Ready

Had our final walk-through of the house yesterday. I'm just ready to be moved in! Friday can't come fast enough. We met the sellers too. They seemed nice enough. Luckily all the repairs are done and they're finished moving out so now we're just waiting to sign paperwork so we can get the keys. I have the feeling it's going to be a long night Friday.

Had another DR appointment today. As it gets closer I start to feel like I'm living there. 50% effaced and the baby's in the perfect position. So now we just need to keep her there for a few more weeks. I don't think that's problem. She doesn't really have much room to move so I can't see her presenting breach. She has a nice heartbeat of 165 and the PA says she thinks she's doing just perfectly.

Last night was SO weird. Loren and I were hooked on a couple intense episodes of Grey's Anatomy so we were awake a lot longer than usual and Alysha started crying about 1:30 and instead of letting her cry back to sleep we got up to see what the problem was. She started crying that she needed to go potty, so I took her to sit on it. She didn't do anything and I led her back to bed where she told me she wanted to watch "Ellen". We watch the Ellen show every day. I told her it wasn't on so she told me to turn on Elmo's World. Obviously I wasn't going to let her up to sit on the couch and watch Elmo's world in the middle of the night, so she started crying uncontrollably for Elmo's World. It was so bizarre! We finally got her back to sleep after a drink of milk and a drink of water and letting her cry for a few more minutes. I don't think she was actually awake for any of that. It was just so unlike her! Usually if she wakes up in the middle of the night she's back to sleep super quickly. But I wonder if all this moving stress and the coming baby is starting to wear off on her a little bit. Cuz the night before that she tried to move into our bed for the first time in a long time and Loren just led her back to bed and she fell right back asleep. But anyway we didn't get to sleep until 2:30 and now I'm SO exhausted. Less than 5 hours of sleep is really not enough for me whether I'm pregnant or not!

I'm trying to remember a few more of the hilarious things she's doing lately. She's got such a personality and talks NONSTOP. But I've got pregnancy brain and if I don't write it down immediately I am not remembering it for longer than a few minutes. Sorry Aly!

Follow-Up

So got my hips adjusted and I was impressed. It was super easy. And it made me feel better simply because the DR confirmed that something was wrong! My left hip was up higher than my right and my L4 vertebrae and sacrum were twisted in opposite directions and stuck there. I feel immediate relief when I sat up after getting it fixed, although I did feel a bit of muscle soreness for a little bit afterwards. But I knew the true test was going to come the next morning when I woke up and tried to get out of bed. I slept so much better last night. It was WAY easier to roll over and I didn't feel like crying once an hour. Getting out of bed was much easier this morning. I still feel lots of stretching and soreness in my upper belly after walking around, but I think I just need a support belt. Anybody used one? Is it worth it to buy one for 5 remaining weeks, or not worth the money?

Been spending the afternoons each day packing and I'm starting to make a dent...I think...I've got most of my clothes all packed and all our books. Loren's got most of his clothes packed too and our pots and pans, etc. I think next I'm going to start tackling Alysha's room. She doesn't play with half her toys anyway and heaven knows she has way more 2T clothes than she's going to wear in the next week. Saturday's going to be the biggest packing day for us. Moving most our stuff to the garage so it's out of the way and then it's just waiting for our closing day to get here. Less than a week!

Relief

So as I said in the last post, I've been having horrible hip pain. Walking, sitting, rolling, they're all painful. So I brought it up at my last DR appointment and I was worried that she'd say, that's normal for pregnancy, get over it. But luckily she didn't! Instead I'm going into the DR today to have my hips adjusted and hopefully put back into alignment. She said that the ladies that she's known having this done have walked out of the DR office feeling like doing cartwheels! So hopefully that's me :).


We also heard back from the sellers finally about the repairs. They should all be done by the end of this week! Which means we're on track to close and move early next week. So it's been moving and cleaning for us this week. Hopefully we'll be set to have everything ready to go by the end of Saturday night. Loren's been such an amazing help. I feel like garbage, literally every day. I have a hard time standing up long enough to take a shower without feeling like taking a nap afterwards. So he's been doing the majority of the packing so far, which truth be told, he's much better at it than I am anyway.

Discomfort

So I'm going to try to not post what I've already said, but...pregnancy brain...

House update:

We're 3 weeks away! YAY! We're coming up on the final preparations and I can't even explain how much I can't wait for all this to be done. It's so stressful. I can't imagine trying to do this in a place where we didn't already live! It'd be impossible. We've been on the phone with realtors almost everyday trying to pin down where the sellers are with the work orders. The hard part is that they don't want to use the same companies as we've gotten quotes from so they've been busy getting their own quotes, which I really do understand. They want to make sure they're getting the best deal for their money. The issue has been just making sure that they're using an accredited contractor and mold clean-up company and not just some cousin's, brother-in-law's, best friend. We just want to make sure it's done right so we don't have to do it again down the road! But looks like they're taking the proper measures and we're finally moving along. The next stresses include our appraisal to pass for the FHA loan, and then packing packing packing. We have so much stuff, I just look around and I don't even know where to start. Once we get some boxes and just get going I'm sure it'll go pretty fast.

Baby update:

As I said, all this house stuff has made me a basket case, which I'm sure pregnancy hormones are helping along. Sleep is pretty hard to come by, and when it actually happens I wake up SO sore. I wake up every time I have to roll over. And in addition to that my hips and lower back/abdomen are killing me the next morning. I kinda stagger to the couch and die until Alysha's done with breakfast and then she gets to watch tv while I take a warm shower and try to loosen up. 7 weeks left! ;) Despite the stress, I've been SO much better at keeping my blood pressure down this time. Fortunately. This time, last time, I was put on bed rest for a week while we did tests to see if I had pre-eclampsia. (I didn't). I would not be able to handle bed rest this time!
We're pretty anxious for this house stuff to be over so we can concentrate on baby stuffs. Loren and I were talking last night and it hasn't even become real yet because with Alysha by this point baby stuff had completely taken over our lives. It's all we thought about and spent all our time getting stuff and making sure everything was ready for her arrival. This time we've been SO busy with tax stuff, house stuff, and running after AlyRae, that we haven't even started to get baby stuff ready. It's just going to have to wait. So baby girl stay in there til after March 4th, k! Then we'll have plenty of time to buy a new car seat, set up the crib, wash baby clothes, and prepare for you to join our family. :)
We are also trying to cement a name. Right now we're fairly sure that her first name with be Evelyn. (Evy) We've been coming back to it for the entire pregnancy. But a middle name is a little difficult this time. When we decided on Alysha, Renae came instantly. Loren likes Evelyn Jane. I like Evelyn Claire. I guess we'll give it some more time :). As I said 7 weeks left!

Finally Some Good News

So today we finally got the sellers signed forms back! They've agreed to fix the roof :). Loren got to go up and look at it today with a mold specialist. He said it basically looks like whoever redid the roof 9 years ago just covered up the damage with another layer instead of ripping it out and replacing it. Just laziness. And maybe a little bit of the previous owners lack of desire to pay for the work it would be. Anyway it's good news for us because it appears to have been a slow problem over the past 10 years and it's so much better than it could have been. Either way we're happy to know that they're going to take us seriously and fix the problem so we aren't faced with having to walk away from this house that we are excited to be moving into. :)

Also had a DR appointment this week and was very happy to discover that my blood pressure is still perfectly normal. This is the time in my last pregnancy that it started going really high and I had to pass tests and stuff, but not so far! I also passed my glucose test with flying colors which is really amazing with the amount of chocolate that I eat. :) This baby has a serious sweet tooth. :)

A Home?

It's been a wild few weeks. I'm a little anxious to see what my blood pressure's going to look like at my DR appointment tomorrow morning...

After looking at about 30 more houses we put another offer in on a 5 bedroom house off Woodruff. And after a bit of negotiations our offer was accepted. I still feel like we're paying a bit more than the house is worth...but what do I know about houses? :). So then we had our inspection. It was REALLY well. There wasn't anything that was considered to be a major problem, or anything that Loren doesn't feel comfortable fixing himself. The sellers have not been to careful so there were a bunch of fire hazards, but once all their stuff gets out of there those issues will be eliminated! We were congratulating ourselves until he got to the attic. The roof was redone about 9 years ago so we figured all was well. But not so. Probably when they redid the roof, someone stepped through it! Because of the snow we couldn't tell how they fixed that situation, but they did a sloppy, lazy job of it however it was done. Because of it, the fan from the bathroom has been emptying all the moisture into the roof and it was really weak and yucky. So now we've put in that they need to get it fixed before we continue on. We didn't know if they maybe didn't know about it? Or maybe they didn't know it was so bad? Or maybe they're just really dishonest people, either way, hopefully they can see the light and accept to fix it or we'll have to walk away. Again. Their realtor seemed to think it wouldn't be that big of a deal for them to fix it, so hopefully he's right. I worry about the snow issue and this is not a very great time of year to be redoing a roof. We're supposed to hear back by tomorrow.

Then it's been kinda haunting me that I needed to check our car seat and see when it expires. Lo and behold I was stupid when buying it secondhand, and it expired while we were using it with Alysha. So now we're faced with the dilemma of buying a new one, buying another secondhand one, or possibly using this one for a month until we can afford a new one. Luckily we still have about 2 months until the baby decides to make an appearance (hopefully).

Despite these issues we've been having, I'm still so happy with the decision I made to quit my job. I'm so much happier being with Alysha everyday. And she's better behaved too. Or maybe it's just that I'm not as tired by bedtime so I have more patience for her acting up! :) We also haven't eaten out NEARLY as much with me staying home. And amazingly the house it a bit cleaner :) Mission accomplished.

January Blues

Well we lost that house too. Just by a couple of hours! It was a pretty sad way to start out the new year. But we moved on and saw about 35 more houses that week. I'm exhausted! All that house hunting got me pretty cranky by the end of the week. But we might have found another one. It's a well taken care of 5 bedroom house. We love it, but we need them to come down in price about 5 grand. So we'll see if they're willing. :)

Now to take down my Christmas tree......