February 2010 Archives

So I've kept this quiet on the blog until now but I think it's safe now to announce that we put an offer on a house and it was accepted!  We're still in the "pending inspection" stage but most likely they won't find anything that's a deal breaker for us so that means that our family will be moving within the next couple of months.  Crazy!

To give you some backstory, we were not really actively looking to move.  Ben and I had talked about it and knew that we would want to move probably before the kids started school.  We also were frustrated that the girls had to share a room in this house and knew that 1 bathroom for 5 people (3 being girls) wouldn't work forever.  We also know that today's market is a buyer's market so I had been passively checking the MLS listings for a few weeks to see what was available.

One night I was looking at some houses and came across this very grand looking and affordable house.  It was a foreclosure but still, the price seemed like it was well within our budget.  I showed Ben who also wondered why it was the price it was and we decided to call the next day.  I called (the seller's agent since we don't have a buyer's agent) and was told that there were already multiple offers on the house but that if we really wanted to see it, we could.  We went and looked at it...

First impressions:

• It's filthy.  Top to bottom dirty and disgusting.
• It needs updating.  Nothing structural, but the style of things are not to our taste.
  
• It's huge.  3800 square feet.  2 levels plus a basement.  6 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms.
• It backs up to a moderately busy "feeder" road.
• There is a homeowner's association that restricts almost everything.
• The neighborhood and neighbors seem great.  While we were there, 2 of them came to talk to us and tried to convince us to buy it.  They also seem active in the neighborhood which is a nice change.
• There seemed to be a possible mold problem, which would be a dealbreaker for us.  We discovered later that the previous owners had a dog that they couldn't housetrain and some of the areas that looked like mold were probably dog pee.  Lovely, but better than mold!

Anyway, we hemmed and hawed all evening.  They gave us until 11 a.m. the next morning to submit an offer and we had to have a mortgage preapproval before that.  We finally decided to just go for it, not knowing if a beautiful house like this would come back on the market at a comparable price.  We got our pre-approval, wrote an offer and waited.  We did this last Friday and found out on Tuesday that our offer had been accepted!  We won the bid by $500.

There were a couple of maintenance things that the bank took care of and now we're waiting for them to sign off on the work they did before our 7 day inspection period starts.  We'll get our own\ inspection and test for mold and radon just to be on the safe side.  If all passes, we could move in as early as the end of March!

Maybe we're crazy but I think this is a house we could live in for a long time.  I'm very excited and hope that it works out for us.  We now need to find a great realtor and see what we can do about our current house.  We put so much money into it and know we'll be lucky if we get what we paid for it so that's disappointing but such is life. 

Lily refused to nurse all last night and first thing this morning.  I decided to take her back to the doctor since I was so worried about her getting enough to eat!  Also last night she woke screaming again after Ben got home from driving her around.  We put her in the swing and she fell asleep there.

Before I left for the doctor's office, Lily was taking a nap and I went in there before she woke up and was able to nurse her for a good 25 minutes.  She was still basically sleeping but hey, I'll take what I can get!

We went to the doctor and she evaluated Lily and decided that it's just her teeth bugging her.  She's getting that lateral incisor and she's also getting a bottom lateral incisor that looks sore.  The doctor said to give her Tylenol every 4 hours today and tonight and see if that helps.  We're supposed to bring her back if she has no urine output for 24 hours.

The good news is that ever since we got home from the doctor Lily has been nursing again normally!  I'm so relieved and happy because I was so worried about what to do.  But now it's like she never stopped so I'm thinking the Tylenol is helping manage her pain - thank goodness. 

It has been a busy week for us!  Yesterday Ben and I (and the girls) went to my brother's house to help him and his wife get their house ready to sell and the kids and I left early.  I put them all down and an hour later Lily woke up screaming.  Usually when that happens I just go in and nurse but she was having none of it.  I put her in the swing and she just kept crying/screaming.  I gave her Tylenol, held her, bounced her, tried to nurse her some more but same thing - intermittent crying.  She also threw up on my shoulder and kept burping a lot.  I called the nurse line and by the time they called me back Lily was playing with toys on the floor acting happy.  Based on the symptoms, the nurse told me to bring Lily in.  Ben got home a little while later and my mom wonderfully stayed with Maia while we took Lily and Juliette to the Children's ER.  By the time we finally got seen, Lily was in a great mood.  The doctor looked at her, couldn't find anything wrong and sent us home saying "Maybe a stomach bug."  Frustrating!  After we got home and she was asleep in the carseat I was able to take her out and nurse her and she nursed great.  She also nursed once in the morning (asleep) around 5:30 a.m.

Fast forward to today - she did not nurse at all until 5:30 p.m. when I got her out of her crib asleep then she nursed great.  I don't know if this is a nursing strike or if her teeth are really bothering her or if she has a stomach bug but it worries me that she's not nursing!  She doesn't take a bottle still so this is a problem.  She is eating her solids and seems hungry sometimes but I'm not sure what to do.  I put Lily down tonight around 7:30 (no feeding) and she woke up about 15 minutes later screaming and doing the exact same thing that she did last night.  This time Ben was home and thought that she seemed in pain.  Finally we put her in her carseat and he's now driving her around to get her to sleep.  I hope it works.

In other news, the girls are pulling up to standing now.  I found Juliette standing in her crib yesterday and everywhere else.  Lily too, but not her crib yet!  I think she's still kind of short.  Lily is working on her other lateral incisor and Juliette is getting her top two front teeth.  Also, starting on Saturday Juliette started saying "mamama" and "bababa" so that was exciting!  I don't think that she means me yet but I'm happy she can say it.

Anyway, there is some other stuff going on but I'll share that later.  This is long enough.

Today we had our NICU follow-up clinic appointment at Children's hospital.  I had been looking forward to it just to see how the girls are doing and for a chance to get out of the house.  Ben took the afternoon off and my mom came over to watch Maia.

It was pretty fun.  The girls sat at little tables while a couple of occupational therapists gave them toys and scored them on how they played with the toys.  They would hide a toy under a rag and see if they removed right rag if there were two.  They had a ring on a string and put the ring out of reach and wondered if they would pull the string to reach the ring.  They hid a toy under a see-through plastic cover to see if they could figure out how to get it.  They gave them three blocks to play with and were checking whether they'd figure out how to take all three.  Etc.  After that they put the girls on a play mat to test their gross/fine motor skills.  They scored the girls on cognitive reasoning, language, and gross/fine motor skills.

Lily:
Cognitive: 8 months
Receptive Communication: 7 months
Expressive Communication: 9 months
Fine Motor: 10 months
Gross Motor: 9 months

Juliette:
Cognitive: 9 months
Receptive Communication: 7 months
Expressive Communication: 8 months
Fine Motor: 10 months
Gross Motor: 9 months

All and all pretty good.  Lily wanted to eat all the toys put in front of her so maybe her cognitive skills weren't the greatest but she matches her adjusted age (8 months, 6 days) which is what they're looking for.  Juliette only has one consonant so far (dadadada) where Lily has a few so that's why she scored lower in Expressive Communication.  Ben and I weren't sure whether either girl can understand any words yet other than their names so that's something we'll be working on with both girls. 

After the appointment we met with a developmental pediatrician who evaluated both girls.  Lily was 13 lbs, 6.4 oz and 25 3/4" (41.5 cm head circ.) and Juliette was 15 lbs, 6.8 oz and 26 3/4" (42.7 cm head circ.).  Both girls look great but he did say that they will probably always be small.  I'll be thankful if "small" is the only thing we'll have to deal with resulting from their prematurity.

In other news, they're sleeping a little bit better this week - Lily especially.  Juliette will go for a few hours before waking up so that gives us our evenings back!  Those extra baby-free hours make a big difference.

We installed two new anti-spam comment plugins today.

The first isn't something you'll notice. It just sits there and silently judges your comments. If you comment something that it thinks is spam, it will hold it for us to review and approve.

The second is a captcha plugin. This makes you type in a couple of blurry words before your comment will be accepted. If you mess up, it tells you to try again. There seems to be a bug, though, because once you've messed up once you can't ever enter them correctly. If that happens to you, you'll have to refresh the page and re-enter your comment, and try the captcha again. I suggest you copy & paste your comment so you don't have to retype it if that happens!

We hope these new anti-spam measures aren't too much of an inconvenience for our readers but enough of a hurdle to prevent the spammers.

Thank you!

Sleep = bad, blah blah blah.  Last night I went in there at 10 to feed them (they were both up before that as well) and I fell asleep.  Next thing I knew it was 2 a.m.  I was still in my clothes, hadn't brushed my teeth or even turned off the TV and computer!  Whoops.  Ben was already in bed too so he didn't know to wake me.  I got out of there at 2 and then immediately Lily started crying so I had to go back in there where I...wait for it...fell asleep again until 4.  At that time I finally went to bed until I got up at quarter to 6. 

I was playing with Lily today and she was gnawing on my finger and I felt another tooth!  I thought her top teeth would be the next to come but it was one of the top teeth to the side of the middle ones.  I don't know if Juliette has it too -I'll have to check and at least it would explain the bad nights.  They're both definitely chewing on everything they can.

A property manager came by today to see the house.  We're not really planning on moving but we wanted to see what he thought our property could rent for if we did decide to do it down the line.  He actually gave me a quote that was more than I expected but after we do all the math of the additional taxes, rental license, maintenence, property management fees etc. it probably wouldn't be worth it.  We'll probably move before Maia starts school but that's still a few years away (thank goodness) so we'll see what happens.  On the other hand, homes are priced right right now so that's something else to consider.

Stacy and Finn are coming over tomorrow and we're looking forward to the company!  Maia's friend Austin (Stacy's nephew) moved so he doesn't live with them anymore and won't be coming over.  Poor Maia will be so sad

Things have been a little bit better this week.  Not great, we still get hourly wake-ups sometimes but not quite as consistently as before.  Maybe it's teething, maybe they're just used to me, who knows but it's rough.  Last night Lily only woke twice so that was wonderful.  I've resigned myself to having to sleep in the chair in their room just so that I can actually get some sleep!  Sometimes nursing takes half hour and I just can't stay awake!

It's been a decent week otherwise.  Maia's been in a good mood for most of the week and it's really amazing how big her vocabulary is these days.  I love it when she says stuff like "I love you so much mom" and "Shh, Lily!  No screaming!"  She has been obsessed with playdoh lately so it's been fun to help her with it.  She doesn't make anything cool yet, she mostly just tears little pieces off the big piece and makes a mess but at least she has fun doing it.

I brought the girls to their eye appointment this last week just as a follow-up from their preemie ROP appointments.  They never had ROP but they just wanted to do periodic checks.  They are both a little bit far-sighted (which is expected in babies) and she was mildly concerned about Juliette in thinking that one eye might be more nearsighted than the other.  She couldn't tell for sure so she said to just come back when they're 18 months and they'll check it out.

Anyway, someone just woke up so off to feed a baby!