The Housing Search - House #8 and #13

We saw 6 more houses this weekend. It was a much better selection that we looked at and it made things extremely difficult! We have it narrowed down to 2 houses. They are both 3 bedroom, 2.5 baths and have a finished basement with room for an office. Here are the pictures of the 2 top contenders: http://picasaweb.google.com

Happy 2.5 Years!

Today is Paige's 2 1/2 year birthday! Paige had made so much progress since she turned 2. It really is unbelievable when I think back to 6 months ago. Mostly it's her language. She has conversations with her toys and the cat. It's really cute because she'll ask Ella a question like "Wanna sit on the couch by me?" Then she'll respond for Ella: "Yes" Then she'll confirm: "Okay". It cracks me up every time. And how can I resist when she comes up to me and asks "Momma, you want to play legos with me?" I think it was just this week that she's now using the word "with" when appropriate. She still gets his and hers confused at times though.

Last night Justin was asking her if she wanted peanut butter on toast. And I added that he could put some banana on it too (which I love). And Justin responded: "No, that's gross". Not only did she just repeat the words out of his mouth, but she rephrased it back to me. Paige said "No mama, you don't put manana (banana) on peanut butter, that's gross". And added a nice finger waving along with it too.

Her bedroom is right at the top of the stairs, so since we've had her in the toddler bed, we've been closing the door tightly and she has a childproof cover on the doorknob inside. I think with the weather being colder, her door might not be latching all the way shut. This morning I was still in bed (with morning sickness-I thought this was supposed to be over by now) and Justin was in the living room eating his breakfast. I heard a little noise on the baby monitor from one of her toys, but she never said a word when she woke up. Next thing I know she's walking down the stairs by herself and in the living room with Justin to tell him she's up! She must've been able to pull hard enough to get that door open by herself. I hope she doesn't try that in the middle of the night now that she knows she can get out.

Happy half birthday, Paige!

The Housing Search - House #7

On Saturday, our realtor took us to see 5 houses. Of those 5, there was one that Justin really seemed to like and I was on the fence about. It was priced well, but there would be a lot of work that we'd have to put into it before we could even move in. On Sunday, we went to an open house on our own. This is the 7th house we've since so far since the previous weekend we had also been to an open house. This house, we were both in agreement that we really like it. It is at the very top of our price range and doesn't have a basement or air conditioning. Two pretty big downsides for us. Here are some pictures I took with my phone.

The kitchen. All new cabinets and appliances. Very pretty:


The master bathroom. Very small :(The living room with original hardwood floors and wood burning fireplace!
The family room. This room is huge and right off the kitchen!
The view of the backyard and pool/poolhouse from the kitchen sink. A full acre of land.
There are still a huge list of houses from our realtor that we're looking forward to seeing. So who knows what we'll decide on. There's still some time.

Paige of course came with us on Saturday when we looked at the 5 houses. She did wonderfully. It was even raining most of the day, but she tolerated it well. She loved looking through the houses and seeing what dolls and stuffed animals each house had. At one point we had sat down in the living room to chat with the realtor and she ran off and brought back a Clifford dog doll! She wasn't planning on stealing it though. In it's place she left her toy phone that she brought from home. She was just going to do a trade!

A look back at the first trimester

If you haven't heard already, Paige is going to be a big sister! We were being cautious and not making a public post about it until the first trimester was officially over. Tomorrow I'll be 13 weeks along! I met with my doctor today. It was a new doctor, because the one I had been seeing was not working out so well. I didn't feel comfortable with either of the 2 out of 3 doctors that I met in the practice. And I knew that if I was dreading going in for the routine appointments this early on, that it would only get worse down the road. So I made the switch to a practice out of the hospital that I plan to deliver at. Today I met with a midwife, but I'll get to meet each of the 4 doctors eventually as they rotate the patients so all the doctors are familiar with all the patients since any one of them could be the one on-call for the delivery.

At today's appointment, she did an internal exam, listened to the heartbeat, took tons of blood from me and we filled out a bunch of medical history paperwork. They also sent me home with a goody bag and all kinds of paperwork to read through that covers all the testing and everything else that will occur during my upcoming appointments. I had such a good feeling after leaving my appointment today and they covered so much more with me than we went through during any of my 3 appointments at the old practice!

The midwife was able to quickly find the heartbeat with the doppler and the baby was very active and making big thumping noises as we were trying to listen! The heartbeat was in the 160s.

I'm very happy that the first trimester is officially over. I haven't been throwing up, but have been feeling very nauseated since the beginning. Hopefully that will start subsiding as we enter the second trimester.

It's snowing again today. The forecast is calling for 5-7 inches by late tomorrow afternoon. It snowed a little this weekend, but we haven't had any accumulation since our first snow at the end of October.

Play

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post called "I bite Isabelle". Paige would say this to us when we asked her what she had done at school that day. Last week when we were at grandma's house, Paige said something that sounded like, "Mommy bite me?". After asking her to repeat herself several times, we realized that her word for "play" and "bite" sound very similar. And she always leaves out the word "with" from her sentences. So all this time she's been telling us that she played with Isabelle in daycare and we were going into lectures about biting!

Yesterday, however, she did get bit by her friend Rocco at school. And she was quick to name names when we asked her who did it. But the cute thing was when I dropped her off at school this morning, Rocco met us at the door and was very quick to apologize! But Paige just turned her head away. I hope she can forgive him.

In other news, this week we found a realtor. She was referred to us from another faculty member at Justin's school. So we're taking his awesome recommendation and going to look at 4 houses on Saturday! I'm really looking forward to it.

Tonight we are meeting with other faculty at a neighboring college for a dinner with all our families. Last night Paige refused to eat dinner until after she watched a full episode of Dora. I'm hoping she's more cooperative out in public tonight.

You're not listening to Daddy!

A month or two ago, Paige was getting into trouble a lot. She seemed to be on a mission to test the boundaries, and that often involved touching the stove, the dishwasher, or the cat (often in ways that made Ella yell), poking us in our eyes, etc. And so we'd tell her to stop several times, she'd resist, and she'd ultimately end up on time out. Depending on how often she'd been bad that night (and how much energy we had), she sometimes would have to say "sorry" before she could leave time out. That might take anywhere from 3 minutes to a half hour.

However, one thing that we always did is that when she left time out, we'd make her look us in the eyes while we said something like "the reason you were on time out is ____." And, more often than not, the reason was "...you weren't listening to Daddy." Or Mommy, as the case may be.

I think that as a result, "not listening" to mommy or daddy has become the Cardinal Sin in our household. Now, if she's misbehaving, we will usually ask her to stop once or twice. If she doesn't respond we will then, with a hardened voice (but still not shouting), say "Paige, you're not listening to Mommy." And usually...I'd say 4 out of 5 times...she will almost immediately change her behavior. It's not absolute, of course--she's two. But she's become much better about listening to us when we ask her to do something. And, as a result, she's only going on time out once or twice a week these days instead of the once or twice a night like she was just a few weeks back!

Parenting is fun when it works.

Toddler bed update

Paige is doing so well in her new toddler bed. Occasionally, she'll wake up in the middle of the night and we'll have to hold her for a minute or two and then she'll go back to sleep. The great thing is once she goes to bed she stays in there. Even when she's crying out for us, she doesn't walk to her door, she just stays laying in the bed and calls. This morning, when she woke up she was calling for me and when I went to her in her bed she was asking for a tissue because her nose was running! Although her word for tissue sounds a lot like choo choo. So after spending a minute telling her she must've been dreaming because there's no choo choo here I finally realized her nose was running.

New addition

I adopted a crayfish from the BIO 111 labs last week. He was purchased for experiments evaluating the relationship between temperature and activity levels in an ectotherm. They didn't have a clear plan for him after he was done (freezer bait?), so I went ahead and bought a cheap 1.5 gallon aquarium and brought him into my office. Here are pictures:

Chillin' in the office. Arthropods are way better than fishes! (they eat them, actually)

Gorgeous, isn't he?

In the final picture, he's balancing a piece of food I'd just placed in the tank on his back. So he can do tricks too!

Barack Obama

Last night, our country elected Barack Obama to our highest governmental office. You may agree with his views, or you may disagree with him. I tend to agree with him more often than not. But no matter what one's political persuasions may be, I think that one has to look at what just happened with a certain degree of awe.

Until last night, we were a country that, over our entire 200 year history, had exclusively been led by white males. This is a country that, for all its goodness and high ideals, was also built upon a foundation of slavery, discrimination, and bigotry. But now, overnight, we are also a country with a President Elect who is a black man.

There are only a few moments in your life when you know that a massively important, historic event has just occurred that forever changes the world around you. Last night was one of those events. Paige is going to grow up in a world in which the concept of a black U.S. President isn't a pipe dream, isn't unusual, and isn't even remarkable. It will be old news. Uninteresting. Normal.

That's amazing.
-dad