Jeez...

They told me not to do too much, but we did go to Wal-Mart yesterday and I had to sit down a half a dozen times on the benches spread throughout the store.

We got halloween candy at the store, but forgot to turn our light on. Oops.

And my husband has decided that he absolutely, positively hates this house. 100%, so we're going to find a new place to live. Within a week. And move there, and not buy this house.

Anyone else think we're insane? Better than getting into a mortgage on a house we don't want, though, right?

Another day, another heel stick...

Another trip to the hospital. Good news, this time, considering her 'age' and the lower level of bilirubin, we were given the all clear to stop heel sticks and just wait for the jaundice to go away! Yeah!

Aren't having the best of luck with feedings, though. Right now we are using a bottle/supplement from pumping. No yucky formula, though. That's good, right? I'm giving her the good stuff, even if it's through a bottle? I tell you what, this whole parenting thing is tough on the emotions. The good thing is, I recognize it, I'm not oblivious to why I'm feeling the way I do. It's still tough to deal with, and I recognize that it's not rational, but still, tough to deal with.

I continue to feel guilty for taking an epidural, for not being able to 'make it' without drugs. I would have had to have one anyway for the c-section, but still...guilty. And now with the feedings, it's kind of like being whacked upside the head each time she won't latch on. Guilty as heck. And I know it's not my fault and she's probably just a little too young to 'get it' -- but still...

Ouch...

Had to go and see the pediatrician and get a heel stick today. Well, the baby did. Nearly undid 'dad' to see it. It took forever to get the blood and with me moving slow because of the c-section, I had to go sit in the waiting room. The rest of the check up went fine, though.

Home with lil'list mouse...

Today we came home from the hospital. It was a long stay, but a short stay, if you know what I mean. We were glad to get out of the hospital bed/couch and into our own bed, and glad to be on our own (baby's) schedule instead of on the hospital's.

Can you say moo?

Got milk? I do...but they won't let me try and feed her, because of the jaundice, so I have to just pump and use the sns feeder (little tube you use on your finger or other) to try and hurry her along. I hate it. I really do, because I'd like to be able to feed her naturally, less muss and fuss. We will see. Maybe once we're home from the hospital.

pumping...

I had to start pumping the colostrum last night because she can't be out of her bed too long and it was taking too long to try and get her to feed naturally. It breaks my heart and makes me cry, but what can I say, she needs to eat. Matthew is a big help. He's got this daddy thing down pat.

Daddy is doing great...

Matthew has spent most of the time (since I am VERY slow to move) swaddling, burping, feeding, and rocking while I just try and get out of bed. Recuperating from this surgery will be a challenge, that is for sure. The labor was hard (and long) and I am very, very, tired.

But daddy is doing great. He was shown what to do by the nurses and quite frankly, I think he's the better parent. He is still happy even though he's tired. I've caught him snoozing a few times and just shushed her back to sleep in her little bassinet under the jaundice lights (which she got put under this morning). That seemed to work well. They tell us she's lethargic from the jaundice... They also tell us that we need to keep her on the bilirubin bed as much as possible which means no cuddling or anything, just out to feed and right back again. That sucks.

My parents visited yesterday and Matthew's parents and sister visited today. It was nice to have the visit. My parents brought some pre-washed baby clothes, as hers are still packed up in the house. All the parents also went down today and unpacked the kitchen and baby's room and bathrooms for us. That was awesome. We'll see how the house looks once we get there.

Meet the Meece...

http://lil-meeces.blogspot.com/2008/10/keeley-josephine.html

The middle of something big...

Pitocin started at midnight Wednesday/Thursday morning. They increased contractions exponentially, with most of the time spent in 1 minute increments of contracting for 60-90 seconds and then a break of a minute. Basically like the transition stage of labor, except it went on all day Thursday. Instead of the expected 2-3 hours of contractions like that. Around the middle of the afternoon, I took a shot of stadol, so I could get some sleep in between contractions. Matthew said I would fall asleep for 60 seconds wake up and do my breathing and fall right back to sleep. This went on for an hour and a half. After all that time, I was still only at 6 cm dilated, when I had been at 4 cm at 8 am Thursday morning. Needless to say I wasn't getting anywhere and being in that much pain for that long and learning that I wasn't making any progress just made it worse. When I got to the point that I was crying instead of breathing (picture 12 he he he whooos on the way UP a contraction without ever coming back down), my husband said it was time for the epidural. I just nodded my head. The first one didn't really work. They went to put my catheter in and I could still feel everything. I told them that and at first they didn't believe me, but then they put in a second epidural, tried again, whatever and got it right. They told me I was ready to push about then. I pushed for 4 hours and the doctor finally came and said that I couldn't have the baby naturally. So basically we were forced into a c-section by the position of the baby (face up) and either the way she was positioned and the way my pelvis is shaped. Either way, we found out we were not going to have the baby any other way but by c-section. I slept through the procedure until they said okay dad, tell her what it is... and I opened my eyes to hear my husband say, "it's a girl". I got to see her pretty face and then watch my husband be all teary as he held his baby for the first time. All in all, 28 hours, most of them without drugs, if anyone is counting.

The start of something big...

This is post dated. Went into labor 3.5 weeks early at 8:15 pm, specifically, my water broke. All over the bathroom floor. Spent an hour trying to get a bag packed, find the car seat in the mess of the house, and just in general contact family on the way to the hospital. Got to the hospital at 10 p.m. They took our info and got us into a labor room. Gave us 2 hours to get labor officially started or would start pitocin. We walked and walked the halls.

Not yet...

No hot water yet, apparently the 'other' realtor wasn't in yet by 9:30 am, yeah, right, she's been pissy since she found out she won't get the sale money for the house (she didnt get back to us for a week and the other guy did, so he got our business) -- so I dont know if this is more payback or what, but we sure need to get this figured out, and soon, who wants to bring a baby into a house with no heat/hot water?

Apparently OUR realtor agrees we shouldn't have to pay to get this fixed, as it was broken before we moved in AND we're paying them rent to live here. He seems to think there is just a 'trick' to getting it turned on, but.. I don't know. I wish that were the case, but it seems kind of far-fetched to me. Still doesnt say why if you have the hot water heater turned 'on' that the furnace goes nuts.

And we found out that the lady that owns the place isn't widowed, like the story supposedly went, apparently her husband quit his dentist practice here a month ago and moved down south to let a new dentist do much of the stuff and just part-time it. So speculation is that they divorced over whatever and now she's stuck with a house she doesn't want--and taking it out on us. The guy that came and hooked up our DSL (yeah, internet!) said that he was here a month ago unhooking their DSL and that the guy was loading up his truck and such to move on. Not dead several months ago as we were told. Hmm...

And if the guy was here last month, not really a chance that the whole house just magically went haywire in the last 4 weeks, now is there? Good chance something was wrong ahead of time and they just didn't want to have to pay for it. I'm starting to feel scammed. Not liking it much either. Maybe it will all turn out okay, but when you're 9 months pregnant and you could go into labor at any minute, you don't really want to think about the fact that you haven't had a shower in a while, etc. etc.

Moving day...

Well everything got moved in. Sorted through the mail. Still trying to get our house to close, so we can get it painted and take out the ugly crap that's in here. We are renting currently, but of course we run across a problem right away: the hot water heater isn't working. So no showers. Check the breaker, it was turned off. So we turn it on. And still no hot water, but also the thermostat on the wall goes crazy. Can't have hot water turned on AND use heat, and there's no hot water no matter what.

Good thing we find it out at night, when there's no chance of anyone fixing it. The bad thing is, I'm sure they'll be pissy and try NOT to have to pay to get it fixed. Currently, though, we are renting. We don't own the place, they won't let us do anything to it, so they should be/are responsible for making sure we have hot water. We did insist on a warranty that would cover something like this, but of course I'm sure it won't be enforced until closing, in which case if they decide to be real jerks, we could be without hot water until closing. Even though we paid them rent money up front. Not sure what's going on, but I don't like it.

Baby update...

Check out the meeces page for a baby update.

Life in general...

We went to church, watched football (go bears!), took care of the parents puppies and then drove down to St. Louis. Staying in a nice hotel and heading to bed very early. Tomorrow Matthew goes to work for his real first day. I also have a doctor's appointment. Oh joy.

Long visit...

Had a nice long visit with Matthew's family today. He used the truck to pick up supplies for their back fence, etc. etc. Nice to be needed (not)... Anyway, seems like all we're doing is running, will be nice when things settle down a little bit.

Friday...

oh if only Fridays were the easiest days of the week. They don't really seem to be though. Matthew drove back to St. Louis today for work. It was a long day for him and he conked out super early. Sure wish I could sleep like that. Tomorrow should be an uneventful day. Just waiting out the weekend. We get keys on Monday, after our doctor's appointment.

Early to bed...

I did manage a nap today, for about a half an hour in the morning. We're going to bed around nine tonight. There's not much on tv and Matthew has to get up before 5 to head down to work. Just a couple more days before we hopefully move into our new house. Things seem to be going extraordinarily slowly, but I guess that's because I can't really 'do' anything about it. Just sit and wait. Matthew gets paid tomorrow, so we're hoping that will be enough for the mortgage company to agree to finance us. Not sure why they're in such a tizzy, we're not anywhere NEAR maxed out on our mortgage (we were preapproved for a LOT more), but whatever. We just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other and hope that it all goes through. If not, I don't know what we'll do. Right now we're trying to enjoy family's company while we can and while we have the time/energy to do so. Okay, so not the energy. We're both wiped out, but still.

Today we went and visited my friend Trish and her new baby. He's a month old. I think he's tiny but Matthew thought he was pretty big. I guess I'm used to older babies so to me he looked pretty small. I was the one holding him and it took quite a long time for him to get heavy. I hope that's a good thing. I'll be holding my own little one soon. Just about a month to go.

Annoyed...

Well, the housing thing is still going okay, it's moving forward. The only catch is that 6 months ago, people just took out a small loan to pay closing costs, etc. Now, they want you to prove that you could liquidate your assets (401ks, savings, checking, etc) to pay your closing costs. Now why anyone in their right mind would think that was a good idea over taking out a small loan you could pay back in about 3 months is beyond me. So what, we should empty our retirement accounts and live on credit cards for a few months to prove something to them? Doesn't that seem kind of stupid? I thought the lending industry was all about taking care NOT to overstretch yourself. We were approved for more than $55,000 MORE to roll into the mortgage than the actual mortgage. Apparently that doesn't prove anything to them either. If we'd known this would be a problem, well, we wouldn't have paid out the equivalent in closing costs to pay off our truck, or my student loan within the last 6 months. Jerks. I know, they're trying to keep people from 'overextending' -- but seriously, when you pre-approved us for more than $50k more than that, what would it hurt for us to take out a couple thousand bucks to cover the closing costs so we're NOT broke when the baby arrives? Jeez.

Goings on...

Today we went and grabbed some foodstuffs and other essentials, not only to replace what we're eating while we're with family, but also for next week when we hopefully move into the house. Since our stuff won't arrive and we won't likely get it all put away, we've got instant macaroni, instant soup, fruit cups, etc.

Matthew has to go get his 'stuff' taken care of tomorrow morning, so he's already in bed. My feet have been swollen the last few days. Not sure if it's the diet or just that I'm up on my feet a lot more around here helping out.

One of my uncles is here, he was in MO for a class reunion last weekend, so I was sweeping the floors, cleaning the counters, organizing things, etc. etc. while mom was at work and helping her get stuff ready in general. Luckily, she's taking us up on our offer of the foodstuffs stuck in our freezer, so she's not had to buy a bunch of extra stuff with all of us as company. I'm sure that eases her mind.

Most of the day we giggled and gagged over the 2 big labs' discovery of a deer (somewhere nearby) -- they keep dragging up parts and chewing them up all over the yard. One of them even drug the hoof in to try and chew on it inside. Mom was having none of that. Back out he went. With the hoof. Yucky! Still a giggle though.

The moving day that wasn't...

Yup, for all you cynics out there, you were right. We loaded up our stuff, paint, vehicle on U-Haul trailer, etc. etc. and got a 1/3 of the way there when we got a call from our realtor. A pre-emptive stop from preventing us from painting our 'new' house. The whole purpose of getting the keys early, paying the lady rent until closing, and waiting to get our stuff moved in and staying in a hotel, all pretty inconvenient, was to be able to get the house painted (99% guaranteed) before the baby arrived. If, like it seems, we won't close on the house until Nov. 7th, we're going to be cutting it mighty close. We asked, politely, very politely, if there was any way we could at least paint the nursery so that the baby's room would be done ahead of time, God forbid anything should happen and I'd deliver early. No.

The lady accepted our offer, we were willing to take possession of the house, pay her rent, take all the utilities in our names, pay those for the meantime, and have insurance, besides hers, on the house, so in case anything happened, our stuff would be secure, oh and we have to pay closing costs, and, and of course we had to agree to pay all the damages to the house, which there really aren't, because we got 'such a good deal' -- but nope.. we can't paint, in case, God forbid, our loan fell through, and we had painted the walls (white instead of awful red) and dripped onto the precious wordwork throughout the house.

You tell me, what kind of hoser, who is buying a house, would drip paint on the woodwork and not clean it up, if they were planning on living in it forever, or whatever. None. They'd clean it up because they saw it as their house. And in addition, it was going to be 'so expensive' if we DID drip AND the mortgage fell through AND we weren't able to get a mortgage through anyone else, etc. etc. etc. all this IF'S, to clean up a couple of drops of paint on woodwork. Can anyone run a calendar from October 13-November 1st and tell me how many days of rent that is? We were going to give her almost the equivalent of a mortgage payment in rent. She already has our earnest money sitting there in cash with her real estate agent, so she'd have both, which would be let's just say plenty to use a bit of soap and water and clean up a couple of drops of paint IF all that stuff fell through.

Arse. Bite my arse. That's what I really want to say right now. YES, I can see it from her point of view, but seriously, lady, you have no money skills at all, or you have a very bad advisor.

atv's...

My hubby loves 4-wheeling of any kind - truck, atv, you name it. Today he spent from after lunch (at church, very yummy) until about dinner time at an off road park near where our families live. Everything went fine. Until my nephew flipped his 4-wheeler. Everyone is okay, just some good bruises and a funny story to tell. Remember that one time we all went 4-wheeling and you flipped yours over.. ha ha..good times.

Homeless...

Well, we are crashing at my parents house for the weekend and will get keys on Monday. We went to H0me Dep0t and picked up 5 gallons of primer and 2 gallons of an off white color of paint to paint the 'extremely' red room with--which would be the guest room. We figured that would give us enough to start with for Monday and then we could get more paint once we either A. picked out colors or B. ran out of places to put primer and/or ran out of paint. Right now the comforter for that room is burgundy/navy/hunter green. So a plain off white with the only other thing being in the room is the bed we figured was the way to go. We also picked up a ceiling fan for the dining room, as it only has a huge ugly light fixture you'd only see over the tables at pizza hut or a trashy bar over the pool table--like odd stained glass or something.

Right now we are debating whether to go with a light orange or light yellow for the nursery. If you've seen the decor it's mostly antique white/white and then the accessories are cream bins, red, yellow, orange pails, and yellow painted wall hangings (a lion and giraffe face in bright yellow/brown spots) and that's about it. Crib sheets are light green and then an animal print and a car/construction print in bright colors. We would probably add in blue and green somehow either in a rug, a lamp, or other artwork or such for the walls. Basically, primary colors. That way, once those things are either broken or we don't want them anymore, the room would be a light color that we could customize for whichever gender of baby we have.

I may have mentioned before, but our 'stuff' won't arrive until the 21st, so we will be staying in a hotel until then. Going back to paint/clean up/organize what we do have, etc.

We may use a light yellow in the master bedroom as well, and haven't decided on the bathrooms yet. The master quilt is white with lavendar, green, blue, yellow, etc. etc. It's kind of patchwork-y without being patchwork.

Anyway, thanks for chiming in with support. We're taking it one step at a time. Tomorrow will be for family, church, football, and perhaps making some lists and picking up some more items like batteries for the smoke detectors that don't seem to work, etc. All in a days work. Time to turn in.

Packing, packing.. gone!

A couch and a table is all that's left to be loaded. From the whole house. Forget 1 or 2 pm these guys will be done by noon!

Today...

We are getting packed up and they will leave us with just a handful of our stuff left to get us through the next 2 weeks or so...they should be here fairly soon, so, I guess I better finish up and prepare to get out of their way.

On a sign...

First the snow
Then the rain
Now the Cubs
What's next?

Our stuff is packed..

Almost all of it. We kept out cleaning supplies and paper stuff to eat off of for today and tomorrow, and that's about it. Once we dump off our recyclables we will have 2 extra containers to pack them in. Woohoo! It only took about 4 hours for them to do so.

They say it should take about the same amount of time tomorrow to load the stuff in the truck. Then we can do a final clean and be on our way! Much earlier than we had anticipated, as a matter of fact. Which is a good thing.

Inspections on the house are tomorrow and we get the keys on Monday. If all that goes well, we should be settled by the end of October. We still need to paint and etc. etc. Our 'stuff' will arrive on Tuesday, the 21st and we're supposed to have painting help this coming Monday and Tuesday, Matthew has to do work orientations on Wednesday and Friday, then a doctor's appointment on Monday (Matthew will start work officially then). Stuff arrives Tuesday and we should have unpacking help on Friday the 24th. In the meantime we will work on the house and try and rest some. Everything seems to be coming together.

Financing...

Applied for...
Yeah! We picked a lender and filled out the paperwork. There was a lot of bouncing around and trying to decide between 2 of them, but we finally feel like we got a good deal (under 5% for the first year, and under 6% for the remainder of the mortgage)--it's still a very scary thing, but the lender we went with explained everything complete detail, sat with us until we were satisfied and even explained what the OTHER lender had quoted us. Basically, the guy is a broker and he works in his 'fee' and rolls it into the mortgage, so we'd be paying him almost $4k extra on top of our house, and we'd be paying interest on THAT for the next 3o years. That didn't sound good to us. Anyway, we're satisfied that we did the right thing and got a good rate.

Yeah!

House scoop...

I have a new reader. Yeah! Here's the info on the 2 houses we went to look at.....

http://lil-mousehouse.blogspot.com/2008/09/tale-of-2-houses.html

We made an offer on the tri-level house. We were very surprised that it was accepted. We expected to haggle back and forth for a while, especially since we were offering appx. $29k below what the listing price was (and that had already gone down $10k)...

Turns out the lady was widowed, they were the original owners of the home, and she was moving closer to her family, so she just wanted out from under the home. The caveat for taking such a low offer was that she didn't want to have to fix any major repairs if the inspection came back as 'bad'--we have to have an inspection in order for our loan to go through. We will be using a VA loan, and they do everything they can to protect the buyers, i.e. if the home is appraised lower than the agreed upon price, then the VA will cancel the loan. If there is major structural, mold, etc. etc. damage, the VA will cancel the loan. Basically it's all done to protect US Veterans from getting shafted when they go to buy a house. There are no points or any of that garbage, just a low fixed rate. It also allows us to buy it with 'no money down' --which is a good thing.

We also have a low interest rate locked in with a local bank, with a chance of it going even lower, and a chance for a buydown, with the lump sum being paid by the bank. Basically, in this market, the bank is trying to reel in everyone else's customers. If we close in October, we'll get 1% point knocked off of our mortgage for the first year (about $118/month less in payments)--with the bank kicking in the $1400 from their own pockets. In the meantime, if we make payments as if they were 'regular' payments, then we will have not only their $1400, but our own 'extra' $1400 in there as well. Oh and since we got the house for such a low price, we should have about $40,000 equity automatically in the house. I've heard that's a good thing. I can't even fathom what it means right now, but I've heard it's a good thing.

The only downside we are seeing right now is that since there was no haggling, we didn't get a chance to request that the seller pay the closing costs, so we will be responsible for those. And since we've been so diligent at paying off bills, we don't have a huge savings right now. We used our savings to pay off our truck and my student loan in the last 3 months, so we'll have to borrow enough to pay the closing costs outright, probably from our current bank. They love us, of course, because we paid our truck off in 3.5 years instead of 6, the same with every other loan we've gotten from them.

Basically, we are going on faith that everything is going to be alright. Movers are coming to pack us up THIS Thursday and Friday. They can store our 'stuff' for as long as 30 days. The house seller agreed to let us move into the house a little before the closing date since I'm hugely pregnant and we've got to be down there so soon. We have to pay rent and have at least renter's insurance, which is only fair. We'd like to stay in a hotel for a few days (should be at his new work's expense) and get at least the nursery painted if possible before we get our stuff out of storage. This would be between Oct. 13th and 16th. Matthew has some info sessions on Oct. 15th and orientation on Oct. 17th. He'll start work in earnest Oct. 20th. That's also the date of my first doctor's appointment with my new doctor. Can you see how we say we are going on faith? Basically, we're saying 'Yes, Lord' and putting one foot in front of the other without looking down, up or out. We're being careful and paying attention, and asking questions and opinions and advice, but basically we're just doing whatever seems to 'fall into place' without much other guarantee.

umm...

We gave what we thought was a ridiculously low offer (13% or so lower than their asking price, which had already come down $10k from the outset)... and they accepted! As long as inspections and paperwork go okay, we will own our first home in a few short weeks. More later.

Houses..

Right now we should be showing our parents the first of 2 houses. Wish us luck! Oh and on making a decision too!

Our bags are packed...

Well at least the contents of our pantry are. Who knows how long that stuff is going to be in storage and what the storage is truly 'like' - so we're dropping it off with the folks before heading down to view houses again.

Same with freezer and fridge stuff. Luckily they still have their 'old' fridge in the basement and it's almost never full except for holidays, so they'll just have some 'extra' for the time being.

We figure if they use it all up, they do. If not, then we move it down to the new house or apartment and voila, a full pantry again. Yeah!

What do you think?

Should we clean out our fridge and freezer and just have a couple of frozen meals or subway sandwiches stuck in there along with cereal bars or something for the 2 days they are 'moving' us? My husband will be at work both days and basically we need to clean out the fridge and freezer, scrub the bathrooms and vacuum once the movers are gone.

If we clean it out, we have to do it tomorrow morning and take it family for storage/their use-there's not much in there-a frozen pizza, some frozen pasta and appetizers, a couple pounds of meat, all the condiments in the fridge of course, stuff like that. If we lost it all 'meh' we'd replace it. We'll have to do some of that no matter what because they are moving us Thursday and Friday. So Friday will almost certainly have to be fast food for hubby and something stuck in the fridge for me no matter what. Oh and we'll be gone Saturday at noon through late Monday. So all we have is Tuesday, Wednesday to really eat. And way more food than that.

Let me spell it out for you...

N-U-C-L-E-A-R

NOT "NUKULAR"--and I'm not talking to George W. here, I'm talking to Sarah.
Seriously, do you need something for someone to make fun of you for? -- because you're asking for it.

Where did the last 7 months go?

All I know is, time is ticking down and I am starting to feel very overwhelmed.

Also, the baby likes chocolate. A Lot! Just like daddy.

And I think I'm completely exhausted. I took an hour nap today and it didnt' help at all.