Moving right along.....

The Wednesday before Eddie and I found out about the twins we had put our house on the market for sale.
We moved into our lovely home almost 5 years ago when Ella was only 2 a Liana wasn't even born. We love our neighbors, our house, our yard, everything except for our school district, which though filled by many lovely people, our district's focus seems to be directed at getting kids to meet the minimum in Elementary school, keeping them from dropping out in Middle school, and keeping them out of prison in High School. I applaud the hard working efforts of all concerned, but as we have the opportunity to move into a district where our daughters can be challenged to excel and not just survive, we felt like we needed to take the leap.

We tried (when I was pregnant with Nina) to sell our home two years ago, we had it on the market for 6 months and had only 2 people ever even come to see it. With this as our past experience we were a little hesitant to hope for much.

On the Friday we found out about the twins we called our Realtor and told her that the 3 bedroom homes we had been considering were not going to cut it, and we needed to look a little bigger. Of course bigger means more money, or a less nice neighborhood, or a fixer-upper. We looked at all of the above and found houses with cemented in rock-scape backyards, "designer" paint jobs that looked like jello pudding smeared on the wall, homes where thrifty evictees had taken everything from the toilet fixtures and wall moldings to literally the kitchen sink.

We debated the merits of the best schools and little houses over really good schools with bigger houses. We drove up to the model homes of new constructions and did some daydreaming. We talked about all of it and waited to see if we could even sell our home in the first place.

When our realtor called back she had good news, we had a full price offer already, by the next Monday we had several full price offers, we countered on several of those and got 2 back, more counters, and to make a long story short, by the following Friday, only 10 days after listing, we accepted an offer to sell our home.

The next morning after much soul searching, thought, and prayer we drove on up to the new constructions and signed our contract for a beautiful new home scheduled to be completed November 12, 2009.

For those of you familiar with the standard 30 day escrow yes, that means that we are currently packing cleaning up for the inspectors and appraisers that are coming, and we will be homeless for a couple of months, 2 months to be exact. We won't be on the streets, there are several short term rental condos etc. available in the area (this is the project for this week, finding our intermediate housing.)

I think I may be insane, because while I am stressed out, terrified and worried about moving twice, living in a short term rental, being pregnant with twins, and all the daily functions of life, I am also really calm about this decision. It really is the right choice for us, and come Thanksgiving, you are all welcome to come on by, because we will have plenty of room, and plenty of paint-brushes so you can help us decorate our new home! (if you don't paint, don't worry, you can rub my feet, unload boxes, or even cook my turkey, cuz I'm gonna be too pregnant to do anything helpful!)

Growth & Development

We recently announced that we are expecting again and with three beautiful daughters already here a lot of people ask "So are you going for a boy this time?" The answer for both Eddie and I has been "we just want a healthy baby" Eddie adds "another girl would be cheaper and easier, we already have all the stuff."

It's true, we do have all the stuff and we kind of have a handle on the diapering and emotional moods of girls, every baby and every girl has been different, but there are some things that are almost old hat for us at this point when dealing with little girls.

We have been anticipating the ultrasound that would hopefully tell us gender of this new little one, trying not to spend too much energy on that anticipation because with both Ella and Nina we didn't know for sure that we had girls till we saw them in person.

Pardon me for stepping back a bit, but when you see the ultrasounds from early weeks you realize what a marvel it is that we know anything at all about our babies that young in development.

Here is a scan of week 7 of our pregnancy,
basically we saw that there was indeed a baby, there was only one, and it had a heart developing.

Here is a scan of week 11,

now we see (sort of) that the baby has a face and little skeletal arms and legs.

So yes, not the clearest of images but they are pretty darn close to the original printout I have on my desk here, there is no HI-DEF clarity, but it sure is reassuring that the baby is growing and moving right along during those early weeks when the only proof I have that the baby is there is an overwhelming urge to purge.

So now we have come to week 16 , and because I am old (I turn 35 a month before my due date) I got to go see a Perinatologist last Friday just to make sure that everything was going well, and hopefully to find out if we need to track down the hand-me-down clothes in pink or blue.

Well, I won't hold you in suspense any longer, did in fact find out that one of the babies is a BOY!

Wait,.......what?........did she write "one of the babies?"

Why yes, yes I did, and now that I have had two days to adjust, I can type it without shaking, though I am still bursting into shocked laughter every few minutes.

When we first sat on the exam table, and the doctor set the scanner on my belly three big blobs showed on the screen, Eddie made the joke

"From that picture it looks like we are having triplets."
Dr. - "No, no, Isn't twins enough?"
me - "No, we're only having one baby"
Dr. - "You are having two babies, you didn't know that you are having twins?"
me - "No, it just isn't possible, we've had two scans already, are you sure?"

Jumping ahead a bit, she was very sure , here is a scan of our twins, or at least two round blobby things one on the left, one on the right, and the curly line in the middle is the dividing line where their two Amniotic sacs meet. They are measuring well and equally big.
Twin A gave us a lovely head shot,
and a nice view of it's spine, but not a money shot

Twin B gave us a nice profile, I think I can already see a resemblance to Eddie's full lips,
and he spread out a bit to enjoy the space and gave us this aerial view of his, well, his boy part
So we are happy, and in shock, and looking for a slightly bigger house, and we are now anticipating the gender of twin A, since I have to return every 4 weeks for scans now, maybe we will get the money shot yet.

I will post more info on due dates etc. when I get it, thank you all for you love and support, and prayers, we are going to need them all as we learn how to be a family of 7. Am I really going to be a mother of 5? it just seems so much more than 4.

Do you think I should get my co-pay back for the first few visits? maybe just half off?

Bounty is in the eye of the beholder!

As I wrote in my last posting, we returned from our trip in time to harvest the corn, that is the good news, the bad news is that we all came down with a virus that included high fevers for several days. Since it was in the upper 90's here, I couldn't let my little farmers attend to their harvest for a while.
This delay led us to a trio of "Good News/Bad News" stories

Farmer Liana's story
Good news - Liana's crop of "Ruby Red Sweet Corn" was still plump on the stalk when she recovered!

Bad news - the plump little ears were a maximum of 4 inches long.

Good news - the farmer in this case is only 4 years old.

Result= a happy farmer who was incredibly impressed by the bounty of her crop.

Farmer Ella's Story
Good News - Some of Ella's ears of corn reached the epic measurement of 6 inches long!Bad news - Some of Ella's ears of corn were less that an inch long and had only 3 kernals on them.

Good news - the kernals she had on the tiny cobs were very sweet

Bad news - most of Ella's corn was a bit shrivelled on the cob when we shucked it.
Good news - Ella is really excited to dry the corn all the way and grind it into cornmeal.
Bad news - she can't decide what she should make with her cornmeal.

Good news - she has a lot of recipes to choose from.

Result = A happy farmer

And little farmer Nina you ask? Well it is all good news to her, she got to go outside, pick things, eat things, peel things and throw things. Life is good when you are almost two!