Over Being Pregnant

Although mentally I know that it is better for baby to stay in longer and it helps us for her to stay the full 40 weeks while we move, my body says I want her out NOW! I am just tired of being pregnant and the hot days don't help at all. Maybe Gabe screaming all day from teething doesn't help matters...then again once she's here that will just make 2 babies screaming.

Baby Looking Good

The ultrasound showed baby weighing in at 6lb 1oz with plenty of fluid. No dilation or anything yet so looks like she's planning to stay awhile (and possibly be bigger than her brothers)!

Updates

It was way too hot today! It's still roasting in our house and I'm sure that my pregnant state is not helping matters. Gabe (who is normally asleep before 8) is still making noises in his bed. Luke is awake due to his 3.5 hour nap this afternoon.

Our house inspection went pretty well today - a few things for Matt's to-do list, but not too bad. The work on our current house seems to be going well and is almost finished.

Now to focus on the ultrasound tomorrow morning and to find out if I'm imagining things or if my body is really dilating already. Seriously, I don't see this girl staying in until 40 weeks, but we shall see.

Friday Morning

One of the few mornings that I decide to set an alarm, the boys decide to be awake off and on from 3:30-5:00 a.m. I think for Gabe it was the teething. Not sure why Luke was awake, just glad they both went back to sleep. So I dragged myself out of bed at 7 this morning (earlier than I've been getting up) and headed out to a few garage sales. Didn't find too much though. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow morning. Then we headed over to church and Gabe seemed to do okay getting dropped off in the toddler area. Luke had a blast because his group played outdoors on the playground. Afterward, we headed for the mall for lunch and a quick trip to Target. Gabe was asleep halfway home and luckily stayed asleep when I transferred him to his crib. Luke worked for awhile in his new numbers and letters book that I bought for him and is now laying quietly in bed. Compared to some of the previous days, the kids are doing wonderfully. Then I realized that I think Luke skipped his morning inhaler, which may very well confirm my theory that his inhalers make him act crazy!

Ultrasound #4 Coming Up

I'm 35 weeks today and the doctor says I'm only measuring at 31 weeks which means we have another ultrasound scheduled next week. Gabe also measured a couple of weeks behind, but I can't recall if he measured quite this small. He was normal sized once they did the ultrasound so hopefully baby girl is too.

We Have a House

Our offer was accepted and our buyers agreed to moving our closing date back so if everything else falls into place, we should be able to close on both houses the same day! Exactly 6 days before baby girl is due to arrive (assuming she hangs in there that long). I'm predicting that she will make her arrival on the day of the closings just to complicate things a little bit.

In other news, we moved Gabe into Luke's room to give them a trial run at sharing a room. Last night was the first night and aside from them talking in jibberish to one another for 45 minutes, it wasn't too bad. Nap time today, on the other hand, was a different story. Gabe was screaming hysterically - I think due to teething. After Tylenol and a bottle (yes I caved and gave a bottle), I finally had to sternly tell them both to lay down and they did. Heard a few more short cries, but it's been pretty quiet since then. Now it's time to get Gabe's old room completely cleaned out for the move. That'll make one room down and 8 more to go.

The Waiting Game...

So all the official papers are turned in for our house offer and to finalize things with our buyers. Now we wait... Waiting is almost as hard as making all the decisions along the way (though not as stressful). For the time being, we pack and pack and pack some more.

The Teeth Have Arrived (really this time)

I can finally see 2 little white teeth starting to push through on the bottom. Of course this means Gabe can get a little fussier than normal. He's also hitting a developmental spurt. He began picking up words like crazy and seems to understand everything we say to him. This new found ability is keeping him awake at night as he'd much rather practice talking/playing than sleep. Since I can only get a good night's sleep every 3 nights anyway, it shouldn't phase me too much if he's up a lot at night.

Luke got a new bike today and was sooo excited to show off his riding skills! He had a couple of bikes, but neither of them were quite the right size for him at the moment. He tells me he has the fastest bike now and wants to take the training wheels off! I'm not sure we're ready for that...

The House Search Continues; Gabe Finally Calls Me Mama

We looked at 5 more houses on Sunday and really liked 2 of them. My favorite, of course, is the most expensive one and the one we probably shouldn't realistically put an offer on because our goal is to save money while I'm not working. There is another house we really liked though that is a more reasonable financial choice as well. We should put an offer on it when Matt gets back Wednesday after we look at it one more time and check out just a couple more houses to be sure. This means that maybe things will start to fall into place and I can stop freaking out about not having somewhere to live after our house closes. The good thing about having to do these repairs is that we will have to push our closing date back a couple of weeks to get everything done which actually helps us have less of a gap between the two closing dates. If things work out, we'll close on one house early in the week and the new house later in the week - that is the week before baby girl arrives. And yes, she is still unnamed because I can't make a decision on that either! We may have one name that has risen to the top, but we're not sure we like the meaning when you look it up - should that be a reason not to use it? I mean really, who puts much stock into what names mean?

In other news, Gabe spontaneously called me "mama" after months of referring to me as "dada!" He's always been able to differentiate when asked who mama or dada is, but has insisted on using the term dada for both of us until today. He also tried and pretty accurately said "Gabe." So now his list of words includes: baba (bottle), bebe (blanket), baby (someone's belly since there is a baby in mommy's tummy), k (Luke), up, buberry (blueberry), b with wild hand gestures (bread), ssss (shoe), diapa (diaper), ball (in a deep growly voice), and dog (also in a deep growly voice). We're not sure why those two words are spoken in the growly voice, but they were also 2 of the first words he mastered. The rest of his communication relies on a handful of signs that he's learned (more, please, thank you, all done) and a lot of nodding, shaking, and pointing. He's also pretty good at pointing to body parts when asked (nose, ear, mouth, eye, finger, hair, toe).

Luke continues to amaze me with his development. He is so well mannered and able to understand concepts well beyond his years. Don't get me wrong, he has his moments where you can tell he's four and he breaks down (usually if he's really tired). But for the most part, he does what he's asked without arguing, though it's almost guaranteed that he'll ask why. He is very interested in reading and making books right now. He also likes to sit down and write lists (made up of random letters) and complete mazes. His ability to complete mazes in under 10 seconds amazes me - I'm not sure I could finish them that quickly! Luke pays attention to the details in everything we do, especially in books. TV shows or movies with a villain have never bothered him, but I read him a Junie B. Jones book about monsters under the bed the other night and it took more than an hour to convince him to sleep in his own bed and there there are NO monsters under it. DO NOT joke with him about monsters being real or I will send him to sleep with you for the night! I had to read the entire chapter book so that he could see everything was fine in the end and Junie B. wasn't scared anymore.

Good News, Bad News

The good news is that we can actually afford the estimate for repairing the house and completing the sale! The fact that the damage doesn't extend behind the brick was definitely an answer to prayer because it would have added a lot to the cost. Unfortunately, we also found out that the house we were seriously considering putting an offer on sold this week! We still have a few that we can consider, but of course each has its own set of flaws. We're going to look at a few more tomorrow and hopefully find one that we really like. The other bad news is that Luke is sick. It seems to be sinus/allergy related, but we can't really tell for sure. He does know how to time getting sick on the weekends so that the doctor's office charges after-hours fees. His breathing always becomes labored when he's sick or congested so we started up the inhalers tonight. I'm sitting across the room from him though and can still hear him breathing - I'm really hoping that doesn't mean we'll be in for another trip to the ER for treatments.

Friends at the Park

Luke was so excited to meet 2 little boys at the park today who were right about his age. They spent the morning making grasshopper homes, collecting bugs, climbing trees, and playing all kinds of interesting games. Gabe, on the other hand, could care less what the other kids were doing. He just wanted to walk around and do his own thing which kept mommy pretty busy tracking him. It was nice to enjoy a day outdoors where the heat wasn't overpowering. Of course, we tried to go out in the afternoon, but the heat drove us right back inside!

A Little Calmer Now

So I'm a little calmer now that Matt talked to the bank and found out we qualify for a different type of loan that will allow us to buy even if we end up spending most of our money on the repairs to our current house. So I started packing boxes in hopes that we actually end up moving. We still don't have estimates for the repairs though which makes it difficult to make and real decisions about what to do. We should have those by tomorrow and then we just have to hammer out details with the buyers. The good news is that this could push the closing date back a couple of weeks and give us a little more time to make our final decision on the next house, get the offer in, and set up that closing date. I'm really hoping that we can still get all of this accomplished before baby girl makes her appearance. We're at 6w6d until she's due!

One Thing After Another

So we came back from our week long lake vacation to find out that our house has a water leakage problem around the front door that has rotted part of the wall and even some of the floor. This is not good news because we were barely going to have the money we needed to close and put a down payment on the next house the way it was - now we have to magically come up with several thousand more if we want to sell. We're still waiting to get some estimates, but it doesn't look good and of course homeowner's insurance doesn't cover it unless we find that somehow it was caused by storm related damage. This just complicates an already stressful situation. All I want to know is where we will be living when baby girl decides to make her arrival. I really felt like I was supposed to stay home with the kids this year, but now I'm starting to second guess that decision.