Progress at last

So, today we got these forms from the underwriter that have to be signed by our contractors for them to get paid. We think that's got to be a good sign. We're also pretty sure that it's the last step in this part of the process. Once this gets finalized, we will have to wait for the loan application to be approved by the DCA for our down payment assistance program. That is supposed to take four days. Hopefully it will be an accurate time estimate. Or maybe even an over-estimate! Wouldn't that be thrilling? We'll keep you posted.

In other news, I'm pretty sure that both Justin and myself have Fifths Disease. Josh has is it. And apparently in adults, the main symptoms are sore joints/muscles, fatigue and a rash. Kind of like mono. Justin has the first two symptoms, and as of dinner tonight, I've got a huge rash over most of my upper body. I'm pretty annoyed at the way the situation was handled. That's all I'm going to say about it. But this is icky. And apparently can last (in adults) for several weeks. Awesome. If you have seen me in the last week, beware. And accept my apologies. I didn't know that I was carrying it. Humph.

Roxanne has been enjoying being back with the boys. She clearly missed them. And in the interim period, she has learned to say "Ben" much more clearly. It's cute. She says "Hi Ben!!!!!" when he comes over in the morning, and at nap time, she says "Night night Ben!" She has gotten right back into the swing of things. She is such a busy thing these days. At the moment, her favorite things to play with are her Weebles (these are at our house, and our collection has grown to five large playsets...ah!) which she will actually play with for up to 15 minutes sometimes, her Prudence Potty book, anything Sponge Bob related, race cars (at Josh's house), blocks of all kinds, and kitties. She LOVES kitties. Any time she sees one, she freaks out and pets it, kisses it, and sings a little to it. This girl needs some kittens. Justin and I were talking about whether or not there would be any kittens around in the winter for her birthday, and if we can't find any, we will get her some for her half-birthday next June. Justin told me that he always secretly wanted to celebrate his half-birthday since his real birthday was so close to Christmas, so maybe we will start the tradition for Roxanne. I really hope that we are in the house for her second birthday and maybe have a party at home. That would be so lovely.

Signing off. I'm itchy and grumpy. I'm going to watch some dumb TV and ignore the itching. Hope you all are well!

One more day of vacation...

Tomorrow is my last day of vacation. I'm pretty bummed, but it's been a nice break! I got to sleep a lot, and Roxanne and I got to see what it would be like if I was a stay at home mom. It's not that different from my job now, but it's nice to be able to get out of the house and drive places. I can't do that with three little ones. Roxanne has asked about "Josh" a few times, so I know she will be happy to see him and Ben on Wednesday. She might have asked about Ben, but her word for Ben is kind of like "beh," so it's easy to miss. She's using more and more sentences lately (if you don't believe me, ask my mom, she's gotten to witness some of the jibber jabber) but it's definitely not easy to understand her all the time. But she is definitely sure of what she's saying. The funniest is when she gets on a roll and gets very earnest and uses her arms and nods and opens her eyes a little wider. It's like she trying to tell you something very serious, but it's very hard not to laugh. Justin and I are both getting better at understanding her. She often uses the structure "it's a ___" like "it's a baby" or "it's a ball." She also says "nother ___" when she wants more of something. I guess I say "another ____?" often. Usually she's asking for "bob bob." She's becoming a total Sponge Bob Square Pants fanatic, so we are trying to limit her viewing of it a little.

My mom gave us one of Leah's old Sponge Bob pillow cases and fleece blankets, and I had distant hopes that they would help her want to stay in bed, but no such luck. She still wakes up in the middle of the night. It's frustrating because I'm fairly sure now that a fair amount of her waking is from our loud neighborhood. I'll come in her room at 2:00am and she will instantly say "choo-choo!" or "car!" and sure enough, I can hear either a train or a car going by noisily. Hopefully we will be moving to the new house soon, and it's very very very quiet over there. We turned in the last of the second set of conditions this afternoon, so hopefully they won't come back with more... What a nightmare that would be. Our landlord told us this evening that he rented the apartment to one of his "buddies." Apparently he's a musician with a pregnant wife. At least we won't have to have any more "showings," but we both feel almost guilty that we can't tell the woman how noisy it is over here and how tough it is to keep a baby asleep through bachelor-pad parties every other week. I guess if they are good friends, he won't mind coming out and asking them to keep it down. Or maybe they will just join in the festivities!

Justin is starting to feel a little better, although he's still got a lot of muscle soreness and a swollen throat. This seems like a really weird virus that he's got. We've been wondering if it's swine flu, but he's never had a fever. Hopefully he'll get better soon. He stayed home today from work, and Roxanne and I enjoyed spending a 3 day weekend with him. We went over to Centennial Park and let Roxanne play in the fountain. A nice (and short) outing, but definitely something I wouldn't have wanted to do alone. I hate driving downtown. Somehow I always get lost and end up in parts of downtown that look an awful lot like the USSR. We also ambled around Richard's Variety Store in midtown for a while. That place is so bizarre, but really fun. We let Roxanne ride the coin-operated horses they have up front and she started out terrified, and gradually warmed up enough to hold onto the saddle with one hand and clutch Daddy's arm with the other. But she was smiling and hooting while she did it. It was a nice day.

Photo post

More conditions... and rambling and rambling

We are still not closing yet. The underwriter came back yesterday evening with some new paperwork requests. It's not nearly as many this time, and almost all of the requests are related to our contractors (they want our contractors to provide resumes...ugh). It's frustrating because we don't understand why they couldn't have asked for this last time. Fortunately, we have everything they requested except for a resume from the roofer. He has so far ignored our e-mails and two voicemails. I don't get it. I mean, he just has to give us a brief outline of his business history, which is what Justin explained in the voicemail, but he hasn't responded. I know that there are circumstances that might make him unavailable, like being out of town, etc., but surely he would check his voicemail or e-mail at least once or twice?? Can you tell I'm frustrated? It's so annoying when these things rely on other people, since they clearly are not on the same timeline that we are. It just would be nice if he would make some kind of response. Even if it was just to say that he didn't want to do the work. Sigh. In any case, hopefully we will get it soon, and this will be the last time they ask for more stuff. It's just crazy how intense this process has been. Oh, and Justin is not feeling well now, and has a swollen throat and body aches. Poor Justin. We are probably going to stay quarantined for a few days, since if he has the flu or something, we don't want to spread it.

All is not lost. I promise I'll write something positive! From reading my blog lately, you would kind of think we were just sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves. We only do that for part of the day. :) I've been enjoying my days off, but they have gone by WAY too fast. Yesterday we went to Alpharetta to see my Mom and Leah. We had a lovely lunch at Fickle Pickle and then my Mom kept Roxanne while I went thrift store shopping. What a luxury! There were so many kids screaming and running around in the stores I went to; I was constantly reminded how nice it was to get a break. And apparently Roxanne was a perfect little angel for her Nana. I know she had a lot of fun. As soon as we got in the car to go home, she passed out and didn't even stir for the next two hours.

Today I stuck around home and continued a project of packing up her too-small baby clothes. There are so many! I bought those vacuum bags from IKEA, so I didn't feel bad about keeping them for now. We still don't know if we want another baby, so until we decide, we agreed we should keep the baby stuff. And I don't want to start actually packing yet, since I don't want to jinx us. So for now I've just been trying to organize and clean, so that if we do move soon, it might be a little easier. Plus, I need to stay busy around the house so I don't go out and spend money...

I have been looking for a GRE book though, so if anyone has a used one they are willing to part with, let me know. I found a used one from 2007, but all the answers were already marked in it (in pen...). I'm hoping to take it in October. After months and months and months of trying to come up with a good life-after-nannying plan, I finally decided I should go back to school for my true love. Literature. The GSU English Master of Arts in Literary Studies looks perfect. I e-mailed the director and he said that they have plenty of students who work part or full time outside of the University, which is perfect for me. I figure if I start the program in Fall 2010, I should be able to keep nannying until I'm done with the program, maybe 3 years later. I looked up the graduate level English courses on the GSU class schedule online, and they offer at least four classes a semester for times past 5:30. I'm also hoping that if I start graduate school, Justin will, too. He can go for free! And I know he wants to, since he's such a good student and his life's goal is to be a sage. It would be tough with both of us in school but I think we could do it if we keep reasonable expectations. In any case, I think it will be easier to plan all of this once the house business is settled. Hopefully that will be VERY soon. Especially since our landlord has been showing our apartment quite a bit lately. What an icky feeling. On two levels... One that people are tramping through our house. Two that we HAVE to be out of here by July 31. I guess if the timing doesn't work out, we can always rent a U-Haul and live in it for a few weeks. Right?

I really need to upload photos...

I have so many cute photos on my camera right now, and I can't seem to get around to uploading them. Today was my first day of "vacation," and it went by in about three seconds. Roxanne was super fussy for lots of the day, and I was luckily able to get her to take two naps. We're having car problems right now, which is an unwelcome stress on top of the house stresses. We've taken the car to three auto shops in the last week, but it looks like no matter how many opinions we get, the news is frustrating. We were just trying to get our rear brake pads replaced, but apparently, our calipers (spelling?) are also bad. For now, we are just driving the car as little as possible and we'll get the brakes fixed after closing. Whenever that finally happens... Speaking of which, we are still waiting for final approval from the underwriter. Our mortgage broker originally told us that it would be 24 hours from the time we submitted the "conditions" but clearly, that hasn't been the case. We have been following up with him a lot, but to no avail. He just keeps saying that he's following up with the underwriter and we should hear something soon. After that, the stuff still has to go the DCA for our down payment program, which should take about 4 days. So we probably won't be closing until next week at the earliest. Sigh. I'm just frustrated because I took the week off for the closing, and it doesn't seem like it's going to be worth it. It's just very very hard to take time off last minute, so I was really hoping this wouldn't end up happening. So it goes.

Hmm, we've been pretty busy lately, so I won't go into detail about all of our comings and goings, but I will say that Roxanne had a fun time on the Fourth. We went to the Decatur Square fireworks display. We kept her up way past her bed time, but she did end up having a good time. At first, she was a little scared, and wanted to bury her face in Justin's shoulder, but then she started peeking out to watch the fireworks, until she ended up really watching them. She was holding her hands out to them and talking to them and clapping. But she would take occasional pauses to bury her face in Mama or Daddy for comfort. I think her favorite part of the whole experience was sitting on the blanket in the grass and watching lots of little kids run around and/or play with sparklers. The fireworks display itself was fantastic, and we really enjoyed it. We hope you all had a nice Fourth, too.

Ah-pane and nuggles

Those are Roxanne's favorite words right now. She just recently learned both of them, and they sound so cute when she says them. "Ah-pane" is her word for "airplane," which she chants any time she hears one. "Nuggles" is her word for "snuggle." The cutest part of that word is that if you ask her to snuggle, she will usually get a big grin on her face and come give you a big cuddle. What a nice age. Today she was patting the cat at Josh's house, and said "tee says mao," which is her version of "kitty says meow." She then pointed out the kitty's ears, nose, eyes, mouth, toes and shoulder. Her word for shoulder sounds NOTHING like the word shoulder, but she definitely understands what it is. She is really into pointing things out and naming them, and she especially loves body parts. She points out Elmo's toes and fingers and his mouth. Same with her babies. She has recently learned that booboos need to be kissed, although I'm not really sure how she got that. I guess from watching me and Josh interact. Today she fell down and hit her foot on a wooden train, and she came over to me (I was laying on the floor working on a puzzle) and she pushed my head down while she lifted her foot to my mouth and made a kissing sound. No confusion there...

Oh, and before I forget, her height is now 34 1/4 inches and her weight is 26.8 pounds. I was convinced she was closer to 30 pounds by now, but I think she's finally starting to slim down. She's definitely a busy bee.

Our closing is going to be pushed back. We're hoping for next Friday, but we'll see. It just took too long to get all of the paperwork we needed for the "conditions." But it's all in now. Hopefully it will be sufficient. Can you get "conditions" on "conditions?" I'm sure you can... It seems like a lot of people we've been talking to have had to delay closings. I think a lot of banks are being flooded with loan/re-financing requests. We're definitely not thrilled about it, but what can you do? We just want it to happen one way or another... But I want it to end next week. Seriously.

Scrambling

No news. We got our "approved with conditions" from the mortgage broker, which apparently means you have to dig up millions of documents to give your mortgage broker. Millions. I mean, it's basically everything except our second grade report card. And of course, if we don't get everything to them ASAP, we might have to push closing back. We've had awful luck with holidays falling at key points of this process. Like Friday being a bank holiday... We lose a day to prepare for closing. Same with our due diligence period. We lost a day to Memorial Day. But then again, we've been lucky in other ways. Let's think of the glass as half full.

Roxanne's doctor's appointment was this morning. Justin took her. I don't have the sheet in front of me with her new height and weight, but I'll update soon. I do know that she's in the 75th percentile for weight and "the top" for her height. Her development is apparently good, and everything else is fine. We got some new tips for "poop" issues, so that's always helpful. She did have to have 2 shots, and even though we gave her Motrin once before her appointment, and once in the middle of the day, she's been very fussy. Justin said she officially hates the doctor's office. Apparently she screamed and cried with everything they did to her. She definitely does not seem to like our pediatrician. I guess it's normal, but in Roxanne's defense, the doctor is not a very warm person. At least she doesn't have to go back until she turns 2.

Ugh, I'm exhausted and feel like maybe I'm getting sick. It could be psychosomatic, since I've been hearing about other people getting sick. But my ears hurt and my throat feels a little ickly. Of course, Justin and I both had to spend a lot of time on the phone and e-mailing people today to get all of this documentation we need. Sadly, we still don't even have it all.

Also, Netflix just released Season 2 of The IT Crowd on the "watch instantly" feature. Yay! British comedians playing IT guys. Season 1 was wonderful. I think I watched the whole season two or three times. I highly recommend it.