A Lesson in Painting

(Hold on to your hats, folks, this is gonna be a cute one...)

So Andy has been working diligently on sprucing up our laundry room - to my very particular specifications.  A coworker of his redid his kitchen and gave us his old cabinets for free, so Andy repainted and put new hardware on them.  He's mixed up the perfect color of teal for the walls and even moved around some of the appliances to make a more functional space.  Now it's time to paint the trim before we replace the awful linoleum on the floor with slightly less awful linoleum.  Hey, we've got like a $5 budget to work with over here.  Anyway, he thought that this would be a good time to teach Ellie to paint.  The walls are getting repainted anyway and the floor is getting ripped up, so it really didn't matter how messy she was about it.  So, I give you Painting with Daddy 101...

A little baby yoga while Daddy gets more paint on the brush.

She was really concerned about her toes being dirty.

This one was Daddy's idea.

And it only took a 30 minute bath to get all the paint off!  Maybe someday soon we'll try full-body finger-painting :-)

Update: my dad just reminded me of one of MY first painting lessons just a few years ago...

Almost-4 Months Update

So after my ranting the other day, I realized that I haven't given you an honest-to-goodness update in quite a while.  So here we go ...

Ellie is going to be turning 4 months old soon, and she is changing so much every day!  After our Easter fun, we celebrated her dedication at church on April 14th.  In case you're not familiar with it, our denomination doesn't do infant baptism.  We believe that a person should make their own decision to be baptized.  Instead, we do a dedication, where the parents and the congregation take vows to raise the child in the church and to help them grow spiritually.  It's kind of a big deal.  So my parents and my sister came down for the day and I bought a new dress for myself and made Andy wear his nice shoes.

It was a beautiful service!  Ellie was very well behaved and didn't even spit up on herself or the pastor or ANYONE!  I was so proud.  After church and before bell choir practice, we squeezed in a few family photos to commemorate the occasion...

Grandpa, Mommy, Daddy, & Me

Daddy, Mommy, Grandma, Pappy, & Me

Auntie, Mommy, Daddy, & Me

Then we went out to lunch, which was so-so.  The food was GREAT, but there was an obnoxiously loud high school girls' soccer team at the table next to us.  Ugh.  Evidently everything was HI-larious, except for when Ellie would scream (because she was just TRYING to take a nap) and then we'd get dirty looks.  Darn kids.  Wow, I'm old.

I hereby apologize to all the moms that I irritated with my similar behavior in high school.  I had no idea.  I'm so sorry.

Then mom and sis and I did some shopping at our favorite thrift store (yay for new sneakers and a jacket that fits over my pudgy post-baby arms!) and then headed back to my house.  Everyone took turns reading with Ellie while she was in a good enough mood to tolerate it...

Auntie's going to be a writer someday - maybe she will write me a book?!

OH that crazy Petunia!  She's such a silly goose!

And then all the company had to leave and go back to their own corners of the state.  I wish everyone just lived here so we wouldn't have to make it such a big deal to get together.  OK, I really shouldn't complain because they are, at most, only an hour and a half away.  But still.  I wish they were closer.  Like right down the road.  Maybe someday...

Anyway, we have had some SUPER nice weather here lately and all of our flowers have bloomed!  It's our first spring in this house, so we weren't sure what to expect to pop up in the flower beds.  Boy were we surprised!  Here's a little tour...

The front of the house with the BEAUTIFUL cherry trees!

Cherry Tree

Closeup of Cherry Blossoms

Maple Tree next to the garage (and the POOL in the background!!)

Flower bed with the wishing well - a storm last weekend knocked all my flowers over :-(

Bleeding hearts in the wishing well flower bed

Daffodils and Purple Hyacinth by the wishing well.  LOVE Purple Hyacinth!

And that's that!  There are hostas on the other side of the house which will bloom later in the summer and daisy mums everywhere that will bloom this fall.  The previous homeowners didn't do a lot with the inside of the house, but they certainly took pride in the outside!  

We also bought Ellie a new toy this week.  She had not been making any progress toward reaching, grabbing, or even being interested in toys.  So I took the toy bar off of her pack 'n play and rigged it up over her changing table so she could actually reach the toys.  It was a total hit!  She loved it!  But I couldn't just leave it there like that.  So we invested in a toy gym with a piano at the bottom for her to kick.  Girl can kick.  Seriously, it can hurt.  The piano part flips up so that she can sit at it and play when she is older and can sit on her own.  Anyway, the day that it was delivered, I put it right together and let her play it.  She LOVES it! I'm hoping that it's strong enough to withstand all of her kicking because she just goes nuts on it.  There's a mirror that hangs down and she loves looking at herself and making faces.  Sometimes she will start to fuss and we think that she's getting tired of playing, but when we go to pick her up, she smiles at the fussy face she was making.  Crazy kid.  And she's discovered her tongue.  It is ALWAYS sticking out now.  And on Sunday evening, she was sticking out her tongue at herself in the mirror and let out a giggle.  We've heard some almost-giggles already, but this was an honest-to-goodness giggle.  It sounded like the fake ones that you hear on tv commercials.  But it honestly came out of her face!  And now she giggles pretty regularly.  It's pretty fun.  Although Andy can get downright annoying with the noises he makes trying to get her to do it.

So anyway, all that to say that sometimes, she will play so hard with this toy, that she just falls asleep.  Right there on the floor.  The kid who refuses to sleep unless she's being held.  I'm not complaining at all.  It just surprises me!  

I played myself out!

Ellie also had her two trial days at Sarah's house for babysitting this past week.  She did great!  According to Sarah, she didn't even really cry all that much and she napped in the swing!  When I picked her up, she was smiling and giggling at Sarah and the other girls.  So I officially accepted the job!  I'm going to be the new secretary at our church.  Not terribly glamorous, but a nice work environment with a lot of flexibility.  I think it'll be good.  I'm going in tomorrow to start 'training' and then I officially start on Wednesday next week!

And that's pretty much our update!  Ellie goes in for her 4 month check-up on May 6th, so after that we'll have an update on how much she weighs now.  My guess is a lot.  People still comment on how small she is, but to me she seems huge!  I guess it's just all perspective.  One last picture before we go, and it's one of my recent favorites.  I splurged and bought these adorable little sunglasses at Carter's the last time I was there.  One day the other week, it was over 80 degrees outside (and inside), so we went outside to try them out.  The result?  Cuteness overload!

Just soakin' up some rays with Dad!

32 Weeks and Updates on Just About Everything

So life has been a crazy mess the past few weeks!  The house is a wreck and my nesting is kicking in, so those two things don't mesh very well.  On top of that, Andy's back at work (he took a week off for the move) so I'm at home by myself all day long, but I'm getting pretty big so there's not much I can actually do by myself as far as unpacking goes.  I get half a box done and need to take a rest.  So I'm nesting like crazy, but can only get projects halfway done.  It's crazy frustrating.  But we are making progress.  A little at a time, but progress nonetheless.  Ok, so now on to the baby update . . .

We arrived at 32 weeks this past Saturday.  8 weeks to go.  Eight.  That's all.  Ok, see now I'm starting to panic about getting everything done again.  Anyway, 32 weeks means that we are in a safe zone of sorts.  If she would be born now, she would stand a very good chance at not only survival, but going on to be perfectly normal.  She's still kicking up a storm, which some NST techs have been surprised about.  Usually by 32 weeks they are big enough that they don't have enough room to thrash around like she does.  Oh but it feels like she has plenty of room in there!  My ultrasounds continue to show her head being down, so we're on the right track there!  And she continues to pass all of our NST's with flying colors.  Sometimes she decides to take a nap right in the middle, so we have to be hooked up to the monitor longer than we'd like, but eventually they see what they are looking for as far as movement and heart rate goes.

Yesterday we had another growth scan done to see how she's progressing size-wise.  The ultrasounds that I get done once a week just take measurements (via a special wand called a doppler) of the bloodflow through three major arteries in her head, umbilical cord, and abdomen.  They do growth scans every two weeks.  So four weeks ago was when she weighed the 2 lbs. 4 oz.  Then two weeks ago, she was up to 2 lbs. 11 oz.  Now this week she has shot right up to 3 lbs. 6 oz.!  She's still below the 5th percentile, but she is showing steady growth, which is a great sign.  The doctor said that it's looking more and more like she's just petite and not being restricted in her growth.  That's what everyone's been saying all along, but it's good that the doctor is actually starting to believe it now!  I guess it's very rare for that to be the actual case.  Usually, when a baby is measuring this small it is because something is holding it back or restricting it's growth.  Every once in a while, though, they see a baby that is perfectly content to be that size and that's just how they grow.  He can't say for sure (can they ever???) but it's looking like that might be the case with Ellie.  SUPER good news to my ears!

The only bad news is that they want to continue monitoring me twice a week, just to be safe.  And that's only bad news because we got a bill this week from my very first specialist visit back in September.  Apparently, our insurance only 100% covers 'routine' maternity care.  Whatever that means.  Are there really any 'routine' pregnancies anymore?  Seriously.  So every time I walk into the specialist's office, even if it's just for an NST and I don't see the doctor, it costs us a $25 copay.  Really, considering the cost of all the tests and whatnot, that's not bad.  Until you think about the fact that I'm going there twice a week.  That's $200 a month just in copays that we didn't budget for.  Hmmm, I guess we'll find that money somewhere!  Really, it's not the money that's upsetting.  Nowhere in the insurance statement of benefits does it specify that maternity care is covered 100% as long as it is within the realm of 'routine'.  That's what's really annoying.  It just says 100% covered.  So anyway, that's our little hiccup for this week.  There's always got to be something just to keep us on our toes!

So other than that, things are going pretty ok.  We haven't been able to decorate for Christmas yet because the living room isn't completely put back together, which makes me kind of sad.  That's usually something I do as SOON as I am allowed to, which is generally the day after Thanksgiving.  I need to unpack and organize the music room because I've got a student coming tonight.  Our dining room is piled full of stuff to be gone through 'then' and we have my Father-in-law coming over for dinner tomorrow night.  And the nursery is an absolute mess.  Here's a picture of the progress we've made on it so far:

Yeah.  The walls need painted, we need to get a blind for that window, the furniture needs moved around, the brown dresser needs moved to another room, the armoire (which is in the garage) needs to be painted and moved up, the crib needs put together, and I have an art project for on the wall that I haven't even started yet!  The good news is that we got the car seat and stroller out of the box and assembled the other night.  Someday we will have to install the car seat bases in our cars so that we could actually USE the seat if we suddenly needed to, but it's still progress.  We're both doing the best that we can and everything that NEEDS to get done will get done in time.  Pardon me while I go sit in the corner and repeat that to myself over and over again!  Oh wait, no time for a nervous breakdown, there is too much work to be done!  Time to watch White Christmas (snow, snow, snow, snow, SNOW!) and unpack the music room.  Wish me luck!

Settlement Day!

So, remember that one time that we bought a house?  Yeah, me too!  Settlement went off without a hitch yesterday.  Well, kind of.  We'll get to that.  Here's a rundown of our big, exciting day . . .

7:30 rolled around bright and early for our final walk-through.  Everything looked pretty much how we left it the last time, so we were satisfied enough and left around 8 to head to the attorney's office.  Now, our settlement was scheduled for 9, but the attorney had said that he wanted us there around 8:15 to get started on our part so the sellers didn't have to sit around forever and just watch us sign papers.  Hence the freakishly early start to the day.

So, signing the paperwork wasn't all that painful.  My hand didn't even cramp up!  The sellers showed up at 9 and signed their part of the papers and then handed over the keys.  And that was that!  We got a few instructions from them about the keys (5 of the 6 go to the house and the one left over goes to the garage) and the mail.  They moved into a rental duplex right next door to the house.  That's a little weird to us, but I suppose we will just have to get over it.  It's just a rental, after all, so hopefully they won't be there permanently.  So our mailboxes are RIGHT next to each other, so if we get each other's mail by accident we can just pop it in the other box.  At least they were nice enough to let us know that they would gladly do that for us!

And that was that.  No party music, no balloons, no popping champagne cork.  It was a little anticlimactic, to be perfectly honest.  I didn't really feel any different.  We literally climbed in the car and said, "Well, I guess we own a house now."  So we drove home (to the house we currently live in) and picked up the other car full of cleaning supplies and headed over to the new house to start cleaning!  Yay, fun!  Andy took a broom and swept down the walls and ceilings and I followed behind him with the vacuum.  After the vacuuming was done, we rented the carpet cleaner and really attacked the carpets.  They didn't look dirty because of their color, but there was some seriously disgusting water coming out of them.  I'm glad we took the time to do it. We finished up around 9:30 and returned the carpet cleaner to the store with time to spare!

In the middle of the day, I had to run to town for a Non-Stress Test.  Ellie was very cooperative, so I only had to be hooked up to the monitor for 20 minutes instead of 40 like the last time.  Results were good - nothing to report!

Last night around dinner time, we got a call from our realtor saying that there was a problem with our paperwork.  I knew it was too easy.  We've hit roadbumps around every corner with buying this house, so just going in and spending an hour signing papers seemed way too easy.  Luckily, it wasn't a problem with us or anything we did, but the HUD needed re-done by TODAY because of a bank error.  The bank holding the first mortgage on the house gave the attorney the wrong payoff number for their portion of the mortgage. They accidentally took $4,000 more than it would have taken to pay off the mortgage, so the second bank got that much less.  These numbers were off from the beginning, so it's hard to tell why they just noticed it NOW, but it should make the bank holding the second mortgage really happy to be getting that much more than they thought they would, especially since they were the ones actually taking the loss in the first place!  So, we didn't do anything wrong, we just had to go in and sign a new HUD.  This means that the attorney got to his office at 4:30 this morning to rewrite it and our agent got to her office at 6 to make copies for us.  We got there at 6:15 (on Andy's way to work) and signed off and the sellers will sign off sometime today as well.  That's a lot of extra work for a lot of people just because of the bank's stupid mistake.  Like I said, it would have just been too easy to sign the papers and be done!

Our only other hiccup is that we don't have a key to the front door.  None of the keys they gave us work for it.  We've got our agent talking to their agent about whether or not they were forgotten or just got lost over the years, but we will probably end up changing the locks anyway.  Especially since they live next door.  Call me paranoid, but I just don't want to take that chance.  Andy thinks it would be nice to have the garage have the same key as the house anyway.  Just one more adventure of the brand new homeowners!

Today's adventures include running to town to get all of the paint we will need next week (don't worry, someone from Home Depot will carry it to the car for me!) and pulling about 10,000 nails and screws out of the walls so that Andy can start patching them when he gets home from work.  After that, the guys can start painting the walls and ceilings.  I think that part will make me more excited because the house will start to look different and feel more like ours.

And with that, I will leave you with a picture and get started on another busy day!  Be back with a baby update next week :-)

It's hard to see because of my unwilling photographer, but here I am, using my brand new key to
open the door!  Too bad it was the front door and the key didn't work!

25 Weeks and Other Updates

So much has been going on that needs sharing!  First up, we have picked a name!  We debated for (what felt like) a long time before finally deciding on the one that I had picked out from the beginning.  I keep trying to tell Andy that he should just go with whatever I want because he almost always ends up deciding it's what he wants too.  Happened with the house, the name, and too many other situations to even count!  Anyway, our baby girl will be named . . .

We wanted something that would carry some meaning for us, so this name was selected with great care.  Elaina comes from my mother's mother's name, which was Elaine (well, it was her middle name, but it's what she went by).  She passed away when I was 3 or 4, I don't remember which, but old enough that I remember it happening.  Joyce was Andy's mother's name.  She passed away when he was in high school - I never got to meet her.  Aside from being a beautiful name (in our opinion!), we thought it was a great way to remember and honor two wonderful women who are no longer physically in our lives.  I have taken to calling her Ellie for short :-) 

So, little Ellie is 25 weeks cooked now!  She's still very active, which the doctor says is a good thing.  At this stage of development, she is putting on more fat (gotta stay warm!) and growing some hair!  Not much else to report on the development front.

We had our 24 week check-up with the OB last Thursday.  They said I look great!  Ellie loves playing hide and seek, even from the nurse just checking her heart rate.  She would find it for a second and then you'd hear a loud thump (I can personally verify it was the sound of a good swift kick) and then she'd be in a different place and the nurse would have to find her again.  After a few minutes (and lots of laughter) we got a reading of 150.  The doctor looked at my blood pressure and said it was even better than his, so I took that as a good sign, haha!  Oh, by the way, his name was Dr. Sheppard.  Yes, that's right ladies, I got to see Dr. Sheppard at this appointment.  Ok, so this Dr. was quite a bit older and much less 'McDreamy' than the one from TV, but it still made me giggle.  He measured my bump and said I was measuring right on, so that's encouraging, and I've gained another two pounds since week 20, so hopefully Ellie's growing quite nicely in there too.  We will find out on the 18th when we go for our next ultrasound at the specialist! 

In housing news . . . on Tuesday of last week, we were able to have our home inspection!  The inspector found a few little things that need fixing, but nothing that the combined handyman powers of Andy, his dad, and my dad can't fix!  So that's quite a relief.  I was only able to be there for a tiny portion of the inspection because I had to go to work, but I was able to walk through the whole house and take note of it's general condition.  The owner's had already moved out and they had CLEANED before they left!  I wasn't sure what to expect because our Realtor had warned us that anything can happen when people are in a situation where they are 'losing' their house.  It actually was left in really good shape for us!  They even had left the lawn mower and everything there and are still keeping up with taking care of the lawn in the meantime.  I (with the help of my mom, of course) will still go through and give everything a thorough scrubbing before moving in, but it was very nice to see that they had taken such good care of it for us.  All of this is happening now because . . .

Our settlement is scheduled for November 9th!  We will take the week after that to clean and paint and fix those little things (and finish packing, haha!) and then move the following weekend.  This is exciting on the one hand, and really a bummer on the other.  Now I actually have to pack.  That's really hard to do when you're only moving 5 minutes away.  Some things (like most of the kitchen) will just get thrown in laundry baskets and taken over by the car load to get put away immediately, but a LOT of the rest of the house really does need packed up into boxes so it is contained and doesn't have to have a 'home' right away.  I hate packing.  And I think I'm starting to nest, so it really goes against ALL of my instincts to be putting things IN boxes right now.  Andy's doing a lot of the work, which is very helpful, but it still makes me cranky to even think about having to do it.  It's one of those necessary evils, I suppose.  I'm trying to keep my spirits up by picking paint colors and planning room layouts and all that.

We just got an email from our Realtor saying that the seller would be willing to meet with us to show us how the downstairs gas fireplace works (something even the inspector couldn't figure out!) and also all the swimming pool information.  We're going to do it, because how else will we ever know?!  However, I am a little nervous that it will be awkward to meet with them.  They are, after all, losing their house to a couple of kids (that's what we look like, anyway!) that are barely older than their own.  We're going to have to see them at the settlement anyway, so it's only awkward because they'll be teaching us how to use their house.  Oddly enough, I had a dream about this very thing a few months ago.  They were nice about everything in my dream, so let's hope that turns out to be true :-) 

I don't have any new baby pictures for you this time, so as a consolation prize, here's a picture of our soon-to-be house, taken when we had our first walk-through all the way back in May.  I was convinced enough at that point to take pictures, it's just taken a little bit longer for the rest of the universe to agree with me :-) 

Home, Sweet Home.  Well, soon anyway!

24 Weeks and A Trip to the Specialist

So today we have arrived at 24 weeks!  Nothing huge developmentally going on, but Baby Girl's skin is starting to get more opaque and pink, so that's exciting.  She's punching and kicking me regularly, which I don't mind one bit.  Yesterday, she was kicking so hard that I could actually see my stomach move!  That was pretty crazy.  I had some serious mixed feelings.  On the one hand, it was awesome to actually SEE how strong she's getting.  On the other hand, I felt a bit like an alien was about to come busting out of me.  Andy hasn't gotten to see that yet, but he DID get to feel her kick last Sunday!  He got fed up with waiting, so he sat me down on the couch and parked his hands on my belly for over an hour to make sure that he would be there whenever she decided to kick.  He didn't recognize it at first because he thought it was just a little muscle twitch, but eventually he felt it for real.  He was pretty excited, to put it mildly.

As far as names go, we are 99% settled on the one that we like.  However, he still doesn't want me sharing just yet in case we change our minds.  I'm not going to be able to keep it to myself for too much longer though, so I hope he gets over it soon!

Quick update on the house: things are moving along very well - and very quickly!  We got all the paperwork from the banks and have our inspection scheduled for this coming Tuesday morning.  We've submitted all the necessary paperwork to our bank for the mortgage application to be processed and will be signing papers and scheduling the appraisal on Tuesday afternoon.  I don't know when we schedule the closing, but I'm hoping for November 2nd.  After we get the keys at the closing, we are going to give ourselves until Thanksgiving to get everything moved.  Our first month's mortgage is included in our closing costs, so we're going to go ahead and pay November's rent too.  This way, November is paid up on both houses and there's no rush to get from one to the other.  We can take a week or two to clean and paint the new house before moving everything and then have a few more days to clean over here before giving the keys back.  Giving ourselves this time and space will (we hope) really reduce the stress of moving and it gives me a little bit longer to get everything packed!

Now, onto our visit with the specialist this past week.  Andy was unable to get off of work to come with me, so my mom came along, which was a BIG help.  They people there were really nice and we could tell they really knew their stuff.  Basically, after almost 2 hours of ultrasound and talking with the doctor, they've come to the conclusion that she's still too small, but there's no apparent reason why.  The doctor explained that up until the 3rd trimester, all babies grow at pretty much the same rate.  After 28 weeks, they start growing differently based on their genetic predispositions to be tall or short or whatever.  So my being short should have nothing to do with the baby's size right now.  That being said, any measurements that fall between the 10th and 90th percentile are considered in the 'normal' range for growth.  Well my baby girl is only in the 7th percentile, so she's just small enough to warrant further investigation.

They did not change my due date because developmentally speaking, she's right on track for 24 weeks.  She has all the pieces and parts that she should have at this point and they are all put together in the right order and working well.  Overall, she is proportionate, except her femurs (thigh bones) are a bit shorter than they should be for the rest of her body.  The doctor basically said that being this small at this age could mean any one of a hundred different problems (none of which have solutions, of course), but there are no secondary indicators to point to any particular one of those problems.  Even her short leg bones don't necessarily mean anything because problems that cause that usually affect the arm bones too, but they look totally normal.  So she's small, but there's really no indication as to why.  He mentioned doing an amniocentesis to check for chromosomal abnormalities or infections, but didn't think it was really necessary at this point.  Her blood flow measurements everywhere (placenta, heart, brain) were good, so there's not really a concern about a nutrient deficiency or anything like that either.

We were pretty much told that there's nothing (specific) to worry about, but they are bringing me back on October 18th to check on her growth and make sure she's still progressing normally.  I'm guessing they are probably going to want to monitor her growth throughout the rest of the pregnancy too.  Andy's going to come to the rest of these specialist appointments with me, just because they're so overwhelming.  It's hard to process all that information all at once, especially knowing that no matter what the problem would be, there's no fix for it.  It did make me feel better to hear him say that it's entirely possible that I was like this as a baby too, they just didn't know it.  The technology wasn't sophisticated enough to take such precise measurements back then.  So it could still be just the way my babies are going to develop, we just don't know that yet.

So that was our trip to the specialist.  It didn't really change anything for me, seeing as how they still don't know if there's anything wrong, but at least I got some more good pictures out of it!

This one is probably my favorite from the whole session - you can see her profile really well, including her adorable little nose!  And, if you look carefully, her lips are parted and it looks (to me) like she's smiling :-) I have also been told that it looks like she is blowing a bubble, but that's just her hand behind the other side of her head.

Here, you can see that she's getting her workout on by doing crunches!  Her face is turned away (which is why her head looks weird) but it was funny to see her flex in and out of this position, touching elbow to knee.

So this coming Thursday I go for my regular visit to my OB and then I will be headed back to the specialists on October 18th.  Even though they say nothing is necessarily 'wrong' at this point, please continue to pray for my baby girl to grow big and strong and make it above that 10th percentile!

Ups and Downs

The past two weeks have been so full of ups and downs for us.  I'm exhausted.  It's been so crazy I haven't even wanted to give updates, but now enough has happened that I just have to!  But first, a baby update . . .

We have reached 23 weeks this weekend!  I can hardly believe it.  Baby Girl is kicking and punching like a champ and Momma loves it!  Well, most of the time.  Sometimes, she gets me in some kind of organ that really hurts.  But it's still very encouraging.  Andy still hasn't been able to feel anything, which makes us kind of sad.  I swear she's strong enough that he should  be able to feel her, but she always stops moving as soon as he touches my stomach.  Even when I touch it, she stops.  It's very frustrating.  The internet tells me she's about the size of a grapefruit now, but I'm not so sure with how she was measuring a few weeks ago.  The other cool fact is that all of her facial features are fully developed now, so we should (hopefully) get some good pictures at our next scan!

Ok, on to the life updates . . .

First let's start with an up:
Andy is making terrific progress on the furniture for Baby Girl's room!  We have the glider that is completely done and sitting in the living room . . .

. . . And it's super comfortable too!  I actually use it a lot already.  Last week, the dresser was also fully completed . . .

The picture is bad because of the horrible lighting in our basement, but it really is pretty.  We painted the hardware oil-rubbed bronze and I think it looks really sharp against the Marshmallow White.  And then just this past week, he has been working on getting the wardrobe sanded down and ready to prime . . .

Again, horrible pictures because the lighting is just terrible, but you get the idea.  They were gorgeous pieces of furniture before, and I really like how they are turning out!

Down:
Last Friday afternoon, on my way home from work, my car completely died.  I made it onto our road, but not quite home, so I had to walk the rest of the way.  This in itself was very upsetting to me, seeing as how it was a hot day and I'm quite pregnant.  We had it towed to the mechanic, who was closed for the weekend and couldn't diagnose anything until Monday.  So on Monday we got a call saying that it was the alternator (which is a fairly expensive part) and it was located in between the engine and the dash, so there would be quite a bit of labor as well.  Between driving Andy's car (when he wasn't at work) and borrowing my Father-in-law's car, I was able to make it to work and all my other commitments for the week, but it wasn't enjoyable.  I'm used to driving my SUV, so driving around all these little cars all week long just drove me crazy - not to mention how hard it was to get in and out of them!  Anyway, my car came home on Thursday night, but the bill was $659 (which is a lot for us).  So we had to pull money from our budgeted areas for moving expenses and improving the new house once we move in.  It's frustrating to be doing so well on budgeting for upcoming expenses and then have to use it because an unforeseen circumstance arises.  We were proud though that we didn't have to dip into our savings for our down payment and closing costs, so that was a little bit of a silver lining to an otherwise cloudy event.

Up:
On Saturday (the day after my car broke down), my mom came down to take me shopping at some nearby outlets to get ideas for clothes for Baby Girl!  It was so much fun.  We were supposed to be just window shopping so that she could get a feel for my taste in baby clothes and stuff like that, but we ended up walking away with a few adorable outfits that were just too cute to leave at the store.  I love that even though we moved away from my parents last fall, they still live close enough to come visit like that on a semi-regular basis.  It also made me so excited for the baby to be here so I can dress her up and snuggle her all day long :-)

Down:
Monday evening, I had to work.  That, in itself, is not really too big of a down.  However.  This particular retail job requires that I do a lot of straightening of the store.  I go around and put things away, straighten the items on the shelves, pull things forward, etc.  It ends up being a lot of getting up and down off the floor to reach the bottom shelves.  At 8:59 (we close at 9:00) I stood up from kneeling on the floor, and my pants ripped right out.  The new girl that I was training thought it was just hilarious, but I wasn't so amused.  Here's what I had to walk around in the rest of the night . . . 

Yeah.  Luckily, we were only there for another hour finishing things up and my t-shirt was just long enough to pull down over it.  Now, if you've ever been pregnant, you probably know this already, but those of you who haven't, let me make this very clear:  Maternity clothes are flipping expensive.  Seriously.  They cost just as much (if not more) than regular clothes, but they NEVER go on sale.  So when I found some on clearance at target for 50% off, I snatched up two identical pairs right away.  When I was wearing them, though, it felt like one pair was a half-size smaller than the other.  Not enough to be uncomfortable, just enough so that I could tell the difference between two otherwise identical pairs of jeans.  I guess the tight pair got just a little too tight on Monday night.  I now only own one pair of jeans and a pair of capris.  The weather has cooled down sufficiently that the capris are officially out of season.  So I have one pair of pants to wear to work and no money to go buy more because all our money just went into my car.  I guess I will start saving my pennies and hopefully be able to get a second pair in a few weeks.  It just feels ridiculous to only own one pair of jeans, but I guess that's the way life goes!

Up:
This is the big one.  This past Friday, I was in the music room and my phone chimed letting me know I had a voicemail.  Our cell phones don't get great reception in our house (because of the tin siding, we think) so it never rang, but the voicemail was very surprising!  It was our Realtor, Janet.  She's been awesome, by the way.  If any of you are ever looking for a house in my area, let me know and I will get you hooked up with her.  Anyway, she called to say that we heard back from the mysterious investor that was the last piece to the puzzle.  They wanted us to change something.  Andy got home and she called and actually talked to him and it turns out that they will approve it if we push our closing date back (from October 19th) to on or before November 9th!  Of course, we said yes to that and went right out and signed the papers agreeing to it.  So we don't have all the paperwork from the banks and such yet, but we DO have a closing date SET for no later than November 9th!  It will take another week or so to get the rest of the paperwork in and then we will file the actual mortgage application and schedule the inspection and really get the ball rolling.  The best part, for me, is that I know we will have the keys by November 9th.  No more waiting and wondering.  It's time to start packing.  Well, we decided I could wait until the beginning of October to start that so that I have a week to just enjoy this good news and get mentally prepared.  The only drawback is that now yesterday was the first day of Autumn and I don't get to put out any of my fall decorations.  But I'll take it if it means I get to put up the Christmas tree in a house that we own!  I just feel so excited and so relieved.  This is really, finally, happening.  And just in time too, because I was starting to feel antsy about getting the nursery set up :-)

Neutral:
I have mixed feelings about this next one because it hasn't happened yet.  On the 27th, we will go in to the specialist for the scan to see why Baby Girl was measuring so small.  I've been really hungry this week, so I hope she was just a little behind and will have caught up by then.  Andy can't get the day off to go with me, so my amazing Mom is coming down so I don't have to go alone.  I'm not really worried, I just don't like having to wait so long to find out.  Luckily, a doctor should actually perform the scan and be able to tell us something right away, so that cuts down on the waiting quite a bit.  Anyway, just please keep us in your prayers this week for good reports, calm nerves, and a cooperative baby!  

(Also, I told Andy that we need to agree on a name for her before I go in for this appointment, so hopefully that announcement should be coming very soon as well!)

20 Weeks, A House Update, and A Guessing Game!

Today we have reached the halfway point!  20 weeks!  We definitely had a growth spurt this week.  I've been getting hungry roughly every two hours.  I feel huge!  Baby is supposedly the size of a banana, which means 10.2 ounces and 6.5 inches.  He or she is moving around a lot more (I'm 99% sure I feel it now!), which is great, but it also means wiggling right into my bladder or up into my stomach, giving me heartburn.  Oh, the heartburn.  Tums are my new best friend.  Some people have told me that means I'm going to have a hairy baby, but I dunno.  My mom apparently had a lot of heartburn with my sister and I don't remember her coming out particularly hairy.  I mean, she had hair, but she wasn't furry or anything!  Leg cramps have been plaguing me at night too, which, along with the heartburn and continuing crazy dreams, mean that I haven't been sleeping very well.  Not cool when it comes to being coherent for work!  Hopefully not too much more of that (work) though, before I can leave and concentrate on the studio and the baby and getting into the new house!

Speaking of the new house, we heard from our Realtor this week!  Here's the background situation, in case you don't already know.  We found a house and I fell in love with it.  Andy took a little more time (he was hesitant about the pool, of all things), but after we found out about the baby, he was on board with it too.  We put in an offer in June and it was accepted by the sellers right away.  We signed the paperwork on June 25th.  Typically, we'd be homeowners by now.  However, the sellers have gone bankrupt, so the house is tied up in Bankruptcy as one of their assets.  So, it had to be released from Bankruptcy court before we could do anything with it, which we were told would take around 30 days.  THEN, the house is in short sale, which means that the bank is letting the owners sell it for less than they owe so that everyone can get out from under it before a foreclosure has to go through.  These particular owners had also taken out a second mortgage at some point, which means that both banks have to approve of the sale price and the loss they'd be taking on the house.  That can take anywhere from 60 days to 6 or 7 months after the Bankruptcy release.  So, we have absolutely no idea when we are going to get into our house.  In theory, this works out ok for us because we're currently renting right now with no lease, so we can stay as long as we need and then leave whenever we get the house with no penalties or anything.  But there is a slight chance that all this could drag out beyond January, when Baby is due to arrive.  So there's a lot of stress there.  We could either be here with no room for the baby, or at any time get a call saying we've got the house and have 30 days to get all the paperwork and inspections done and move in.  That's a lot of pressure every time the phone rings.

So we got an email from our Realtor the other day.  She said that the listing agent has gotten verbal acceptance from the bank holding the second mortgage!  Our offer was enough to cover the entire debt to the first bank, so they aren't an issue.  However.  There is a surprise FOURTH party that no one (not even the listing agent) knew about until this week.  The second bank had sold their portion of the mortgage to an investor at some point.  So now we have to wait for written approval from them too.  The bad news is that we don't know who this investor is, so there's no way to tell how long it could take.  The good news is, out of 4 parties needing to approve our offer, we are down to the last one.  It's still crazy stressful.  Every week that passes with Baby's development, I worry that we won't make it into the new house in time to get the nursery ready for him or her.  I just have to keep reminding myself that God allowed all this to fall into place like this on purpose.  We wouldn't have gotten pregnant or gotten the house if it wasn't going to fall together ok.  That's a tough thing to remember, but I'm trying :-)

So, that was the house update!  Now, onto the guessing game.  Andy and I decided long before we even thought about getting pregnant, that when the time came, we wanted to find out the sex of the baby.  We're going to have that opportunity on Thursday!  We go in early on Thursday morning for the Anatomy Scan, commonly referred to as the ultrasound.  We'll (hopefully) get to find out boy or girl, but also learn all about how our baby is developing.  This is good, but also a little nerve wracking.  If there's a physical or developmental problem, this is when we'll find out.  So I'm a little anxious going into it, but holding on to the exciting part about finding out more about who will be joining our lives in January.  In the spirit of friendly competition, let's open up the debate!  You tell me: will it be a boy or a girl??  There are a lot of ways that people say they can tell, so I'm going to try to give you the answers to all the wives' tale questions . . . 

Heart Rate:  160 both times we've listened in.
Craving:  Sweet things like fruity candies (not chocolate at all) and also some salty things like chips and pretzels, but mostly pizza and pizza-type foods (garlic bread, pizza rolls, etc.)
Heartburn:  Yes.  Definitely.
Carrying High or Low:  I don't know.  The baby feels to be sitting pretty low, but when I look at my belly, the widest part seems to be smack dab in the middle.  Well, you tell me.  Here's the 360 view of my baby belly at 20 weeks, including a backside shot for if you are like my coworker Jackie who swears that you can tell by looking from behind . . . 

There you have it!  That's all the information I can think to provide you with.  If there's anything I missed, let me know.  So, what do you think?  Am I cookin' a boy or a girl in my oven??

TidBits

So I haven't updated in a while.  Nothing's really been happening, so that's partly why, but I've also had a crazy week at work.  Today is my first day off from both jobs in well over a week, so I figured I'd pop in and offer up a few tidbits from the past week.  Here we go....

We started our registries last Sunday!  It was pretty fun, but kind of stressful at the same time.  Thanks for all the facebook feedback about what we should make sure to include!  We got all of the necessities as far as we can tell.  And throughout the week, Andy actually somehow talked me into cloth diapers.  We had decided against it at first because the house we will be moving to has public water and sewer, so we figured the water bills would outweigh the diaper cost savings.  If there's one thing in the world I can depend on, it's that my husband is a planner.  He crunched numbers for days to figure out that we would still save money with cloth.  It took a lot of convincing, because I really gravitate toward throwing the poo away rather than putting it in my washer several times a week, but he finally talked me into it.

We had an issue with our fridge this week.  Apparently it was on a defrost cycle and so the temperature rose slightly.  It was enough to make us realize that our water bottles were not as cold as they should have been.  Andy panicked and rotated the dial toward 'cold'.  Unfortunately, the temperature continued to hold at a steady 50.  If you know anything about fridges, you know that's entirely too warm.  So the next day I looked at the dial a bit closer, and realized that 'cold' is actually the opposite of 'colder', so he had actually turned the temperature up.  Oops.  So after much freaking out and random adjustments, it's finally back to a nice cold temperature with the dial set at 'normal'.  All that for nothing.  It was pretty exciting.  Or not.

We enjoyed watching the Olympic opening ceremony on Friday night!  We stayed up until midnight to watch the whole thing and loved every minute of it.  It got varied reviews and a lot of the people I know on facebook apparently didn't like it.  I, for one, thoroughly enjoyed it.  Mr. Bean's appearance may have actually been my favorite part, though the flame lighting was incredibly touching as well.  It was fresh and creative and really well done, in my opinion.  If you didn't like it, well then that's ok too, I'm just saying that I really did.  So far I've also really enjoyed watching some swimming and gymnastics qualifying rounds.  And I've got to say that I'm super lucky that Andy is as much of a fan as I am.

My mom, dad, and sister came to visit yesterday!  We had fun shopping for the last bit of fabric for the baby's quilt, which is looking super cute!  I can't wait to show you all pictures.  She's going nuts (in a very, very good way) with anything fabric in the nursery.  It's going to be beautiful!  We also had fun just sitting around catching up and hearing all about their recent trip to Niagra Falls.  I hadn't seen any of them in a while, so it was a really great day.  Plus, we went to my favorite Italian restaurant for lunch, so that always makes for a good day!

Also we got a call yesterday from our realtor (who needed some info from us) that may have indicated that things are moving faster with our house than we thought they would.  None of us really knows what's going on, so I'm trying not to get too excited just yet, but it's still good to know that things are moving in a forward direction!

And last, but certainly not least, we made it to 15 weeks on Saturday!  The Bump tells me that Baby is about 4 inches long and weighs 2.5 ounces.  Roughly the size of a navel orange, which is pretty adorable to picture.    And I'm starting to show more and more, which is a good thing for me!  My tummy has [almost] always been a bit jiggly (come on, whose hasn't??), but now it's starting to tighten up and jiggle less.  Good news all around!  I've been lotion-ing up with cocoa butter to help avoid stretch marks, but I hope that I'm not so vain that I'll be upset if I get them anyway.  I have one pair of regular jeans that still fits.  One.  They got pretty filthy at work on Saturday evening, so I had nothing to wear to church on Sunday.  I ended up pulling out the maternity jeans and my belly is ALMOST big enough to hold them up properly!  I tried wearing my capris a week or two back and they just would not stay up, so this relative success with the jeans is very encouraging.  I know it's a silly thing to be excited about, but I still am!  My next appointment is on the 6th, and then we will set the date for the growth scan ultrasound to find out if it's a boy or a girl!

So that's what happened this week.  The next time something exciting happens, I'll be sure to let you know!