Quick, before I get Sidetrack'd

Well, it looks like we have had a successful house hunt again this year! On Saturday morning we looked at about 6 houses, and ended up making an offer on the first one we looked at (that day). It is a single story, 3 bedroom, 2 bath, traditional style house. It needs a little work, but it isn’t so much when compared to what needed to be done in our first house! No crazy 80′s wallpaper to strip or sandstone tiles in the bathrooms at least. It has panelling in the living room, so M will be busy painting that and the bedrooms (plain white walls right now) since I can’t help paint. Otherwise it seems to be in pretty good condition – new carpet, new flooring in the kitchen, cabinets in good condition, etc. The people who are selling the house are the original owners, so it has been well cared for over the past 20 years or so.

We still have numerous things to accomplish between now and May 19th (scheduled closing date) including the home inspection next Monday and getting final approval on our financing. It doesn’t appear that there will be anything major to hold us up, but you never know. Please continue to pray that if this is supposed to be our house then everything will go smoothly.

Amongst the stresses of looking for a house, I have been struggling with and praying through some faith issues in the area of our “me not working” budget. All of the houses we have liked and considered fell into what we could afford under our new budget, but this house is significantly lower in our price range than the other one we made an offer on, so there should be a little more wiggle room financially. God is faithful to hear and answer our prayers when we put our trust in him!

Well, here we are, approaching the end of pregnancy week 24. It is hard to believe how fast the time seems to be passing! Little and I had a doctor’s visit on Tuesday and everything is looking good. Her heart rate was good and she is moving around a lot, so she seems to be getting along just fine. The doc said my blood pressure and weight are looking good. So, another visit down with no concerns or complications…just the way we like it. After my next visit at 28 weeks we start seeing the doctor more regularly (28 weeks, 31, 33, 35, and then weekly). I was telling M about the schedule Tuesday evening and his comment was, “When you look at it that way, there isn’t much time left.”

Sometime next week or the first week of May I have to go for my glucose test (the one where I drink the glucola stuff, wait an hour, and then have blood drawn). I am not looking forward to drinking that stuff after some of the descriptions I’ve heard from those of you who have experienced it, but, alas, we do what we have to do.

Now for the house…we have looked at about 15 houses over the last couple of weeks and have 4 or 5 more that we will see tomorrow. The first one we found that we really liked received multiple offers the day we went back for a second tour, so that one is out of the running unless something happens with all of the current offers. We found a couple on Tuesday that we liked; one already had a contract on it but the contract was in jeopardy of falling through so we looked at it anyway. The other has a nice flow and is a good size; it also has a huge backyard with an enormous oak tree (fortunately at the back edge of the yard where the house isn’t in too much danger from roots or branches). M really likes the oak tree! We made an offer on that one, but now it looks like the owner’s job transfer may not go through as quickly as he was originally told and the house might come off the market. Thus, we will be continuing to look the next few days and will rescind our offer on the oak tree house if we find something that we like better.

You know, house hunting can be fun, but after a while the houses begin to run together in your mind. There is also the little issue of time that we are having to deal with in this case. Oh well, it will all work out like it should in due time. We trust that God is at work and will provide!

We finally got the ultrasound and belly pictures ready for the world to see!

We have some 2-D ultrasound pictures (standard ultrasound) and some 4-D ultrasound pictures (these appear blurrier and are more golden in color). The 4-D ones are a little harder to tell what is going on; it might help to know that all of these are in a vertical orientation with Little’s face toward the right of the picture.

The first belly picture (in the blue shirt) was taken on March 21st at 20 weeks; the second picture (in the striped shirt) was taken on April 11 at 23 weeks. We plan to take new pictures each week so you can see how big Little’s “house” is getting.

Have you ever stopped to think about how much stuff it takes to feed, and bathe, and care for a baby these days? Saturday was the great registry adventure, and I must say that we were a bit overwhelmed!

It all started about 10:30 at Babies ‘R Us. It took a few minutes to fill out the registry paperwork, but we were soon set free in the aisles armed with a trusty scanner gun. (M really enjoyed using the scanner guns.) Within a few seconds we were standing in the feeding section wondering why there had to be seventy-five different types of bottles and which type did we want to have living in our cabinets. We then moved on to bathtubs (again, there were way more options than are truly necessary) and spent the next 90 minutes or so making a lot of decisions that were made more on personal preference than on facts about the products. I feel comfortable with the products we chose based on research, but things that weren’t reviewed by Consumer Reports…well, that’s another matter all together. Our adventure wrapped up about 3:00 after registering at Target, and both of us were exhausted mentally and physically!

Hopefully, as first timers, we at least got some of the things we’ll need on the registry. I did notice that we seemed to put a lot of 0-3 months size onsies on the list. Too many? Give us a few months and we’ll have a better idea.

Well, it is that time again around here…time to start thinking about moving. I’m sure to many of you it appears that moving is one of our favorite activities (this will be the 6th move in 5 years). Let me assure you that this is not the case; it has just worked out that way.

We met with the realtor last week and started the process…finding financing, looking at house listings, etc. We hope to start touring some houses this week and see where the search takes us from there. It is a little different this time; we are working with a more definite time frame as we plan toward Little making her appearance in early August. Please keep us in your prayers as we are making such a big and life impacting decision. I’ll keep you posted!

Little must be getting bigger and stronger, because her movements sure are growing! It is such a cool sensation to feel those tiny little hands and feet (and head and elbows and knees, probably) bumping into my belly. Over the last several days there have been occasions when she has made a strong enough movement that it could be felt on the outside of my belly. They are still few and far between, so, unfortunately, M has not been able to feel her yet. I’m sure it won’t be too long before he’ll be able to feel it anytime he wants; I’m just having trouble waiting for that first time. It is amazing to think that we are down to just a few months before we get to meet our precious little girl!