Updates and stuff

A quick update on the house: they apparently found the issue with the wet insulation. It was with the siding; there was a small tear in some sheeth (plastic stuff used for keeping water out) under the actual siding that water was leaking in through. With all the rain we have, and the wind we had the last few weeks, it was seeping in from every which way the rain was blowing. They tore siding down off the house, caulked the tears, replaced the siding and it was re-painted yesterday. The holes are still above our master bedroom window and those are supposed to get fixed next Monday. They referred to this as a "freak accident" and said they've never seen this before. I hope they're right, because I'll be pissed if we find more of these issues. And unfortunately, they can't do anything to check to see if this is a problem elsewhere without tearing off the siding on the entire house. The little device they use to check moisture levels didn't even pick up the soaking wet insulation the first day they were here because it was so far back in the wall. So now we just wait and see...and hope to God that dark patches don't start appearing on the walls (that's a sign of water damage soaking through). Luckily though, they are considering this a warranty issue and we don't have have to pay for this and is covered in the 10 year warranty. So IF we should find more of these issues, it will be covered as a structural issue for the next 10 years. But lets hope we don't have anymore issues.

In other house news, we've been having problems with a circuit tripping. I work from home and have to have a good set up for work. Long story short, when the printer is plugged in and turned on, if the upstairs guest bathroom light is turned on, it trips the circuit and kills the power to my office (losing any of my unsaved work!!!) and electricity in the bathroom. I thought I noticed that it happened when I flush the toilet in that bathroom, but toilets aren't connected to the electric, so I thought it was just a weird coincident that it happened twice. Well it happened again yesterday and I am absolutely positive it happened after I flushed the toilet. A guy came out here on Tuesday to look at it and replaced the breaker box, but that didn't fix it. So I'll be calling them again after I do some more testing this weekend. Oy vey.

In GOOD news, tomorrow is a chili cook off for Seth's battalion and I'm making a white chicken chili! My dad made this chili once for a chili cook off at work and he won, so I'm hoping it has winning powers and I win tomorrow. Seth has been getting into making cutting boards and has been making a lot of them for family and selling them to co-workers, and the prizes are his cutting boards. Last I heard, there were 6 entries for the chili cook off and there are prizes for the top 3 chili. I so badly want to win - because I never win ANYTHING!!! - but I can get a custom made cutting board any day of the week! (If you want a custom cutting board, let me know and I'll send you pictures!!!) There is also a silent auction for donated baked goods for a formal that's taking place in August after the deployment is over. I'm baking cookies and also these lemon blueberry cupcakes!!! Oh they look so heavenly!

Tomorrow is the start of spring break and I can't wait. I have a long list of items to accomplish before my parents come up here next week and I'll definitely be using the extra day to do it. I'm so excited for a break from work!!! I hope the weather is decent!

On being homeowners

We're homeowners now. I've had better experiences. We bought this brand new house so it should be in tip top shape with no problems, right? Wrong.

Friday, Seth was over here doing stuff while I was at the old house working. He came home (to the old house) and told me he had some not so great news. He was putting an anchor in the wall to hang the blinds in our bedroom and the anchor came out slimy. He knew that meant wet insulation. Great. Wet insulation on the insides of our walls. Hello Holmes on Homes!!! So I've been dealing with that. Yesterday they were here for a good hour, today they've been back for pretty much the whole morning. It also annoys me big time that I was told they'd get here yesterday between 9:30 and 10:30 am. They come strolling up to my door at about 8:45ish. I was working, so I hadn't showered yet, no make up, no bra, teeth unbrushed. Great. As much as I want this fixed ASAP, I want them to give me accurate times of when they'll be here. Same thing today. A guy was going to come today to inspect the roof for leaks between 9:30 and 10:30 and the boss lady was going to be here between 10:30 and 11 to see what he found. She got here at about 8:30. I was in the bathroom, shower was on, I was naked and Patrick starts barking his little head off. Grrr. I threw on clothes, answered the door and she asked if it was OK if they looked at it now. Sure, why not. So...two ish hours later, bigger holes in the dry wall in our bedroom, she finds more soaking wet insulation, roofer checked out the roof and says nothing is wrong with it, he checks the attic and checks all the vents...all look fine and dandy. She was going to call a siding specialist to have him check the siding and said that would be done tomorrow. Seth had duty last night and was up 30+ hours and laid down in our room to sleep because she said the siding guy would be here tomorrow. About 30 minutes after he goes to bed, there's a knock on the door and it's her again with the siding guy. Seriously? Seth got up and went to the spare bedroom to sleep and there are no curtains in there yet and it's bright as hell in there. Poor guy. No leaks have been found (yet) and they're continuing to look for where the problem is coming from. I'll be damned if I have mold growing on the insides of our walls in a brand new house. Here's a picture of what our master bedroom window looked like this afternoon after they did their stuff. The wet insulation has been removed (and has been contained to this one area) and now the wood is drying out behind it.

Patrick LOVES the backyard though! He literally gets a huge smile (with his huge underbite) when he runs all around. There is a ton of mulch in the backyard and he tears it up back there. And since he's short, he kicks it up and he is covered in mulch in no time. And we have big gaps under the fence so he can easily sneak out (which he's done), so we can't leave him alone in the backyard yet. We bought chicken wire stuff to lay across the bottom of the fence, but he's a digger and has already sniffed out the neighbor dog and they both whine and stick their noses through the fence to smell each other. We were going to do railroad ties along the fence to block the holes, but they're expensive and we'd need quite a few. And it's been cold and very rainy and windy the last few days which make standing in the backyard while he runs around quite miserable. We need to do something with the amount of mulch too; it's on a steep slant that is a little too steep to grow grass (and mow it), so we want to put in terraces, but again, we're budgeting for this, along with all the baby stuff we need to buy.

We ordered blinds Friday night and I'm hoping they get here ASAP. My parents are coming up for spring break in early April. The blinds are supposed to get here on April 5th and my parents will be here April 4th. And they don't rush order blind orders. Perfect. Hello tacky sheets in the window until the real stuff gets here. Painting is done, but we still have touch ups to do (and the baby's room), and all of our stuff has been moved in. We still have to go back to the old house and clean it, which we're doing a few nights this week and this weekend.

So needless to say...being a home owner is time consuming and expensive. Welcome to adult hood, I guess.

Feeling the baby move

The baby has been moving all over my uterus. It’s pretty crazy. The other night, I was lying in bed with my hands on my stomach seeing if I could feel him move from the outside. I thought I felt him move but wasn’t sure so I waited a few more times of feeling it before waking Seth up to share the excitement with him. (He had duty the night before so he passed out in bed really early). He didn’t wake up when I said his name, so I let him sleep. Then a little while later, I turned off the TV and he woke up and I told him I felt the baby move on the outside. He put his hands on my stomach to try to feel but baby wasn’t into moving and Seth fell back to sleep. He’s felt it quite a few times since then and it’s so cute to see him! We’ll be watching TV and put his hand on my stomach and when I feel the baby move, I’ll ask him if he felt it. He says, “is that him!?!?”  It’s really cute how excited he gets.

One night last week we had tacos for dinner and I made homemade guacamole. Baby sure did like it because he was all over the place shortly after I got done eating!! I had leftovers the following day for lunch with guacamole again, to see if it would have the same effect and sure enough, it did!! He was really active for a solid amount of time. Too bad Seth was at work though!

Yesterday when Seth got up for work, I kinda woke up. He said to me, “is he awake right now?” and put his hands on my stomach to see if he could feel him. Baby still isn’t big enough that the movements wake me up, so I don’t know if the baby was awake at that time or not. Sometimes when Seth gets home from work, he’ll shake and blow on my stomach and tell the baby to “wake up!! Hang out with us!!” I keep telling him he needs to NOT waking a sleeping baby; that’s parenting 101!! But he’s just excited to feel his baby boy and I can understand that!!!

Side Effects of Pregnancy

For the most part, this has gone pretty smooth and easy. I’ve only actually thrown up a handful of times (although each and every time, I cry and hate it…throwing up is just gross, regardless of the circumstances) but I did have a lot of nausea the first trimester. I constantly felt like I was going to throw up, but rarely did. And for that, I was extremely thankful. I have a friend who had to go on medication her entire pregnancy because she couldn’t keep a single thing down. No thank you!

Besides the nausea being the most common side effect, here are the other side effects I’ve been experiencing.

Constipation. By far the worst side effect. Enough said.

When I brush my teeth and tongue, I often gag. This has gotten better since starting the second trimester, but throwing up was easily triggered when I brushed my tongue. I had to proceed with lots of caution and I’m glad that I can brush it like normal again!!

Sometimes when I brush my teeth, my gums bleed. It’s mostly when I floss though.

Constantly peeing. I’ve always had a small bladder, but I definitely go more frequently now. I currently get up twice each night…I can’t wait to see how much more frequently I get up at the end of this pregnancy!

Craving wise, I haven’t had any of the weird food cravings people talk about. Just strong urges for normal things more often. I can’t drink enough milk and so I have to limit myself. Did you know pregnant women are supposed to drink 2 GALLONS of water each day? That’s literally impossible for me. I have a 32 oz Nalgene bottle that I use to keep track of how much I drink. I struggle to drink a whole one a day. I’m a really slow drinker (I was never good at doing shots!!) and I’m just not a thirsty person in general. If I craved water as much as I crave milk, I’d be doing great. I try to allow myself to only drink milk twice a day, and usually it’s only a glass. I make myself drink water the rest of the time, but it’s just not as good. I also love cheese. String cheese to be exact. And Cheese-Its. (Although, I haven’t bought a box of these in a few weeks!) Favorite fruit is apples (with peanut butter) or strawberries.

I’ve really really been liking sugary, fruity, sour candies.  Sour gummy worms? My BFFs. Skittles? I want to be BFFs with them too. Gummy worms or bears in general will do too. I don’t really buy these, but when I do get the occasional pack, I try to savor them. Ok, let’s be honest. In reality, I devour them.

On that note, I'm 22 weeks today :)

It's a.....

We found out the gender of our baby the other day! It’s a…

BOY!!!

We have pretty much settled on a name and have been calling him by his new name all weekend. I’ve also started feeling him move around and he’s been using my bladder as a trampoline. It’s awesome, yet totally weird, feeling him move inside of me. It’s surreal really. It feels like popcorn popping inside my belly. He’s pretty active throughout the day. (He’s actually moving right now – maybe he can sense me talking about him?!) The movements aren’t strong enough to wake me up at night though. We were bowling on Saturday night (one of Seth’s favorite activities) and the baby was moving around. Seth was excited that the baby seemed to like the noise of the bowling alley. 

Which leads me to....

Sunday morning I woke up with a bladder infection. Ever had one of those?? They SUCK soooo bad. I really didn’t want to go to the ER…last time I went, it was a 6 hour wait. It was terrible and people in the waiting room were annoying. Sunday evening, it was getting worse each time I went pee and it became pretty painful. And I had to go every 5 seconds, but literally it would be a teaspoon of pee. I called the ER room and asked if there were a ton of people and about how long a wait would be (apparently, I thought it was like calling ahead for a reservation at a restaurant) and was disappointed that she couldn’t give me an answer and all she could say was “it’s been steady.” I figured a bladder infection would be low on the list of priority things in an ER room. Eventually, I sucked it up and went to the ER, where I was pleasantly surprised when I checked in that I would need to go to the Labor and Delivery ER room because I’m 20 weeks pregnant and if there’s any pain in the ab or girly part areas, I have to go to that ER room. After getting lost in a creepy, quiet, dimly lit hospital on a Sunday evening, I found a janitor who pointed me in the right direction to where I was supposed to go. There wasn’t a wait whatsoever and I was in a room immediately! Hallelujah! I was feeling the baby move so I really wasn’t concerned that he was in danger, but I was in pain and that’s the only reason I went, instead of waiting to go to my regular DR on Monday morning. I got some meds, got lost in the hospital again on my way out and then was home at about 8:45 pm. I was only there for about 3 hours and I’m so thankful that it wasn’t all night long like the last time. Seth was home though, so I was bored as hell in the hospital by myself. We were in the middle of making a bunch of cookies for some of his friends that are deployed and I was making mac and cheese for dinner, using a recipe I was sooo excited for! He said he would finish the baking and cook dinner while I went to the ER.

i parked here. because i could! and because i knew it'd be dark and late by the time i left 

I saw this recipe on pinterest on Saturday morning and we decided to make them on Sunday. They didn’t turn out nearly as pretty as they are in the pinterest pic but they are very good. Very rich too. Ours turned out ugly. 

proof ours were ugly!

We put a little dab of brownie mix on the bottom of the cupcake pan, but clearly the original picture indicates just put the Oreo on the bottom. We also overfilled them so they overflowed from the cupcake pan and were really difficult to get out. Oh well, they tasted good and Seth’s coworkers are enjoying them for a while.  

Saving Money

I attempted to cut Seth’s hair last night. You know, just give it a little trim so he didn’t have to pay $15 to get a haircut. He figured we could save $30/month if I learn to cut his hair. Apparently once upon a time, I made a comment about how it can’t be that hard to cut his hair and he asked if I wanted to go to the PX to get some clippers with him. We stood in the aisle and debated over different clippers and then settled on a set.

Do you KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO DO A FADE TO ARMY STANDARDS?! It’s stupid hard. Seth started this venture out with hair. Now he’s bald. Honestly. That’s how hard it is. I’m not even kidding. He was getting annoyed with me (because helllllo, I’ve never actually GIVEN a haircut according to Army regulations, but it looked easy enough when I’d go to the barber shop with him), and I was getting annoyed with him because he was getting annoyed with me. Then he gave me the Army regulation number that is for the haircut. I practiced fades on his hair for what seemed like eternity (in one evening, mind you) so I can eventually learn it. After practicing (and messing up) fade after fade after fade, he told me to just shave it all off.

But lucky for me, he said we can give it another try this weekend! YAY!!!! Please note my sarcasm. And lucky for him, the evening ended in me in tears because I failed him and his hair cutting needs when he started citing the Army regulations for haircuts. All in an attempt to save a little money.

For the record, he looks much better with hair. This hair. The hair that was all over the bathroom floor. And now in the trash can. Mixed with tears and pride. I'm not a barber. Nor a hair stylist.

News train - a first class ticket!

We got approved for the house AND they accepted our offer!!! We close in a few weeks. I never thought I’d be so excited to move, but I am!! I just want to be moved in and settled and have separate, designated rooms for an office, a guest room and a backyard for Patrick!!



Also, while I’m on the news train and it’s Valentine’s Day, I should also mention that I’m pregnant :) We’ve known for quite some time (ok, a long time…early November!), we only told family our exciting news. I was too scared/nervous I’d jinx it if we told everyone right away. I’m now 19 weeks (as of today!!!) and in a safer zone and we feel more comfortable telling people. I really want to start blogging more regularly so I can document it as the time goes on.


So far, it’s been a fairly easy pregnancy. The first trimester, I constantly felt like I was going to throw up, but I only threw up a handful of times (thankfully). I have higher levels of iron than the average woman, so I haven’t been nearly as exhausted as all my pregnant friends said I would be. We are going to centering classes at the hospital and they’re fun! Tomorrow is our second class and I’m excited for it. It’s a monthly 2 hour class and the spouses take our vitals (blood pressure and weight – that’s always fun….not) and then we get to hear the heartbeat. The class is with other people who are due right around the same time (we’re all due in July) and we have a reunion class after we all have the babies and the babies get to meet each other!! We also talk about regular topics and as we get closer to our due dates, we take a tour of the labor and delivery rooms, apparently get on the table and practice labor positions (I already told Seth I’m SO volunteering to do that!! I may or may not be joking).


When I first found out I was pregnant, I immediately thought it was a boy. I don’t know why, but I just did. Everyone on Seth’s side of the family (except one of his sisters) thinks it’s a boy. Everyone on my side of the family thinks it’s a girl. At the suggestion of a friend, I held my wedding ring (and engagement ring and promise ring all at separate times) over my palm with a strand of my hair to see what it reveals. Going in a line suggests it’s going to be a boy, going in loops suggests a girl. Each time I try this, it consistently goes in a line. The Chinese calendar (based on my age when I conceived the baby, and the month that we conceived) suggests it’s a girl. We have names picked out for each gender that we’re pretty firm on, but we’re not going to share them until the baby is here. (Enjoy the suspense!!) We will be finding out the gender though, and we can’t wait for that. We go in 10.5 days for that appointment!!! We went to Lowes (right after our offer on the house was accepted) and picked out paint swatches for a boy and girl’s room (no, I’m not having twins…we just have the colors picked out for whatever gender it is), our bedroom, an accent wall in the entry way, the living room and possibly the office.


It’s going to be a very exciting year and we can’t wait!!

(also, if we are friends on Facebook, I haven’t ‘announced’ it on there yet, so if you could not mention it, I would appreciate it. K thanks!!!)

Happy Valentine's Day :)