we are having a baby

Its going to be a bit before I publish this, since we are being pretty closed lipped about it, but I am pregnant! I was figuring we were close to 8 weeks, and had an ultrasound yesterday to confirm and reassure. The tech put us at 7 weeks 2 days, which seems about right really based on my high tech calculations I had done (but won't go into detail here about).

It was SO COOL to see the little flutter of heartbeat on our little blob on the screen. She pointed out which ovary it came from (the right) and everything seems to be growing well. She even did a 3-D picture for us, which is kinda silly cause its just a blob in 3-D and the regular picture actually looks better I think. I really can't wait to show the pictures with everyone, but right now we have just kept them to ourselves.

I have been so sick! Not throwing up ever (although I wish sometimes I did), just a really precarious stomach not unlike a next day hangover stomach (i'm sure there are those that can relate). I had about 1 1/2 weeks of feeling just horrible, not eating made me feel crappy, eating too much made me feel crappy, and eating anything was the same. Water made me feel sick. I usually drink a lot of it, so that was hard and also made me dehydrated. I started taking B6 pills and trying really hard to eat small meals and not drink with my food (SO hard for me!) and I have felt a bit better the last few days. I'm not sure if its the vitamins or what, but I am thankful that instead of constantly feeling nauseous I just feel it mildly a few times a day. Amanda says she heard on NPR that the sicker you are, the higher your babies' IQ. Uh huh.

I have been EXHAUSTED. I feel totally lame cause we just moved and there are still so many things to do around here and its all I can do to go to work and come home and stay awake until bedtime. BCH has certainly taken on a heavier load around here and I love him even more for it. I don't remember feeling like this with my other pregnancies; I am worried that my age is going to really make this a tough one if its killing me at this point. Hopefully I will get that second trimester surge of energy I have read about.

We have our first appointment with our midwife, Lindsay, in about two weeks and I hope at that point everything is on track. If so, I think we will start telling people then. I can't wait!

Our house - in pictures!

I'm not so great at uploading pictures on this blog, but here you go. Please ignore the few random boxes that are in some of the pictures - still got more things to put away, but we have made some great progress so far. This is the master bedroom. It has a walk in closet, which is really an add on room, but it was too messy looking to take a picture of.
Upstairs half bath. It overlooks the back yard, and its nice to have a second bathroom for Nathan.
Nathan's bedroom upstairs. Its a decent size room, despite the slanty ceilings
Kitchen. You can't really tell from this picture but it has an old cast iron one piece sink / drawers. Its pretty retro cool. The cupboards are really old as well but they are in decent shape and have a nice charm to them.
Back yard. Kind of a ghetto cement patio. I plan to put in a garden off the back of the house (on the left side of the picture) but this year my tomatoes and peppers get to grow in pots.
Front view of the house. The yard and landscaping is really nice; a lot of great shade plants on the west side of the house and these bushes provide great privacy for our fabulous porch.
Porch. The previous owner rebuilt it using Trex board about five years ago. He also left us this nice bench. We look forward to many many hours of porch time here.
Our 100+ year old house comes equipped with a boiler and radiators. This terrified me when we initially looked at the house, but supposedly radiant heat is a better heat. Now we just need to figure out how to turn it on and control each radiator. Most of our radiators look like this one, which are original to the house, and are pretty cool looking.

Dining room. Almost every floor in the house is hardwood. The floor is a little wavy in this room (BCH says it undulates) but its not too bad and our inspector assured us it wasn't a structural problem. Our hardwood floors are REALLY creaky though (no sneaking around the house at night, thats for sure!)

Living room. The fireplace is not as bright red as it looks in this picture, its just the lighting. But it is red. I hated it initially. But its grown on me, and we found this really nice rug that mostly matches. I would like to paint it a slightly different shade of red. Also, that faux painted wall is going to be re-painted. Its pretty awful looking.
Another angle of the living room. It has a really nice window bay and a lot of light coming in all the windows. Our furniture looks pretty good in here. I love this room!

There you go - not pictures of everything (bathroom, walk in closet, 3rd bedroom, mud room and basement were not included). We have some more things to change, like painting, as well as installing a dishwasher in the kitchen and creating some more counter space. But so far we are loving it even more than we thought we would.

Settling In

Our new house is finally feeling like ours. The closing / recording / possession did not go as we had hoped, and we ended up moving on Sunday of Memorial weekend. Luckily, we have some great family and friends that made it go quick and smooth (for a move, at least).

One cool thing is we keep getting checks in the mail. Interest reimbursement from the title company, car insurance overpaid, appraisal fee paid back for all our loan troubles, deposit on our rental place refunded, it just goes on! Its been awesome because we have been able to get some nice stuff like a new tv stand, an awesome rug and coffee table for the front room (the whole house is hardwood / tile so we need a lot of rugs), and a nightstand so far. We plan to install a dishwasher, build a cabinet around that, and buy a butcher block table for more counter space. And of course there are a lot of 'house' things we don't own yet and need; such as a ladder and yard tools.

A week of cleaning and unpacking and now I feel home. I LOVE this house. Everyone that comes over says they love it too. This house feels like US. I love that we own a 100+ year old home, with its high ceilings, boiler, creaky floors, and odd additions. I love that I have this with Brandon, and that we are making steps like this together. Building a home for my boys, and for our future.

three weeks

We are set to close in three weeks.

If all goes well, moving in four weeks.

(side note: whats everyone doing Memorial weekend?...)

Super excited!

We love this house.

The inspection went well, and they agreed to fix a few of the minor things. BONUS.

went to IKEA yesterday and wrote a very long list of things we need, and things we want.

(Man, we have some crappy furniture that should have been put out in the pasture long ago.)

I've also been keeping an eye on KSL and Craigslist for a used portable dishwasher.

This will make Nathan very happy.

It will also make me happy cause my dishes will get chipped and broken a lot less.

We have a bit of painting to do, but not much.

I still want to paint the fireplace purple.

BCH does not like this idea, but its better than the fire engine red it currently sports.

It will look good with our green couches, I promise!

Did I already mention I love this house?

"makes us happy"

It has been quite the dramatic day; actually the whole last week. We got back out there again and saw houses the very next day after cancelling our contract on the Kensington house. We saw a house we LOVED. So the next day we went out again, saw a few really really cool houses, and again saw the house we loved. This time, we brought my sister for another perspective and had both of our real estate agents with us. Christina admitted, after touring the house and deciding she also loved it, that she had come there with the agenda to talk us out of making an offer on it cause it had a shared driveway.

Our previous experience of rushing into it made us hesitant. So, we slept on it. And decided the next morning to make an offer. Offer submitted, with an expectation that they might counter offer. The next morning Christina tells us that they had gotten another offer and we were to bring back our 'biggest and best' offer. We talked a lot about what we were willing to do, and amended our offer.

Christina called this morning trying to track down our finance guys cell number so she could get a pre-qualification letter. This was a good sign and made us feel hopeful.

Then we don't hear anything. Finally BCH can stand it no longer and calls Christina. They have counter offered, and we needed to quickly sign it before they changed their mind, as there were now 'multiple offers' on the table.

It felt so dramatic, printing the offer off and signing it and faxing it to BCH. Then re-faxing it cause I did it wrong. Then faxing another time cause the fax machine missed a page. My heart was seriously racing. What if they got a much bigger offer before getting our agreement and decided to take it?

Finally, it was done. Everything signed, everyone in agreement. Under contract. I looked over the paperwork again that Christina had emailed to me, and saw the original fax cover page she had submitted to their agent. She had written, "My clients LOVE the house and hope this works out". Their agent had circled the word "LOVE" and had written below it: "Makes us happy".

This makes everyone happy :)

Disappointed

Remember when I said the home we were in the process of buying was built in the 1920's? You know when you buy a home that old, there is going to be some settling. And this home seemed to have a bit, but we were not overly concerned when we made our offer. Well, after our home inspection we have decided it has had a bit TOO much settling.

I keep going through the "shoulda"s in this process - but that isn't productive or helpful at all. I'm disappointed and discouraged; I was already tired of looking at houses when we made this offer (which I think was part of the reason I was so quick to agree to an offer) and having to look again is not encouraging to me. I need to get re-energized but I don't know how.

The other disappointment is that backing out of the contract might mean we are going to miss out on the $8,000 first time homeowners rebate. It requires you to be under contract on a house by April 30. While this is still very possible, we are not going to hold out hope on it. BCH and I also agree that we shouldn't just 'settle' on a house we don't love just to get the credit. The point of buying a house was not to get the credit, it was to buy a house. Which is what we still plan to do, its just going to take longer than we had hoped.

Jumping through the hoops...hope we don't trip!

We have been a bit hush about it on Facebook and around town (I think that both of us are a bit superstitious and dont want to jinx this - heard too many bad stories and already got one house rejection) so we aren't shouting on the rooftops about this, but we are very excited that we are currently under contract for a house. Closing date is set for April 29th, and the big hurdle this week is the home inspection, set for Wednesday. Found out today that our loan is approved (its amazing the difference between pre-approved and approved) but of course they have requested yet another round of paperwork and information from us. Sigh...

Its a 1920's Tudor, three bedroom and two bath. Its only a couple of blocks from where we currently reside, on a tidy street in the Sugarhood area that we already know and love. As our Realtor pointed out, its a good street because there are a lot of Subaru owners on the block. She cracks me up.

I am not thrilled about moving (AGAIN) so we haven't done a bit of packing yet, but I am excited that this will be the last move in a long time (as I am sure my siblings - ie: moving team - are thrilled about as well...)

The home has been updated, for the most part, so it is pretty move in ready. But of course we have already come up with a list of things we want to do immediately and in the near future. We also have the start of a needs list - things we have not owned but will need ASAP - like a garden hose of all things.

Do not fret, those of you who have asked. Despite searching and looking for one, we do not have a big porch (as seen from the picture) for infamous summer nights porch time, but it does have a nice backyard which we plan on putting a patio in. There is even a fire pit already installed, so I anticipate porch time can make a smooth transition to the new digs.

That is, if, and when, we finally jump through the last hoop and get those hot little keys in our hands.