BillyandAshlee.com

With only 9 days left until the big sono, anyone want to guess what this baby is? Here are a few belly pics to help!

5w4d and 16w5d:

And just for fun, 16w2d with Lauren:

We finally heard from the buyer’s agent about the inspection and there are 3 things they asked:

1. repair some missing shingles and plumbing flashing on the roof. We had a roofer out to look at it and all said it should be about $400, not bad at all!
2. give them the remote control for the ceiling fan in the family room. Easy! We just had it put away for the showings.
3. nail down some purlins in the attic. Billy will take care of it himself this weekend.

And that’s it!! We didn’t think there would really be much, our house is only 16 years old, but you just never know! So, it appears the sale will go through and we are moving! We’ll probably try to sign our lease over the weekend and start getting utilities and things changed over and finish packing. We plan to move on Saturday, April 11th…any volunteers to come help? I’m not much help as I shouldn’t be lifting more than about the weight of Lauren while pregnant, so we’ll take any help we can get!

I drove by the new house tonight and all the plumbing in the basement is in!! The sump pump, drain in the finished space under the garage, 1/2 bath, bar drain, etc! They also had a support beam in across the garage. It’s so fun to see the progress, we usually check on it every other day or so. There’s a house behind us that is a few weeks or a month ahead of us and they started framing last week and the entire house is pretty much done minus the roof…I can’t wait until we can see our house take shape like that!

I am sick, again. Only 2 weeks after getting over the flu. This time it’s just a bad cold…congestion, sore throat, body aches, fever, and just feel miserable overall. I stayed home from work today and basically slept all day. I’ve only gained about 3 pounds at 16 weeks (had gained 5.5 with Lauren by 15 weeks). I googled and found the expected weight gain at 16 weeks and the lower limit is 5.5 and higher is 8.5…and I’m at 3. I imagine it’s because I’ve been sick and keep losing weight or struggling to maintain. I’m actually down about 1 pound from my 12 week appt, 4 weeks ago. I also imagine it’s because we’ve been so busy packing, cleaning, chasing after Lauren, and I just haven’t had much of an appetite with this pregnancy. But I’m not too worried about it, I’m sure I’ll have gained the recommended 25-35 by the end of it all.

Only 12 days until the big sonogram when we find out what this baby is (hopefully)!! I’ll get a belly pic up before then so everyone can guess! If I were to guess what the baby is by how the pregnancy is compared to my last one with Lauren, I’d have to say boy because it’s been so different:
- craved sweets with Lauren and can’t really handle them this time
- couldn’t eat meat at all with Lauren and have been eating it just fine and even had hamburgers which I never normally eat with this one
- no nausea with Lauren and bad nausea with this one
- headaches with this one and not with Lauren
- keep getting sick with this one and I don’t think I did at all with Lauren
- felt movement much earlier with this one
- insomnia with this one and not with Lauren (keep waking up at 2 or 3am and being awake for a few hours)

So apparently this child is shaping up to be difficult! Or maybe I’m just older and have a bit more going on in my life this time. And I know every pregnancy can just be different regardless of gender. Only 12 more days and we’ll know!

After touring some apartments and all but freaking out about how we are supposed to fit a family of 3.5 and a small horse of a dog in a small 2 bedroom apartment, we finally found a duplex willing to give us a 4 month lease. It’s location is pretty good for work, daycare, and the new house. It’s 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 2 car garage (which for us right now means extra storage!), a deck off of the eat-in kitchen, on a cul-de-sac. There is a bunch of room for Brody to run around in off of the deck, but no fence, but considering he’s 9 and lazy, I think it will work just fine. Here’s the floor plan:

However, we are waiting until the inspection is over to sign anything. That is happening today. We really think it will come back fine, but you just never know. Hopefully we hear tonight and know that this sale will actually go through.

I’m getting a little sad about leaving our house. If we were moving straight to the new house, it might not be as bad. But thinking of leaving the house we’ve lived in for 8 years…our first house, the house we lived in when we got engaged, married, pregnant, brought Lauren home from the hospital to, etc…is a little sad. And Lauren tells us now and then she doesn’t want to move. I totally understand. I don’t want to move to a duplex either!

In pregnancy news, I started feeling flutters around 12-13 weeks and have been feeling a lot of rolling and kicks in the last week (15 weeks). This is much earlier than with Lauren…with her it was 15 weeks flutter and kicks at 18 weeks. Then on Saturday, at 15.5 weeks, Billy was able to feel the baby rolling and kicking as well!! He couldn’t feel it until 20 weeks with Lauren, so he was really excited! I can’t wait until they’re more regular and a tad stronger so Lauren can feel them! She sits on my lap at night to do her breathing treatment and to cuddle before bed and quite often, the baby is kicking her back the entire time, but she can’t feel it yet. It’s going to be interesting the first time she does feel it! 15 days until we find out the gender and we can hardly wait! There have been far more family members and friends voting for “boy” than “girl”, and I’m actually leaning that way myself a bit, but I also have only seen myself having 2 girls ever since Lauren was born, so I’m not sure what I really think!

In new house news, we have the foundation in and they filled in the area around it. I think we have to let the foundation cure for awhile now, but I’m not entirely sure. I do believe we’ll be framing in a few weeks!! Lauren is actually getting excited to go see the “hole with walls” vs. when it was just a “hole”. Once we can start seeing it look like a house, I’m sure she’ll be even more excited!

We got an offer on our house on Sunday, and another on Monday! After countering back and forth, we finally sold this afternoon!! Close date of 4/15! Yea!! But oh my goodness, 4 weeks to find a new place to move to and get moved! eek!

I’m not sure if anyone remembers reading our blog 4 years ago and how many weekends we spent looking at nursery furniture…I think we made at least 4 trips to every furniture store in KC that sold baby furniture. It was painful. We ended up getting a convertible crib for Lauren (started as a crib and is now her full/double size bed she’ll have until she leaves for college), double dresser (which we also used as a changing table when she was a baby), and a nightstand. It’s been perfect. So, maybe now knowing what we wanted and worked made this time easier?

We had 4 showings on our house today (2 of which were second showings, yea! keep your fingers crossed we get an offer soon as 17 showings in 9 days is getting tiring, not that I’m complaining in this market!), so we were making up things to do and decided to check out nursery furniture and get an idea. We walked into Kids Rooms (where we purchased Lauren’s) and in 5 mins picked out what we wanted, got a price quote, they told us to wait until April to order because that is when they have their big yearly sale, that it will take 2-3 months to come in, then they’ll hold it for us for 2 months….perfect! We should be in the new house by the end of all of that! I seriously can’t believe it was that easy!

Like we did with Lauren, we’re getting a convertible crib, 6 drawer dresser, and a nightstand. It’s Munire furniture, Urban collection, in the espresso (dark brown) finish. Here are pics of the baby’s new furniture!

the crib:

crib shown as full size bed with nightstand:

6 drawer dresser:

Let’s start with getting the stomach flu while pregnant has to be about the most miserable thing I can think of…just short of getting the stomach flu while pregnant and being a stay at home mom…at least I got to send Lauren to school. I was home sick 3 days this week with it, vomiting for about 24 hours of it and then trying to get my stomach to recover and choking down small bits of food and liquid for the following 2 days to avoid the hospital and IV that my dr. was wanting me to do if I couldn’t manage it. Thankfully I am finally back at work today and thank to help from my Zofran again, I’m feeling much better. Food still doesn’t sound very appealing, but it never really does to me during pregnancy. Other than that, pregnancy is ok I guess. I’m officially in the 2nd trimester, so that is a relief. I’m in maternity pants almost 100% of the time and there are a few maternity shirts I can wear that don’t look ridiculously large, but most non-maternity shirts are just fine too. I imagine it won’t be much longer though. I ended up losing about 3 pounds this week due to the flu, so I’m only up 1 pound as of right now at the 14.5 week mark, but I’m sure that’s all bound to change as I regain my appetite. We have a doppler at home and let’s just say, the baby is not pleased about that…every time we listen, he/she immediately starts kicking the doppler and squirms around so much it’s hard to find and listen to the heart beat! But the heart rate seems to be much lower than Lauren’s was…hers was always in the 150’s, this baby’s seems to be in the 120’s usually (until it gets really mad about the doppler and goes higher! lol). A lot of people are guessing “boy”, I still have no idea.

Amongst all of this chaos, we have had showings all week on our house…1 on Monday, 1 on Wednesday, 2 on Thursday, and so far 2 today and 1 tomorrow (I imagine my phone will start ringing this afternoon and tomorrow for more showings this weekend if it’s anything like last week). So, that’s 12 showings on our house in a week. Crazy. Keeping the house show ready isn’t a problem, but one of us getting home to put Brody in the car and drive around with him is getting really old. Especially today, when they schedule a 9-10am showing at 8:45am (yes, 15 min warning) and Billy returns home at 10:10, gets Brody inside, turns off the lights, just to have them ring the doorbell…they thought they’d scheduled 9-11. Frustrating. In hopeful news, one of the showings we had last night was a 2nd showing, they originally saw the house last weekend. They lingered 20 minutes after they were supposed to be gone and had an army of people with them, so that appears to be a good sign. The buyers agent asked our agent a bunch of questions last night (such as for utility bill averages) and said that they have narrowed it down to our house and one other. We’ll see what comes of it. We’re getting great traffic though, so that seems like a very good sign.

Our new house now has a foundation! They are letting the weatherproofing stuff cure for a few days and then they will backfill. I have no clue what’s after that step, but for only 2 weeks of work, it seems like a lot of progress to us and is very cool to be able to see our entire basement! Maybe between work and showings this weekend, I’ll have some time to post pictures.

I’ll try to get an update on Lauren done in the next few weeks, she’s almost 3.5!

This was our first weekend with our house on the market and we got appointments for 5 showings! Our agent said that is phenomenal for our first weekend especially in this market! Yea! The only downside is having to be out of house so much…we had 2 showings yesterday but they were only 1 hour periods and several hours apart, so wasn’t bad. But today we had to be out of the house, with Lauren and Brody, from 10:45am - 3:15pm. That was tough to find stuff to keep us occupied in cold, windy weather for 4.5 hours. That alone makes me hope we sell soon!

We got feedback from 3 of the showings so far…one today cancelled, but here’s what the 2 yesterday had to say:

“My buyer liked this home. This was his first day out looking. He may come back for a 2nd showing. Thank you, Carol ”

“house shows very well. On clients list of potentials; they have just begun search though and plan to look in Lees Summit”

So of the 2 that saw the house and left feedback, it’s on their top list of potentials! It’s making us feel pretty good that we won’t still be on the market for months, but nothing is certain until our agent calls us with an offer!

And quite honestly, I *love* keeping the house show-ready at all times…it’s exactly how I like it! Being kicked out of our house with a 30 min notice at any point in time doesn’t sound like much fun though. So far our shortest notice as been 2 hours, so not too bad.

Wish us luck!

In non-house related news….Lauren is going to be a big sister!

We are 13.5 weeks pregnant with the due date being on my dad’s (papa’s) birthday, September 8th! We are all very excited, but no one can possibly be as excited as Lauren! I hear daily reports from daycare about the “baby in mommy’s tummy”. She has a long laundry list of what she is going to do when she’s a big sister which involve giving the baby a bottle, giving the baby a bath, rocking the baby, and driving. Yes, driving. Not sure how she’s decided that once she’s a sister and almost 4, she can drive, but apparently it must be so. She knows that the baby is going to come after we move into our new house (fingers crossed anyway!) and right before her birthday (9/27). She’s so excited that the baby will be able to come to her birthday party…because the girl is all about the birthday parties!

We actually found out that we were pregnant the day after Christmas, which was a very nice belated Christmas gift! We told Lauren a few days later, but silly us, forgot to tell her it was a secret. The next day when I picked her up from daycare, all the teachers surrounded me wanting to know if what Lauren told them (mommy has a baby in her belly and I’m going to be a big sister) were true! Oops! I had to confess! lol Lauren was also the one to tell most of our friends and family and was so excited to do it! And of course, she also has a baby in her tummy…but it’s going to come our around daddy’s birthday (July) we’ve been told. Oh - and Lauren is absolutely *convinced* that she is getting a sister. Each time we ask her if it’s ok if it’s a boy, she says yes very tentatively, but then reassures us that it’s a girl.

So, for that reason (being able to prepare Lauren in case it’s a boy) and because we have just a *bit* going on in our lives with selling our house, building a new house (and trying to decorate the kids jack and jill bathroom and their playroom…which will either be girly or neutral…and then the nursery), busy season for me at work, etc…we’ve decided that we are going to find out the gender this time! Only 4.5 more weeks until the big sonogram! Given the choice, we really and truly couldn’t decide and ultimately have no preference whatsoever…only little Miss Opinion Lauren is the one that cares!

This pregnancy has been pretty different for me than my pregnancy with Lauren. I was pretty tired the second month (weeks 7-11) with Lauren, but that hit me much earlier this time (4-8 weeks). I didn’t have any nausea with Lauren, but it started about 7 weeks with this one and was so horrible by 9 weeks, I started taking Zofran. I was on that for about 2.5 weeks until the nausea finally subsided right before 12 weeks. Thank goodness, that was miserable! Overall it’s just been more difficult because I have a 3 year old to take care of, it’s busy season at work, we’ve had a million meetings for the new house, and we were getting our house ready for sale. I hesitate to say it out loud, but I think the worst of it is behind me! I have a lot more energy, the nausea is gone for the most part, and I’d have to check with Billy, but I think I’m a little less cranky!

We’ve been horrible about taking belly pictures this time, I think we have one from around 5 weeks and that’s it. Maybe now that I’ll be trying to blog about the pregnancy, I’ll remember to take them more frequently!

I’ve been feeling little flutters and baby movement for the last week or so and I can’t wait for Lauren and Billy to be able to feel them, it’s definitely my favorite part of pregnancy.

Overall, we’re just very excited for the newest (and last) addition to our family!

Two exciting things happened yesterday…

1. Our house officially went on the market! You can search for it on any of the real estate web sites if you know our address or subdivision! Our realtor told us the market is really picking up right now, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed. I keep saying I hope it sells in the first few weeks…which I know stresses Billy out, but it’s much less stressful to move twice, than for our new house to be done and ready to close with no contract on our current house! Our house *should* be done around the end of July, first of August, but we can wait as long as the end of October to close if we need to. But of course we’d rather be living in the new house! Think good “house selling” thoughts for us!

2. We broke ground on the new house! I drove by yesterday and we officially have a big hole! I know it’s not much, but we started the process of talking about building this house 3 months ago and signed the contract 5 weeks ago, so it’s a pretty big deal for us!

We celebrated both with dinner at Oklahoma Joe’s…which was really an excuse not to get our clean house dirty making dinner! The house is spotless just like Lauren and I like it, we’ll see how good we are at making our beds everyday…who knows, maybe it will actually become a habit?