To be like a 2-year-old

Over breakfast this morning we had a few interesting things happen that I thought would make a good blog post, so, here I am.

Noah has had a slight addiction to Cocoa Crispies lately. Well, the cheapo kind that comes in a bag, but "you can't tell the difference," right? Well, at least that's what all cheap mothers say. :) Anyways, he's learning to use silverware, and one of the things he can eat by himself is cereal. It's messy, and we have to change his shirt afterwards, but he's gotta learn somehow. He was eating away, and I realized that he was eating with his left hand. That's not really a shocker, he does lots of stuff with his left hand, but I wanted to "test" him. While he was taking a drink, I flipped the stem of the spoon to the right side. Sure enough, he grabbed the spoon with his right hand and kept eating. He's not quite as controlled with his right hand, but it's pretty close. So, who knows, we might have a lefty, or he might be one of the lucky ones that are ambidextrous. How cool would that be? He'd never have to worry which arm he broke. :)

He keeps eating his beloved cereal, and the cat comes over to snoop around. She typically waits around until he finishes his cereal, and then she always begs for the little bit of leftover milk in the bottom of the bowl. Noah got a spoon full of his cereal, and tried to feed her some of his cereal. :) He's such a good share-er. Well, at least until he has a little brother that wants all his stuff.

The third thing he did this morning made me think "if only we could all be like you." We've got these 2 flies that have been flying around the apartment for the last few days. I'm pretty sure they're ninjas- they never fail to get away from the fly-swatter, and the spray stuff doesn't seem to phase them. It's very frustrating. All that to say that these two flies were buzzing around Noah's head this morning while he was eating. Whenever one would land on his head, which was about every 5 seconds, I'd reach over and swing my hand near his head to get it to go away. He thinks this is just hilarious. Wanna know what's even funnier? When it lands on his ear and he can feel it moving around. I would go insane if they did that to me. Noah on the other hand, just enjoys it. If only I could be more like my 2-year-old. Well, almost 2-year-old.

Offer Accepted!

Our offer on the house was accepted yesterday. Guess they really did want to get rid of it ASAP. Another offer came in at the same time as ours, but ours was a little better, so we got it. Yay hoo! Hopefully everything will work out so that we can be done with the whole house-hunting thing. I think it's the best house so far that we've looked at as far as having what we wanted- a decent sized yard, not a really tiny or narrow kitchen, at least 3 bedrooms, and room for the dining table, and plenty of room for a piano/keyboard. It has a few little "extra" things that are gonna have to go. Like, an awful railing that goes along part of the entrance to the den. It looks like someone pulled it off their front steps and stuck it there. There's also an automatic hand drier in one of the bathrooms. WHY?! Why would someone want one of those things in their house?! So, thats gonna have to go too. We'll stick a medicine cabinet or something there instead. It's also got a giant brick fireplace with the awful red bricks. That's going to get a make-over ASAP. The kitchen cabinets are also going to get a make-over, hopefully sooner than later. I'm sure we'll have lots of "before" and "after" pictures coming up relatively soon.

If anyone has any tips on antiquing kitchen cabinets, let me know! As of now, that's what I plan on doing with the cabinets in the house. Unless I show Josh a picture and he hates it.

Shortest blog post ever. I think.

We find out within 5 business days if our offer was accepted, or what the counter offer is. It's a foreclosure, so we think the bank might just want to get rid of it ASAP and *hopefully* accept our offer. This whole house-buying thing is definitely teaching me to have more patience than I already do. And that is all. For now.

Found another one...

We found another house today. Our offer is going in first thing tomorrow morning. Thankfully, after one doesn't work out, another one seems to pop up a few days later. Praying this one works out. Excellent location, amazing schools, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a fair price. And....$89 per square foot. :) It could use some minor work at some point, but nothing expensive, and we can do it ourselves.

Defiance? I think so.

Noah's a pretty well-behaved kid for the most part. The only thing we seem to have issues with at the moment is "come here." He knows what it means, he just doesn't always come when we call him. Until today the most defiance he's shown was when Josh or I would say "Noah, come here," and he wouldn't come. In fact, occasionally he'd just sit down right where he was and look at us. Today he upped the ante.

"Noah, come here," and he not only didn't come, but he turned around, ran into his room, and slammed the door. I think he thinks he's a teenager or something. Needless to say, that didn't fly, and he ended up "coming here" like he should have in the first place.

Getting discouraged

This week we haven't had a whole lot of luck in the house hunting department. I found one that I thought could be our house, took Josh to go look at it, and realized that a few important things were missing.

#1- There really wasn't a place to put our dining room table. It was an 1120 square foot house, with no dining room, or even a place to put it in the kitchen. That's not really a problem now, but once kids get older, hopefully we'll be eating at the table more often, and an important element of that whole scenario, is a table.

#2- Nowhere to put a piano, or even a keyboard. Everyone knows that Josh is a musician, but not as many know that I grew up playing the piano, doing competitions, and even thought that I would end up majoring in piano performance. I had a Russian teacher that tried talking me into going to the St. Petersburg Music Conservatory in Russia, or whatever it's called, where she went. Anyways, all that to say, playing the piano used to be a huge part of my life, but since being married (almost 5 years), I haven't really played at all. We just haven't had the space to put a piano. One of the things I'm looking forward to about having a house, is being able to play again, and maybe teach if I can figure out what to do with the little boys. In this house, there's nowhere to put a piano, or even a keyboard, unless we squeezed it into our bedroom, and then it would be just a tad weird to be holed up in my bedroom playing the piano with two little ones running around.

Because of these things, we didn't end up making an offer. It's discouraging because I'm putting so much work into finding us a house, and I just feel like I'm failing over and over again. I know it's not my fault that these houses either are in escrow already, or they just wouldn't work for what we need, but it still feels a lot like failure. So, after a day or so of taking a break from all this, it'll be back to the drawing board. Better luck next time? Hope so.

William has a birthday....

...unless he comes early, that is. My c-section is scheduled for December 22nd, which is also my sister's birthday. What are the chances? Well, I guess it would be 1 in 365...unless it's a leap year, which it's not. 7:30am. Mi madre booked her plane ticket today, so she's officially coming out. First time she'll have been here since we moved here 2.5 years ago.

I've officially blown up. I now have a watermelon in there. A very active watermelon. I gained a whopping 9 pounds this last month. My head just about exploded right there in the dr's office. Dr's not worried though since I hadn't really gained anything until now, as long as I don't start gaining 9 pounds EVERY month. Apparently it's not uncommon for "smaller people" to not gain anything or even show for a long time and then pop overnight and have a huge spike in weight gain. I've calmed down since the initial shock of gaining the weight of a newborn in a month. I'm just going to try to keep exercising most days to keep the weight gain at a healthy rate.

Noah and I went out to look at houses again today. We found one that I liked, but it needs a some work done on it. It's a foreclosure, but it's still priced higher than I want to pay for the amount of work that it needs. It was just put on the market today though, so there's a decent chance that no one will make an offer on it, and it'll come down in price. So, I plan on keeping an eye on it for now, and keep looking for other ones. We're also making an offer on a house that's already in escrow, but there's always a chance that it'll fall out of escrow and we want to be ready if that happens. It's a smaller house, but I absolutely love it. Since it's smaller, it's also cheaper, which is always a plus in my book. I could totally see us living there. So anyways, it's not likely, but we'll be ready just in case.

That's all for now. Adios amigos!