One more month!

One more month and my man will no longer be a PROBATIONARY FIREFIGHTER! Yay!!!!!!!! And if I wasn't carrying a basketball in my belly, and I didn't have this ridiculous pain in my leg from possible phlebitis, I'd be really excited!

(I'm totally writing this while watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey so I'm totally spacing. This is an awesome fight! I freakin love Theresa!)

Izzy is now a preschool graduate. She's on her way to kindergarten come August. Conveniently she turns 5 the DAY before school starts. Awesome. G slid through sophomore year and is now working at the pool all summer and will be starting her junior year the same day as Izzy starts kinder. A junior in high school, and a kindergartner... oh and a 1 year old and a newborn. Uhhh what? How in the heck?

We're making some changes in the house this weekend. We've put the whole house hunting on hold for the time being because the interest rates went up and well... ouch. Not worth it. So we'll be moving Izzy into Avery's room and turning her room into a playroom/nursery. Of course the baby won't be in there for a while, but I want to get Izzy and Avery all acclimated before the new one comes, and before school starts. I think they'll be ok. We'll have to change up Izzy's bedtime routine, but I think she'll be ok. She hates sleeping by herself so I think she'll be happy to have Avery in the room with her. Avery on the other hand... is going to wake Izzy up EARLY! It should be fun. She likes to yell in the morning into the monitor, or make funny noises and laugh. I know I'll be hearing "Izzy wake up!" over and over again. It should be funny. They'll have fun playing with all their toys in one location, and I'll be happy that there's not crap all over the house!

D's a stress case and a half. He's got a lot of work to do before probation is over... and well if I haven't mentioned before, D is a HUGE procrastinator. HUGE. Like worse than my sister. Sorry sis. So he's making his life harder, therefore stressing me out, and stressing the kids out. Fun. I love my procrastinator. Really. I do. Just keep repeating that mantra in my head.

I was really hoping we'd be all moved before the new munchkin arrived, but ya know... it's just not our time yet. I'm ok with it. I don't want to settle for a house I am not in love with. Everything will fall into place when it's time.

5 1/2 more weeks and this kid will be here. (Please let it be more like 3 weeks) Wishful thinking. It will never happen.

Countdown.

9 more glorious weeks and I'll have released this beast from my loins! Hallelujah!

Understand that I am only slightly freaking out about the fact that I have NOTHING ready for this kid. I suppose 9 weeks is plenty of time to yell at D to get all the baby stuff down from the attic, but there's still diapers, nursing stuff, baby bath stuff... oh and getting Avery off the bottle! The other day when we couldn't find my newest nephew's bottle, we opted to use one of Avery's and Oh My Lord... I thought her head was going to explode. Nana couldn't get to her fast enough before she had yanked it out of Luke's mouth and popped it into hers screaming the whole time "MY BABA!" Ode to the future....

I will have 2 children in diapers. This, I never wanted to happen in my LIFE. I'm rolling with it. I don't think I could get Avery comfortably potty trained in 9 weeks and then have the baby come and her not revert back. THAT would suck.

And did I mention I have no place to put this kid? Our house is full. We were hoping we would have moved by now but we are still waiting to hear about one of the offers we put in, and have a back up on another. So I doubt in 9 weeks we'll be anywhere but here. We'll have the baby in our room for a while, but then what? Not looking forward to bunking Izzy and Avery. And I have no where to put the baby's stuff! The diapers, the clothes, the ahhhhhhhhhhhh! I wanted to get a new dresser but I have no where to put it! So I guess I'll be rearranging my dresser temporarily to put baby stuff in. I don't want to invade the girls space until I absolutely have to.

And laughably, I could totally have another one, IF we had a bigger house. D says NO. He's already prepared for the snip snip. He says if he has 5 kids he'll die. HAHA. So if we are done, that's fine. As long as this one comes out healthy, I couldn't be happier. I'm ok with never being pregnant again. I guess. It's just that my kids are so cute! :)

I need to go shopping.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!

So it's like half way through May already? Sort of. It's seriously insane how fast time is going! I have less than 11 weeks before the new baby comes! WOW! And a little more than 9 weeks of D being on probation! Yipeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!

D's been on a strike team for the last 6 days! Big fire in Santa Barbara. I'm afraid this state is going to burn down before summer at this rate! He gets to leave Santa Barbara today and come home tonight to sleep, then back to his regular shift tomorrow. Pooh, but whatever. A few hours with him is enough to tide us all over til Thursday! I can't complain too much. A few of my girlfriends husbands have been gone for months and one almost a whole year on his tour of Iraq. I know I'm lucky to only have missed him for a week or so. The kids, don't understand and are all in a tizzy. Especially Izzy. Maybe I'll change her name to Tizzy! :)

We didn't get one of the houses we put an offer on. Not necessarily a bad thing. We are the back up offer if the first one falls through. And the other house that we really liked... the mortgage company that owns it LAGS like a turtle! We signed that offer well over a month ago and have heard NOTHING! Our Realtor insists this is the game the banks are playing. It's obnoxious. But we're fine for now. It would be nice to move before Izzy starts kindergarten in August, but you know, when the time is right it will all work out. Renting isn't killing us. It's just not investing us either.

The girls are awesome. G's been having a rocky time the last month or so, but summer is coming and she'll be very busy working at the pool again. Out of my hair, and earning MONEY!

And my Topsy Turvy is GROWING! I haven't black thumbed it yet!!! I'm very excited about this. I've never kept a plant alive, let alone actually GROWN something from nothing! Totally awesome. We'll see if it actually produces a tomato or two!

Life is good... life is very good. I'm just happy to be content right now. Couldn't ask for much more.....

Cooking with Izzy

So have I mentioned how much my kid loves to cook? And eat? I mean she will pretty much eat anything we give her... with the exception of a few vegetables. It's pretty amazing.

So we picked up a how to kit on sushi the other day when we were at the bookstore. Izzy LOVES avocado rolls. I mean BIG HEART love. So we thought we'd try to make our own. Went to the store today and bought the nori (seaweed paper) and some vinegar for the rice. Busted out the how to kit and we were well on our way! Daddy took the reins on the fist attempt and uhhh the book mistakenly told us to cut the nori in half. Uhhh this makes for very small sushi that does not seal.

Exhibit A: A little mushy...




So we said to heck with the book and made it up as we went along.

Ahhhh... very impressive. D is a whiz at the sushi making! He got his first avocado rolls perfect!


Izzy even made her own!

I got creative and put some carrots in mine... and D thought it would be funny to add some paper garnish to make it look all professional.

YUM!!! We'll have to master the veggies before we move on to fish and other things. Isn't my kid so cute?

Hard to breathe... and move.. and pick up kid.

Fat. Pregnant. Getting harder to waddle, much less move. Picking up Avery... no fun. Pain. Back. Owwwwwiiiiiiiiiiiiieeee. 27 weeks... still have a lot of time to get fatter. Wondering how to explain to 18 month old that mommy is too fat to bend over and pick her up. The next few months should be very interesting!

Making a deal... with the devil?

If I knew the devil... I'd do it. Right now. In a heartbeat.

Isn't that terrible?

I know it's our fault. I know I should have gone back to work and tried to help dig us out of debt. I knew it would come back to bite me in the ass one day. The ability to stay home with my kids, pay our bills (but not pay DOWN our bills), and live like we did when D and I were both working... is more than wonderful. I absolutely hated my job. I was lucky to be laid off at the perfect time.

I've been home with the kids and with D for almost two years and do I regret it? Not for a second. My kids need me, my husband needs me, and frankly I need them. I'm perfectly content being "just a stay-at-home-mom," or whatever you want to call it. I love it. Never thought I would, but I do.

So now, we "thought" we were ready to buy a house. The market is awesome, perfect for us. We found this awesome AWESOME house that we could totally see ourselves in. We totally got approved for a loan too! We could afford the payments, but there's this one.. thing... It's called our GIANT debt. We've managed to run it up quite a bit since I haven't been working as I'm sure most Americans have, but it just totally sucks! The big contingency is that we have to "borrow" the amount of our debt from someone to make the loan stick. Uhhh... easier said than done. I mean. we've resorted to playing $1 dollar quick picks every Wednesday and Saturday in the hopes that the lotto fairy will bless us with just enough money to pay down our debt and give us a nice down payment.

Maybe when the baby comes I can donate some eggs or something... I hear you can make a good profit!

Oh magic money fairy... take pity on us so that we don't have to find a devil to make a deal with! We don't want to be stuck renting for the rest of our lives!

Soooooo

So that baby name poll that I put up... well we decided we don't like any of those names. haha.

We are dorks. I think we found one we like but we aren't sharing. Or at least... I'm not. D however has a large mouth so we'll see.

Things have been crazy here. The girls are nuts, schedules are nuts, D's work has been crazy. Just everything is nuts. And through all of this, I'm having the ickiest pregnancy. Just uncomfortable, moody, very... out of sorts. Like seriously, alien invasion. With Izzy I was so happy to be pregnant I don't think I stopped to even think about how uncomfortable I was. I was just happy. With Avery, I was sick as a dog for 4 months straight and then exhausted. And then the water weight. Oh the pain. That was awful. But the two hours of labor made it all better!

This one however, dude. Just seriously happy I'm not going to do this again. My thighs are huge, my butt is huge, my belly is HUGE. If one more relative tells me how BIG I look all of a sudden, I'm going to crawl into a hole for the next 16 weeks until the kid comes out. The indigestion is painful enough now that I'm sleeping sitting up all night. I'm already out of breath just walking to the park. And picking up Avery all day and chasing after her and Izzy is agonizing on my back.

I will be very happy when this kid is out of my body. I'll take the sleepless nights with a newborn over sleepless pregnant nights any day!