Circa 2012: A preview of the Central life

We. Have. Moved.

Samurai's mother will be babysitting for us when I go back out to work in February. I do not want to go back out to work.

So, on New Year's Day 2012, we moved in with my in-laws, once again sharing a room that is even smaller than what we shared before.

I guess like all new or first-time mothers, I was a bit over-protective of my daughter. In fact, I was a bit greedy in sharing her so one great thing is that we got her crib to fit through the doorway so she can sleep in the same room with us. Back at my mother's house, she graciously gave up her spare bedroom for the crib as it just couldn't fit through the narrow hallway. So I used to abandon Samurai to sleep in her room almost every night even though we had a brand new, functional monitor, lol.

So baby in our room. I am happy. Did I say I did not want to go back out to work?

Living in Central was cool and not much different from the West in terms of being in a house all day dreading my return to work. The only hard part was having one bathroom for about six people in a house. At my mother's there were two for four people but I think them adjusting to a new baby crying all hours of the night was tougher than anything else.

When February came, I was back out to work, unfortunately.

I wasn't getting any sleep because my daughter clearly knew I now had to get up at 4:00am instead of 6. This meant that in addition to going to sleep at 11 or 12 at night, she was waking me up at 2 or 3 in the morning giving me just 2 to 3 hours of sleep as I had no choice but to start getting ready when I managed to put her back down to sleep.

I would be so paranoid driving to work because my eyes would be closing down on me, but at least I got good parking spots!

Unfortunately three months later, our Central life and free babysitting was cut short when my mother-in-law damaged her knee. She was persistent that she could still do it though, but she needed the rest, and I did not feel comfortable putting that strain on her.

Due to Samurai's unpredictable work schedule, a daycare close by in Port of Spain was therefore the only option, but unfortunately, this decision meant a large chunk of our savings evaporating every month. All of these daycares were ridiculously expensive and the cheaper one's were all filled or were too unkempt for me to even consider leaving my child there.

So back to Diego we went with less money in our pockets to start our dream home with now three more years before TTMF's deadline to start building on the land.