Apartment Searching

Sometimes you just have to suck it up and admit, your living in a home that is draining your wallet. My husband and I are renters, we won’t buy until we know where we want to raise our kids. Sew our oats for 5-10 years. Right now we pay $950.00 in rent for a 3 bedroom single home on about 5 acres of property. We have a beautiful backyard, quiet and safe neighborhood and an excellent landlord. During the winter we also spend $600.00 a month in oil, deal with the sewage backing up about once a month in the basement, a leak underneath the sink, windows that don’t stay up (or down), bug problems, poor installation, old (OLD) bathroom, just a poorly remodled situation. It’s more everything was covered up, rather than fixed.

From the months of November to March we spent roughly $2400.00 in heating our home. Four months. That was when the harshest of chill hit. October and April we probably spent about $400 those months but as I’m not going to pull out our oil bills, I’m only estimating.

Based off of the winter months, we spent $6200.00 on this house. Obsurd. Oil should not be costing this much. It’s not the cost of the oil, it is the fact that the house cannot retain heat. We knew we should have put plastic on the windows, etc. we should have prepared but when we moved in we were told that the previous renters spent about $200 a month, so we budgetted for anywhere between $300 – $400, thinking that we were high balling it. Boy were we wrong.

We decided that unless our landlord can lower our rent by $300.00 we wont beable to stay here throughout the winter. Which begins the great search for a place to live. I’m sad at the thought. As a lot of our options are mainly townhomes and apartments. We won’t rent an apartment as we are a decently sized family with a dog and a cat. We’d much rather a town home or a single family house. I’m sad about the idea of losing our backyard, our privacy, etc. depresses me.

Long Weekend

My hubby had three days off this past weekend, which meant today was back to reality. Our weekend went pretty well and was eventful at times.

We went and picked up Max on Friday and spent Saturday outside in the pool. The kids loved it, we enjoyed it and it was HOT. Pregnancy and heat don’t mix too well apparently. Or at least I should have known this since I’ve spent two summers pregnant before, just not THIS pregnant.

Sunday, the 4th we spent the day at my parents. I pounded the water and ice chips. Need to get my iron checked as I am definitely craving ice. My Mother has an ice machine that spurts out crushed ice so I was enjoying that versus waiting for the ice to melt a bit before chewing at home. My teeth aren’t in the best condition so I try to not cause too much havoc on them. Tori got to play with sparklers for the first time. It was nice to see her running back and forth and knowing to hand it back to Daddy when it got too low. Abby wanted to touch the ‘sparkle’ so Daddy held them for her. She actually enjoyed running around with her cousin Ainsley more than she did the sparklers.

That night we came home and well, TMI, but while using the restroom I had a very harsh contraction. After that contraction, I discovered that I had bloody show. I had a serious of contractions all night. However none of them were regular or even worth considering a reason to rush to the hospital. Though now we definitely feel we are playing the waiting game. I’ll know the baby will be here within a day or two when I spend an entire day nesting. That was how it was with both of my girls and I’m expecting the same this time as well.

I have my appointment tomorrow with my regular OB/GYN. Hopefully things will go well but I have this eerie feeling that something will not be quite right. Whether it’s my blood pressure, dialation, etc. I just have this feeling that baby will be here before the 23rd rather than wait until that day. We’ll see. I could be very wrong. I always tend to get anxious and then nothing happens. It could just be jitters because of all the action baby is causing in the belly the past few days. I do have a lot of pressure but I’ve had that pressure for weeks now.

And now…for some confessions. I saw this on a message board I read frequently and thought it’d be cute to do.

Four Confessions for this pregnancy

• I have not been consistent with taking my prenatals. I either forget or I can’t swallow them or they make me sick.
• I have at least one cafinated beverage a day. Trucking behind two toddlers and being 9 months pregnant requires cafiene.
• My sex drive is depleated. I have no urge for sex, no desire, versus my previous pregnancies.
• I’m not as excited about ultrasounds or ‘new’ things like I was with my first pregnancy. Perhaps it’s because this is my third time and I’m just ‘oh look baby on tv screen, looks like white noise’.

Somethings just fall in your lap

Okay, so in our case ‘things’ really isn’t what fell in our lap, but a dog. And boy, it’s nice to just let things happen rather than seek it out and be disappointed. I am a huge animal lover and have been since I was a child. I always had some kind of pet, whether it was a dog, cat, hamster, fish, or a bird. Nothing exotic, your normal run of the mill pets, each one that I now have fond memories of. A few more specific than others.

Through my husband and I’s marriage we’ve had quite a few pets. Some we have had to give up because of moving, because they were aggressive toward children etc. Our last dog, passed away from Parvo which was very heartbreaking. We had decided than that no more pets (other than the kitty we already had). We weren’t going to seek a dog and weren’t going to plan on getting a dog anytime soon.

Until recently that was. We didn’t start seeking or even considering adopting a dog until my husband came home telling me about a Golden Retriever one of his co-workers was looking to find a home for. His co-worker’s Father actually own(ed) the dog but as he has fallen quite ill, he’s going to a nursing home and as we all know, pets aren’t typically allowed in a nursing home unless they are a service animal. His co-worker was unable to keep the dog because his landlord does not allow pets.

At first dear hubby was just ‘mehh’ and didn’t think anything of it until he got caught up in a conversation with his co-worker about the dog. Everything the co-worker was saying sounded ‘perfect’. Too good to be true. And that brought us to today. We went to go visit dog, well Max. Max met all of our expectations and beyond so far. He knows all his basic commands, healthy, wonderful with the kids, up to date on health records, has energy but not too high strung and is definitely a ‘mans dog’.

Needless to say, Max came home with us today. It’s possibly a very silly thing of us to do, what with a baby coming in 22 days now but he’s an adult dog. He’s not a puppy we need to take outside every hour and he’s content to lay at our feet for a few hours as well. The kids are smitten with him and so are we. Im sure he’ll become a little less than perfect when he grows comfortable but I believe if there were any major training flaws or personality flaws, we would have noticed at some point today.

So yes, sometimes, if you wait and stop seeking that perfect ‘thing’ or ‘pet’, it’ll come to you.

Pregnancy Insomnia

We are 22 days till little Miss Audrey makes her debut and pregnancy insomnia has seemed to set in the last few days. I hardly sleep but I am one hundred percent exhausted. If I’m not waking to kicks in the stomach, braxton hicks, restless legs, the cats going nuts, or having to pee, I’m in that 2nd phase of sleep where I’m almost there but am still aware of what is occuring around me and can hear every little thing. Not to mention I have those achy pains that aren’t necessairly contributed to pregnancy that keep me awake as well.

I seemed to have done something to my big toe. I’m notorious in getting in-grown toe nails and I think I either didn’t get it or ended up cutting my nail bed getting it out. Needless to say either my nail bed is infected because it got cut open or the ingrown toe nail is growing and causing some pain. It doesn’t take much pressure to cause a jolt of pain. Moving my blanket at night with my foot even hurts. So that doesn’t help when I’m inches from deep sleep and bam, pain.

I’ve been full of complaints lately, little patience and feeling overwhelmed. I have a lot to accomplish before Audrey gets here but my dear hubby keeps telling me there is plenty of time, it will get done. I shouldn’t stress myself too much. Since she’ll come whether things are done or not and it won’t be the end of the world if all the laundry isn’t done when she arrives.

We’ll be spending our Independence day at my Parent’s house this weekend. I’m looking forward to it. BBQ, Sparklers, a few Fireworks, etc. should be a good day. We are not going to a big fireworks display this year. One, the date of the fireworks falls on days the husband works and he works nights, so that is not going to work. Two, due to PTSD, my husband has anxiety when it comes to large crowds. We thought we remedied this by planning to go the mall near my Mother’s to watch the fireworks from the car but given that their not doing fireworks till the 8th (a night the hubby works), we will not be able to go.

That’s okay. My toddlers love Grandma’s and they’ll get to swim, they’re water babies so they won’t care if they get to watch fireworks or not hah. Abigale counted to 3 today. It was amazing to hear her do it on her own. Often she will count numbers, not usually in any particular order unless I start with one, she says two, I say three, she says four and so forth.

I’ve got to get our pre-school stuff together and start preparing but I’m trying not to stress too much over this. Confession, I never went to pre-school. Neither did any of my siblings. I think I’m more than capable of teaching my children their ABC’s, 123′s, how to spell their name, the basics of writing, and the simple aspect of it. We don’t know if we plan on home-schooling or not, that is still the great debate but we have time before we need to make the ultimate decision.