stuck with pmi

so husband and i have been paying pmi on our mortgage since we bought the house 5 years ago. pmi is mortgage insurance that you pay when you do not have 20% to put down on a house when you buy it. (i am not sure why 20$ is the magic number, or who came up with it but that is the number they gave us) as 24 year old first time home buyers (one a catholic school teacher and one a teachers aide) we did not have that magic number of 20%, we barely had 3%. over time we have done a lot of work to the house. so about a week ago i called to bank to see if our house is now worth more than when we bought it, enough more that we can lose the pmi we pay each month. this week we had the house appraised and YEAY it is worth enough to drop pmi. but wait...the TYPE of mortgage we have (a special first time home buyers) does not allow you to drop pmi until you have payed off 25% of the principal on the house. so, yea we have about another $10000 or so before we get there. the bank says, well you can pay another $10 or so each month directly to the principal and that will get your there quicker...umm it take a lot of $10 payments to add up to $10000. ugh!
now we may look into refinancing and see if that is an affordable option. that was going to be another $50 in our pocket each month. crossing my fingers that this will be affordable, and with interest rates now maybe we will save even more each month!!! of course we are kind of looking at other houses to move into so we have to weigh how much refinancing will cost us and how long it will take us to recoup it...ugh. more number crunching

off to get the little rugrat to take his nap so mommy can have some quiet time