A mind dump

A friend of mine from college just told me she was preggers (YAY, you know who you are!!!), and she started a blog.  One of her posts was a big mind dump where she posted random thoughts about what was going on in her head right now... seems like a good time for me to do one of those too...

1. I have been thinking back lately about what a HORRIBLE sleeper Cal was when he was younger.  Am I really about to go through all of that again? Now that Cal is sleeping through the night, we will add a new little guy to have to sleep train.  Y'all just prepare yourselves for me to blog like crazy about him crying it out and me crying it out too...ha!

2. What should I do with the side bar of my blog?  Now I have the month by month pictures of Cal... should I do a whole new section for month by month pictures of Andy (?) too?  Or should I get rid of the Cal ones all together?  (yes, this is something that runs through my brain right now)

3. How am I going to fit 2 babies and ALL of their STUFF into my car?  Is my car big enough?  Where will Hank go?

4. Does Cal has any idea how much his little world is going to be rocked?

5. We are a beach loving family.  Will we be able to go to the beach at all this summer?  Or is it going to be wayyy too crazy to try to get away? Can we all fit in the tiny little beach house?  It's doubtful.  But it could be kind of fun trying.  But will this bambino wake everyone up in the night to eat?

6. My dreams are CRAZY lately.  I don't remember having weird pregnancy dreams with Cal.  These dreams are wild...and so realistic. 

7. Why am I dumping my brain out on this?  We have another showing this afternoon.  Just got the text.  I should be mopping/vacuuming/picking up the house.  This is our 6th showing in 7 days.  Not too bad if you ask me.  I am happy with it.  Now...SELL!

8. I'll dump more later.  Gotta go clean :)

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KISSES!

Strong Man!

25 weeks! (and more on the house, of course!)

I am 25 weeks pregnant today! Woohooo!  Still feeling great and don't have any complaints.  He is moving more and more and sometimes that will keep me up at night, but other than that, all is well over here! 

A picture at 25 weeks, for those that have asked for it.

Last night, or around 4:15 this morning, our home alarm went off. We don't have the alarm activated, so it only goes off if there is a short or something.  Turns out, it is plugged into an outlet, and Cal managed to unplug it when we weren't looking, which I guess made it go off this morning-- who know.  Anyway, we made it stop, and I guess it woke up the babe in my belly because he was WIDE awake after that and was doing some kind of flips and karate kicks.  Finally at about 5, he calmed down (dear LORD, do not let this be a sign of the future sleeping habits!), and then the alarm started chirping.  One little chirp every 30 seconds.  I laid there timing them and counting for about 5 minutes-- that's 10 chirps!  I thought I was going to lose my mind.  Eddie, of course, was sound asleep.  So I went down to investigate, fixed the problem, then came back to bed.  I guess that got the baby going again and he was at it again with the karate kicks.  Finally, we both fell asleep....then Eddie's alarm went off.  Cal slept until 7:30, so I got a little bit of rest until he got up.  PHEW!  There might be a nap in my future today....maybe??

Here's the latest on the house:

We had another showing on Monday night at 5:30.  Cal was napping and at 3:30, he woke up and was just kind of talking in his crib.  I was standing up to go get him when the call came in.  So I left him in there to play with his animals-- thankfully he was SO happy in there!-- while I ran around like CRAZY getting everything ready.  Cookies were out, vacuum was run, toys/golf clubs (grrrr) were loaded in my car....we were ready!  I went in to Cal's room, cleaned it up and then grabbed him, changed him, and walked him straight to the car so he wouldn't have a chance to touch anything!  Having a house on the market with a little one (and a dog!) is not easy!  We went over to my parents house...again!

It took a LONG time to get the feedback...well, it was long for me.  I prefer instant gratification!  At lunch on Tuesday with Andrea (holla!) and Julie, I got the email and this was the feedback: Beautiful place, my clients loved it. The cookies were a really nice touch, please send me the recipe! This is #1 on our list, but it may be out of their price range by a bit.

First question is why is their realtor showing the something out of their price range?  Hmmm.....Turns out that they are pre-approved for an amount that is quite a bit less than our asking price.  I think they are ready to make an offer, but I think their amount is not quite high enough for us.  If I was 3 weeks from delivery, or if our house had been on the market for 5 months, then maybe we could have jumped all over it, but the house hasn't been on the market a week yet and only 1 weekend.  We will hold out a little bit longer....maybe they will come through with more money??  Fingers crossed!

Sunday, Monday

It was SOOOO nice having Cal and Eddie home. The house was way too quiet without them here!  My mom is keeping Jackson and Catherine (my niece and nephew) this week (she's sharing duties with my brother's mother-in-law), so she has Jackson right now.  We took Cal over to their house Sunday late afternoon to let Jackson and Cal have some play time together.  It. Was. Awesome!  I loved watching the two of the play together!  They are hilarious!  Cal follows Jackson and Jackson loves to say "c'mon Cal! C'mon!"  They were like two little peas in a pod playing together and it had all of us in tears cracking up. 

My parents have a tent in their basement for the grandbabies and Cal and Jackson thought it was SO much fun to run into the tent and then run out screaming while we all cheered.  Cal was beside himself he was laughing so hard.  My dad crawled into one side and pretended to be stuck and Jackson was trying to pull him out by his jean pockets.  Cal had both hands over his mouth and was laughing so hard he was snorting.  I was crying I was laughing so hard. I only took one picture of the tent, because I was laughing too hard the rest of the time!

After all of that play time (and oh yeah-- there was a football game on too!), it was time for bed.  The boys were stinky from sweating so much so mom and I put both of them in the tub together.  They had a blast!

I love how close they are already and, as cheesy as it is to say, I love the thought of them becoming even closer as they grow up.  Between these two and my next little guy, these kiddos are going to have a blast wrecking things together! haha!

This morning, I had a doctor's appointment, the glucose test-- ugh!, so I had Cal up in the bedroom with me while I got ready.  I looked back and him and cracked up at how he was sitting:

 He had his little feet crossed and was just chilling on momma's bed!  Love this little guy :)

 oh, and check out that bedhead/cowlick! haha!

I think my glucose test went well.  The drink didn't taste as bad as I thought it did last time, but I felt pretty bad afterward.  Guess that's just a realllly sugary drink to consume!  Hard to believe I am already 24 weeks!  ACK!

The weekend alone

I survived!  I was missing my boys like crazy, but it ended up being a blessing: we had THREE showings!  WOOHOOO!

Let me back up.... we knew we had the first showing on Saturday, at 11:30.  I went out to dinner with my parents on Friday night and came home early to mop the kitchen and the hardwoods (quite the exciting Friday night, huh???).  By 10:30, I was pooped, so Hank and I went and got in bed.

I couldn't sleep Saturday morning, so I was up early and showered and started getting my house completely "show ready."  It also happened to be POURING down rain.  I took several tubs of toys out to my car, took out Hank's stuff and was baking some cookies to make the house smell yummy :).  My dad came over to fix a lock on the back door.  It has always worked just fine, but for some reason, the key would not turn, so people would not have been able to get out the back of the house.

In true dad fashion, he fixed the key and was noticing that the back yard was not draining very well because of all of the leaves on the ground (not to mention the torrential downpour that had been going on for hours and hours).  He decided that we needed to go out back and do a little yard work.  In the pouring rain.  I put on my tall Hunter boots and rain coat and out we went...in the rain....raking leaves...less than an hour before the showing.  We dug out the ditch that helps the water flow out of the yard and cleaned off some furniture.  Finally, about 20 minutes before the showing, I said we were done.  I still needed to do one more walk through of the house.  Oh, did I mention that Hank was outside with us and rolled in something...? Not sure if it was poop or dead animal, but he covered himself in something.  Classic, right?

Dad and I went in the house and opps!  He had poop on the bottom of his shoes!  And it was tracked into the bathroom.....refusing to panic, I hauled tail to get him out of the house, get stinky Hank into the car, and my floors wiped down (again), all before the showing!

As I was driving away from my house, I got a call from the showing agency and my heart stopped thinking it was them canceling the appointment after all that!  But, even better, they scheduled another appointment for 3:30!  I went to my parents house and hung out for a while, and made more cookies to have out for the visitors (not sure how many the first group would have taken...!).  I went back over to my house to check on things and get it back in show-order.  You know, make sure lights were on, doors were how they should be, etc.... I could tell the first showing lasted a while-- they ate several cookies (haha), left me a note about the cookies, and I could tell they sat on the couch for a while.  After running through the house top to bottom to checking on everything, I headed back over to my mom's house!

At about 6:45 Saturday night, I got a call for a showing on Sunday!  I was SUPER excited to just have the exposure.  At this point, we had not received feedback from the first two showings so I didn't know if this was someone new, or a repeat visitor.  Turns out, it was a new visitor.

Feedback:  I got both feedbacks from Saturday when I woke up Sunday morning:  The first one I got (not sure which showing it was from) LOVED the house, loved the layout, loved all of the upgrades (um, we don't have any.....), but unfortunately, did not like the lot...I am thinking all of the rain draining off in the back yard was a turn off.  The second feedback said they loved the house, but the layout was not conducive for their family. Understandable!  The third feedback said she liked the house and the layout, but felt there wasn't enough light in the kitchen (um, it's SUPER bright in there!).  But the realtor said he loved the house and would definitely like to show it again to other clients--that's good, right??

So, all in all, it was a productive weekend on the home front, but I didn't really take a whole lot of time to myself.  I didn't care though.  I was working hard and glad I did.  The boys got home on Sunday around 1:30 and I am pretty sure I kissed Cal about a million times.  Is it possible he grew over the weekend?

If you are sick of hearing about the house *stuff* feel free to ignore the blog for a while-- I won't mind! ;)

I turned this before entering it, but can't get it to rotate...oh well!  I left these cookies out at the showings (the plate was full though), and every showing left a note thanking me and in each of the feedbacks we got, it was written how much they enjoyed the cookies!  Isn't that hilarious?  Guess I will keep it up!  I made some extra this weekend and froze them, so the house won't smell like freshly baked cookies, but they can nibble on some while the look around...haha!

This weekend

I am pathetic.

Yes, I am.  I can admit it.

Eddie left today at 1:00 with Cal to go to South Carolina to visit Eddie's grandparents and Eddie's parents.  Last year, we all went, and it was good to see everyone, but it is SUPER low key.  This year, Eddie's mom encouraged me to stay at home and rest, relax and recharge.  I agree that I need some downtime, especially after all of the hard work I've done on the house in the past week, but still....

The car was loaded with Cal's bags and gas when Eddie got home and my tears were already starting.  What is wrong with me??  Other moms I know are telling me how I should be celebrating and kicking up my heels and loving life right now.  Of course, I do love life right now...it's just reallllllly quiet here.... like, SUPER quiet...  When I hugged Cal goodbye, I started blubbering.  Yup, blubbering.  I am ridiculous!  I KNOW!  I am going to blame it on the pregnancy hormones, but come on.  I can only blame so much on that. 

On the PLUS side...I got notice that we have a showing tomorrow!  Our first one (since doing ALL of this work!), so I am going to turn my blah/sad mood into cleaning every inch of the house.  It is already clean, but I am going to clean it without a 16 month helper following me.  This means that when I Windex the table, I will not have little finger prints all over it as soon as I am done (but I love love love those finger prints!), I will put away toys and they will stay put...not look as if the toy bin threw up all over the house, and I will do laundry and the only person here to generate more laundry will be ME!  I can handle hiding my laundry! :)

Here's my thing...those boys mean the world to me.  I mean, everything.  The weather is nasty and I don't like the thought of them driving in a downpour.  Eddie will be safe driving.  I just can't imagine anything happening to them.  And that's why I get so emotional.  But I will continue to blame it on the pregnancy.  It's easier that way. 

Help a sistah out and keep your fingers crossed for us for tomorrow.  This could be one of a BUNCH of showings, but it could be the one showing that matters. 

Wassahappening? An update...

I am due for a long update...on everything!

The House:

We put in an offer on the house we loved, contingent upon our house selling.  And they accepted it!  YAHOO!  So that put us into full-on get out of this house mode.  It has been CRAZY around here getting everything ready.  We rented a POD and when it came, it was much much much smaller than we anticipated, so we filled it and started to fill my parent's storage unit too (thanks, mom and dad!).  I've been busy every day taking loads of stuff that is not needed on a day to day basis out of here.  We moved out our couch, love seat and recliner and it was replaced by the stager's furniture which is very neutral and small-- makes the room seem HUGE!

Here are some pictures of me packing up the....STUFF (I would use a different word here, but I am not totally clear on who all reads this, so I will keep it PG, but I really want to use a different word that starts with S....)

loads of boxes!

Here are some of the after pictures:

 The family room-- the couch, chair, rug, table and art are all rented!

And into the dining room: we brought in our kitchen table and staged it as a dining room table.  The rest is wide open!

And we had a power washer come out today to power wash the driveway, side walk and front porch.  We didn't really think the driveway needed it, but here is a pic (from my phone) when he was halfway done:

You think we needed it??  SHEESH!  It was necessary, for sure!

Our house is just about completely ready for showings.  We have a professional photographer coming out this afternoon to take the pictures and we will be "live" tomorrow!  I am excited/anxious/thrilled/sick of waiting, all wrapped up in one.  The house looks great.  It really does.  Now if we could just get an offer, it would make putting all of this time (and money!) into getting the house ready worth it!

Cal Boy:

Cal is doing great!  When we hit 15 months, I swear to you, he was like a different child.  Everyone said to just get ready because 15 months is when they turn into little monsters...they weren't kidding!  He isn't a monster ALL the time, but boy, he sure can throw a great fit!  When he hit 16 months, the fits were fewer and fewer.  I think we got better at dealing with them too.  Now we  just ignore him when he's on the ground having a melt down and it will end fairly quickly.

When we were out in California for the bowl game, he bit me a few times.  When we came home, he bit my mom once.  We told him NO very sternly every time he did it, and he would cry and be done with it.  The other day, he bit me, and I lightly smacked his hand (for those of you against this, I apologize if I offend you here).  He got reallllly mad at that and took my hand and stuck my finger in his mouth and bit down HARD!  It left teeth marks!  I held him by both arms and said NO, we do NOT bite! Then I gave him a little pat on the bottom. I would not call it a spanking, but it's about as close as I'll come to that for a while!  He screamed and was mad at me, but just wanted to hug me after that, so we hugged and I explained that biting is not allowed (he obviously has no idea what I was talking about), BUT, he has not bitten me since!  Hoping it worked!

He is starting to talk more and more and I love listening to him try to talk.  He says Momma and Daddah all the time and he also says: ball, peeese (please), dogggg, keys, booo (for books)...hmmm, I am sure there are more things I am forgetting....

We are having the best time with him right now!  He has his moments (enter the biting phase), but he is so sweet and so loving.  We can't get enough of him!

Sleeping is great: from 7:00 at night until at least 7:30 in the morning (most mornings it's around 8) and he naps every day for 2-3 hours.  If he had a big morning, his nap will be 3.5 hours!

He loves to show off his tricks, like pointing to his nose and his toes and if you ask him where the baby is, he will come over and lift up my shirt to pat my tummy.  PRECIOUS!

Bath time is the MOST fun part of the day.  He plays SO hard in there!  He loves to put his face in and blow bubbles.  It's awesome to watch him have no fear of the water!

 Cal loves his chair from Pottery Barn that my parents gave him for Christmas.  He does, however, have a tendency to hoard.  I am hoping we don't see him on that show when he's older... he had his chair filled with every toy he could find in it, and he couldn't fit.  I got some pictures of the process of him trying to sit with everything in the chair, but I am only posting the cute ones of bozo.

And I can't write about Cal without writing about his rubber boots!  The kid loves his boots!  He wears them non-stop, and God help you if you try to take them off of him.  He puts them on every day and stomps around the house in them!  I think it's pretty adorable....

Pregnancy:

I can't believe how little I have written about this pregnancy!  I am so devoted to getting this house sold and us moved that I am not focusing on this pregnancy very much at all!  Don't get me wrong: I am eating healthy (although I am sure I will still gain 50 lbs...whatever), taking vitamins, and doing everything else I should do to grow a healthy baby, but I am not reading baby books, setting up his nursery, shopping for baby clothes....guess it's a good thing it's a boy!

really and truly, I am feeling great still.  It will hit me towards the end when I am feeling HUGE just how pregnant I am, but for now, I feel great.  No complaints.  Actually, one complaint: with all of this moving and prepping jazz going on around here (not to mention the meltdowns from the little one), I would love to drink a bottle of wine a night.  Is that too much to ask??  haha-- last pregnancy, I was allowing myself one glass every now and then by this point, but honestly, alcohol doesn't even sound good to me.  I just want to relax with a glass on my couch and just SIT.  (does that make me sound like I have a drinking problem??? I don't, I swear!!!)

I am 24 weeks today-- how IN SANE is that???  It's just flying by and I am enjoying all of his little kicks and punches and I think he is going to be as active as his big brother!  Eddie was able to feel him kick from the outside the other day so that was really cool.  I think it always seems more "real" to the dad when they can feel the bulge in my belly move.  haha

As for names, we go around and around... should we keep the CEW monogram that Eddie, Cal and I all have?  That way, all of Cal's monogrammed clothes could be passed down.......???  But honestly, can you think of some good E names for me?  That's a toughy!  So then we thought that since Cal got Eddie's dad's name, that we should give baby two my dad's name, Steven.  But we would give him another name and call him that-- does that make sense?  We've been thinking Steven Andrew and calling him Andy.  I LOVE the name Andy....it just seems really sweet to me.

So what do you think?  Stick with the CEW?  Or go for Andy?  My dad would be over the moon if his name was in there somewhere....

Well, I think that just about covers it all!  I'll keep you posted on the house.... sorry for the lengthy, boring updates.  I will try to be better about blogging since most of my to-do list is done for now!

House update!

This could be a VERY boring/long blog post, so I'll apologize now!


Those that have been reading a while might remember to this past Mother's Day when Eddie got me a lot in an awesome new neighborhood for us to build a house.  We (he) decided we should be reasonable and wait until our house sold.  We (he) also decided to try to sell our house For Sale By Owner for a while. 

We had a good amount of showings for FSBO, but it just wasn't selling.  Well, the awesome neighborhood is a HOT neighborhood, and they realized that they could raise their prices and people would still want to move there (even in a crap economy, go figure!).  Once they raised their prices, we were basically out.  Their lot prices went up, and so did the floor plans from which to choose.  We would have brought new meaning to the phrase House Poor!

So, then I get pregnant, and I am sick of thinking of where this little bambino is going to go in this house-- as I have said before, the layout just won't work with another baby and we are flat out of space!  I contacted an AMAZING Realtor who had been referred to me by another friend and she is outstanding.  It's a mother-in-law/daughter-in-law team and they are really hard working women.  They have a lot of connections with doctors at Duke in the residency program, so we are hoping when the new doctors come in (late February/early March) they will show them our house!

One afternoon, Cal was in mega destruct mode where he just wanted to throw everything in sight, so I loaded him in the car and we went for a drive.  I decided to drive through a little neighborhood that I've always thought was really cute and right away, I saw a For Sale By Owner sign in the front yard of a very cute house.  I grabbed a flier and, are you ready for this??  It was BELOW our budget.  And it was bigger than the house in pricey neighborhood, had a larger lot than that n'hood, AND,  it was almost $100,000 LESS!!!  I thought it had to be too good to be true.  There was a website with pictures to view so I went home and looked up the pictures.  It was adorable...that got me motivated even more!

The wonder team had a Stager come out to our house to walk through room by room to discuss things that needed to be done in order to get it sold.  The stager came up with a packet of "suggestions" for us to complete-- our packet was 15 pages....!  Some of the things were pretty common sense (clean out closets to make them look bigger), and other things were things we never would have done on our own without someone telling us to (get rid of our living room furniture and rent furniture in there to make the room look bigger).  The leather on our couch is VERY worn and it has not worn very well.  The leather is peeling off so it looks very cheap and unattractive (unfortunately!). We also have some large pieces in there, so we are going to store those to show off the maximum amount of square footage.

Soooo.... in the mean time, we had our Realtors show us the house that was FSBO and it was even cuter in person than in the pictures.  The pictures do not do it justice at all!  It has great crown molding, the hardwood floors are immaculate and the back yard is HUGE!  There are some things that will need updating: the carpeting needs to be redone, it could use a fresh coat of paint (although every room is white except the dining room-- the walls just need a little refreshing!), and there is not granite in the kitchen....but those are all minor minor things, if you ask me!  The layout is perfect, with a guestroom downstairs, and the other rooms upstairs.  There is also a HUGE playroom and a walk up attic that is beyond huge.  I gasped when I walked up there. It's that big.  All I could think about was all of my crap that needs to be stored!

Okay, so we are in love with this house.  But, we still have to get ours sold first!  Our goal is to have it on the market by Feb.1st.  That way it will reset on MLS at 0 days on the market and we will hopefully have all of our stuff on the list completed.  I had a painter come out yesterday to do some touch up work and paint a bathroom (it was a crazy red color done in a HIGH sheen-- not picked by us!), and now it's a light khaki color-- it looks great! We also are renting a POD storage bin and we are packing things like crazy.  If we aren't going to need it in the next 3 months, it is going in storage.  I have cleaned out every closet, taken out the majority of the items in our kitchen cabinets (the open glassed ones), and removed every picture of us from the house!  The stager said having personal pictures around makes the people forget to focus on the house, but instead on the pictures of the "cute baby" or the "fun wedding" etc.  I can understand that, I guess...  I always walk into people's houses and look at the pictures!  I am a picture person--haha

The stager will come back hopefully this week to move around some furniture and bring in some rental stuff.  She thinks we should replace our Pottery Barn rug with a very neutral rug that will make people look up at the lines on the ceiling instead of at the rug.  Makes sense...right??  Our realtors are suggesting we do whatever the stager tells us to.  They said she is amazing at getting houses sold quickly.  Let's hope so! 

This process is SO SO complicated, but if we can move (and quickly!), it will all be worth it.  We don't have the POD yet, but I have about 25 boxes stacked in the living room right now waiting to be loaded.  We have several large pieces of furniture that will be loaded in there as well.  Could be interesting to do all of this pregnant, right?  Oh, and doing all of this with Cal "helping" has been beyond difficult.  Did I mention that I am sick too?  Yeah-- killer cold.  Can't stop coughing. 

It's a long post, and if you've read this far, I am impressed!  Wish us luck....my fingers are crossed everything works out.  I think we are going to put a contingent offer on the other house.  It's really perfect for us!

Ahhhhh.......I'll keep you posted!

Jackson's birthday party

My nephew, Jackson, turned 3 this past week and we went to his birthday party at Playnation on Saturday morning.  It was the PERFECT place to have a party!  The place is huge and they shut it down for birthday parties, so his party had the run of the place.  I meant to get more pictures of the other kids, but (of course) Cal was grabbing my attention.  He really wanted to go on the big slide, but is not quite big enough to go on his own.  It was wayyy hard for momma to get up the stairs while holding Cal and balancing a belly, so my mom took him.  She thought she was just going to take him once or twice, but he kept running over to her and doing the "more" sign over and over and over again.  Here are some pictures of them going down the slide.....

 ready.....

 set....

 go!

 He would giggle all the way down the slide, starting at the top, and everyone was staring at him because he was laughing so hard.  After about his 50th time down, he got very brave and didn't want to wait for Grandma!  Luckily, she was quick and was right there to grab him to go down together.

 cracking up!

 All of the electricity in the place did a number on Cal's hair and I thought it was SO funny!  So, of course, I had to document the wild hair....

 There was one slide that was a blow up slide-- the whole thing was like a HUGE jump house, and you climb up the ladder and then go down the other side.  Eddie took Cal to the top and I thought they were going to slide down together....Eddie got up there and let Cal go!!!!

 HE LOVED IT!

He was squealing all the way to the bottom and started doing the more sign over and over again.  It scared the life out of me, but once I saw how much Cal loved it, how could I not crack up?  It was so stinkin' cute to see my little man going down such a huge slide!

After playing, all of the kids went into the eating room for some pizza and cupcakes.  Cal, never one to turn down food, chowed on both.  In the below picture, he took a bite of cupcake, then shoved pizza in his mouth immediately after.  He is looking at me like, what?  It's good! haha

 Who me??

 This was 4 minutes after we pulled out of the parking lot of the play place.  His eyes weren't even all the way shut, but his eyes were crossing and he was OUT!  So fun!

On a side note....happy birthday to my sweet nephew!  I love him so much and can NOT believe he is THREE!!!

Hank

Have I mentioned that my dog is a saint?  He deserves all the doggie treats in the world, if you ask me.