What are you looking at?

Adjusted expectations

When setting the tone for 2012, I decided that my word for the year would be leap. Abandon comfort zones. Propel myself into new terrain. Be nervous. All in an effort to prepare for the big changes I expected to set into motion.

Well, one of those adventures is officially on hold. Luke and I won't be putting our house on the market this spring.

It shouldn't have taken a preliminary analysis from our real estate agent to figure this out, but apparently I am that stupid. For instance: Did you know that homes these days are...selling less than what you paid for? By like, thousands of dollars? And there are no fairy godmothers to neatly make up the difference? Also, that you will possibly STILL be expected to do things like repair the roof and pony up closing costs? May I also inform you that the earth is round and revolves around the sun?

It's been an enlightening week for the Frema-Useless Clutter household.

Oh, Momma, but you are a fool! Let us join in a round of laughter at your expense.

All kidding aside, I am surprised I thought the concept of getting the house to market by April was more within our grasp than it actually was. We've known since tax time last year that our 2011 refund would be applied fully toward our credit card debt, our short-term savings is nil, and the dial on our mortgage (understandably) hasn't moved much since we bought this place a little more than three years ago. Of course we'll need to bring money to the table. I just never quantified the amount until Saturday.

Screw books and puzzles! No time like the present to learn DIY shingle.

Before leaving us yesterday, our agent promised to be in touch with more concrete numbers on what we can reasonably expect the house to sell for and how much we might be asked to pay out of pocket, but after comparing last year's list prices to sale prices for homes in our neighborhood, Luke and I already know that we can't afford to sell right now - maybe not even in this calendar year.

At first this was more than a little discouraging. We are so ready to move forward in other areas of our lives, but everything is contingent upon being free of this property (or at least will be made a million times easier). Renting is not an option, and we aren't interested in jumping through hoops for a short sale. Instead, we're choosing to view this setback as an opportunity. 

Really, we should have been planning to go into this process with as little debt as possible, so now we can make that happen. Our tax refund will be used to pay off our credit card balance, and that better equips us to take care of our remaining medical bills (still looking at you, Liam, while also waiting to receive the invoice for my follow-up ERCP). Once that's done, we can make updates to paint, fixtures, and other random eyesores a little at a time instead of all at once. We can investigate other ways to save money (refinancing, budget cuts, etc.). Meanwhile, our mortgage will only get lower, and there is still plenty we can do to get ready for the changes that lie ahead. We are deep in the tunnel, but we can still see the light.

And what if, in the middle of all these preparations, the adventure of a lifetime falls into my (our) lap? I (we) may chase after it, anyway, easy be damned. This year, when pitted against leap, easy is going to lose, every time.

I'm a big kid now (times two)

This past weekend, Luke and I took the first tangible step in preparing our house for a new baby by moving Kara and Nathan into the same bedroom. The Big Kids Bedroom. A bedroom that now contains a twin bed, a toddler bed, and two children under the age of four.

 

A view of Nathan's big boy bed. You'll notice we nixed the idea of themed wall art and instead went with that famous line known as "Cheap Pictures We Liked From Target."

We've been talking about this merge ever since we found out about Baby Brother, and we've been discussing it with the kids for almost as long, but it wasn't until last week when I was reading stories to Nathan in his glider that it hit me: Oh my gosh, my baby is losing his room. And his crib, and his dresser, and all those other baby things that we picked out just for him.

I thought about how he might not be ready, and how, as one of two boys, he may never have his own room again, and how adorable, kissably soft, and baby-like his cheeks are, even though his favorite statement of late is "No, I want to do it by myself," and I ended up crying myself to sleep. Oh, the tangled emotions involved in making room for another child, and forcing watching the children you already have grow up in the process.

But JC Penney wasn't aware of my misgivings, so Kara's twin bed arrived on Saturday as planned, and Luke and I spent that afternoon washing bedding, rearranging furniture, and transferring Nathan's things into Kara's closet and dresser. Between the two of them, Nathan actually had the largest set of drawers, but I wanted to keep all the matching furniture together, partly for the baby and partly for (eventual) showing purposes; in the end, we made it work by designating the closet for all shirts and pants and the dresser for socks, underclothes, and pajamas.

 

A close-up of Nathan's big boy bed, which looks perfect against the yellow paint, in my frugal lazy humble opinion.

Fortunately, ironing out the logistics of The Great Bedroom Merge turned out to be a lot of fun; while I'm no Martha Stewart when it comes to decorating, I rise to the tasks of organizing, removing extraneous clutter, and finding a proper place for belongings that make the cut. It also helped that Nathan LOVED the idea of sleeping in the toddler bed; pair that with his fondness for his quilt from godmother Auntie Molly, and you get a charged-up little boy who was more than ready to roll around in the covers and play with his animals the minute his set-up was complete. The car pillow was a new purchse and proved to be a hit with both kids. 

 

A view of Kara's newest big girl bed. Is it wrong to kind of want it for myself?

Because it took all day to get things settled, both kids missed their naps (not that Kara takes them very often, anyway), so it was a challenge to get them settled down come bedtime. They didn't want to read stories in the rocking chair as is our usual way, opting instead to camp out in their respective beds, and their attention span was extremely short; plus, Nathan typically goes down about 30 minutes before Kara, and Kara doesn't fall asleep as quickly as he does, so we weren't sure how difficult it would be for each of them to fall asleep in the presence of the other. The cherry on top was following through with our decision to attempt to wean Nathan from his pacifier; I was so sure he would call us on this and put up a fight. 

At 8:06, we showered them with kisses, left the room, and braced ourselves for a long night ahead.

By 9:02, they were out like a light, with Nathan pacifier free.

That is not to imply the fifty-six minutes in between were perfect -- several times they tumbled out of bed, and Nathan did mention his pacifier once while being tucked in. But overall our son took his new role as a big boy very seriously, and big boys stay in their beds, so he did, and pacifiers are meant for babies, so subconsiously I think he deemed it inappropriate to push the issue. Also, his stay-put example definitely inspired Kara to follow suit, as she's never had any problems abandoning her big girl status to visit Mommy and Daddy more frequently than TV shows air commercials. She actually fell asleep earlier with Nathan across the room than she typically does on her own. SCORE AND SCORE.

Luke and I were not as enthused when Kara jumped into our bed at five o'clock the next morning and Nathan sobbed for his pacifier at six (insert stab to the heart here).

We held firm on the latter, though, and Luke eventually tried to appease Nathan by bringing him into bed with us, but four people + a queen-sized mattress does not = restful sleep for anyone. It was a long Easter, let me tell you. And Nathan hasn't fully processed the permanence of the arrangement yet, because occasionally he still asks to read stories in "his room." But at two and a half nights in, we have a consistent pattern of both children falling asleep before 9:30, which has NOT been our experience in the past, so at this point I am inclined to declare the Great Merge a smashing success.

 

Here is our boy, all tucked in and ready for Dreamland. He was delighted with his big boy pillows and adamant about laying his head on the stack of them, which I think is one of the reasons it took him so long to fall asleep that first night. It was clear he was uncomfortable having his head elevated so high. "You don't have to use both of them if you don't want to - you can cuddle the car pillow like a stuffed animal or even move it to the other side of the bed. Whatever you want," I told him, but he wouldn't hear of it.

He must have considered the suggestion on some level, though, because eventually we found him like this:

 

Luke wanted a better-looking photo than that for our albums, though, so he took some artistic liberties to achieve this:

 

How is he not on the cover of a Golden Book? Those cheeks!

Meanwhile, Kara adjusted to her own upgrade pretty well and was especially taken with her new quilt. This shot is only slightly staged:

 

It took a lot of self-restraint not to crawl in there with her, for a mother-daughter cuddle.

At this point last week, I was so sad about Nathan shedding another layer of his babyhood, but now I am so happy for him, and proud that he was able to handle these big, important steps so easily. My favorite part? I can give those baby-toddler cheeks another kiss good-night once he's fast asleep, just like I do with Kara, now that we're no longer separated by crib slats.

 

We are getting so close to Baby Day, and there is still so much to do, but this merge? It was a good thing, and a step in the right direction.

Home improvement

I don't think I'm a very good homeowner.

To be clear: I like owning a home. I enjoy not having to answer to a higher authority if I want to paint a wall or replace a faucet or handle some other type of administrative task. What I despise is actually doing those things that would make my house a nicer place to live in.

Since we found out about Baby Brother 2.0 back in October, Luke and I have been talking about various projects we intended to tackle before his arrival. At first the list seemed pretty ambitious: repaint the entire kitchen (plus cabinets) and adjoining half-bathroom; paint both kids' rooms and the bathroom at their end of the hall; winterize the backyard and FINALLY lay down some seed to repair the dead patches of grass we inherited from the previous owners (courtesy of their four dogs). Replace the ripped-up screens on the second floor. Revamp the landscaping in the front of the house.

We're not talking major renovations like knocking out a wall or updating our shower, just a little sprucing up here and there that would be easier to do before the baby comes rather than after.

Let me tell you what we have accomplished so far:

• Replaced the screens (as of Wednesday, with help from Luke's parents)
• Mowed the lawn and scattered seed (as of yesterday)
• That is all

Part of it is money; paint isn't expensive, necessarily, but it's also not cheap, and buying gallons of new color to throw on our walls when we are so focused on paying down debt just isn't a top priority. However, if I'm being honest, the bigger issue is the fact that even thinking about taping off edges and laying down plastic and keeping two toddlers away from rooms of wet paint feels like more trouble than it's worth.

Which is a shame, too, because mentally I can also see the outcome of these projects and how they would improve our feelings about living in this house. When I was in Rensselaer and working at Saint Joe, I took two weeks off from work to paint all the rooms in my new little apartment, and I was so proud of my work when I was done.

Then again, I was twenty-five years old with no children and no major expenses to cover, and I could come and go from the project as I pleased without worrying about stopping to manage potty time or fix lunch or give anyone a bath.

Anyway.

It's also lamentable because in my opinion, our house is in need of some serious TLC. Despite hiring painters to do the whole house before our October 2008 move-in, several rooms are already in desperate need of touching up: marks on the walls, scratched-up baseboards and hand rails, spackled areas that are still white as a bride on her wedding day, etc. Apparently, the everyday life of a young, growing family isn't compatible with pretty real estate.

We have leftover paint in the garage, so this type of work could be done without spending a dime, but again, just thinking about the prep involved makes me want to take a nap.

Has anyone else ever felt this blah about their house and eventually gone on to take a more vested interest in home improvement and decorating once their kids grew older? Lazy Inquiring minds want to know.

Pre-nesting

This past Sunday, I spent a glorious three hours cleaning out Kara's closet and sorting her outgrown clothes into Tupperware bins for other fashionistas to enjoy. Now that we know the baby's sex and ESPECIALLY since Luke and I will be taking steps to nail shut close the door on the reproductive phase of our lives, I'm eager to let go of that which no longer represents the family we are now and make room for the next round of material fanfare. (Though I did hold on to some unique iron-on onesies made by a special Internet auntie.) For us, that chapter involves turning two toddlers into roommates by situating them in a gender-neutral space absent of floral wall art and yellow paint and preparing a nursery for our newest little guy. 

When it comes to feeling ready for this baby, I haven't yet experienced that paralyzing Oh, Shit Moment Amalah described in a recent post, but at this point it's only a matter of days, as I have already shared with Luke my strong desire to conduct The Great Carseat Experiment this weekend to finally determine how we will fit three children in the second row of the Outlander. Luckily, we have two different infant buckets at our disposal - the Chicco KeyFit 30 originally purchased for Kara, which we love but anticipate being too bulky to position between two toddler seats, and a slimmer Baby Trends hand-me-down from my friend Jenn that may just do the trick. It also helps that Kara is now the appropriate height and weight for a booster seat (40 pounds and 40 inches, as of last week's well-child visit), so that should buy us a little more room.

Anyway, just imagining those carseats all smashed together lined up in a perfectly safe arrangement is working me into a mini-frenzy. Actually watching this image come to life is guaranteed to secure my one-way ticket to Crazy Pregnant Lady Town.

As I've stated before, we truly are blessed to have so many of Baby Brother's "necessities" already in our possession, the result of having two young children and generous family and friends. Bassinet, crib, changing table, swing, car seat, bouncy seats, nursing pillows, bottle warmers, infant AND toddler carriers, mobile... We haven't spent a dime on him yet, and that includes my maternity wardrobe, which so far has accommodated my current size nicely (though come summer I may be singing a different tune). We do know, though, that there are a couple of things we'll want to pick up, the biggest item being a stroller. Once I'm feeling up to it, Luke and I want to be out and about as much as possible with all three kids this summer, and while baby carriers are wonderful, it would be nice to NOT have the baby strapped to my person every waking moment of the day if I so desire. Of course, our choice of stroller will be heavily influenced by the infant car seat we end up using - another reason The Great Carseat Experiment must take place as soon as possible - and after doing some price-checking online, I'm wondering if it would make more sense financially to drop some dough on a moderately priced travel system than spend almost the same amount on a single stroller.

A jogging stroller would also be grand, but unless we win the lottery, Luke and I will be staggering our alone time on the trail accordingly. Which is not terrible in theory, since I'm sure we'll each welcome a short break from the zoo that will be our household.

One area where I do want to spend some money is on decorating the kids' rooms. Kara and Nathan's room would benefit from a fresh coat of paint, spunky wall art, and some new bedding if we can swing it right away. As for the baby's room, it's technically all ready to go for a boy, but I hate the thought of bringing him home to a space that was custom-designed for his big brother. Plus, nurseries are so much damn FUN to decorate, and I want to experience doing that one last time.

Luke and I also once talked about painting the kitchen, half bath, and the kids' bathroom, but these action items may be placed on hold until fall, when we will hopefully have more moolah at our disposal. Not to mention it might make more sense to paint those areas closer to sell time, in case our color palettes are deemed All Wrong by our real estate agent. (Feel free to agree with me here -- or not -- in the comments.)

It feels like we've been talking about these various projects for simply ages now, but pretty soon it'll be time to spring into action, because Oh, shit, a baby is coming! (hey, there it is!), and babies do not factor your laundry to-do list into their date of arrival.

Ingrates!

Chasing the clouds away

It's so easy to let money troubles define who you are by measuring your life against that which you cannot do. At least, that's how it feels to me sometimes. My monthly book club dinners are out. Luke can't join a gym to support his training for this year's Mini (!!). Kara can't take dance lessons, and Nathan can't start (pre-pre)school by his birthday like we once planned. Granted, these can'ts will resolve themselves in a few months, so they're not hindering us long term, but how do you get by in the interim? How can you turn your day-to-day into something meaningful using only what you already have? And during the coldest, darkest time of year?

Those were the questions Luke and I were asking ourselves at the beginning of the month, after evaluating our money situation for the remainder of winter and coming up with a game plan to get us through. It's easy to fall into a "Why me?" sort of attitude and feel sorry for yourself. But clearly, asking pointless questions and indulging useless emotions won't get you anywhere. So here are some of the ways in which we are accentuating the positive:

Cleaning house: Luke and I love to play the "What if?" game when it comes to remembering all the other houses we could have purchased instead of this one, but when she's wearing her Sunday best, it's easier to appreciate all the positives we gained with this place: open space, natural light, optimal number of bedrooms, and plenty of toilets to accommodate large family get-togethers. I am working hard to stop clutter from piling up in hot spots like the microwave top, the mail stand, and my dresser top. I make the bed every morning before I leave for work, and I've stopped using our CD rack as my own personal storage unit. We won't be implementing any major renovations this year, but we do plan to paint the kids' bathrooms and our kitchen before the baby comes, and a new splash of color can do wonders to improve the overall mood of a room. (Right, Molly?)

Being creative: Last week I received a gift certificate from my employer acknowledging my five-plus years of service. The certificate was for an undesignated amount of money for a site that very much reminded me of those catalogs from grade school - you know, the ones that told you what you could score for selling five to twenty candy bars (sparkly pen, bangle bracelets), fifty to seventy-five (NKOTB tribute band CD, piggy bank), etc. I could have redeemed it for a sassy new hobo bag, but Luke and I chose boring cookware instead, because our current set was scratched up something fierce and there was no room in our budget for replacing it. It wasn't a fun choice, but we saw an opportunity and jumped on it.

Taking stock: It's also been helpful to remind ourselves of all the things we do have that make this rough patch more manageable. The maternity clothes I once planned to unload to Goodwill, for one - I'll need more clothes when the weather gets warmer and my belly rivals the size of a world globe, but for now I can stretch out live off my regular work pants and the oodles of three-quarter-sleeved shirts I found at Kohl's near the end of my pregnancy with Nathan.

Thankfully, we need very little baby gear for Number Three. Nathan's room is still set up to accommodate a baby with a matching crib, changing table, and dresser set, courtesy of my 2008 Christmas bonus, and his and Kara's closets are jam-packed with items Luke and I weren't sure what to do with but didn't want to get rid of: crib mobile, swing, baby carriers, activity table, random infant toys, and so on, and our bassinet will come back to us from Samantha and Dan the next time they come to visit. And ninety-five percent of what we don't have is either being handed down to us from family and friends. We'll need a new single stroller, and we'd LOVE to get our hands on a jogging stroller, but ultimately we won't be missing anything necessary to bring the baby home.

We are also feeling better about our car situation. The plan was always to try and fit our current Chicco infant seat into the Outlander along with Kara's and Nathan's Britax convertibles, but thanks to some of the comments on my last post, we are now considering investing in smaller seats if that's what it will take to cram fit all three kids in there. Plus, there's a good chance that Kara can move into a booster seat by summer, and that will save us some room, so we're exploring that option, too. Not fretting over taking on a $300-plus car payment does wonders for a mother's piece of mind. Imagine that!

Finally, thanks to the size and layout of our house, we'll only need a smidge of rearranging to make room for Number Three. So far the plan is for the two older ones to share Kara's bedroom, which is the larger of the two rooms by about the double the square footage; they are so young right now that the gender issue doesn't come into play, and it just makes sense for the kids who share a bedtime routine to also share their sleeping quarters. We'll transition Kara into a twin-sized bed and Nathan into her toddler bed sometime this spring and leave his room pretty much as is for the baby (though we do plan to paint). All of this will require some creative thinking on our parts in regards to organization, but creative thinking is free, and paint is cheap. This is good.

And on the leisure and recreation front, Luke and I realized we still have plenty of ways to keep busy. We finally made space for his drawing table - which had been sadly collecting dust in our garage for almost as long as we've lived in this house - in the little nook in our bedroom, and we've been alternating between the library and our current book collection for new reading material. We have rediscovered the old Nintendo games saved on our Wii, and my brother- and sister-in-law passed along a TV antenna last week, so two nights ago, for the first time since August, we were able to view network television. LIVE. On our actual TV instead of a laptop. If I weren't pregnant and, you know, vehemently against smoking, it would've been the perfect moment to light a cigarette, post-coital style.

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It's easier to think positively when your stomach isn't hurting almost twenty-four hours a day. I'm in the middle of my sixteenth week, and over the few days or so, I've seen an increase in my energy level and a slightly higher tolerance for a wider menu of grocery items (though for some reason almost every tomato sauce I've had tastes terribly sweet and overall not right to me. What's up with that?), so when it comes to feeling like complete and utter crap, I think I'm finally, FINALLY, out of the woods. (I've even taken to washing dinner dishes again, hooray for Luke!) I'm still getting headaches, but they're not as frequent, and sleeping is still relatively uneventful, save for the three-year-old who has a habit of climbing into her parents' bed almost every night. However, while this pregnancy saw the quickest recovery of first(ish)-trimester symptoms, they definitely hit me the hardest this time. So...I win? Sort of?

My next doctor's appointment is February 7, at which time we'll get to see Number Three's privates and consequently start focusing on only one set of baby names. Time is flying by this go-around, it seems, so I'm not impatient with waiting, only excited. And for what it's worth, I'm not even as nervous about affording this baby, now that we (assuming) have the car thing under control. Hopefully that means my future posts will read more like this one and not my last.

Thank you, as always, for letting me be honest.

"Why are you selling the house?"

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about revisiting major life choices, reflecting on the outcome, and wondering if I'd do it all again. I followed up a week later with the age-old question, "To live or not to live near your family?" My first entry for October talked about revamping our budget to accommodate new goals. And my last one highlighted our latest in a string of whirlwind weekends up north, with a good-natured jab at caffeine.

Put those macro-level concepts together and it's not hard to understand why we want to sell our house.

 

Luke with the kids at a nearby orchard earlier this month. All hail the beauty of a simple but meaningful day.

That is not to say that Luke and I have a carved-in-stone plan we are following or that we have any idea how this process will play out. We want to get closer to our families, but that could mean finding a place on the other side of town just as easily as it could translate into planting roots in one of their zip codes. And we are not willing to compromise the basic elements of our lives just to reduce the mileage on our cars: anyplace we live must be affordable on a one-income salary, have a solid school system (not five star, but pretty damn good), boast of parks, walking trails, and other forms of outdoor recreation, and be a managable commuting distance from my employer (whether my current one or another). We just have a new non-negotiable to add to the mix, and that is yes, reducing the mileage on our cars to spend more time with the people we love. No Impact Man would be proud.

We don't know what the future looks like, but we DO know that in order to get there, we can't stay as we are.

There are so many things to love about our current community. So much of what we are looking for is right in our backyard. I can access an entire trail system simply by hopping my fence. The integrity of the schools is without question. The town is quaint, easy to navigate, and cheap. But those things on their own are not enough to keep us here forever.

I long for the days when we could visit during a holiday and still crash in our own bed at night. I lament over missed time with friends because you can only call on so many people over the span of a weekend, and family touchpoints have always come first. I want to offer a shoulder and an ear more often in the literal sense than I'm able to now. I would love for Samantha to be able to call me on a random Saturday morning to watch Danny and Rosemary so that she and Dan can drool over tile. And Luke and I certainly wouldn't say no to the free baby-sitting likely to be offered in return.

These desires do not seem unreasonable to me.

Many people live away from their hometowns and do just fine seeing their parents at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. But Luke and I have never been those people, and it's time to start carving out a life that more honestly reflects our behavior. Our home is with each other and the kids, obviously, but as a wife, mother, and full-time employee, I appreciate the whole "It takes a village" mindset much more than I did as a single twenty-something grad student, that's for sure. And as a stay-at-home dad, Luke identifies with it on a different level even from me.

There are non-family issues at play here, too, of course. Like, our grocery stores are mostly filled with boxed, frozen, and/or imported items, with nary a Trader Joe's or Whole Foods or like-minded retailer in sight. Public transportation is limited and inefficient. Diversity is somewhat lacking, at least compared to a population like Chicago's. But I know that being a child of Chicago means I am setting the bar relatively high in that area.

Originally, the plan was to put the house on the market come spring; that plan has changed for reasons I can't share yet. But Luke and I are in agreement that, as soon as it's feasible, we will put our house on the market, and we will sell it, and we will rent an apartment near my job's new headquarters, and THEN we will be in a position to answer the questions that until now have been hypothetical at best. And I can't wait.

 

On living honestly

This morning, Luke and I registered Kara for preschool.

Well, technically, not preschool. It's categorized as a children's ministry program, offered through a nearby church. Four hours a day, one day a week. The program isn't accredited with fancy acronyms, and the staff members don't have teaching licenses, but there will be free play and music and snack time and show-and-tell and take-home bulletins once a month. Plus, we'll have to get her a backpack and lunchbox. So for a two-year-old girl who's been hanging out at home with her dad and her baby brother almost her entire life, it's close enough.

It's plenty close for her parents, too.

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In an effort to get a better handle on our finances, Luke and I are trying something new at home. Suze Orman calls it the back-to-cash movement. I like to think of it as our new reality.

The new reality is this: Gone are the days where we put everything on the credit card and pay for it at the end of thirty days (which, near the end, wasn't working out so well, anyway). Good-bye to Excel spreadsheets that were intended to help us budget on a monthly basis rather than per-paycheck. From now on, if we want to buy something, we are going to the bank, making a withdrawal from the ATM, and paying for it in cash. There will be occasional exceptions, of course, like purchases online or the occasional Redbox rental, but ninety-five percent of the time, them's the rules.

We started on October 1. Six days in so far, and doing well.

 

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Luke and I have been talking a lot about what we want to accomplish in the short term--realistic goals we can achieve in the next six to twelve months. In the short term, we want more social networking opportunities for Kara and Nathan (not the Facebook and Twitter kind), to give them a chance to explore interests outside the confines of our living room, interacting with adults who are not us. We want to enjoy financial freedom and not have to itemize every single penny of a paycheck two months in advance in order to afford concert tickets or Christmas presents or a random date night. We want to formally close the baby chapter of our lives by New Year's and put our house on the market come spring. And I want to volunteer.

However, we're also in agreement on what we don't want. For example, we are not quite ready to enroll Nathan in any sort of program that takes him out of our care. He can have a few more months of home time with Luke and Kara, and enjoy the precious one-on-one time he's about to score with his dad, and at least blow out the candles on his second birthday cake before we re-evaluate our position. Also, we are not ready for Luke to go back to work, even if we could put another salary to good use ($1,600 worth of car repairs on the Outlander, I'm looking at you). We appreciate and depend on the benefits of being a one-income family: the extra bonding time for Luke and the kids, the flexibility of managing only one work schedule, the ability for me to concentrate on my corporate to-dos as needed instead of tossing my laptop into a bag the minute the clock turns five. We wouldn't be any worse for the wear for having those issues, but they would most definitely complicate things, and we have all the uncertainty we can handle right now, thankyouverymuch.

We've talked about me picking up some freelance work or Luke taking a part-time job with night and weekend hours to bring more money through the door, but honestly, right now we are content to just buckle down and do the best we can with what we have today. There is enough to pay the bills and buy the organic yogurt we like and travel north and even score dinner out once and a while. We are beefing up our short-term savings and still making regular deposits into our health savings account for medical expenses. We don't need a second mortgage, and we aren't defaulting on Sallie Mae. In every area that counts, we are fine. And believe me, we are thankful.

But still, we are making hard choices, like back in August when we discontinued satellite. This month, we stopped all contributions to my 401(k), an account that's been funded every two weeks rain or shine for the last five years AND saw generous matches from my employer, to make room in the budget for Kara's tutition. I am disappointed over this and understand there may be long-term ramifications come our golden years, but I do not regret it. Luke and I have been preparing for the future since before we even married. We're proud of the money we've accrued for retirement already. But right now, it is time to plan for now.

 

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In a conversation with Molly earlier this fall, she used the phrase "living honestly," and it has stuck with me ever since. Because that's what it feels like we're doing now: living a life that reflects our priorities and our resources, and sorting out the white noise that only gets in the way. For the first time in a long time, we're putting our money where our mouth is. What's that worth to you? I ask about almost everything now, from wedding RSVPs to a bag of Gummi Bears to preschool. What are you willing to sacrifice to make this happen?

Our short term is paving the way for the long term, a reality in which we are mortgage-free and in a position to entertain housing options that bring us closer to our loved ones, who I am missing more than ever these days. A reality that has both of us in careers that we love and best align with our strengths and passions. A reality that includes another child, obtained in a non-traditional way. It will take baby steps, but we will get there. I know it in my bones.

 

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As Kara and Nathan grow older, I become more aware of all the ways we can screw them up. I know, I know, they're only babies, all they need is love, blah blah blah, but even at this young age, we are setting the bar for how they will realize their potential. Take Kara's "school," for example. She'll be three in December, and is intellectually capable, I think, of handling a (slightly) more rigorous curriculum than the one we are placing her in; kids younger than her do this all the time in daycare, yes? But that benefit of school is not important to Luke and me right now, and as a result, her experience will be missing that formalized educational component. We'll revisit our feelings next year, obviously, but for now that's where we stand. 

We are also setting the bar for ourselves, I suppose, in regards to what Kara and Nathan can expect from us as parents. We did what we felt was necessary to get Kara into school, but we didn't even consider placing her more than one day a week (baby steps, remember?) or research more expensive options like the Goddard School or Montessori. We already know that retirement savings will always trump a 529. Many parents have different opinions on this, and that's okay. But as much as Luke and I want to give the kids the very best of ourselves, we are going to make ourselves a priority, too, and not apologize for that to anyone.

 

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I have come to learn that as a mother, I enjoy the toddler years far more than the infant ones. Kara's humor and sass are shining through these days, the product of two wise-cracking parents, to be sure, and builds upon both by relying on her razor-sharp memory. One day while we were eating dinner, she thought it a good idea to let milk dribble out of her mouth. She laughed as the milk traveled down her chin, and I hid a smile as I said, "Kara Leigh, please don't do that, that's not funny," and she replied, "Well, maybe a little funny," a phrase Luke uttered in passing the day before. (Thank you, dear.)

Meanwhile, Nathan speaks in full sentences and punctuates the majority of them with a question mark. "What's that noise, Mommy?  Want to build Mrs. Potato? Where's the moon, Mommy? Is that a oak leaf, Mommy? Want to read Turtle, Turtle, Watch Out? Should Momma hooold you?" And so on with the inquisitiveness. He is so curious, so observant, so willing to sit back and watch the action unfold. That is, when he's not bouncing off the couch, roaring like Michael Jackson circa "Scream," or body slamming his torso into the nearest gate.

They both have insatiable appetites for reading, which has been further enhanced by the recent discovery of our local library. At first I was worried they wouldn't get the concept of borrowing books, afraid they would pout and fuss when it came time to return them, but they totally get it, and now live for the next chance to play with the trains and scramble through the catepillar tunnel featured in the kids' room.

Our new reality is that our toddlers are becoming full-blown children. And man, do we just want to do right by them, and ourselves, too.

 

Go your own way

Well. That certainly was a lot of emotional vomit I spewed onto your monitors last week, wasn't it? Sorry about that. But if it helps any, it sure made me feel a whole lot lighter.

The biggest reassurance throughout this recent Self-Discovery 2.0 is that as I evaluate each major life choice, I'm still pretty sure that I/we made the right one.

The biggest was my decision five years ago to accept a new job opportunity in Indianapolis, a decision that placed two hundred and forty minutes and almost three hundred miles worth of distance between me, my parents, my siblings, and all of my closest friends. And in the five years that I've lived here, I have missed a lot. Ryan's wedding shower before her husband's move to Germany. The birth of my first nephew. Being within arm's reach for countless family crises, and unavailable for any function falling on a Sunday afternoon. It is something I have wrestled with on an almost daily basis. And while I know that many people are separated by even more hours and even more miles and make it work splendidly, it has never been a comfortable separation for me. I still think about the job offer that could have been and how things might have been different if only I had chosen a zip code closer to home.

But I am still glad to be here. Thanks to THIS zip code, Luke and I have carved out our own path together and learned to make it on our own, and we have two beautiful babies, and a stay-at-home parent, and a secure job with a thriving company, and a ridiculously affordable cost of living, all at a quieter pace and in the type of community-like atmosphere that is harder to find in the area where I grew up. That is not to say that we will always stay here or that we aren't considering life outside these walls, but I am grateful to have started out here, and we are in a better position to know what we want out of life as a result of having made this choice.

Our second most important decision, in my opinion, was to buy our house. This twelve-year-old house that seemed bright and perky enough when we signed on the dotted line but has revealed more wear and tear than we anticipated. Once again, it inspires the same cycle of questions, Luke and I wondering if we should have coughed up the extra forty dollars a month to go with one of the houses that didn't require brand new carpet from top to bottom or a new sliding glass door or brand new windows or a drastic revamp of the back yard or the eventual purchase of a brand new A/C unit. We are now an extra forty minutes and twenty-five miles away from our families, and in the spring I will have a forty-five-minute commute to work, and I never liked the exterior to begin with, and we detest the lack of cabinet space (and yes, still, the cabinets themselves). It's hard not to walk into other people's homes and ooh and aah over the features they have that we so desperately want for ourselves--bigger eating area, more storage, classier entranceway, sturdier bathroom elements. All of that in addition to more accessible options for organic produce, and less motherf*&!ing construction.

Round and round we would go while studying our financial situation to determine how much of a hit would we take on this investment if we were to put it up for sale tomorrow, how long we'd have to stay here before the money we've poured into this place (so far) isn't flushed down the toilet, the amount of money needed to fit it to our liking, the debt we're willing to accrue in the name of buying our dream home. This is where the green-eyed monster tempts me most, because of its intimate nature. This is where I eat my breakfast and pay our bills and tuck our children into bed, and it's hard to fall in love with your home when all you can see are its flaws.

But despite those flaws, I reluctantly still believe we ended up with the best house available at the time. For one thing, the mortgage can't be beat. In the almost two years we have been here, we've paid less to the bank than we ever did to our apartment complex, with double the square footage and one hundred percent autonomy to boot. Unfortunately, we just learned that our escrow payments are going up by $116 next month, but tightening the purse strings even makes that doable, which wouldn't have been the case if our inital payment were higher. Plus, aside from our kitchen grumbles, the space meets all of our needs. Adequate number of bedrooms and baths, separate loft for the computer, open first floor to accommodate boxes of toys and the constant patter of little feet. Again, it's not like we'll plan our funerals here, but we have what we need, and we know now what we want for the future.

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On Friday I saw my ob/gyn for the obligatory annual check-up, and one of the topics that came up was my family history with cancer--two maternal aunts, one of whom has already passed away from brain cancer (she also had breast cancer) and another who's battling breast cancer in the late stages. We talked about options for genetic testing and ways to reduce risk in the event that were deemed necessary. It's a scary talk to have, that's for sure, and heart-wrenching to think about losing precious years with your husband and children and everyone else who loves you. I spent a lot of time over the weekend thinking about this and how important it is to be honest with yourself about what you want out of life. Like, maybe I want another baby, so what if my patience is already stretched thin with two kids and the mere thought of washing baby bottles again makes me want to hurl. Even if that path never come to fruition (Luke has definitely not changed his mind here), simply giving myself permission to say it without attempting to justify it is so freeing, like the equivalent of a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders. There are tons more examples like this, goals without a strategic plan or pros and cons list, and I'm so excited to see where they end up, and how I will make the right ones a reality, and which ones will be left to God. At least I am open to the possibilities.

Luke and Bree plus three?

Now that the kids are a little older and every second of the day isn't solely focused on survival, Luke and I are finally in a place to start putting the finishing touches on our home. We made the move last October, and yet we still have walls that are bare, pictures that are outdated or missing altogether (didn't we give birth to a son in January?), knick knacks that need staging, files that need organizing, boxes that need sorting through.... You get the picture. As a result, we're now re-evaluating the usefulness and/or necessity of every piece of furniture, every stitch of clothing, every picture, file, and knick knack that we have, the goal being to keep only those things that bring us the greatest joy, meet our basic needs, and make our lives a little easier so we can spend less time picking up after ourselves and more time doing. Yesterday, I gave an armful of clothes, five pairs of shoes, and several old duffel bags to Goodwill, and looking at all the new space in my closet was not unlike going on a first date that involves dinner and second base. Not that I could recite the technical definition of second base, mind you, but in my head, it's some pretty good stuff.

Anyway, when I received word that my Parents job was ending, another goal was thrown into the mix: make a little money. In this economy, it's all about the Benjamins, y'all, one man's trash is another man's treasure, and I've got my mind on my money and my money on my mind. (If you can think of other personal finance cliches, knock yourself out. Bonus points for those born from early nineties rap.)

ANYWAY. Enter the baby clothes.

As Kara (rapidly) outgrew each stage of (her precious, adorable) clothing, everything was laundered and folded and blessed and placed neatly into Tuperware bins to use for the next baby. Items ranged from onesies she practically lived in to a three-month winter suit she wore maybe once on a stroller ride with Daddy to a newborn coming-home outfit she never wore at all because as it turns out, eleven-pound infants were not built to wear such tiny things.

 

Another Parents.com gem taken about ten days after Kara was born, just in time for our annual Christmas card. In case you're wondering, the sleeper and the Santa hat both made the cut.

Since Nathan's closet is smaller, we've been going through his things every couple of sizes, but except for one major purging before we moved into the house, Kara's things were left relatively untouched. As she is our first precious baybeee, it was emotional for the both of us, going through those bins, and there were tears and heartfelt talks over what we wanted to hold onto and what we were okay offering to the world (for cash), and as I sniffled sadly into the sleeve of my shirt and lamented the possibility of never being in this exact stage again, I wailed for the zillionth time, "Do you really think we're done?"

My husband blew me away by replying that he really wasn't sure. However, he added, "I think we're sad for different reasons."

"What do you mean?" I said, recovering from my latest Ugly Cry.

"I'm sad about Kara never being this little again, not about not doing this again."

 

Kara at eight months, watching me leave for work on a random weekday morning. I can't remember if we kept these pjs or not. I hope so.

The topic of more children was revisited Saturday morning, after I reorganized Kara's closet to store our bassinet, which until today had been residing in our master bedroom, serving as a drying rack and/or storage unit, take your pick, and isn't THAT exactly what you want in your line of vision as you get ready to...well, you know.

As I refolded the few baby blankets we decided to hold onto and placed them on the bassinet's mattress, I asked Luke again, "Do you still think you're okay not having another baby?"

And he sighed, because hot damn, is he married to a woman with a one-track mind or what, but once again, he conceded, "Maybe not. I don't know. I don't mean to leave you hanging, but I really don't know," adding, "...but probably."

The conversation rarely ends here. There's been a lot of talk about other ways to add to our family; the door is currently open to either adoption or foster parenting, though Luke isn't ready to do any soul-searching on either one. Which is totally understandable, seeing as our oldest isn't even potty-trained and our youngest can't stand on his own two feet without assistance. Why do I keep pushing for an answer to a question that doesn't need an answer right now? Why can't I just be happy with the family we have and let the future work itself out?

 

Me at 40 weeks with Kara. If a third pregnancy isn't in the cards, I certainly won't miss looking like an item of interest on a whale expedition.

I'll tell you why. Because I don't want to worry about contraception for the entire length of my thirties. Because I don't want to drag out my child-birthing years with large age gaps between a second and third child. Because I know Luke wants to go back to work someday. Because I know we would want a parent at home with any kids younger than school age. Because we have other plans for our life, plans that don't include changing diapers, washing bottles, or rocking babies to sleep at two o'clock in the morning, and I want to know when those plans might possibly become a reality.

When it comes to physically producing another baby, Luke is very, very hesitant, not just because he's quite happy with the two we already have, the two who are extremely close in age and who try his patience on a daily basis, but he's also concerned about what a third pregnancy might mean for me. I developed pre-eclampsia with Nathan, and in hindsight, I think I probably had it with Kara, on a low enough scale that the doctors just missed it. If that's actually the case, I got it the second time around a little earlier, so who knows when it would rear its ugly head with number three. Plus, you know, gestation, so tiring, so draining, and recovery from a third c-section? I don't even want to think about it. Breastfeeding/pumping/weaning again? I DON'T EVEN WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT. It's just been in the last few months that I've finally started feeling like myself again. It started with the 30 Day Shred back in May and has climaxed these last couple of weeks as I build on my training for my upcoming 5K. I am 29 years old. I want to look and feel 29. I don't think that's unreasonable.

But then I think about never getting a positive pregnancy test again, never seeing a baby of mine on an ultrasound again, never feeling kicks and flutters inside my belly again, never having the most perfect human being I've ever seen in my life be removed from my uterus again, and I am filled with sadness. I remember being in recovery with Nathan a couple of hours after he was born, resting in bed, holding him in my arms, nuzzling his cheek and kissing his head, and telling Molly, "I understand why some women have eight babies." And I did understand. Those moments of getting to know him were worth every ounce of discomfort, every minute of confusion. I knew it with Kara and confirmed it with my son.

 

Nathan at eight or nine weeks, I think, donning a sleeper that Luke wore when he was a baby. I don't care if we get our next child at eight YEARS old, he/she is wearing this sleeper, damn it, family traditions and all that.

In the event, though, that we did close the pregnancy chapter of our lives and expand our clan using alternative methods, I think adoption or foster parenting would be a wonderful fit for Luke and me and the kids. I've always been drawn to the idea of taking in a child who needs a loving home; when I was in middle school, I told all my friends that I would never give birth to a baby, not ever, because there were too many children already in the world who didn't have anybody to love them. I spent half my junior year thinking about becoming a nun because I adored the sisters at my high school so much, so obviously lil' Frema's decision-making processes were a little extreme back then, but I still agree there are too many children who need parents and love and education and quality medical care, and Luke and I have such a good life to offer another child that I can't imagine not doing it. Though I can imagine not doing it, because of the oodles of money you have to shell out and the hoops you have to jump through and the fact that patience has never been my strong suit and it's already spread thin with two kids. A third might very well push me over the edge, however he/she gets here.

Nothing is set in stone either way, and like I said, Luke really isn't up for talking about this in-depth right now, but so far it seems like we might lean more towards foster parenting with an open option to adopt. I attribute my feelings to reading The Pinballs in fifth grade. What? It was a really, really good book.

 

Nathan around four months, probably, because he's still in his swing. Actually, it's Molly's swing, but whatever, we're all family around here.

Finally, I haven't written off going along with Luke's initial thought of just being happy with the two beautiful children we have. There's something to be said for leaving these early years in the past and enjoying the new experiences that come along with getting older. Luke and I have loved watching Kara come into her own, increasing her vocabulary, showing interest in potty training, delighting in chapter books, going down kiddie slides at the park. And Nathan is in one of my favorite baby stages--he can transport himself to any area he wants and entertain himself for longer periods of time, he's smiling and laughing and snuggling and kissing (read: sucking on your knee). And while he's once again taken to waking up at night, we can still count on getting in a respectable block of sleep. His newborn days were hard, so very hard, and it took us completely by surprise because Kara was such an easy-going baby, no gas problems, no screaming for hours a day despite being nestled safely in our arms. Who knows how a third child would rock our world?

We also have big plans for retirement savings and 529 plans and traveling the world and being charitable, and all of that takes money. The bigger our family, the smaller our financial nest egg will be for all of these areas.

 

This is a recent, non-Parents shot of Kara and Nathan oohing and aahing over the Lost A Sock family's shiny, red fire truck. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, bestowing my mad mothering skills only upon them.

The hardest thing about this decision is that there's no right or wrong answer. All of the reasons I've given for having another child are just as valid as the reasons for being done. In the end, it's not really about money for your golden years or nursing difficulties or your personal reserves, it's about what you feel called to do in your heart. All I can do right now is think and pray and continue to share my feelings with Luke and also SHUT UP ALREADY, because holy hell, the last thing we need as we work this out is pressure. Sometimes the best action plan isn't to search for answers, it's to let them come.

Minus the cup of Joe

Are Luke and I the only people who dig listening to music on their TV?

Last fall when we moved into our new house, we finally bit the bullet and signed up for satellite service after three years without any cable whatsoever. Which was all very well and good for us, but we still weren't into formally introducing Kara to television. It wasn't that hard at the apartment when we only had a few choice channels at our disposal, but suddenly there was TLC and Lifetime Television for Women and TBS and TNT and SOAPNet oh my God, SOAPNet, I missed you most of all. It's hard to completely abstain from watching those types of shows during daylight hours, and I'm definitely guilty of watching All My Children while she's running around playing with her toys, but overall we're careful to limit her overall exposure. However, when nothing's on it can feel oddly creepy throughout the house, and we're often too lazy to go upstairs and sort through CDs to bring downstairs, and there's no good place to stash the CDs downstairs, and there's only so much Baby Einstein and Fischer-Price you can take before you want to cut out your own eardrums.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before we discovered the beauty that is satellite radio via dish service, giving us the music variety we need without having to shuffle through our DVD player all day long. There are a few stations we listen to more than others--where was Love Songs when I needed it the most?--but by far the winner in our house is the Coffee House, where singer/songwriter tunes reign supreme. It's a slightly biased station, as in any given hour you can bet you'll hear at least one song from Tracy Chapman, Ryan Adams, Ray LaMontagne, or the the Indigo Girls, but it's great background music to have on while going through the motions of your day-to-day.

Listening to the Coffee House has expanded our iTunes playlist considerably, so I thought it might be fun to share some of the newer stuff I'm listening to these days.

"Sweet Pea" - Amos Lee
I first heard this in a recent commercial for a cell phone provider--the one where the dad takes his daughter's stuffed animal on a business trip and photographs it in different places. That little girl looks a lot like I imagine Kara will in a few years, so the song stuck with me; when I heard it on the Coffee House, I recognized it immediately and knew I had to have it.

"Love is All Around" - Toby Lightman
This was played constantly during the first couple of months I was home with Nathan, so whenever I hear it, I think about my adorable little family. I like to sing it to Kara (the parts I can recite from memory, anyway), and when I get to the "love, love, love, love" part, she always smiles.

"Amie" - Counting Crows
When Luke and I lived in Rensselaer, we once attended a coffee house set by a local band who played this song, so now whenever I hear it, I think of that time in our lives when we were dating and holding down two apartments even though we shared a bed at least five days a week. This version isn't that different from the original, but I like the Counting Crows, and I don't know, it felt more age-appropriate to download this one.

"Brand New Day" - Joshua Radin
I first became a fan of this one on an episode of House where Foreman and 13 are in bed together and Wilson finally washes out his dead fiancee's coffee cup. Apparently the Coffee House liked it, too, because now it's in constant rotation. While filming a home video of Kara last week, this song happened to be playing in the background, making me love it even more. I'll try to post the video sometime soon.

"Beautiful Wreck (Live)" - Shawn Mullins
I've always liked Shawn Mullins, starting when he released his "Lullaby" single in the late nineties, so this was an easy sell.

"Hello" - Schuyler Fisk
This song strikes me as one teenaged Frema would have taken to, setting it to repeat on her CD player for hours while reminiscing about former loves and missed opportunities. As an adult, I listen to it and reminisce about teenaged Frema's (many) (many many many) mistakes. Hello, hindsight, my old friend.

"Wonder" - Natalie Merchant
When I was in high school, I thought Natalie Merchant was boring. Now as a 29-year-old wife and mother, I think she's brilliant. This song has Girl Power written all over it.

"Least Complicated" - Indigo Girls
Seriously, ALL THE TIME. Only switch out " Least Complicated" with "What Are You Like?" which I'm not so much a fan of. This one's cool, though.

"Come On, Get Higher" - Matt Nathanson
I knew about this one before the Coffee House, but I couldn't bring myself to sing along because of the "swing of your hips" line. It gives me the tinglies. I'm over it now that I hear it multiple times all the livelong day.

And two non-Coffee House staples:

"Saturday in the Park" - Chicago
The opening chords to this song always transport me into a state of J.D.-like reflection. I heard it in a movie or TV show around the time I was pregnant with Kara and included it on a CD of baby-rocking tunes for myself, so now I assoicate it with those early months with her.

"The Book of Love" - The Magnetic Fields
Peter Gabriel's version of this song was featured in the Scrubs season finale last week, during the J.D.'s futuristic home-video montage, and I bawled like a baby, partly because Scrubs has been a pastime of Luke's and mine since almost the beginning of our relationship, and I was so sad about Zach Braff leaving the show, and also because the lyrics are simple but also really beautiful.

What are you jamming to these days? Really, I want to know.

Also, all this music talk totally has me jonesing for another CD swap. I can't believe it's been almost three years since the last one! As far as themes go, I was thinking something along the lines of either a summertime mix or a life soundtrack sort of thing. Anyone game?

Baby 2.0: Six Weeks (aka Serenity Now!)

I had the idea for this post two weeks ago, back when it was intended to document the Frema-Useless Clutter household at one month post-partum, but then I got distracted with the relationship meme that all the cool kids were doing, and then I never found more than twenty minutes of spare time for the computer outside of checking my e-mail and blogging for Parents. So now it's six weeks, and my plan to post regular monthly updates has been shot to hell, but now I've been thinking about this specific post for so long that I can't move on to another topic (aka BIRTH STORY) until I brain dump all the thoughts I've been collecting regarding about what it's been like to mother two children so far.

Reviewing my first post home, I want to laugh my tired little head off at the woman who thought her child's first week outside the womb would actually paint an accurate picture of what life would be like long term. Ha! Slept like an angel, you say? Of course he did; it took all his energy just to open his freaking eyelids, what else was there for him to do but sleep? Feeling prepared, you say? Who wouldn't be when you're in the hospital and food and pain meds are delivered on command and it's somebody else's job to clean up the bathroom and oh, yeah, doting grandparents are caring for one half of your offspring?

Life on Easy Street was short-lived. SURPRISE, SURPRISE.

Our first big hurdle was nursing. I rambled on about this in great length over at Parents, so I won't bore you with the details here. Suffice it to say that I am no longer breastfeeding for a number of reasons, and it was just as gut-wrenching a decision to make this time as it was with Kara, but now I'm at peace, and honestly even relieved, because after being pregnant for what felt like eighty-seven million years in a row, my body is finally my own again. It's not anything to write home about at the moment, and it looks like I'll be sporting at least a few pieces of maternity clothing when I go back to work in two weeks, but it's mine, all mine, and damn, it feels good.

So. Breezy first couple of weeks, and two weeks of boob and pumping hell after that while my family also battled a nasty cough/cold that we are just now fully recovered from. Kara got it first, and if you think learning how to wrangle two babies under a year and a half is hard, just try it when one of them is blowing snot all over your couch and then smearing it across her face and then crying in agony as you attack her with the Kleenex yet AGAIN and then crumbles in a heap on the floor because overall she feels just miserable. She was napping horribly and waking up at night, and only after TWO WEEKS did she come close to feeling anywhere near normal, and by then Luke and I had caught it, and then a couple of days later Nathan got it, and it was all one big Sick Fest, and no wonder I still have almost fifteen pounds of baby weight to lose, seeing as I survived that period mainly due to entire bags of Hostess Donettes, Oreo ice cream, and chocolate-peanut butter shakes.

Once we were all healthy, I thought for sure we'd have an easier time of it, but then the Universe convinced my son that regular naptimes are overrated and his time would be better spent screaming his bloody head off all the live-long day. Luke was convinced it was colic, I was convinced it was one of those Wonder Weeks-type developmental spurts everyone raves about, but paired with his history of frequent spit-ups and very bad gas, we decided there might be more to it. For the last few days we've been experimenting with a combination of Dr. Brown's and Born Free bottles along with a lactose-free formula, which so far seems to help with the spit-up some. Unfortunately, the crab-ass attitude is still there, but like I said, there's a good chance he'd be off his game, anyway, so I think in another week or two we'll have a better idea regarding whether or not we need to mix things up again.

And now we're in week six, and Luke and I are just now finally starting to feel like maybe we can do this multiple children thing. For a while, things seemed pretty dark; we're no longer napping because it always seems like there's something more critical to get accomplished during those precious moments when at least one child is down for the count: wash bottles, sort and fold laundry, shower, or just CHILLAX for eight seconds in front of the television because holy crap, this is hard. Oftentimes it feels like TV is our saving grace, a chance to disconnect from reality and enjoy something that doesn't need feeding or diapering or burping or rocking to sleep. We're trying to go easy on ourselves and not set our expectations too high regarding what we can realistically get done in a day, but that means the upstairs bathrooms haven't been cleaned in weeks, and the baseboards are disgusting, and the kitchen floor hasn't been mopped at all since Nathan was born, though it has received numerous poor-man's baths courtesy of Clorox wipes. God help me but I love my Clorox wipes.

We're using paper plates and plastic cups. I'm wearing the same two or three sets of lounge pants and tee-shirts in an effort to cut back on laundry. I've got piles of paperwork that need shredding and filing, and our photos on the computer need backing up, and Nathan's baby book hasn't been touched, and the CD rack Luke assembled in our bedroom before the baby came home still doesn't have any CDs on it, and the fifty-inch flat-screen plasma TV that Luke won in an online contest, I KID YOU NOT, is still sitting in a box, unopened, in our kitchen, because we don't own an entertainment unit that would adequately support a fifty-inch flat-screen plasma TV and there has simply been NO TIME to get one.

This maternity leave hasn't gone at all how I thought it would. I imagined Luke and I getting out at every opportunity with our two beautiful children, visiting museums and going to the zoo and generally just enjoying our time together while I was at home instead of dealing with sickness and higher levels of fussiness than we ever had with Kara. I thought I would bounce back from my c-section just like I did the first time, but instead I could barely handle stairs for what felt like forever, and it hurt to get up and down from the couch, and I couldn't even pick up my daughter without staining my (maternity) underwear with blood. (Belated TMI alert, SORRY ABOUT THAT.) There are purple stretch marks on my thighs, and my stomach looks like a sand-trap on a golf course. Hello, Weight Watchers, is it me you're looking for? I THINK SO. And to top it all off, I'm terrified of the day when I'll be left alone to handle both children for the first time (when they're awake, that is. I'm golden so long as at least one is passed out in a crib or swing). Luke and I try hard not to leave the other with both kids if we can possibly help it, but pretty soon it'll be a fact of life. He seems pretty ready to roll with the punches, but I'm nervous as hell. It wouldn't be so bad if Nathan was content in your arms, but half the time that still isn't enough. Put him down, though, and it's worse; his cry escalates to mind-numbing, glass-breaking shrieks peppered with full-body hiccups and desperate gasps for breath, and you feel horrible for having to abandon him while you heat up Kara's lunch, but what else can you do? I'm already in awe of Luke and his future mad fathering skillz, as he's the one who signed on to hang out with these guys all by his lonesome five days a week.

(I'm well aware that using a good baby carrier would at least allow us to keep Nathan close and our hands free for Kara, but baby gadgets intimidate me so I've not been proactive in researching them; we have a Baby Bjorn, but it seems bulky and Nathan wasn't feeling it. We also have a Maclaren carrier that I got for free last year after reviewing it for Parents, but we haven't tried that one yet.)

I don't want this entry to come across like I don't love my son, because I do. I love his blue eyes and pouty lips and the feel of his body asleep on my chest. I love his wild facial expressions and the way his hands grab my fingers when he's eating. I love his gassy smiles and the way he says "Wah!" when he cries. I was so nervous about having a boy, afraid I wouldn't know how to deal with a boy, and now I can't imagine not having this wonderful, beautiful, complicated baby boy. Luke and I are pretty sure that our family is complete, so while their thirteen-month age difference frightens me now, I couldn't be more excited to see how Kara and Nathan's dynamic plays out in years to come. And honestly, things are getting better. If you had talked to me last night, I might not have said that, but even in that short amount of time I feel like we've turned a corner--nothing I can put my finger on, just a knowledge that we're working through the hardest part and every day will only get easier.

Alright, enough with the words. If you've suffered through this insanely long post, you certainly deserve some visuals. But before you ooh and ahh over the children, first get a load of my house!

The living room is where we spend the majority of our time, so I thought you might like to see what we've done to it thus far. In case your memory is poor, the above picture is what it looked like before we moved in.

And here's the after, taken right before Christmas:

 

There's still a lot of decorating that needs to happen down here, mainly in terms of getting some more pictures on the walls, but for the most part I'm pretty happy with it. The change in paint color really brightens things up, and the carpet is great because now Kara can run around and trip over her toys without me worrying about her smashing her head, though at first Luke and I had actually planned to keep the laminate floor. The sellers scratched it up something fierce when they moved out, though, and while they left behind plenty of replacement panels, it just didn't seem worth the effort.

Unfortunately, these days it only looks this good at night. Most of the time, it looks like this:

 

At least the cloth bins lined against the wall make for an easy pick-up. And now that I'm not as sore from surgery and can sleep in bed comfortably again, Nathan and I are back upstairs with Luke, so the bassinet is up there, too. The only downside to that is that we don't have a good place to lay Nathan down when we need our hands free. Yes, there's the Pack 'n Play, but we have more practical uses for the Pack 'n Play:

 

Even before Nathan showed up, Luke and I never liked the idea of running up and down the stairs for diaper changes; in the picture above this one, you'll see we have a small basket on one of our end tables, which holds a box of wipes, a waterproof pad, and a handful of size fours for Kara. For Nathan, though, a child who pees and spits up on himself several times a day, one basket just didn't cut it. We ended up creating a sort of baby station here, where we store wipes, diapers, bibs, burb cloths, and multiple changes of clothing. Once his bodily habits are more predictable, I imagine we'll do away with using this as storage, but right now it's been invaluable. This is also the first time Luke and I have used the changing table attachment; our backs are eternally grateful.

 

Here is the boy. He's a good-looking boy, isn't he? We like him.

 

Luke and I used to set up elaborate toy scenes like this for Kara all the time when she was itty-bitty; it's harder to do that for Nathan because his sister can't keep her hands off them, but we try to oblige him when she's asleep. Daddy's sidekick, indeed!

 

Kara continues to adjust to our new addition every day; she's learned to tune out his crying and rarely gets upset at his outbursts anymore. She prefers to spend much of her time reading with us and pushing her shopping cart around the room, shouting "Go go!" as she makes her way through the piles of books, toys, and pillows.

 

And lastly, here is me. I'm doing OK. Tired and hormonal, but OK. After all, I have a wonderful husband who's in this with me one hundred percent and two children who melt my heart with their funny liitle quirks and mannerisms. Even at its hardest, life is pretty damn awesome.

The night before (but just barely)

As you can tell by the time stamp on this entry, my resolution to keep better hours doesn't apply the night before a life-changing event. Oh, well. It's not like I'll be running a marathon tomorrow, just lying on a slab waiting to be sliced open. Would it really be that inappropriate to take a little nap?

Things are OK--Luke and I have both been a flip-flop of emotions today, excited about the baby, sad about Kara losing her status as an only child so quickly, anxious about getting the house in order, nervous about tomorrow. It hasn't taken much to get the tears flowing--"Kara's last bath as an only child! Sob," but surprisingly my eyes were dry when I put her to bed, and that's where I expected to get really emotional. She fell asleep quickly, though, and the two of us sat in her rocking chair for a good hour while I just held on to her and told her that I loved her and that I knew she'd be a wonderful big sister. And she will be.

 

Everything is in order--dishes washed, laundry washed and folded, picture framed dusted, carpets vaccuumed, refrigerator and pantry stocked, and grandparents on board to take over baby duties so Luke and I can leave for the hospital by five a.m. Registration is at six. I should be under the knife by eight.

But let's not talk about that right now. Would you like to see pictures of Baby Brother's room? I thought about waiting to include them in my grand House Unveiling post, and then I realized I've been promising that post for about two months, and really, I don't even know if you care anymore, but still, I swear it's coming. In the meantime, though, there is this:

 

Somebody on Parents asked about the paint color we used in here. It's Eddie Bauer Dill, EB10-3, courtesy of Valspar at Lowe's. Of course, this information might be more useful to include on my actual Parents blog.

 

I am so in love with this dresser, it's not even funny. In fact, I'm over the moon about all of Baby Brother's furniture--the style, color, the matchy-matchness of it all. Swoon.

 

As you can see, we went with a safari animals/monkey theme for his room. Just enough for everything to compliment each other, but not so much that other items seem out of place. In my opinion, anyway.

 

To think I once thought boy clothes weren't fun. Look at that onesie on the right. See how bright and bold and colorful? Blue and green are my favorite colors, and these shades rock my world. Oh, yeah.

 

A closet waiting for clothes in sizes larger than six months.

 

Not part of Baby Brother's room, but adorable just the same.

My big goal for this weekend (aside from having a healthy baby, of course) is to take care of myself in the hospital well enough to be discharged in two days instead of three (the standard stay for a c-section), and I have more perspective this time than I did after having Kara, so my next post should take place relatively soon. If not, though, no worries, because Molly is coming to Indianapolis to meet her godson and has agreed to update here once she's back at home. Until then, hopefully this will tide you over:

   

We're coming to get you, baby. See you soon.

I really called it on the NaBloPoMo thing...

...because seriously. Two blog posts for the whole month? My lack of posting this November surprised even me.

But it wasn't without good reason. Between my work trip to New Hampshire, organizing this house, being pregnant, and for the last week, being sick, non-paid blogging had to take a back seat. I did take a stab at it last Wednesday around midnight when Kara should have been down for the count, but she decided to wake up and torture me for THREE AND A HALF HOURS before finally settling down. By the time Luke came in to check on things, both Kara and I were sobbing; he offered to take over, but I would not accept defeat. I did, however, call my sister Samantha the very next day to say that we wouldn't be able to make baby Danny's baptism that following Sunday. I felt absolutely horrible about it, but after countless days of coming home late from work, soothing Kara at night, and traveling on the weekends, we were all burned out. The thought of leaving the zip code after what I like to think of as The Night From Hell was more stressful than picking up the phone and calling Samantha, who was totally understanding about the whole thing. When we all woke up on Saturday morning with runny noses and raspy coughs, I felt even more confident that we made the right decision.

Luke and I also decided that for our own sanity, we were done with traveling indefinitely--our next trip won't happen until sometime after Baby Brother is born and we're feeling adventurous enough to get on the road with two little ones in tow. Luke's parents came to share Thanksgiving with us, so we weren't without family, and Christmas plans are still in progress. However it plays out, though, Luke and I will just be happy to be home.

OK, enough yapping. I owe you a shit load of pictures. Here are some of the latest of Kara:

 

Our little girl is eleven months old now. I am not ready for next month when she'll be one. Her burst of activity is amazing--she's cruising all over the house now, crawling only when she's feeling shy or when I'm chasing her and those cute baby legs can't keep up. She still has only two teeth, but I can see a bunch of white spots shining through her top gums, and I'm terrified they'll all come in at the same time. She dances, too, bouncing up and down, waving her hands, and doing this robot thing with her arms that reminds me of the zombies from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.

 

Nights have been hard since we moved; most of the time Kara will wake up crying at least once. Luke and I have taken to picking her up and rocking her back to sleep because it's the easiest way to get her back down. Eventually this will have to stop and we'll revert back to comforting her while she remains in her crib, but right now things are so hectic that we'll do whatever we can to score the maximum amount of sleep. Plus, as I think about what life with Baby Brother will be like, I can't help but enjoy those nights with her a little bit, even when they're super hard, and even though it takes an extra dose of creativity to hold Kara against me in a way that doesn't put pressure on my ginormous belly. Part of me wishes Luke and I had more time to enjoy our girl before adding another child to the mix, so when those snuggle-time moments present themselves, I have to take them. So what if they make me want to pull my hair out?

Kara seems to be enjoying the house. Luke and I are adopting open floor plans in as many rooms as possible to cut back on clutter and take advantage of all this new space. Our living room is the best example of this; aside from our sleeper sofa, love seat, a couple of end tables, and our poor excuse for an entertainment center, the only other items are Kara's Pack 'n Play and several cloth bins of books and toys. This means she can run around to her heart's content and we can clean up her messes in five minutes or less. Everybody wins!

The biggest parenting challenge I faced this month was my overnight stint in New Hampshire. Luke and Kara drove me to the airport at 11 a.m. Tuesday morning and picked me up about the same time that Friday. From the moment I learned about the trip, I started freaking out. Three nights away from home is a long time, especially when it's your first time away and you can't explain to your kid that you're coming back soon, OF COURSE you're coming back. Good-bye was the worst; I started bawling before we even got to the airport. Luckily, Kara was asleep, so I was spared any tears on her behalf (she hates when I leave the car without her), but trying to kiss her sweet little face enough to last me THREE WHOLE DAYS tore at my soul. The actual trip, though, wasn't too bad. It was nice to sleep in a king-sized bed and eat dessert every night and shower as long as I wanted. Plus, since my flight was out of Boston, I spent my last night strolling along the streets of downtown buying souveniers at Quincy Market and taking a quick peak at Fanuil Hall, which I had been calling Nathaniel Hall, thus portraying myself as a colossal idiot slash tourist. (My boss, who knew better, was very gracious. The mail folks who came across my postcards to Luke probably weren't as kind.) I also got to meet Ben Franklin. His business card read, "Have kite. Will travel."

 

So. That's what I've been up to this month. I'm well aware that I still owe you after pictures of the new house, pictures I originally intended to post in this entry, but I think we can all agree I've rambled long enough. Don't you worry, though; I've already saved the winners to my desktop. They are definitely coming.

No tricks, just treats

Tonight was Kara's first Halloween, not to mention Luke's and my first one as homeowners, so while it was a low-key event of indulging in the wonder that is satellite television and jumping to answer the doorbell, it was special, nonetheless. Kara was wearing her pumpkin costume when Luke came to pick me up at work, and she was admired by numerous trick-or-treaters and their moms when I passed out candy, baby on one hip, the goods in another. Since we only moved in on Tuesday, there wasn't time for creative decorating, but I wanted to make sure people knew we were "Halloween friendly" territory, so Luke ran to the store last night to buy some of those orange pumpkin bags you stuff with leaves and a few spooky window clings for the front door. I was so excited to have kids at our door and so grateful they didn't skip our house for lack of not knowing who we were that oftentimes I actually thanked them for stopping by. We handed out two to three pieces of candy to each kid, thus scoring major brownie points in the Cool Neighbors Department (one boy actually gasped), and Kara's adorableness went over quite well with their parents. A win-win for all, to be sure.

My favorite part of the night occurred while Luke was putting Kara to bed and two boys dressed as the Super Mario brothers came to collect their just desserts.

"Trick or treat!" they exclaimed.

"Wow, look! It's Mario and Luigi!" I said while dropping Reese's cups, Laffy Taffys, and Nerds boxes into their grocery bags.

"Luigi," who couldn't have been older than five, looked me straight in the eye and replied, "We're not real, you know."

"Thanks for clearing that up," I said.

My second and third favorite parts happened when a mini-Dorothy accepted her candy then tried to come into the house and one of the local teenagers welcomed us to the neighboorhood. "Did you just move in? I love the way a new house smells," he said. Was he being genuine or just aiming for more candy? Who cares? That's one smart kid.

Kara had a great time "helping" with the trick-or-treaters and generally melted my heart with her cuddly pumpkin self. Who knew ten-month-olds were so damn fun?

 

Look at me! A baby and a pumpkin! Such the multi-tasker, I know.

  

  Pumpkins don't get any respect.

 

Why does my mom think I look like a pea pod in this picture? The world may never know.

 

My fellow Americans, let me explain why I believe children under the age of one should be allowed to eat Kit-Kats, no matter what our silly parents say.

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There is certainly plenty to say about our big move and the process of settling into our new home (not to mention I owe you some seriously amazing after pictures that reflect thousands of dollars in paint and flooring), but that's for another day. In the meantime, Happy Halloween and Happy NaBloPoMo for those of you jumping on the bandwagon tomorrow. This is the first year I won't be participating, and I'm crying on the inside about it, but I can barely post once a week these days. Once every day for a month? Why not go ahead and ask me to stop searching for Baby-sitters Club books at the half-priced bookstore? Both are equally possible.

Bloggers* in flight

* I can call us that because even though Luke hasn't posted since June, he still does have a blog, and Kara certainly held her own during my back-to-work hiatus, and it makes for a short and catchy title, and it's one fifty-seven in the morning as I sit to write this people, give me a break, will you?

I'm tired.

It feels like the last couple of weeks have been non-stop around here. My little family did make the looong trip to Chicago two weekends in a row, once to see my sister Ryan off to Germany, and once for my nephew Danny's baptism, though it was canceled at the last minute due to the poor little guy spitting up constantly and his pediatrician's recommendation that Samantha and Dan bring him to the hospital for observation. Thankfully, it appears to be a simple case of acid reflux to the -enth degree, but he gave his parents a little scare, nonetheless. So the weekends, not exactly a time for productivity.

Plus, work has been busy, and I had to play a lot of advance catch-up to be able to take the first part of this week off. Then there's the Web training seminar I'll be taking in Nashua, New Hampshire, next month, for which I'll be gone three nights, and the very idea of being away from Kara that long has me feeling much like I did in the days leading to my return to work in March. It's been suggested several times that I bring Luke and Kara with me, but between my tight schedule and our tight budget, it's not a good idea. I just have to wear my big-girl panties and resign myself to a good cry on the nights I should be putting her to bed.

And of course, in between work and family and trips up north has been our house, our blessed, wonderful, pain-in-the-ass house that is eating our money and sucking our will to live. To be fair, it's not so much the house itself as it is some of the contractors that have been dragging their feet (I'm looking at you, Cutting Edge Flooring). The last loose end should be tied up tomorrow, and then we can finally collect our spare keys and collapse in a sea of cardboard boxes and Tupperware bins that unfortunately won't unpack themselves. I'm so sad about leaving this apartment--this modest, two-bedroom apartment, where I held Kara to my chest and sobbed the night we came home from the hospital, where the two of us spent hours of my maternity leave snuggled on the couch while the snow fell outside, content to just sleep and breathe each other in--and yet, so excited about our new home, a home that will see a properly sized Christmas tree and stockings along the staircase (I just listened to our holiday playlist on iTunes, can you tell?) and the pitter-patter of little feet that my heart smiles just thinking about it. It's a bag of mixed emotions I've got going on here, but I'm hoping the joy wins out once we're settled in and I can revel in hammering nail holes wherever I damn well please.

All of this would explain why my contest winners have yet to receive their prizes, but rest assured, friends, they're coming soon to a mail box near you.

In the meantime, pictures! Good ole pictures. They're like the the pinch-hitters of blogging, when words are not enough (or just really boring).

 

Here are a couple from last weekend, aka Ryan's American farewell. She and Jason probably won't visit until sometime next fall, so we tried to soak up as much of her as we could. The sentiment seemed lost on Kara, though.

 

In this shot, the childbearing sisters attempt to show off their offspring while the offspring couldn't care less. Way to ruin a Kodak moment, kids.

 

How cute is my nephew? Let me count the ways.

   

Okay, one more, but really, how cute IS he? And can you believe that come February, this picture will be my life? GAAAAH.

 

Here, Kara and Grandma Dunscombe have a meeting of the minds.

 

Kara wants YOU to know about the awesomeness of Daddy D.

We weren't in Chicago long enough this past weekend to pull out the camera very much, but I did catch one of Kara and my mother in a full-fledged hands-and-knees face-off. Grandma seems determined to win, but she's no match for Kara's adorableness. That always trumps speed.

 

One of the rare instances in which Kara allows herself to be lulled to sleep by the sounds of the highway.

And now, seeing as it's three in the morning and Luke is already hauling miscellaneous crap to our car, I'm going to sign off, but not before I tease you with the promise of after pictures the minute AT&T says we can.  

Of Painters and Clerks

I think houses are more expensive than children.

Really! After giving birth to Kara last December, Luke and I still managed to keep a hefty amount in savings while showering the baby with various Carter's onesies and stuffed blocks and board books written by Dr. Seuss and accommodating a dinner menu that featured several take-out orders a week. But now, after owning this home just 14 days, we've already spent my quarterly bonus, taken out an interest-free loan from my employer, and scrapped plans to upgrade our dining room set before the end of the year. It's daunting, and it's scary, and I don't like it. But I do like saving us the stress of moving our own boxes, dragging out the painting process, and eliminating the overall dog smell once and for all.

Finding a painter wasn't as easy as we thought it would be. Since we don't have a lot of experience with vendors in the home improvement area, we asked our realtor for a recommendation, and she passed along the name of a company who received glowing marks from one of her clients. I called the number and set up a walk-through/estimate for Thursday afternoon. The house is forty minutes from our apartment but only twenty from my work, so I made the appointment on my lunch hour and arrived with ten minutes to spare. That's when I received a call from Jessica, the project manager, who apologized and said she was running late and was I interested in rescheduling?

I said no, I'm not interested in rescheduling, I'm already at the house, I'd rather just wait. OK, she said. I'll be there in fifteen minutes.

Thirty minutes later she was parking in my driveway and apologizing profusely for her tardiness. Se had a doctor's appointment that ran over and put her behind schedule. That's OK, I said. Stuff happens.

I gave Jessica a tour of the house and explained what needed to be done. There was much note-taking and head-nodding, and she sounded confident that her team could complete the job in three or four days. I told her about our flooring appointment for the week of October 20 and our desire to complete all painting by then. How soon can we get an estimate? I asked. Oh, this evening, definitely, she replied. Look for it on your e-mail.

I looked in my e-mail. All evening. Nothing.

At eight o'clock, there was a voice mail from Jessica apologizing for her tardiness in e-mailing the estimate (sound familiar?) and promised to have something by one-thirty the next day. I frowned. Luke's dad had graciously offered to drive down and help with painting the bedrooms; he planned to leave northwest Indiana on Friday at noon. If we accepted the quote, he wouldn't need to make the four-hour round trip. Is there any way we can get it in the morning? I asked.

Sure, sure you can get it in the morning, Jessica said. I'll stay up all night if I have to. I just couldn't get to it during the day, and I want to make sure we give you a good price without undercharging for the work.

The little voice in my head didn't give a rat's ass how long it took, that's your problem, how hard can it be, don't you have a formula for hammering these things out? But I didn't say that, just thanked her for the update. You'll have the estimate by nine tomorrow morning, she said. Thank you, I said. That would be great.

At eight forty-five Friday morning, I logged into Gmail with great anticipation, eager to see the numbers and run them by Luke so we could make a decision before his dad got on the road.

At nine o'clock, I hit refresh. And again five minutes later. And again. And again. AND AGAIN.

By noon, there was still no estimate, and I was mad as hell. But still I kept my cool! I left a voice mail with Jessica AND the owner explaining our urgency and how much we wanted to move forward with this project and could somebody PLEASE call me back?

Nothing. I never heard from the bastards again.

But all's well that ends well. Luke scrambled to do some online research on other painters in the city and found someone who was certified with the Better Business Bureau and who called us back when he said he would and also showed up for the walk-through on time. Imagine that! The icing on the cake was when he said the entire house (cabinets included!) could indeed be finished by the twentieth. But we didn't get that news until Saturday morning, so Luke's dad did come down, and the two of them attempted to work on the bedrooms, but there was an unfortunate sprayer incident and the ceilings took a gazillion years to paint and really, it's just better to hand this over to professionals and admit that when it comes to tackling eighteen hundred square feet of interior structure in just two weeks, we are not cut out for the job. Give it up for Jones Painting.

As for the crappy guys? Turns out their Better Business Bureau rating is just as disappointing as their customer service, so it really did work out for the best. I'd like to be the bigger person and write the whole thing off as a learning experience. I'd like to say I'm not interested in using my blog to steer unsuspecting Hoosiers towards greener, more qualified pastures. But alas, I'm not a bigger person, and Painters Unlimited won't get any love from me, that's for damn sure.

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I'm still in awe that so many of you are interested in my nerdy comics and controversially sacrilegious Jesus figurine. Even Luke's BFF put in a bid; if I knew he'd be interested, I wouldn't have even offered it to the masses. But that wouldn't be fair now, not after I got your hopes up, so instead I'm going to write the name of each interested commenter on a piece of paper and literally pull the winner from a hat; specifically, one of Luke's hats. Hopefully in the next couple of days, because this weekend we'll be in Chicago bidding my sister Ryan a fond farewell before she flies to Germany to be reunited with her husband Jason, who just finished a tour of duty in Iraq. We won't be back until Monday morning, after which I'll have to high tail it to the office and then do a final walk-through of the house to review the paint job. But rest assured, the goodies will be distributed soon.

My own private money pit

It's NOT really a money pit, of course. The house was built in 1996 and passed our inspection with almost flying colors. Also, the changes we're making are primarily aesthetic; it's not like they have to be done today or tomorrow or even next month. But hot damn, Luke and I haven't even owned the place a full week and already it feels like we're in over our heads.

But first things first.

In my last entry, somebody asked for details on the closing. Closing...was very boring. Basically it was an hour and a half of signing papers and passing Kara between Luke and me and our realtor. Which is pretty much the way you hope those things will go. No surprises, no bad feelings, just hammering the final nail on the home ownership coffin, so to speak. Our sellers bought another house in the same town, and they said they had a horrible experience with the owners, so horrible, in fact, that the parties were placed in separate rooms at the closing. Yikes.

Anyway, by 4:30 p.m., the keys were in our hands. We forgot the camera, so there are no symbolic photos of us removing the "For Sale" sign from the front yard, but we did walk through the house again and talk out ideas for potential improvements. Good thing part of our negotiations involved the sellers paying for a professional cleaning service to give the house a once-over, because apparently four dogs leave behind one nasty smell. Also, more animal hair than I've ever seen at one time. It's STILL not up to par, but it's better than nothing, and it didn't cost us a dime.

Our first weekend in the house didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked. My parents-in-law came from up north to help, and Luke and his dad performed some crucial wall repair while his mom and I hung out with Kara. (I'm suddenly not so crazy about my pregnant self breathing in paint fumes for hours at a time, so I won't be much help in that area.) They had a slow start, what with the master bedroom ceiling eating up a gallon and a half of paint and a bunch of time besides. Then, when Luke went back on Sunday to start on the second-floor hallway, he found that the color we picked is considerably lighter than what's already covering the walls, so we'll have to prime the whole thing, something we didn't plan for.

With limited childcare options, a house forty minutes away from our current residence, floors too dirty (read: HAIRY) for us to want Kara horsing around there much before move-in, and no paid time off for me to spend on this project (we're saving my last eight days for the actual move, Christmas, and Kara's birthday), we're looking into hiring professional painters to tackle the more time-consuming aspects of the house like the hallway and staircase, and maybe even those blasted green cabinets. Tile and carpet installation begin in two weeks, and my employer pays me well, so if spending a little more money is what we have to do to swing a completely painted house before move-in without sacrificing our new floors or our sanity, the choice is a simple one, for us.

Kara approves our choice of carpet, which we decided to install in the living room as well. The sellers scratched up the laminate flooring something fierce when they moved out, and while they left behind plenty of spare planks to deal with the aftermath, I'm not such a fan of it anymore, especially with very small children who are learning to stand on their own two feet. Plus, I just think carpet is cozier.

Thanks for protecting my accident-prone forehead, guys. Much love to you.

As nerve-wracking as it is, though, to determine which tasks would benefit from professional help (tee hee) and which ones we can handle on our own, it's wonderful that these decisions are within our control, and we don't have to go through a landlord to ask about painting or adding a phone jack in the loft. This house is ours. The choices are ours. Apartment living served us well, and we don't regret our time as renters, but this new chapter in our lives? It's pretty effing cool.

Closing time

So. Today is closing day! The day Luke and I officially become homeowners for the first time in our lives. Final walk-through is at 2:30 p.m., closing is at 3:00, and of course we're still waiting to get final numbers from the bank for our cashier's check because why should we expect things to run smoothly?

I came into work this morning with a huge rock in my stomach (aside from Baby Brother), and as excited as we are to begin this new chapter of adulthood, Luke and I couldn't be more nervous. And because everything's happening so late in the afternoon, I'm not sure how we're going to celebrate. Maybe remove the "For Sale" sign in the front yard. Possibly go out to dinner because there's dried Rice-A-Roni on the stove from last night and Kara will need to eat shortly after we close and our apartment is a good forty minutes from our new pad. Continue to hash out paint colors and a schedule of what we can reasonably expect to accomplish before our October 28th move-in day. Originally the plan was to spend three weekends painting the entire house and the last weekend moving in, but my nephew Danny's baptism is now set for on October 26 and by the way, Ryan is moving to Germany to reunite with her army husband the weekend before that, and there's no way I'm missing out on my last chance to see her before spring. This leaves us only two working weekends left, so the NEW objective is to simply finish the second floor before the new carpet and bathroom tiles are installed later in the month.

Not that any of this makes me the slightest bit uneasy. Or crabby. Or hungry for a big bowl of spinach dip and a day in my pajamas.

It's overwhelming, how much there is to do before vacating our apartment; so overwhelming, in fact, that all I can do is think about October in small, manageable chunks. Call the flooring company. Price-check options for Internet, phone, and cable. (Yes, after more than three years of doing without, the Frema-Useless Clutter household just might hop on the cable bandwagon again.) (Also, I'm thinking not so much with the Comcast.) Buy primer and paint. Figure out when to paint. Figure out what to do with Kara. I would totally put her to work if she could walk more than five steps at a time. Also, if she could be trusted to keep her gums off the paintbrush.

(Actually, we do have some plans for Kara. A friend of mine from work who I knew from my Saint Joe days is going to come to the house and keep her company next Saturday so Luke and I can tackle the upstairs at the same time. Marissa heard about our baby-sitterless plight and actually volunteered to baby-sit. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a beautiful, paid friendship.)

In more uplifting news, did I tell you how much fun Kara is these days? Oh, wait, I guess I did. But I want to document it here, too, that my baby toddles and eats yogurt and "reads" her board books the right way and still has to play with my hair when I rock her to sleep. Luke and I are constantly looking at pictures from her newborn days and marveling over how much personality she's developed since then, how active she is, and how she loves us through each fumble. I would never categorize myself as patient, and I'm embarrassed to admit how damn frustrating parenthood is sometimes, but despite my shortcomings, Kara still scrambles to my arms when I come home each day. The biggest fear I had about being a working mom--that she wouldn't want me as much--has now reversed into my biggest obstacle, at least when trying to tackle my daily to-dos. She can't get enough of me. But I wouldn't want it any other way.

It's amazing to think that soon, there will be TWO little wonderfuls vying for my attention.

This was taken last Wednesday morning to document me at 20 weeks. Tomorrow I will be 21 weeks. Where is the time going?

Kara doesn't know, either.

It's mind-boggling, how much I love her.

Let's Hear It For The Boy

Well, THERE went two weeks of personal blogging I'll never get back.

The mini-hiatus was unintentional, but life, it has been busy. Between welcoming sweet baby girls, working out insurance and inspection details for our September 30 closing, and keeping up with projects at work, I'm lucky I've managed to update my Parents blog. But, you know, they pay me, so it wasn't that hard of a decision to make.

Speaking of Parents, if you're a follower, you learned on Friday that a penis was discovered in my uterus.

Thanks to the cheesecake I had at lunch, Baby Brother was much more cooperative during his ultrasound than Kara was for hers, so we saw the goods twice. Also, his very adorable profile.

Oh, and we might've purchased a few little boy things. Maybe. Just a few.

I so thought this baby was going to be a girl (thanks for nothing, stupid old wives' tales), but disappointed would be the last word I'd use to describe what it felt like to learn about my son. Luke and I couldn't be more excited.

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I really appreciated all of your comments regarding our new house and our plight with the kitchen cabinets. Despite the amount of work we know it's going to take, Luke and I have decided to bite the bullet and repaint them a soft, creamy color. Paired with a khaki/tan shade on the walls, that should be enough to even things out and keep the first-floor rooms from clashing with each other, no matter what colors we end up using. I was quite impressed with Dr. Maureen's paint job, and after seeing her "before" pictures, I better understand why in certain cases, painting over the wood actually makes more sense than keeping the cabinets in their current condition. I have no idea what shape my cabinets were in before they were subjected to all that green, but after visiting the Valspar Web site to review paint swatches, I think I know where the sellers got their inspiration.

Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

The kicker? I actually DON'T MIND the color scheme in this room. But when you swap out the laminate flooring for a blah white tile and eliminate more than half the square footage, including the kick-ass island, what could have been a warm and inviting look becomes cramped and mismatched in a less impressive space. Oh, well. Live and learn.

The time between now and when we actually move in October is already making me nervous, wondering if we can paint every room and every damn cabinet prior to the second floor's carpet and tile job, prioritizing the items we want to add/upgrade in our home, counting every penny and trying to maximize it best we can. It's overwhelming now, but I trust that once we have the keys in hand, everything will suddenly appear much more managable. In the meantime, let's all ooh and ahh over Kara, who turned nine months old today and currently steals our hearts with her open-mouthed kisses, determination to walk, and ability to babble Mama and Dada at just the right time.

The apple of our eye indeed!

Much cuter than the professional shots she took at Target last month. We'll be redoing them this weekend at Portrait Innovations.

Today it's orchards, tomorrow undergraduate education. Sob.

Cribs, Frema-style

OK, first off, you all will be happy to know that tonight, Randy--yes, that Randy--left a comment on my last entry about the Cringe launch. According to my stat counter, which is how I confirmed it was really him and not someone playing a cruel, cruel joke, he found my blog after typing his full name into Google, which in turn led him to this set of diary entries. Don't worry, I've already reassured Luke that our marriage is strong and will likely outlive the newness of this shocking development, though pretty soon I might have to start stuffing dollars in the Randy jar, so happy am I that my old crush and friend is finally in the know about his kind-of published status.

(You caught the Friends reference, yes? Monica's obsessive talk about Richard? Chandler no likey? Monica coughing up dough for each Richard reference?)

(And the pun, it has officially been killed.)

Second, house talk! You've been waiting for it, I know. Our inspection was last Thursday, and Luke stayed home with Kara while I poked and prodded every nook and cranny of our future residence for two hours. It was the first time I'd been in the house since our showing, so it was comforting to see the place again and confirm we made the right decision. We so, so did.

And I have the pictures to prove it. Walk with me, won't you?

Here's the exterior. Originally Luke and I wanted to stay away from houses like this because there's no presentation to speak of, but after four months of fruitless searching, we suddenly became more open-minded. The trim needs paint, and the siding will eventually be replaced in a color that isn't yellow, but it's not hurting us for now.

Welcome to our living room. The laminate floors are new, and the space is more than our current living room and dining room combined. AND THEN SOME. Plus, lots of windows for plenty of natural light.

When I saw this corner, the first thing that came to mind was, "Playroom." Not that we'll turn it into an actual room, mind you, but this is the perfect place to carve out a books and toys area for Kara and Number Two. Since the house is a two-story, the last thing Luke needs is to spend his days trampling on the staircase to retrieve additional options for early childhood entertainment.

The dining room, which leads to the back yard. The chandelier is tacky ("tacky" being a theme that runs through the entire house, as you'll soon see), but the space is perfect.

First shot of the back yard. When I first saw it, I nearly wet myself because the lot was by far the biggest of all the many, many, MANY houses Luke and I have seen since May. The current owners have four dogs, which explains the poor condition of the lawn, but grass, it grows. I can totally imagine running around with the kids here, playing tag, wading in the kiddie pool, throwing a ball around, or simply enjoying hot dogs on the grill. This was one of the biggest selling points for me.

Second half of the yard.

Now, let's check out the upstairs.

(The upstairs! I grew up in a three-bedroom apartment building in Chicago with my parents, four siblings, and a dog. We owned the building, but space was tight, and lil' Frema dreamed of the day she would live in a house. She never imagined the possibility of a second floor.)

(Also, poor lil' Frema, missing out on all this cool stuff. Printing the Randy poem, buying a house. My adult self weeps for her.)

You're looking at the house's second big selling point (for us): the loft. At our price range and in our current market, Luke and I could be picky enough to narrow our search to at least three bedrooms, but a fourth for office space just wasn't feasible. Situated at the top of the staircase, this loft can hold a generously sized desk, filing cabinet, the works. This enables us to keep all things computer related out of our living room and our bedroom and award each child a bedroom of his/her very own, also a luxury lil' Frema would have died for. If we ever have a third, the gender-sharers can bunk up. The first one to complain gets demoted to the sleeper sofa.

Second view of the loft.

The first half of our bedroom. Notice I said half because this room is GINORMOUS. The fire-engine red paint has got to go, and it will, but I prefer to focus on the large window

and walk-in closet

and this whole other section I have no idea how to deal with yet. Library? Tea room? The possibilities are endless.

But I love that it's there.

The master bath. Which has its own closet. I am in love.

Not with the carpet, though. The current owners are the original builders, so why they approved carpeting to be installed in a room that is so NOT appropriate for carpet is beyond me, but it's an oversight that will soon be rectified, as Luke and I are having the entire upstairs re-carpeted and two bathrooms re-tiled. Or in this specific instance, tiled. We subtracted the cost from our offer specifically for that purpose. The carpet and tile have been chosen, and the deposit was made last night. I know it'll make a huge difference in getting the place to feel like home.

Also, in removing signs of life with FOUR DOGS. Blech.

Bedroom number one. It's smaller than the second bedroom, but it's closest to the master so I'm calling it number one.

Luke and I made offers on three houses earlier this summer, all of which fell through (thank God), and house number three also had non-master bedrooms that weren't identical in size, and it bugged the crap out of me. Here, it doesn't bother me at all, just because the house is so spacious that the chances of us tripping all over each other are slim, and also, again with the sleeper sofa if I hear so much as a peep about how Big Sister has the bigger room. She's the oldest. Them's the breaks.

The second full bathroom, which one day will receive more TLC by way of new cabinetry and mirror fixture but for now will have to settle for new paint and tile. Apparently, the sellers' daughter felt comfortable enough with me to leave remnants of her primping routine scattered across the sink.

Also apparently, she thought bathroom shelving was better used for storing beanie babies than her hair spray collection.

Second bedroom, first time you bear witness to the sellers' love for stars. But it won't be the last!

And as if the yard, master bedroom, and loft weren't enough to seal the deal, God planted a sign that this house was meant to be ours.

It's almost as if Harry Potter himself wanted us to live here. And really, who are we to say no?

There are two rooms left to show you. Two rooms I specifically saved for last because they almost--ALMOST--caused me to walk away. Which would have been crazy after all you've just seen. But that just shows you the extent of the tacky.

The kitchen in all its pea-green-cabinetry glory. With orange walls. Hold me.

The kicker? Is that the woman painted the cabinets JUST FOR THE PURPOSE OF SELLING THE HOUSE. Against her agent's advice. Because she wanted to list this room as "updated." Excuse me while I bang my head against her handiwork.

In all seriousness, this isn't the first house we've seen with painted kitchen cabinets; consequently, this isn't the first time I've looked down on a couple for painting their kitchen cabinets. We're not quite sure what to do with them. Stripping and staining would be quite the job, re-painting them is even less appealing, and replacing them altogether isn't in the cards, budget-wise. I figured we'd just leave them alone until next year and redo them with bonus money, but then I started thinking about color choices for the living room and how limiting the cabinet color is to our first-floor decor. Luke thinks I'm insane--"They're separate rooms!"--but there's no way I could move forward on a blue color scheme for the living room when those horrid green atrocities are visible from my ass print on the couch. If you have suggestions, bring them on.

The blow is only slightly lessened by the nice-sized pantry next to the fridge and adjacent half-bath, but we'll live. Even though that bathroom's tainted, too.

Because of course all the cabinets have to match! Sob.

Also, more stars!

So, that's our house. Luke and I worked damn hard to be able to afford a house on one income and take on a mortgage that won't keep us up at night, and never in a million years did I expect to find anything more than a suitable starter home to outgrow after five years. This place fell from the sky, and to label it a "starter" when there's so much room to play around with would be sinful. The negotiations were relatively painless, and a week later we had a signed purchase agreement and a September 30th closing date. Our apartment lease ends on Halloween, so the plan is to paint for two weeks, re-carpet and tile the third week, and move in the last weekend of October. Hooray for not having to make a mortgage payment until November.

And now, time for bed, seeing as tomorrow I'll be at the hospital with Molly welcoming baby Marin into the world! Be sure to check her blog for updates.

Take me out to the ball game (and house hunting, too)

Luke and I are experiencing a series of busy weekends; two weeks ago it was visiting friends in Kentucky; tomorrow we will leave for a four-day stint up north to hang out with family and specifically to see my brother-in-law, Jason, my sister Ryan's husband, who's home from Iraq until the beginning of August. And this past Sunday, we took Kara on her first big trip downtown. It involved a company-sponsored picnic at a minor league baseball game, walk down the canal, and parking at a nearby museum because it was too damn hot to let the car seat bake in the sun.

Things are OK here. After a month-long hiatus, Luke and I began house hunting again; we viewed a couple of properties on the south side of Indy boasting more homes in our price range and a respectable commute to my work. The first house was adorable but the living room was too small, and the second? Well, all I can say is sellers, STAGE YOUR HOMES. Don't leave bags of unopened Cheetos on the kitchen counter. Don't leave a collection of your husband's boxers on the master bed for all to see. Get rid of the '70s paint on the walls, and patch up the cracks. You can even get crazy and vaccuum your cat hair! Our realtor saw potential, but all we saw was BLECH. Also, filth. Also also, a crappy back yard, but the BLECH and filth weren't helping matters any.

Speaking of the home-buying process, somebody recently e-mailed me to request more information about our experience grabbing a piece of the American Dream. (Hi, Ingrid!) Seeing as we don't have a house yet, I don't know how helpful I can be, but I'm happy to share the steps we've taken thus far.

For years, various loved ones have tried to convince Luke and me to buy a house, but we had valid reasons for taking our time--the biggest one being our uncertainty regarding how long we would stay in Indianapolis. I accepted my current job in the spring of 2005, and by the time Luke moved in that September, I decided our stay would be short term. We spent almost every weekend traveling north to visit family, we had a hard time making friends, and Luke had an even harder time finding a job. Planting roots just didn't make sense. I paid special attention to the home-buying chapter in Suze Orman's Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke but didn't plan to act on it until we moved closer to home. In fact, right before we learned I was pregnant with Kara, we had agreed to begin what we assumed would be a long and ardurous job search in the Chicagoland area because we wanted to expand our family but we didn't want to do that without having our nearest and dearest close by.

Whoopsie.

Those two pink lines put a temporary damper on moving--I wasn't keen on switching to a new insurance plan or ob/gyn practice, especially since I loved my doctors so much--so the new plan was to resume searching after I gave birth. I wasn't happy at work, anyway, and it felt like the right time for a fresh start.

But this spring, everything changed again. I returned to work and found a completely different atmosphere from the one I left, one that was better in every way possible. I adore my new supervisor as well as the financial incentives that take the form of cash bonuses every three months. And now that we are a one-income family, those incentives are more important than ever. Plus, it didn't take long to see that my earning power was much stronger here than it would be in near Chicago. There's no way we could afford our current standard of living and take on a house and still keep Luke home with our kids--something that means a lot to both of us right now. The conclusion was a no-brainer: we had to stay here.

I'm glad we've stayed in apartments for as long as we did. I'm glad we were able to get through such a tumultuous time in our lives without stressing over costly home repairs or decreased property value or whether or not we bought into a good school district. It was absolutely the right move for us, and we have no regrets.

But suddenly, the new right move meant buying a house.

Thanks to a hefty year-end bonus (how awesome is my job, I tell you? Pretty freakin' awesome), we already had enough money for a small down payment stashed in our savings account. We met with a local housing organization to see if we qualified for any special loan programs (not so much, thank you, bonuses) (I'm just kidding, bonuses, please don't leave me), and then met with a mortgage lender at our bank to talk about how much house we were willing to buy. We got the name of a realtor from one of my co-workers, interviewed her over coffee at Panera, and then we were on our way. I thought we would have something in no time and close by the end of July, just in time to wrap up our apartment lease.

Again with the not so much.

It's not that we haven't seen a ton of houses that could possibly meet our needs. Hell, we even bid on a few, but the offers never worked out, and again, I have no regrets, because looking back, we were in much too much of a hurry and made compromises we probably shouldn't have made. The first house was great, but the living room had a funky "cut-out" in the wall that I realize I hate now. The second house had a dimly lit kitchen without access to much natural light. The third met our three-bedroom requirement, but one of the kids' bedrooms would have been much smaller than the other, and while I loved the other features, I never got over that one. I think I breathed a sigh of relief when that deal fell through.

We looked some more after that, but at that point we were seeing at least three houses almost every day in an area I wasn't crazy about, and they weren't working out, either, and soon we had to admit that for now, enough was enough. Even though our interest rate was fluctuating, even though we didn't want to renew our lease, even though we just wanted to be done with this process already. We made sure Pam knew we still wanted to work with her and stayed away from all things real estate for almost a month and a half. We increased our down payment. We opened our minds to other areas, based on recommendations from friends. We signed our lease for another three months, buying us a little more time. And we agreed to trust our gut; it's OK to walk away from something simply because it doesn't feel right.

We also decided to stick with our original mortgage number, which is probably the main reason this search has taken so long.

If the only change in our finances was an increase in the rent category, it would be easy to commit to a higher monthly payment, especially when an extra twenty bucks can buy a more sophisticated home, and especially when work is going so well (I really should write an ode to quarterly bonuses). But when we consider the effect this move will have on our heating, air, and water bills, not to mention the costs associated with actually maintaining a home, it's not something we can do and still be able to sleep at night.

So, that's where we are. I think the biggest lesson we've learned is not to settle. Buying a house is a huge investment that will affect us for years to come; our world will not collapse if we have to keep resigning our lease until we find the one that's right for us.

I have also learned that as of Sunday, I'm now The Type of Person Who Owns Tacky Resident Memorabilia:

In my defense, I needed a few more shirts for this physically awkward "too big for regular clothes but too small for most maternity wear" phase. But I probably won't wear this to Friday's cut and color in Chicago.

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Over at Parents, I've been talking about family cars and soap opera names. Does life get any better than that? I think not.

A six-month-old's lament

Dear Internet,

Why is my mom all about the disappearing acts lately? This hiatus was even lamer than the last one. I didn't even get a chance to post! What's up with that?

Grrr,
Kara

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Dear Kara,

When you type negative comments about your mother using her very own blog, remember she can read them. Also, that she has the power to take that pacifier away faster than you can crawl after her.

Love,
Momma

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Well, if my non-literate baby daughter took the time to ask such deep and meaningful questions, the least I can do is answer them. Maybe you're interested, too!

But really, it's quite boring. I never intended this place to collect dust for as long as it did. Every few days I'd intend to post, but first-trimester yuck caught up to me, to the point that once Kara was down for the night, I was down for the night. I could pull myself together long enough to post on Parents, but not for anything that didn't absolutely require some level of attention. Plus, I'm still feeling hella overwhelmed about this baby (as evidenced by my recent Parents freak-out), and I wasn't sure what to say about it here. I go back and forth between feeling completely off my game about having two kids so close together and completely guilty that I'm not one-hundred-percent over-the-moon about our new addition, which I know is a gift from God, a gift I will love just as much as Kara. But right now the big picture is hazy, as the every day is spent battling UTIs, trying to find an appetite (yet simultaneously wondering why I've only lost a pound), sleeping whenever I get the chance, and bemoaning my overall lack of energy. I don't want to complain all the time. I don't want people to think I'm asking for sympathy. But I can't pretend I'm over this hump yet, physically or emotionally.

It helps that Luke and I have put off house-hunting for a bit. Our whirlwind touring process ended with us making offers on three houses in two weeks, none of which worked out. In all three cases the counter was too high, and the sellers weren't willing to come down any more, and we couldn't afford to go up more than a couple of thousand. The first house we bid on was actually a pipe dream -- it had only been on the market one day, so we knew they wouldn't be desperate enough to go down as much as we wanted, but it never hurts to try -- but the last two offers were acknowledged to be quite reasonable by the seller's agents. It sounds like in each case, the sellers owed more than the houses were worth and couldn't accept much less than their original purchase price. Which, OK, but then why is your house on the market? Why not wait until the economy improves and get more bang for your buck? Whatever. Luke and I are taking the next couple of months to save up a larger down payment (thank you, July bonus) and clear our heads so we don't settle on something that won't work in the long run. I really hope all three of those houses are still on the market when we get back on track. Maybe they'll like our offers then, bastards.

(Not that I'm bitter or anything.)

Things around here are OK. Kara officially turned six months old a couple of weeks ago and weighs in at a whopping 21 pounds and 11 ounces and measures 28 3/4 inches long. She's crawling, pulling up on furniture, kind of submitting to a somewhat regular nap schedule, and laughing. The laughing is the best -- full-on, belly laughs that I didn't think were possible for babies, but they are. And on Saturday night, we caught it on video.

I look terrible, and my voice is super annoying, but surely you can get past all that to appreciate my beautiful baby girl. We couldn't be more delighted with her.

FYI, we haven't been able to get a reaction like that from her since, even with the magic word "Oopsie," so let's just thank our lucky stars we captured it when we did.

(It's totally inappropriate for me to watch this clip and wish I'd pointed at my belly during one of the "Oopsies," right? Probably yes?)

Also, in case you were wondering, the newest Frema-Useless Clutter embryo (who from here on out shall be known as Number Two) isn't doing so bad, either.

There's not much to see right now, but the first picture includes a tiny yet helpful arrow to indicate Number Two's current residence. This ultrasound was taken when I was exactly six weeks along and suggests a due date of February 11, 2009. If I have another c-section (which my doctor suggests), I'd go a week earlier, putting my children just shy of 14 months apart. Tomorrow I will be eight weeks. This early part of pregnancy is going exactly like I remembered -- loooong, and also BLECH -- and I'm already waiting in earnest for that second-trimester burst of energy that didn't come until around week 18 with Kara. Hopefully, Number Two will be more considerate, but probably not. I bet Kara posted crib notes on the wall of my uterus, instructing future siblings on proper prenatal behavior, just to spite me.

For those of you who haven't stopped checking this blog for signs of life, I will do my best not to flake out again, but see above regarding BLECH. Thanks for hanging in there.

For what it's worth...

I told myself it didn't matter, not having a positive pregnancy test. A blood prick from the doctor's office is way more telling than a first morning's urine, and the last thing I need to do is waste three-fifty on something that offers redundant information. But tonight I asked Luke to pick up a Target-brand HPT, anyway, frugality be damned, because I am a girl and biologically programmed to pee on sticks. I need proof. I need the two pink lines. Or in this case, a big blue plus sign.

Mission accomplished.

It's about damn time.

Congratulations, pregnant self! Call me crazy, but it's much more real now.

Things have been crazy-busy around here. Last Wednesday, Luke and I lost two hours of married life talking numbers with our mortgage lender and visited seven homes in four hours on Sunday. Today we saw three more plus the most promising one from the weekend, and tomorrow we will make an offer.

House hunting has proven to be one of the most interesting experiences of my life, and the most exhausting, especially when you're schlepping around a six-month-old who will only tolerate so much car seat before her screams permeate a twenty-foot radius. One house had a whole room showcasing African safari decor complete with elephant wallpaper border and an unfortunately persistent smell of cat. We also attempted to see two bank-owned homes listed at to-die-for prices, until we actually entered the homes and realized that's probably what happened. Somebody must have died. What else could explain the torn carpet, scribbled-on walls, damaged fences, and bugs seeping through the woodwork? If Luke and I could afford a more mature down payment and about ten thousand dollars worth of up-front maintenance costs, these bad boys would be a steal. But we have babies (babies! MY GOD), who would prefer to eat more than once a day, and I am not a fan of having to purge questionable living creatures from my happy place.

The house we are going with, our first choice, is adorable. Three bedrooms, two baths, roomy, fenced-in backyard, two-car insulated garage, brand-new carpet, appliances included, and closet space galore, all in a neighorhood with one of the best school systems in the Indianapolis area. Originally we were hoping to score four bedrooms, or at least three beds and an office space, but alas, we are first-time home-buyers living on one salary, so some of those wants will have to wait until next time. First Choice will definitely meet our needs as a soon-to-be four-person family for years to come, and today on our second walk-through, I got lost thinking about raising our children there--rocking them to sleep, setting up a Christmas tree, playing tag in the yard while Luke throws hot dogs on the grill--and now I am quietly freaking out because I am too emotionally invested in this transaction. We have a price cap that we will not (cannot) negotiate, and there are two other houses to act on should this deal fall through, so I'm not worried about losing my head, but if for some reason things didn't work out, I just might pull a Sally Field circa Steel Magnolias ("I wanna know whyyyyyyyy") and consume an entire pint of Chunky Monkey in one sitting. Which may or may not be appreciated by my embryo.   

Kara is fabulous. She's been sitting on her own for months now, but yesterday was the first time she actually pulled herself into a sitting position. That made me cry, too, as did thinking about how huge I'm going to be in a few months and I won't be able to hold her on my chest like I do now and wah wah wah more ice cream please.

It's getting harder and harder to keep my lips zipped about baby number two at work. I've already told my VP, my direct supervisor, two of my work buddies, and our sales and marketing analyst. If I can make it to my June 18th ob/gyn appointment and ultrasound without tipping off the CEO, it will be a bloody miracle. And seeing as life lately is already one big miracle, I doubt I'm due for another.

More options than an Old Country Buffet

While I was busy debating how to address my high school reunion, surprisingly, life carried on. Here's just a sampling of what's been occupying my time:

Great Aunt Flo Watch of 2008
Geez, you might be thinking, is she really still talking about this? Hell, yes, I'm still talking about this, today is day 55 of my cycle and still not a word from that bitch Aunt Flo. I took another test when I came home from work this afternoon because my stomach felt jittery before lunch, but alas, still negative, my fourth one since Mother's Day weekend. It's not so much that I'm freaked out about maybe having children THIRTEEN MONTHS APART, HOLY CRAP, but more like dying of curiosity; however, even that attitude isn't doing me any good, so I've decided to just sit tight until I'm presented with either two pink lines or a bloodbath in my underwear. I've been cramping on and off for days, and my gut feeling is that I'm not pregnant, but my gut also told me I would deliver Kara before her due date, possibly without drugs, and we all know how that went down.

While waiting for the latest test to register, Luke jokingly asked if there was a way to jumpstart my period. "If you can speed up labor, why not this?" he said.

Indeed.

Weight Watchers
Today marks week three of Weight Watchers 2.0, and things are going...okay. I've not been as dedicated as I was the first time around, so there were several incidents involving pancakes, bacon, and chicken strips, but I've lost 4.2 pounds to date--almost two pounds since last week--and that's not a bad thing. I've really enjoyed the ability to track my eating habits and calculate Points values online; it was through the Web site that I learned one point plus one point doesn't necessarily equal two. As in, three of the Weight Watchers one-point chocolate chip cookies are five points, not three, and I'm not sure why that is, exactly, but being off by a couple of points each day definitely makes a difference on the scale. I just discovered this gem a few days ago, and my newfound knowledge is bound to make a positive impact on next week's weigh-in.

I will say that I participated in a free health risk assessment at work the other day, and baby weight aside, I'm much healthier than I originally thought. In 2005 I was diagnosed with high cholesterol, and my efforts to bring it down were half-hearted at best. I was pregnant for most of 2007, and pregnancy raises cholesterol, so it wasn't until now that I was in a position to retest. I'm happy to report that all of my levels are in the optimal or near-optimal range, and I can breathe a little easier knowing I've reduced my risk for heart disease. It was in taking that test that I realized I'm doing Weight Watchers for more than just the weight loss. I've had an effed-up mentality regarding food for years, and I want to put my best foot forward and engage in a healthier lifestyle. I want Kara to look at me and see a strong role model for making good choices about food and exercise, and I want her to think that it's easy. I don't want her to use food to get attention, like I did when I made myself throw up for three weeks in junior high. I don't want her to obsess over supposed imperfections or compare herself to peers with drastically different body types or run to food whenever she needs comfort. But if I want that for her, I have to want it for me, too. And I do.

But hot damn, do I miss my spinach dip.

It's not all bad, though. I've been doing a little more in the kitchen, and on Tuesday night I used my Take Five! cookbook, a collection of Weight Watchers recipes with only five main ingredients, to make Pita Pizzas for five points a piece. And they were delicious. Isabel, you bonafide pizza lover you, they will not disappoint. I promise.

House
After months of hemming and hawing and pouring over Excel spreadsheets to make sure we are really in a financial position to do this, Luke and I took our first major step in becoming homeowners and mailed off an application to the Indianapolis Neighborhood Housing Partnership, a non-profit that helps first-time owners secure their first house. Now, Luke and I both have excellent credit (quick shout-out to myfico.com, where we purchased our credit reports and Fico scores from all three bureaus for forty-five bucks a piece), so we don't need to go through an agency to make this happen, but the INHP has relationships with banks throughout the city that will offer loans without requiring a down payment OR private mortgage insurance to qualified buyers. Plus, I took a (free!) intro-to-home-buying class last spring that they sponsored at a local university, and it was very infomative. It certainly couldn't hurt to see what they can offer us.

Our lease on this apartment is up at the end of July, but we'll definitely need more time then that to get our act together, so the plan is to switch to a month-to-month lease and close on a property sometime in September. We won't start looking until we've been pre-approved by a lender, which should allow us to move forward relatively quickly once we've found the house of our dreams. Luke and I are beyond excited about being able to do this and STILL have someone home with Kara. I know how lucky we are and I thank God every night for it.

My Gorgeous Baby
Kara turned five months old on Saturday, and she is taking the world by storm: scooting backwards, becoming more vocal, and as of Sunday, experimenting with rice cereal. She won't entertain more than a few spoonfuls before she's pushing away the spoon, but she's extremely interested in everything on our plates, so this is a good place to start.

Plus, she looks absolutely adorable in her high chair.

She continues to hold herself up really well and can sit unsupported for about ten minutes before toppling over like a house of cards.

She's also still snacking on her fingers and toes with passionate abandon.

So, to sum up, things are going really well right now, even if I feel a little like I'm burning the candle at both ends. Work is extremely busy, and I'm helping with a baby shower for my sister Samantha in June, which means invites needed to go out like, yesterday, and writing for Parents always keeps me on my toes. (Not sure why me wanting to clean my daughter's toes from a strange dog's germs is basis for telling me to relax, as if I couldn't wait to dip her foot in bleach or something, or why not wanting my five-month-old baby to be approached by a dog I don't know means I'm afraid of all dogs all the time, but whatever.) Sure, there are times I'm afraid of passing out behind the wheel, but really, what's a good night's sleep, anyway?

I can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring.