Swimming!

We have been super busy this summer!  The kids have been taking all sorts of lessons!  Since my mom has a swimming pool at her house and we are currently living with her, we were nervous about none of them knowing how to swim.  So my mom bought all 3 kids swim lessons at the local Aqua Tots school in Ballantyne.  It started out ROUGH, but it has definitely gotten better!  We enrolled Kaitlyn and Brayden both in a 2 week fast track course that is 8 lessons over the course of 2 weeks to help them learn to swim quicker.  For Allie, they only offered the mommy and me once a week class for a month.  Allie started her lesson first and screamed the entire 30 minute lesson.  I felt bad for the other kids in the class having to listen to that the whole time.  Fortunately she has improved tremendously!  Allie LOVES the water now and is crazy!  She goes under water all the time and laughs and goes crazy!  She is still not quite big enough for the floaties, but too big for the baby floats so it is hard always having to hold her in the water and deal with watching the other kids, so I don't venture into the pool alone very often with them.  Brayden's has been a very slow progression.  At the start of the summer and swim lessons he was still terrified of putting his face in the water.  He still is, but will do it now.  We wasted about 2-3 lessons of him not wanting to do anything with the teacher and crying and freaking out if they tried to make him float on his back.  Justin and I tried to work with him at home and that was a disaster as well.  Finally my mom took him in alone and scared him into doing everything.  She said we are all "too soft" and were banned from the pool! ha!  In only about 30 minutes she had him floating on his back, jumping into the pool to her and putting his face into the water by himself!  Apparently she had to use some threats!  He still won't do all of that for his swim teacher, but at least I know now that he can!   Here is a video of him clutching onto the teacher for dear life as she tries to make him cooperate.

Then here is the same afternoon with my mom!

Such a vast improvement!  Yay Brayden!  He is still very scared of the water and doesn't like it, but at least he is getting better.  Kaitlyn on the other hand has excelled!  She started out in the beginner level class, but after only 3 lessons, they graduated her to the higher level and she is now swimming "freestyle" around the pool!  She is doing great!

Our house finally SOLD! And all the stress that goes along with it!

Back at the very end of May we received a second offer on our house!  I was hesitant to accept b/c it was a contingency and I was afraid of taking our house back off the market and then it falling through again like the first time around, but our agent told us she felt much better about this one.  Since Melissa was not our real agent, just a flat fee agent, she wasn't required to help us out at all, but did much more than she had to that's for sure!  She looked over the offer and spoke to the buyer's agent and told us that the Buyer's house was already under contract and they already had preapproval for the loan.  They were also from Michigan and had only came into town for the weekend to find a house and loved ours!  That made me feel a lot better b/c I knew they wouldn't be able to really just change their mind without having to make another trip back down here to find another house!  So we countered back and actually ended up settling at our original sales price before we decided to raise our price back when we realized we were a lot lower than everyone else in the neighborhood.  So we were very happy!

The buyers wanted a 30 day closing but after our first offer falling through 3 weeks after the offer, I was afraid to do anything until due diligence was over.  So after 15 days we started packing as much as we could to fill the garage up even more.  But I still didn't want to do too much until the Inspection and Appraisal were finished b/c I wanted the house to look nice still!  Well unfortunately the Appraisal never happened until the Friday before our Movers were scheduled to come on the following Monday.  That was by far the worst weekend I can remember!  Moving out of our house has been one of the worst things I have ever done.  I don't know how other people move around so often unless they have companies moving them.  Justin and I both way underestimated the amount of work involved in packing up an entire house, and of course me being pregnant didn't make it any easier.  It took soooo long just to pack up one room!  And so many boxes!  You don't realize how much junk you accumulate over 8 years!  At this point in time I didn't really have time to sort and declutter so once we finally get moved into our new house I will be getting rid of everything that is not necessary!

That Monday our movers show up 10 minutes early.  But unfortunately the two moving pods that we had ordered were 30 minutes late so the movers were basically standing around for a while.  Then the horrible parts of moving just kept on coming.  Justin had thought that two moving pods would be plenty for us.  Well after the movers fill up the first two, we were still no where even close.  As much as I hated having to pay for a third one, we had no choice.  We assumed the third one would be half empty.  No.  Not at all.  Our movers are long gone at this point, so it is only Justin and I left to pack up the third pod over the course of the next day.  We packed it to the brim, stuffing every nook and cranny that we could find and our house was still full of stuff! There was no way that we were buying a fourth pod, so luckily my mom had recently bought a small trailer and hitch for her Subaru.  We were able to make a couple trips with her trailer and just took the rest of our stuff over to her house to load up in here garage since we were moving in there.  We then spend the rest of the night back at our old house cleaning and touching up paint before the closing.  It was the worst three days I can remember in a long time!  I was so stressed out, exhausted, and having break downs over any little thing multiple times a day!

 I should also say that one reason I was extra stressed out was b/c that Monday afternoon, I forgot that I had to take Kaitlyn to a consultation at an oral surgeon.  A month or so ago, the routine X-rays at Kaitlyn's dental visit showed up some black spots on her gums.  They weren't sure what it was so she was referred to the oral surgeon.  It had taken a while to get the appointment so I totally forgot about it and of course it happened to come on the worst time possible.  So in we go and I really don't know what to expect.  Turns out that she has a cyst in her gum that is expanding into the root system of both her middle front tooth and the tooth right next to it.  It is highly unlikely that it is cancerous, but of course that is a concern as well and basically it just needs to be removed.  It will continue to grow, impacting her root system and also prevent her permanent teeth from being able to come down.  They then tell me that it may involve removing all four of her top front teeth b/c it is better to have them match up so the permanent teeth can come down at the same time.  By this time with all the stress I have going on with the move and then hearing that my baby girl will have to have a major surgery under anethesia and wake up with four missing top teeth and realize that she will have to start her first days as kindergarten like that I lose it.  I just start crying and saying I just have no idea what to do.  Anyway, I leave the office a nervous wreck still undecided what to even do, but then have to go back to moving and packing.  We finally finish everything and leave to go to my Mom's house.  It was sad, b/c I was so exhausted and tired that I didn't even really get time to look around and say goodbye to our first house since we were so rushed to get out of there.  I really will miss that house!  It was the home we welcomed three of our children into!

So after that we have our closing and that goes extremely smoothly.  Since the buyers were actually still in Michigan, they weren't even there and the whole thing literally took about 5 minutes.  Now we are adjusting to living with my mom.  The first week was horrible b/c we had so much stuff that we had to try and organize and find places to put it all as it was taking over her house!  I have been struggling the most b/c it is very hard to not have my own space.  We were just saying we can deal with these cramped living quarters until our house was ready in August, but then we receive bad news from our Agent who says she spoke with the builder and they told her some time in September.  I was really hoping that we would miraculously be moved into our new house before the baby arrives and that it would be great!  But unfortunately it looks like baby will be born while we are still living with my mom and Justin and I will have both Allie and a newborn all rooming in the same room as us! Ahh!  Well for now I am just trying to make the best of it and hope that these next couple months fly by!

Below are a few pictures of our old home so I can remember what it looked like!  I will miss you first house!!!

Last Family Picture in front of our house and this was the best we could get!

Brayden and Kaitlyn's Room

 Allie's Room

 Our Room

Kitchen and Breakfast

 Living Room

Family Room

Kaitlyn graduates Pre-K!

My baby Kaitlyn has graduated Pre-K!  It was a bittersweet day!  I was sad that she is no longer in Preschool and will be heading off to Kindergarten in the fall, but man was I ready for it to be over!  Nothing against the school, they have been great as have her teachers.  She will miss them all terribly.  She was so sad when it was over.  I was just over driving her there every morning, Unloading all three kids, walking her to her classroom, then right back out to the car to load Brayden and Allie back up and go back home.  Basically sit at home for a couple hours and then get right back in the car to do it again!  I was sooo over it!  Also it was not really a break having Kaitlyn gone, but still having Brayden and Allie, since Kaitlyn helps keep them all playing together and helps out if I make her!  So anyway, with how stressful everything has been trying to get our house sold I was more than ready for it to be over!  Her school had a little graduation that was really cute:

Singing songs for all the parents

Her Teachers Ms. Leigh and Ms. Elizabeth.  She loved them both!

Allie Turns 2!

Allie Turned Two back in May.  With all the stress we had going on in our lives, it was a very low key birthday.  I feel a tad guilty with how slack I am about my kids' birthdays but oh well. A few updates on Allie.  She currently is talking a lot more.  Not using full sentences, but will say two word sentences and her vocabulary is growing steadily.  She is still our most extreme child.  Either very happy or very angry!  She is a handful for sure!  Things she loves: Baths, the Kindle, Disney Jr. Shows, Playing with her siblings, Food, snacks of all kinds, Playing "Blind Baby", getting her "medicine" under her nose before bedtime.  Things she does not like: Nursery, being told "no", Brayden can be hit or miss with her, having to stay inside a shopping cart while Kaitlyn and Brayden get to walk through the store, Naps, Bedtime.

 Here is my little Two Year Old Allie!

Group Shot.  Best I could get.

Once Justin got home, we took everyone to Chick-fil-A.  Allie loves that place and the ice cream is definitely her favorite!

Kaitlyn's Broken Arm

Back on April 30th, we had just gotten home from some errands and I was carrying stuff into the house.  On our front porch we had a swivel chair.  I didn't see any of it happen as I was just into the house, but apparently Kaitlyn had stood up on the spinning chair and Allie came over and pushed it.  Now to be fair to Allie, they all like to sit on the spinning chair and spin each other.  Kaitlyn just should not have been standing on it!  Well she fell off onto the concrete porch and I just hear screaming.  I run over and she is holding her arm.  I didn't think much of it at first b/c everything looked completely normal.  No swelling, no nothing.  But even after about an hour she is still randomly crying and saying her arm hurts.  I thought maybe she twisted her wrist or something but she said the middle of her arm hurt.  So I reluctantly decide we need to go see a doctor just in case even though I was sure nothing was really wrong!  So we head off the the Urgent Care and Justin meets us over there from work.  They take an X-Ray and sure enough it was broken!

 After we got home from the Urgent Care in her temporary cast.

 I think it was the next day or so, we had an appointment at the Levine Children's Ortho Center for them to decide what the next step was.  They looked over the X-rays and decided that she needed a full arm cast with her elbow at a right angle.  She had to wear the cast for one month.

So one month later we head back to Levine's Ortho Center to have her cast removed.  She was so excited to get it off.  The machine they use to saw through it was so cool!  It is literally like a table saw blade that they use to saw through the cast but once it touches skin or something very soft like the cotton padding inside it stops sawing!  She let Kaitlyn and Brayden test it out using their finger and the spinning saw blade just stops!  I was impressed!  Unfortunately they retook X-ray's and her arm was still broken but slowly healing so she still had to wear a brace for another 3 weeks so she was sad about that. But at least it made bathing much easier since we could remove the brace for that!

Baby No. 4!

Well I realize that I never posted what sex our baby was going to be after I announced we were going to find out on Facebook.  The real reason is that after the doctor appointment I was pretty depressed.  While getting our ultrasound, the tech goes over everything and then we finally find out that we are having another baby girl!  So everyone knows I really wanted another boy so that Brayden could have a brother.  So It's not like we were upset about finding out it was a girl, but just a little disappointed.  Well Justin claims he was not and didn't care either way, but I don't believe him.  What made me depressed is after the ultrasound was over, Justin leaves to go back to work and I go on to wait to see the doctor.  She comes in an tells me that they actually found some cysts on the brain and they will need to monitor them over the pregnancy.  She told me it is probably nothing, but that it can be a sign of downs syndrome, but more specifically a special more serious condition called trisomy 18 which basically most babies don't even survive long after childbirth if that.  So easy for her to say "dont' worry" but basically it is a wait and see situation.  I already passed on all of the genetic testing and not that I would have aborted if there was something wrong, but it would have been nice to be prepared.  The cysts should clear up on their own whether the baby is healthy or not.  So even that alone is not something to comfort me.  But I did have a blessing after a full day of crying, and literally spending hours googling every worse case scenario situation I could find.  yes I'm that person.  I actually felt a lot better after the blessing and I've definitely tried to place that whole situation to the back of my mind and just focus on all the other stresses going on in my life right now!  But it did put a damper on any happy facebook posts about the sex of the baby, so I just never did! So there it is!  We are having a baby girl and if all goes well, it will be drama central in our house a few years down the road!

Selling our House

Well I have a lot to touch on since my last post.  I am currently about 22 weeks pregnant.  We have also made a lot of pretty big decisions.  It's no secret that we have wanted to move out of our current neighborhood for a while and our last straw was finding out that Kaitlyn did not get accepted into any of our CMS lottery options.  We did get accepted into one Charter school, but it is all the way uptown and I was just not willing to drive that far 2x a day.  Plus I wasn't even that happy about that school anyway.  So we decided to put our house on the market. It was extremely stressful and so much work getting our house ready to put on the market.  We packed away so many toys and most all the clutter we could manage and packed it all up into our garage so that the house looked presentable.  We were really excited b/c we got a cash offer within the first 4 days of it being listed.  Unfortunately it turned out be a disaster and I regret ever accepting it.  It was by an investment company and they had never even seen the house in person.  Just the online photos.  They refused to give any due diligence money so we just sat in limbo waiting for the due diligence to run out so we could start packing and really start moving.  Well right before our due diligence was set to expire, the broker contacted us and said that her client wanted to extend it another week.  We agreed but reluctantly b/c they still had not even bothered to schedule an inspection.  Our realtor was getting worried about it and said that she didn't think they were serious enough and we should terminate.  Well turns out we didn't even have to terminate, the broker finally contacts me after wasting about a month of our time off the market and tells me the client needed to withdraw b/c he was having a lot of issues with his inspectors and would not be able to close on the deal.  We were pretty mad.  So we go back on active status and now since we are no longer showing as a new listing all the showings have dwindled tremendously.  The first week we were active we had so many showings it was crazy.  Now we are lucky to have 1-2 a week.  All feedback has been really positive except for the small yard, but nothing we can do about that.  We were the second choice for one client, so that sucks, but at least we know people like our house.  We are one of the lowest priced in our community as well so we had hoped that would help.  Back when we thought we had sold our house we also put in an offer to build a new house with True homes off Regent Pkwy.  We really wanted Fort Mill, but everything was so expensive and really not what we wanted.  So we are building.  It is a great location but in Indian Land.  But we are ok with that.  The schools are not up to Fort Mill Standards, but WAY better that most CMS schools and especially our neighborhood school that Kaitlyn would have been going to.  They are uniform though which I am not happy about.  So anyway, we have the stress of trying to build a new house, and then finding out that we actually did not sell ours and we are already under contract.  We really need to sell our house to get the money we have invested into it, but if we cannot sell by summer, we plan on just renting it out. I just don't know how we will come up with our down payment for the new house!  So that sums up most of the craziness going on right now.  Keeping a show ready house has been so frustrating.  It is really sad waking up every day cleaning the house and then realizing it was all for nothing.  The showings are pretty horrible as well.  I usually have to interrupt naps, stop whatever I'm doing and clean like a crazy person and then just wander around town for hours until it is time for me to come back home and then find out it was all for nothing.  I just feel like our lives are in limbo right now.  We can rarely even plan dinners anymore b/c I will start preparing a dinner and then all the sudden we have to leave and I have to just put it in the fridge.  But I guess it could be worse.  We could be trying to sell once our new baby has already arrived.  I think at that point I really would be crazy!