so i'm a parent now, and it's time to retire my trusty little pick-up truck (which loyally took me all over texas and once to north carolina) and get a car with a back seat for sam's carseat and interior storage for his stroller. i really love driving stick in my truck, so my only other starting requirement was to get something with a manual transmission in it.

i thought about getting a full-cab truck at first, but i do need that inside storage space for the stroller if nothing else. my second thought was to get a hatchback - which is very different than a truck, i admit, but they have roomy rear storage and i think they're super cute. they also get far better gas mileage than trucks, which are built for hauling heavy loads, something i don't need to do much of now that we've bought a house and are no longer moving our entire household every year or so.

i looked at some hatchbacks and really liked the mazda 3, but then i started contemplating crossovers as well - a crossover is higher off the ground like a truck and has more seating and storage than a hatchback. the mazda cx-5/-7/-9 all look pretty great, imho, and there are some other crossovers i like the look of as well as the mazdas, and i found some on carmax that were in our price-range too. but then, before i got a chance to test-drive anything, we had a conversation with my dad-in-law about car-shopping, and he urged us to get a minivan.

a minivan.

kill me now.

my dear hubby, of course, bought that argument hook, line, and sinker, and he's now pushing me towards a minivan as well. so i did some research. beyond the sliding doors (which i hate for multiple reasons), it might seem to the casual observer (me) that crossovers and minivans are very comparable vehicles. this turns out to be true in some cases but not in others. minivans and crossovers have roughly equivalent gas mileage - a criterion i'm very conscious of, though it's not a deal-breaker for me. but they differ in a lot of other ways:

-minivans are lower and closer to the ground than crossovers, for ease of loading both children and stuff, and for being limited by curbs wherever you go
-minivans typically have more legroom, and often have one more seat than crossovers
-minivans have somewhere between 1.5x to 2x the maximum storage volume of crossovers (75cuft to 100cuft in crossovers, compared to a typical 150cuft in minivans, as measured when all the rear seats are down); i'm not sure why that is, but i'd guess it's due to the full-size rear-end of minivans that i personally think is ugly
-minivans flat-out do not have manual transmission as an option
-crossovers typically have better traction than minivans, since they typically come with all-wheel-drive, being therefore slightly safer in poor weather conditions

so if i'm getting a vehicle that makes the most sense for our lifestyle, given the fact that we're planning to have at least one more kid and i want to foster as well, then the minivan is clearly the most sensible choice.

the trouble is, i think minivans are ugly, and they don't come with manual transmissions, aka they aren't as fun for me to drive. on top of all that: sliding doors. do not even get me started.

so do i get a vehicle that i don't like - not just that it isn't my favorite, but i actively do not like them - just because it is the most logical choice for my future needs? i feel like if i do, i will hate myself every time i drive it, even when it's being as useful and practical as advertised. is there room for compromise here?