On Becoming a Real Grownup

I guess I have to say that Mike and I are grownups now. No matter that we're 32 and 31 (respectively). We now have a house and a soon-to-be-born son to our names. Crazy!!

 Part 1: The House

It started last fall, when we felt we were finally ready to look into buying a home. Mike required a house in the Fairport area, so we could pay less for electric, which was fine with me. I've always liked the east side of Rochester. We both wanted a two story home with a garage, and we had some other likes/dislikes in a house. There were quite a few in our price range, but it seemed like every time we found an inside of a house that we loved, the outside was not great, or vice versa. Some houses looked great on the inside, but had no character to them. Luckily, besides Mike's random love of Stucco and houses with lines on the outside (not sure what those are called), we both have almost the same taste in homes.

So we had been looking for around 1.5 months, not too long, when we almost missed an open house in early December. We had spent a lot of time at a previous house, talking to the Real Estate Agent there. We weren't going to buy the house, but he was great. So we finally showed up at the next one, and immediately both thought..."this must be out of our price range". But it wasn't. Almost everything in the entire house looked brand new, from the professional kitchen, to the roof, to the windows. The street was quiet in the front, and the backyard was fairly large and fenced in. The agent selling the house told us that the previous owners were relocating unexpectedly to a different state, and that they had put almost 90,000 dollars worth of work into the home that could not be charged for, because of the value of the other houses on the street. We immediately wanted the house.  Not just for that reason, but also because it seemed to have everything we really wanted, plus lots of character!

Luckily, we had met the other agent directly before that, so after some phone calls and conversing between ourselves, Mike and I decided to put our first offer in on a house, ever. We heard there were 3 other offers at the same time as ours, but we bid a little higher than asking price, and we ended up winning! Our first home buying experience, and our first offer was accepted. That felt pretty damn good.

The flip side was that now there was about a month of paperwork to complete. After some pretty large snafus with our mortgage company (who I will NOT recommend to anyone), and a horrible month of January where we had to get everything completed and spend 1000 dollars on our very sick cat (she is better now), the house was finally ours.

By February, we were painting rooms and moving in. We both love it. For the first time since 18, I'm not expecting to move any time soon. For some reason I don't have any pictures of the house on my computer, but here is a cute picture of Willow in the back yard:

Part 2: The Pregnancy

 So we'd been attempting to conceive for over a year, and I was getting a bit nervous about the whole thing. We'd both been through some testing, and I was worried that it would never happen. But this past April, after allll of the stuff was done with the house, the cat, and Mike had a job he enjoyed, we finally did it. Got pregnant, I mean ;-). It was a natural conception, which is great, because we both didn't want multiples. 

My very first symptoms were vision changes, oddly enough. Mike and I were watching "The Hurt Locker", and I was going crazy because of the shaky cam. I was able to handle movies like Cloverfield, so I didn't know why this one was bothering me so much. The jerky camera movements were almost too much for me to handle. 

Then, I was at a birthday gathering about a week later, and I got my first of 3 ocular migraines. All of a sudden, I had trouble seeing the person I was trying to talk to, because a wavy line had gotten in the way. The line started zigging and zagging, blocking out random points in my field of view. It went away in about 20 minutes, but then I felt unbelievably tired and nauseous. I had gotten 2 in the past 3 or so years, so I didn't think much about the first one. But then it happened again, 3 days later, and again 2 days after that, while I was sleeping. I was actually talking to Kevin Spacey in my dream, and the zig zag appeared over his face. I woke up and the line was still there. That was odd, to see something in a dream that was really happening. 

My family/friends were a bit concerned for my brain health, so I googled ocular migraines, and found that they can be associated with large hormone changes. That was my first inclination that maybe I was pregnant. I was due for my period in a week, so I thought I'd just wait and see before consulting a neurologist about it. 

A week later, exactly on Mother's Day, we found out we were having a baby. It was completely shocking. We told my mom and brothers that day, and I thought since we told them on Mother's Day, we'd tell my dad on Father's Day. That proved to be a very difficult wait, but we did it! He was so shocked that he teared up. Both of my parents have been wanting grandchildren for quite a while now. The due date is January 20th, MLK Jr Day. I still can't believe it.

Equally difficult was waiting to find out the gender. I don't know how my parents waited until we were born. We were both insanely eager to learn what we were having. Our ultrasound date was August 26th, so we've known we were having a boy for about a month now. We did all the fun things, like registering and setting up showers. We still have a lot to do in the next 4 months, but I know we can get things done by then.  We do have a name picked out, but I'm not telling until he's born!

Many people have been asking me about my symptoms. No, I did not crave anything crazy. I craved eggs in the beginning, and yogurt/milk/calcium products nowadays. I did not throw up at all, but I did get nauseous until about 9 weeks in. I was feeling wonderful from 9 weeks until about 22 weeks, but now heartburn is setting in. And booooy is it wrecking me. This is the worst heartburn I've ever had. Some nights I've had to sleep upright, and my abdomen still burned every time I would breathe.  Some days I can't walk without pain, and some I can't sit without pain.

So I've put myself on a diet. Lots of calcium, and low fat foods in general. No greasy foods or citric foods. I have heartburn tea, and raw honey on hand, as well as many Tums and some Zantac that did not work the one and only time I tried it. I have 4 more months, and if I can keep this heartburn at bay, I will have had a wonderful pregnancy. I can't wait until I see our son in person though!! Here is a sneak peak at some ultrasound pics, and I'll probably not write again until we get some real ones!