Heartbreaking

Pretty much my entire day today was filled with thoughts about gratitude.  Mostly about how I tend to focus more on what I could have without expressing gratitude for what I do have.  Some examples:

• I want B to finally get that better job he's been searching for...B has a job that provides us with all that we need (plus a little extra).
• I want a second car...We have a car that, besides a dead battery once, has NEVER given us a single issue.
• I want a bigger house...We have a beautiful home that provides us with shelter from the elements and offers us sufficient space.

I could go on with more examples but I'll spare you the boredom of reading them all and I'll spare myself the embarrassment of sounding even more whiny.  The truth of the matter is I'm richly blessed, probably much more so than I deserve. 

And so while already contemplating this and feeling heavy hearted at my lack of appreciation for all of the wonderful blessings that I do have, I came across this article while reading news headlines on Yahoo.  It's about a mother and her son, the son who was not quite 3 years old had been diagnosed with a disease known as EB at birth.  He did in his mother's arms.  She has a blog and so I clicked the link in the article to visit her blog.  I read the following words, her words, and I cried:

My precious angel received his wings today.  I have had many nightmares about having to write this post.  He was exactly 2 years and 8 months old.  It happened within minutes of me picking him up out of bed and rocking him.  He took his last peaceful breaths in my arms, in his most favorite spot.  My heart literally hurts more than I ever thought was possible.  I'm completely lost without him and don't know where to go or what to do when my feet hit the floor.  I miss him so much it physically hurts.

 I cried because she is suffering an unimaginable loss.  I cried because, while I've never myself experienced a loss such as hers, I could place myself in her shoes and understand just how deeply it must hurt.  I cried because I cradle my own babies next to me everyday and the thought of waking up one day and doing that for the last time breaks my heart.  And I cried because I have two beautiful, happy, healthy little girls and I don't express my gratitude for that nearly enough.

And so, with that I've added a goal for 2012!  And it'd undoubtedly the most important goal I could ever set.  In 2012 I want to take less for granted, to express gratitude for the blessings I have and stop focusing so much time and attention on the blessings I don't yet have and may never have.  Because in the end how many cars we have or how much space we have are completely unimportant.  We are alive, we are healthy, we are happy and we have all that we need - that's plenty cause for us to celebrate!

2012 - Happy New Year

First things first, I fully realize that I am a full week behind in writing this post.  I typically write my New Year's post ahead of time and just schedule it to post to my blog as the clock strikes midnight.  I guess by now you've realized that didn't happen.  And since the first step is admitting there is a problem...I acknowledge that I am behind in updating my blog.  I will at least attempt to correct that now.

Here we go...

I am SUPER excited about 2012!!  I feel we, as a family, have a lot of positive things heading our way.  Ever had a feeling, good or bad, that you just couldn't shake?  Well that's the feeling that I have concerning 2012 so I have a lot of anticipation for what's to come. 

Each year I aim above making resolutions and instead set goals for myself.  I have been going to the gym for the last several months but I've set a goal to push myself every time I enter that gym.  I want to get out of that comfort zone, try things I haven't tried before or things that I've been hesitant to try.  I really want to attempt to push my body to it's limits in a hope to expand my endurance levels on certain activities.  I hate running on the treadmill, it makes me paranoid but I've started to do it because I know that without doing it I'll never reach the goal of running a 5k. Sure, I could always go running outside but let's be realistic I HATE cold weather and if I told myself that I was going to go outside and go running in the cold...I'd be LYING!!  And so, I'll learn to like running on a treadmill, at least until spring.  I'll let you in on a secret...I love the feeling of coming home after having a really good workout, it makes me feel as if I've accomplished a lot that day.

My other goal, is to eat better.  As it is we don't eat bad but we could definitely stand to make a few changes.  My biggest challenge is portion control and so I've made it a goal to master my portions.  To increase the amount of fruits and veggies I eat while decreasing some of the junk that I eat.

So those are my personal, health oriented goals.  My final goal is to just work towards becoming a better wife and mother, but that's really an ongoing goal.  Maybe it's being the mother to a 3 year old or maybe it's having more than one kid begging for my attention at once (or maybe it's a bit of both) but I really felt like my mothering skills have faltered in the past several months.  I desperately need to get back on track though, and hopefully feel as if I am on top of it again.

What's Next...

Last week I wrote a post concerning the results of my glucose tolerance test.  The results weren't as great as I wanted and yet not as bad as I anticipated.  I mentioned at the end of the post that I had set a few goals and spent a nice chunk of money, but I said I'd tell you more later.

Well now it's later! 

When I was still pregnant with Q I informed B that I wanted a gym membership for my birthday.  I wanted the means to get out and work out since we don't have the space for any type of work out equipment nor the disposable income to purchase it.  After losing so much weight during my pregnancy with Y I kept it off for about a year and then it began creeping back on, this time I am determined to not let that happen.  So on Thursday, I officially joined a gym!  Now this is huge for me because I typically hate gyms.  Mostly because I always feel like the elephant in the room (pun intended).  When I went for the first time to try it out I was extremely anxious about it and quite nervous.  I went in and I was given a tour of the gym and allowed to try it out before I committed.  I was amazed at how relaxed I felt there!  I didn't feel as if anyone was staring at me or judging me or even paying me any attention at all.  I LOVED it, and more importantly I loved how I felt after I had a great workout.  So after I was done I handed them my credit card and became a member.  It's not one of the local fancy-schmancy gyms but it'll do the job for me.  I'm excited to go in and workout when I go, it's a nice feeling!

As for the goals I've set, they aren't major.  In the end I don't care how small I get or what size I end up, my goal is just to be healthy.  I've set my goal low - to 5 pounds a month on average.  That should be relatively easy to accomplish, especially now in the beginning.  My other goal is to complete a 5k by next spring.  Not a lofty goal for most but for me it'll be quite the accomplishment! 

I'm determined to become more healthy and there's no one that can stand in my way except myself!  Wish me luck!  In order to keep me on track I plan on updating you guys on how things are going, be sure to hold me accountable!

Updates

Just taking a moment to give you guys an update on our daily life. I think that the most exciting thing is that Y is walking full time now. She rarely ever crawls anymore and it really just happened one day, it's literally like she just up and decided she wanted to walk instead of crawl and that's what she did. I think it's so cute that even though she can do it on her own, she still likes to hold our hand when we are walking with her. A few days ago I was sitting on the couch and she was sitting on the floor playing not too far from me and I said to her, "Mommy has to go potty." She promptly got up from her spot took my hand and walked me to the bathroom. I thought it was the most adorable and funny thing and probably ironic that in 50 years or so she may have to do that all over again, hahaha. She will also walk us to her bedroom when we tell her it's time for a diaper change. She loves to climb on things and under things. It's not her favorite show but she walks around the apartment quite often saying, "Barney!" and she also sings "EIEIO" quite a bit, especially when she here's her Nana's (B's mom) voice on the phone. She is really turning into quite the little tape recorder because she tries to say pretty much everything that she hears someone else saying...even on TV. There's this one pizza commercial that comes on which walks about a tutu and after the commercial goes off you can just hear her saying "tutu, tutu." She is soooo much fun to be around, I enjoy every minute with her and I sometimes find myself sad because I don't want my little girl to grow up. She's walking now, and I'm content with her staying at this point forever. Although I also find that I am getting that itch and I found myself saying to B a few nights ago, half jokingly, "let's have another baby" but I think we're still planning on sticking to our time line.

As for an update on the condo...we ran into a small setback. We were looking to get an FHA loan which would allow us to put less than 20% down, an FHA loan requires only 3.5%. The problem that we have run into is that in order to get an FHA loan the property has to be FHA approved, the condo is not. Prior to February 1, 2010 this would have been slightly easier to work around. Prior to Feb. 1 they allowed spot approvals which basically meant that you could get a single condo approved. However, since they no longer do those it means we have to get the entire complex FHA approved. We've recently found out that this isn't an impossible task and we're slightly more encouraged than we were when we first found out. We've had our agent and mortgage broker working on it and they've given us some fairly positive news on the issue. At first they were estimating that it could potentially cost us $1500 which is really a price we're not willing to pay considering: 1)FHA approval could be denied 2) the short sale could be denied. So for those 2 reasons we were not willing to throw $1500 out the window. Fortunately we have found out now that it won't cost nearly that much and we'll likely only end up paying the fee for any documents that the home owner's association my charge for - potentially $150. Now in the instance that none of this FHA approval stuff works...we'll likely be taking the conventional loan route. So for now, this is only a small setback!

Working Towards A Goal

Many of you probably already know this through either an email or through Facebook, but for those of you who don't know...keep reading. And even if you do know...keep reading because I'm sure there are details that I haven't told you previously.

After many weeks of looking at houses and falling in "love" with them only to suffer the disappointment of finding out that they already had offers on them by the time we spoke with our agent about them, we finally found one and put an offer in. I guess I should clarify that it's not really a house, it's actually a condo. B and myself have gone back and forth between looking for a houses or a condo, 2 bedrooms or 3 bedrooms, this area or that area and the funny thing about it is that our answer was in front of us the entire time. Ya see, we started seriously thinking of buying a home in early-mid December and we started exploring our options. The problem was that each of us was fairly specific about what we wanted and it wasn't necessarily the same thing. B was looking at 2 bdrm condos, I was looking at 3 bdrm houses. B's logic was that we are looking to buy something now and then sell it when the market turns around and have a bunch of equity and that between now and then we could handle 2 bedrooms even if we did have a second child. My logic was a bit different. Did I think we could handle a 2 bdrm with 2 kids, sure (if I had to). But my concern was the uncertainty of not knowing just when this economy of ours is going to turn around. It could be 1 year, it could be 5 or 10 but I wanted to be prepared just in case it was later rather than sooner and we ended up with more than 2 children.

Anyways, with that said, HERE is a link to the condo that we put an offer on. The truth is that we saw this condo fairly early on in our search, in fact it may well have been the first one we ever really gave some thought to. We drove by it and decided we didn't like it - it simply wasn't for us. You're probably wondering why we would cross it off the list so quickly. And honestly, now when I look back at it the reason was a stupid one...we didn't think the street was wide enough. Now you're probably wondering if we crossed it off our list how on earth did we get to the point to putting an offer in on it and honestly I'm not 100% sure of that myself. I do know that we looked at several via the internet and saw several that we really would have loved to buy. However, it wasn't meant to be because by the time we would call the agent we would find that it already had an accepted offer or had been the price, though it had started super low, had quickly gone above and beyond what we were willing and able to pay. So about a week, out of the blue, I asked B if the condo had sold and he said no, so I called our agent to set up a viewing.

We set the viewing up for 2 days later (last Friday) and I honestly wasn't expecting too much but upon entering the condo I was really pleasantly surprised - I could see myself living there. He went on to show up 3 more condos which were all bank owned foreclosures. None of them were horrible and they all had at least one thing that I really liked about them but I was sold on the first one. Upon arriving home B and I talked about it and sent an email to the agent with a few more questions. We prayed about it throughout the weekend and we fasted about it on Sunday and after feeling good about it, we made our offer on Monday.

Needless to say we're happy but we're trying not too get too excited about it. Even though the sellers have accepted our offer, since it is a short sale it requires bank approval of the sale amount. Our agent is currently handling 15 short sales, including ours and he has informed us that typically it takes 90 days minimum before the bank will make a decision. He said, "you would think that they would be in a hurry to get rid of these properties, but they're not. They could careless whether they sell or not." The bank will either agree and sell it at our offer price or they will counteroffer. We are willing to go a bit higher if necessary but overall we believe things will work out for the best in the end. So keep your fingers crossed for us and keep us in your prayers. We'll let you know more as we know more but don't expect anything anytime soon.

Chronicles of Baby Bootcamp

For any of you that aren't quite sure what Baby Boot Camp is, I'll try to explain. I'm sure you have all know that when someone joins the military they first go away to basic training, which is often called boot camp. Well just as the military using basic training/boot camp to train the soldiers, moms can use baby boot camp to train their baby. It's called boot camp because it's not a pleasant experience from mother or baby and is a pretty touch regimen.

I wanted to use baby boot camp to accomplish three goals:

1. Teach Y to fall asleep unassisted. We stopped rocking her to sleep long ago but we still remained in the room until she fell asleep, I wanted to end this dependency.
2. Teach Y to sleep through the night, or at least not wake up screaming in the middle of the night for no apparent reason.
3. Extend Y's nap time, her naps would only last about 30 minutes and she would wake up still being sleepy.

The three goals often go hand-in-hand and if you fix one then it is said that the other two will fix themselves...this was not the case for us at all!

We started Baby Boot Camp as soon as we returned from celebrating Christmas in Canada. That was two weeks ago, we started at nap time on Tues., Dec. 29th. Nap time didn't go so well at all, she only cried for about 10 minutes but she only slept for 15 minutes before waking up and screaming her head off. We surrendered and I decided to give it another try at bedtime. So when it was time for bed, I gave her her milk and she sat with B while I read her a bedtime story. We then put her in bed, she cried for 5 minutes after which I went in to check on her briefly. When I left she screamed even louder - fortunately I had my iPod touch to keep me distracted and I surfed the internet. After another 15 minutes I went in again, calmed her down and left. She continued to cry for another 10 minutes and then she was asleep - 30 minutes for the first night wasn't bad at all!!! I felt confident that this was going to be easy. but received a reality check when she woke several times that night. I started out just letting her cry but I was pretty weak and gave in. The next day nap time was fairly easy, she only cried for 5 minutes and only 15 minutes at bedtime. Over the next few days nap time became a breeze with bedtime becoming fairly easy as well. But the night waking was still an issue, and I mean a HUGE issue. She would wake at night screaming for hours at a time until I cracked. Meanwhile, B and I were having some disagreements on the whole baby boot camp thing. I felt it was a necessary evil for my own sleep needs and sanity. He felt it was cruel and we were punishing her when she had in fact done nothing wrong.

At this point I felt we have successfully accomplished goal #1 but the night wakings were getting more and more challenging and the nap was still only at 30 minutes. I was seriously at my wits end but the progress with goal #1 is honestly what made me stick with it. So now after two full weeks of boot camp Y is able to soothe herself to sleep and at least for the past couple of nights she has slept through the night until 8am! I have definitely enjoyed having the nights of uninterrupted sleep! I still don't wanna say that goal #2 is completely accomplished until she has done it for at least a week or more and goal #3 isn't even close to being resolved. I now put her down for 2 afternoon naps so she is at least getting an hour of nap time each day - still not where I want her to be but we're taking baby steps I guess.

Overall I have to say that though there were so many times when I just wanted to call it quits I am so glad that I stuck it out and stayed with it. I am much happier and so is Y! I think B is just happier now that she doesn't seem to cry herself to sleep or wake up crying.

Welcome 2010, Come On In...

I am so filled with excitement and anticipation for all that 2010 holds! I know that this year will not be without its trials and obstacles but yet and still I feel that we have so much to look forward to. We have always been so blessed in years past that you almost expect the bottom to fall out, but if one thinks like that then they obviously lack the faith needed to survive the crazy day-to-day happenings in their life.

I try not to plan out my life too much, mostly because in the past I have found that my “plan” never works out how I want it to. So instead I set goals. There aren’t many differences between planning and setting goals but there is one HUGE difference – goals are made with some wiggle room which allows you to change them as needed, plans seem to be slightly more set in stone.

So as for our goals for 2010, they include (drum roll please):

• Buying a house (or at least a condo/townhouse).
• Making baby #2.

There, that's it! There's only 2 but they're two pretty hefty ones if you ask me. Now don't go getting all excited about that second goal, notice that I said "making baby #2" I did not say that we would be having baby #2 this year. See, that's where that goal setting comes in, had you asked me last year I would have said that we would be making AND having baby #2 this year. However, I wanna enjoy having just one for a little while longer.

A Great Way to Start the New Year!

About a week ago, after visiting the blog of a friend, I decided that when we got pregnant that I was going start a blog so that our friends and family would be able to have updates on us and our baby. Well, little did I know that just a few days later we would discover that we were already pregnant. Our goal is to keep you updated about some of the general goings on in our day-to-day life. U is extremely excited, even at the threat of the onset of morning sickness, fatigue, and all the other uncontrollable 'side effects' of pregnancy. She spends a lot of time talking to the baby even though it's probably the size of a pen dot and she already refers to it as a 'she', I guess she knows something the rest of use don't. B is his usual happy self, though that will probably change with all the cravings and the mood swings, but hopefully that is at least a couple more months away, either way he was born to be a dad, he's absolutely wonderful with children. So I guess this is the start of a new and wonderful journey for us...wish us luck!