I'm back, for now...

So it's been about two months since my last post, but in that time we packed up all our earthly possessions, sold our townhouse, moved to our new house, and started unpacking all our earthly possessions. Not to mention, we made two trips to the beach in the past month. As we roll into my favorite/busiest time of year, we have even more on our plate. Besides settling in to the house and our new community, I'm taking another class this semester after taking the spring and summer semesters off, and we'll be helping out with Sunday School at our church this fall.

It'll be increasingly difficult to keep up with this blog, so I'm thinking about retooling it to maybe a one post per month format. Luckily, my better half has been doing a much better job lately at posting on her blog, so I encourage all of my fans to visit her site. Anyway, time permitting, look back here in another month or so for my new-and-improved monthly blog.

Finally?

After another tumultuous month, it looks like we are finally geared up to move. Just when it looked like things were doomed, we finally got a contract signed on the old house, and our realtor was able to push the closing for the same day as the closing on the new house. So, if things continue to go as smoothly as they've gone in the last couple days, we'll be moving in a short two weeks! Very scary, very stressful, and extremely exciting... We can hardly wait.

Maybe?

We are expecting another offer to come in for our house in the next day or two. If everything looks good, we should finally be back on track for moving sometime in July. It would be nice if the timing worked out so we could close on both the old and new houses at the same time. Then we could move all of our stuff at once instead of worrying about a double move, storage, etc. All in all, the last couple months have been very draining for us, so it'll be nice when it's all over and we have a brand-new house to show for it!

When I grow up...

Today was a particularly lousy day at work. Not because the work is bad but because there was nothing to do. This has been a recurring theme on this project as we continue to ramp up. Things will get better in short order, but today was just one of those days that was frustratingly long because there was nothing of any significance to be done. So, on the way home, the little voice inside my head asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I suppose it might be a little strange to ask such a question at my age, but I can still remember my father saying not that long ago that he still doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up. He's been saying that, I assume, as long as he's held his current job: thirty years.

There are some great things about my job. The one word I would use to describe it is "safe." It's stable, it's relatively stress-free, it pays very well, there are opportunities for advancement, and the hours are nice. But, a software engineer is not what I really want to be when I grow up. I think I'd rather be a park ranger, or a musician, or maybe a middle school history teacher during the school year and a camp counselor every summer. I think I'd rather do something where I can be outside all day instead of looking up over my dual 20" monitors to stare out the window. But, my job is safe. And I'm not going anywhere, at least not anytime soon. There are a lot worse jobs out there than mine, and I still feel pretty lucky to have had such a successful career thus far.

So, in the end, I was just daydreaming today about what I'd like to do with my time in a perfect world. In ten or twenty years, will I have found the courage to try something new, exciting, and unsafe? Or, will I still be sitting at the computer keyboard, staring at code, and wondering, like my father, about what I want to be when I grow up?

Anyone else have similar thoughts? Would you do something different if you could break away from the safety of your career? What do you want to be when you grow up?

Getaway

Not much is new. We're still having a little trouble getting our house sold, and we're still extremely sleep deprived thanks to the kids taking turns getting up in the middle of the night. It's mostly Sarah, of course, but Jack has been having some sleeping issues recently now that his two-year molars are coming in. So, we've decided this weekend would be a great opportunity for us to take a little overnight excursion away from the kids. We'll be leaving the kids with my folks and heading to the Bavarian Inn in Shepherdstown, WV, for an adults-only night of fine German dining, tasty German beers, a good night's sleep, and NO KIDS! I'm sure we'll miss them terribly, but we desperately need a night away.

Jack and Sarah

I meant to get these pictures up a while ago, as they are about a month old now, but, as you can tell from some of my other recent posts, we've been pretty busy. Anyway, I just wanted to mention to those that don't know just how much Jack enjoys being a big brother. He is very interested in everything that has to do with the baby, and he is uncharacteristically gentle with her. He also really likes to get next to Sarah and ask to have his picture taken with her. Overall, despite the sleep deprivation, it's been a lot of fun having a newborn and a toddler at home!

Setback

We had some bad news today. The people that were going to buy our townhouse pulled the contract because the husband's new job for which they were relocating lost its funding, and therefore they are apparently staying in California. Hopefully this is just a minor and temporary setback. But, it puts a few unknowns back into the equation. Will we get a new offer quickly enough to be able to close by the time the new house is ready? Will the next offer be for less money than the first? Will the next offer we accept even make it through to closing or die beforehand like the first one? Stay tuned...

Progress

We got an offer this week on our current home, so we're one big step closer to moving this summer. As long as everything goes well with the home inspection and all the other details that go along with selling a house, we'll be closing in mid-June. Hopefully, our new house will be finished by then. As you can see in the pictures below, they've made significant progress over the past few weeks.

Although we are so excited to be building a new house, it still feels a little strange to know we only have a short time left in our current one. After all, it was our first house. We got married while living here, and we had two kids in this house (one of them literally IN this house). I certainly have no regrets about leaving, but it's just hard to grasp the fact that one day we'll walk out of here, the place completely empty, and turn the key to lock the front door one final time. Hopefully decades will pass before we have a similar experience leaving the new house.

March 4, 2006

March 12, 2006

April 8, 2006

April 16, 2006

April 21, 2006

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was a busy, fun-filled, two-day affair that included stops in Hagerstown, New Market, and Mt. Airy. Jack got to do two Easter egg hunts, which he really enjoyed, and he got to spend some time playing with his cousins.

After the Hagerstown Easter egg hunt on Saturday, Jack, cousin Eva, and I sat down to read a couple of Jack's new books he got from his grandparents.

On Sunday, after eating at Mealey's in New Market, we showed off our new house to the relatives. Jack took the grand tour with his grandfather and decided to stand in what will eventually be the fireplace in our family room.

After the second Easter egg hunt of the weekend, Jack took a break to eat some M&M's and count his "moneys."

Jack and I capped off the weekend with a ride around the yard courtesy of Poppop's tractor, along with cousins Amy and Paul. A great (and exhausting) weekend was had by all!

For Sale

Our house is finally on the market, and it looks better than ever. This is partly because of all the work we put into fixing things up and thoroughly cleaning everything, partly because we moved a lot of our "junk" into one of three basement storage rooms (ours, my parents', and my in-laws'), and partly because we have been spending a lot of time away from home to keep Jack from messing up all of our hard work. I'll be glad when we get the house under contract and can stop living like refugees while letting Jack go back to throwing toys and food around while emptying every drawer, bag, shelf, or other container he comes into contact with.

Once things calm down a little, I'll try to post some new baby pictures. Until then, hope you have a nice Easter weekend!

Return to Normalcy

It's hard to believe that in a few hours, it will have been an entire week since Sarah's birth. I'm just glad that I finally know what day of the week it is again! I'm finally caught up on sleep, at least as much as can be expected given the fact that we have a newborn at home. Baby Sarah sleeps a lot but still will only go a maximum of three hours between feedings. But, the really nice thing is that she doesn't seem to cry a lot. Instead, she usually snorts and snuffs when she is ready to be fed. We have decided that she is really a baby rhinoceros.

Yesterday I went into work for a few hours while Jack went with his cousins to the Baltimore Aquarium. Today was my first normal day back. Now, I'm catching up on email and such while Mommy takes a nap, Sarah continues to sleep, and Jack multitasks between chewing on puzzle pieces, drinking juice, watching cartoons, and going over to peek at Sarah.

This should hopefully be our final busy weekend in a while; it's the last chance we have to get things ready before our house goes on the market. Hopefully we'll get everything done and then we can take a nice break from all this excitement and just enjoy some quality family time.

Coming Home

This morning, Jack and I went to the hospital so we could bring Mommy and Sarah home. Jack was excited to have Sarah riding next to him in the car. He is very fascinated by having a baby sister. I'm thankful that my girls are both in good health, and I'm very happy to have them back home. After Jack was born, it was exciting to bring him home for the first time. With Sarah, it wasn't quite as momentous since, after all, she was born at home. But, it's still really nice that we're all together again, and now my girls can catch up on some much-needed sleep.

Details

Here's a synopsis of our most unexpected night. Mommy started having contractions at bedtime, which grew in intensity and frequency as I unsuccessfully tried to ignore it all and get some sleep. After a while, we decided we should call the OB/GYN practice to see if we should start heading to the hospital. The midwife we talked to told us it wasn't quite time, and we should stay at home until the contractions were five minutes apart for an hour.

We never made it to that. At one point, Mommy went to use the bathroom, and a second later she was calling out to me that her water had broken. I wasn't too concerned even at this point. After all, her water had broken at home when we had Jack, and he wasn't born until five hours afterward. I called back to talk to the midwife, who told us to head in to the hospital. Luckily, my parents had already come down to stay with us overnight so they could be with Jack the next morning while we went in for our scheduled induction. So, I woke them up and asked my father if he would run us over to the hospital. About that time, Mommy said she was getting a little dizzy and wanted to lay down on the floor. As I was helping her down, she mentioned that she felt like she needed to push.

This was the first moment that I started to worry that things were not going to go as planned. At best, I figured I was going to have trouble getting her off the floor and to the hospital, so I asked my mother to call 911 so that we could get an ambulance to take us. Even then, I still expected that we'd make it to the hospital in time. A split second later, Mommy called out that she thought she had to push, and I looked down to see the baby's head coming out! I got down on the floor and used my hands to guide the baby out. To me, it seemed like this all happened in about three seconds. There was hardly a beat between the time I first saw the head and when I had all of her in my arms. My mother was the relay between me and the 911 operator, who was giving instructions as to how to care for the baby. We wrapped her in towels, and I made sure her nose and throat looked clear. Thankfully she came out crying, so I figured she was breathing okay. The 911 operator told us to tie off the umbilical cord, so my dad took off his shoe, pulled out the shoestring, and handed it to me. I tied it around the umbilical cord into a tight square knot. A few seconds later, the paramedics arrived.

So here we are, just after two o'clock in the morning, Mommy and a very new newborn, still connected by the umbilical cord, are lying on our bathroom floor, wrapped in bath towels, and we now have five men we've never met before come rushing into our bedroom. Things got crowded pretty quickly. After a few minutes, they asked if I wanted to cut the umbilical cord and handed me a scalpel, not a nice pair of scissors like I had when I cut Jack's cord in the hospital, but a shiny, sharp scalpel. I think I was actually more nervous then than when I was catching the baby. I kept thinking that between the lack of sleep and rush of adrenaline that my arm would spasm and I'd end up stabbing either my newborn baby or my wife. But, I managed to cut the cord without incident.

At this point, the paramedics put Sarah on our bed and helped Mommy into a special chair that they used to get her down the stairs. They then put her and the baby onto a stretcher and wheeled them out to the ambulance for a bumpy ride over to the hospital. Apparently, while not unheard of, having an unplanned delivery at your home is not a very common occurrence. When we finally arrived at the hospital, all the emergency room workers stood up and cheered for us!

We finally made it to the delivery room, although the actual delivery had long passed. They put little Sarah Grace into the baby warmer and made sure she was doing okay. She weighed in at 7 lbs. 12 oz. and measured 20 inches long. At some point we realized that nobody looked at the clock to see exactly when she was born. From the timing of the second call to the OB/GYN answering service and the call to 911, our best guess was 2:15 AM.

By this point, things seemed a lot more normal and progressed much like they did when Jack was born. I came home sometime after 9:00 AM to get a nap and something to eat. Afterward, my parents and I took Jack over to the hospital so he could meet his new sister!

Mommy and baby are doing very well and will most likely be coming home tomorrow morning. Although we are all in disbelief over the excitement of her arrival, we are thrilled that Baby Sarah is finally here and we can bring her home. Our party of three has instantly become a party of four. Our lives will never be the same.

Oh What A Night!

Baby Sarah arrived in the wee hours of the morning with quite a bit of excitement. Long story short: I delivered her myself on the floor of our bathroom! She was ready to enter the world, apparently as quickly as possible, so we didn't have enough time to make it to the hospital. Mommy and baby are fine, and we all hitched a ride to the hospital from Howard County Fire & Rescue. More details (and pictures) after I try to get a little sleep...

Almost...

Today Baby Sarah decided that she was going to rest. Her less-than-normal activity level caused some concern, so we called the doctor's office and they asked us to come in to check things out. After running several tests, they determined that everything seems to be okay, but they went ahead and scheduled an induction for tomorrow morning. We'll get up, have a big breakfast, and head over to the hospital, leaving as parents of one and returning as parents of two. If all goes well, I'll be able to post the joyful news of Sarah's arrival, along with some pictures, by this time tomorrow. We are nervous and excited. Hopefully things will go as smoothly as they did with Jack. Stay tuned...

Still waiting...

The weekend came and went, and still no Baby Sarah. She must not be ready yet for her grand entrance. However, since there was no baby excitement over the weekend, we got a ton of house stuff done. On Saturday, my dad and I replaced the kitchen floor. Well, it was pretty much all him, but I tried to be as helpful as possible. Sunday was a bit more of a circus. We had my parents, my wife's parents, and our friends Ben and Michelle all here to help with Operation Paintbrush. We finished all three bathrooms, the kitchen ceiling (that never got done when we painted the kitchen walls a few years back), and a closet. Dad even replaced all of our bathroom faucets, while my mother-in-law kept the crew well fed. We are truly blessed to have such wonderful friends and family who are willing to give up all or part of their weekend to help get our house ready to sell. With little Sarah arriving in perhaps a matter of hours, we could not have done it on our own. We are extremely grateful to all who helped.

Quick Updates

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. We've been even busier than usual, which is really saying something. Here's what's been going on:

1. Things finally seem to be moving again on our new home. We ended up switching to a different lot that we like a lot better. It was a nice and unexpected outcome to what had been a major issue with the builder that almost caused us to walk away from the whole deal. Long story. But, everything is resolved, we are better off, and the foundation has been poured on our new house (in our new lot).
2. Since things are moving along with the new house, we are frantically trying to get our townhouse ready to sell. This weekend will involve putting in a new kitchen floor, painting several rooms, installing new bathroom faucets, power-washing and staining the deck, mulching, etc.
3. Baby Sarah is set to arrive any day now. The official due date is the 22nd, which is less than a week away. Yes, we are crazy for trying to put our house on the market within a week of having a baby. It's partly the builder's fault for screwing things up and not having our new house ready when it was supposed to be and partly our fault for wasting the extra time we then had to get things ready.
4. Once the house goes on the market, we'll be spending a lot of time at my wife's parents' house, my parents' house, friends' houses, and anywhere else that we're welcome so we can stay away while a hopefully steady stream of potential buyers comes to look at our house.
5. Because of our impending nomadic lifestyle (and a nice tax refund), I bought a new laptop, the Dell XPS M170. It rocks! Plus, now that we have His and Hers laptops, we can sit in bed together and play Warcraft. What could be more romantic?

Despite my lack of regular blog updates as of late, you may want to keep checking back here daily over the next week or so. I'll be sure to post as soon as Baby Sarah arrives!

Weather Extremes

Last Sunday we got almost two feet of snow. By the middle of the week, the temperature topped out in the upper 60s, and all our snow melted except for the remains of poor Bob the Snowman, as you can see here. A once mighty snowman was reduced to a meager pile of dirty snow. Then it turned cold again, with overnight lows in the teens. So, it looks like what's left of Bob will stick around a little while longer.

Snowy Sunday

Maryland was finally covered in a blanket of snow last night, after an otherwise unusually warm winter. Although the better part of the state saw a good bit of snow, the highest snowfall total was reported right here in Columbia at 21 inches. This morning, Jack peeked out at all the snow covering the deck and the trees beyond our backyard. After putting him into his snowsuit and boots for the first time since he got them for Christmas, we headed outside to shovel the sidewalk. Jack was a little unsure of the snow at first, but generally had a good time helping to shovel, clear off the cars, and build a nice fat snowman. Then it was time to come in for some grilled cheese sandwiches and a long winter's nap.

Unbroken

I reported about a month ago, complete with a nice photo, that ground had been broken on our new home. Imagine our surprise this morning when we drove by the site only to see that the hole is gone! It turns out that they hit a major electrical line on their first attempt, so they will be re-digging the hole about five feet farther back from the street. Except for the fact that I'm hoping this isn't a sign of things to come on this construction project, I actually think it's worked out in our favor. Although five feet isn't a lot, it will be nice to have an extra five feet of front yard and an extra five feet of driveway. Our lot is long and skinny anyway, so we won't miss the five foot loss from the back yard. According to the builder, they'll be re-breaking ground this week, if that is what you call it, and should pour the foundation shortly thereafter. Fingers are crossed with great anticipation!

Toys!

As I briefly mentioned in a previous post, Jack ended up getting a mountain of toys for Christmas this year from Santa, family, and friends. Although he received a wide variety of toys, the theme of his Christmas could best be summed up as "Trains!" The trains he received were divided between the die cast Thomas trains and GeoTrax, the latter being motorized and made of nice durable plastic. Here you can see Jack sitting in the middle of a track layout (while looking at some flash cards he also got for Christmas). What you see here is only a small portion of all the GeoTrax stuff he received. We've put everything together a couple of times, and it ends up stretching out to cover our entire kitchen! A small price to pay to listen to him giggle while he plays with his "choo-choos."

Christmas Cleanup

The holidays have come and gone as quickly as ever, and we've been trying to get the house back in order. Jack, as always, wanted to be right in the middle of all the action, so he was more than willing to help us vacuum up some of the pine needles left behind by our Christmas tree. We had a nice time this weekend ringing in the new year with friends, but now it's time to get back into the normal routine. Well, it won't be so normal for us...it's time to get down to business and get our house ready to go on the market. That means lots of packing, painting, and other not-so-fun projects. But, it will all be worth it in the end!