Smile and giggles

Here's some videos of Bree playing with her daddy and her grandpop! I love her smiles and giggles in these videos! This is becoming a very fun part of Bree's development. We haven't quite gotten the big belly laugh yet, but the little giggle is cute enough!

Turkey Time!!

November 24th, 2011 was Miss. Bree's first Thanksgiving!!! All set with a big turkey bird, corn pudding, mashed potatoes, and biscuits. Now unfortunately for Miss. Bree, Thanksgiving for her was a bottle of formula while watching her momma and Dada eat their scrumptious meal. We started off the day with playtime, a nap, bath and a change into her pretty Thanksgiving outfit (not really an outfit made specifically for Thanksgiving, but a pretty little girl outfit that her Gigi gave her). Miss. Bree watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and then helped her mommy and daddy prepare Thanksgiving day meal. I'm hoping next year will be a bit more exciting for her as she'll be able to enjoy some of the Thanksgiving meal.

 Bree and her Grandmom

 Nap time

 Rub a dub, dub...little girl in a tub!

 Mommy and daddy playing around

 Family photos

 

Look at that bird!!

 

Going back to work

I apologize for those of you who check this blog regularly. I have been pretty delinquent in keeping this blog up to date, especially in the last month. So here's my attempt to do so. Let's back up to about a month ago, more specifically, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That was my official start date to go back to work and my official end date to my maternity leave.

I know I'm not one of the women who could be a stay-at-home mom. I admire them, but know that my calling lies in both raising little Miss. Bree and in helping people (right now teenagers) who are dealing with crises. So, when a person is split like that, they go to work. For the time being, I'm going back full time, as I'm over halfway done getting my LCSW supervision hours and really want to finish them up, so I can sit for my LCSW exam. My current job is working at an Extended Day Program, which is a high intensity therapeutic level of care program. I work on the adolescent side and see my clients 5 days a week for 3 to 3.5 hours a day. Most of the kids I see have pretty severe mental health concerns ranging from depression and anxiety to opposition and anger. During my whole maternity leave, I've gone back and forth. Some days loving the time I was getting with Bree and sometimes missing the adult interaction and the type of work I was doing before going on maternity leave. But as the days got closer and closer, I began realizing how difficult it may be leaving Miss. Bree. In my opinion, it's unfortunate that maternity leave goes from birth to 3.5 months of age. I almost wish I could birth Bree, take a week or two off, then go back to work and start my maternity leave when Bree turned 3 months and lasted until 6.5 months. Those last few days, I was noticing how she smiles more, laughs, plays, and has become a joy to be with. Our long drawn out screaming battles are over, she sleeps through the night, and has become pretty predictable at this stage. All the wonderful personality traits that a person would never want to leave!

So Wednesday morning arrived and I set out to go to work. Luckily for me, I only had to work one day before being off for a long weekend, thanks to the Thanksgiving holiday. My in-laws were able to watch Bree for the day, so that we didn't have to enroll her in daycare until the following Monday. I knew she was in good hands, but it just wasn't my hands, which somehow made a difference. After running back in the house as I had forgotten my lunch (hadn't done this in almost 4 months), I set off to work. My first action, once I got in the car was to call my best friend. She asked how I was doing, and the tears started flowing. Up until this call, I actually thought I was doing pretty well. She reassured me that Bree wouldn't forget me (one of my biggest fears about going back to work) and that we would still be very much so attached, thanks to all the time I had spent with her these first few months. I managed to collect myself and headed into work.Thankfully, it was a nice easy day, spent with getting caught up with my co-workers, setting up my desk with pictures of Bree, and spending an easy 3 hours with the kids. Before I knew it, work was over and I was heading home! That's the nice thing about my work, with everything that is going on, the work day goes by so quickly.

Now that I've been working for almost a month, the separation part is getting easy, but I still get bouts of envy when I hear Jason talking about his "daddy, daughter" lunches every Wednesday afternoon. Bree's daycare is located right outside Jason's work, so he can stop over pretty conveniently. Some nights have been harder than others, when Bree was already asleep by the time I got home. But other nights, I've been able to cuddle her and feed her before her final bedtime. I'm sure it's a work in progress as I'm not the only one to be feeling the working mommy guilt. I love my job and I certainly love my precious baby girl. I guess it's a balancing act that I will somehow figure out!!

 Our favorite position

 Bree and her grandpop playing around and exploring

 Meeting mommy after my first day back to work

 Getting in some much needed baby, mommy cuddle time after work!

Home Sweet Home …Almost

So about a month ago or so I think Amy alluded to the fact that I would be writing a blog on the home buying process.  I’m pretty sure she meant it to be sooner than this but better late than never right?  I must say that the process of buying a home has gone completely differently than I expected.  Let’s talk about just the process of getting pre-approved for a loan.  We tried doing this about a year and a half ago but were denied because they counted my grad school income as a big zero.  That hurt a lot because that made up half our total income.  Now when we applied in October we were in a much better position as we both had full time “real” jobs.  But the process was still not straight forward.  Since Amy was on maternity leave, we had to do a lot of explaining as to why she didn’t have a current paycheck.  We also had to explain why I didn’t have two years of work history because I was in grad school.  For a second it sounded like that might be a deal breaker, but luckily they were willing to accept my work experience from my time in the military before grad school as evidence that I can actually earn money.  The last hurdle was having to explain why we had a large deposit into our checking account.  We have had Bank of America for several years, but I got really irritated when they came out saying they were going to charge me to use my debit card, so I switched to Navy Federal Credit Union (who we’re actually getting the mortgage through).  So we were in the process of transferring funds, but they saw a big deposit and thought I might have other income off the books that I wasn’t divulging.  After all that was explained though we finally got a pre-approval so we could actually put an offer on a house.  For some reason I just always pictured buying a house to be like buying a car; you walk in point to the house, say “I want that one” and off you go!  But I have come to realize that houses cost slightly more than cars.  It’s also crazy to think that just a few years ago Bree could have applied for a loan and probably bought herself a McMansion out in Hawaii.  Now it seems that the pendulum has swung the other way too far (not that we would ever do knee jerk reactions).

So after the pre-approval came the house hunting process, which again did not go as I had expected.  I’m not a big one on long commutes, so my 50 – 60 minute commute one way has not been very appealing to me.  So I’ve been trying to nudge Amy along toward looking at houses as early as possible, especially because I’ll be hauling Bree with me every day.  But Amy, as those of you who know her well are very aware of, is quite possibly the most fiercely loyal person you will ever meet.  She absolutely did not want to leave her coworkers in a lurch, and she was worried that us moving would mean she would have to quit her job which would be a rough deal after coming right off of maternity leave.  So every now and again I’d bring it up with basically no progress.  We’d gotten to the point where she kind of agreed to start looking come early April so that we could move when our lease is up, but I got the distinct feeling that I would have to shove and stuff her into the car to get her out to look at houses.  Then the strangest thing happened.  One day I came home from work and just wanted to show her some of the houses I’d been looking at during lunch, just for something to talk about.  So I start scrolling through the houses and she sees one that she likes (not one of the ones I had picked out, but an entirely different one).  We then look into it a bit more and really like what we see.  But it still comes back to the issue of her and her work.  So she then mapquests the address and realizes that her drive would be roughly what mine is now (50 – 60 minutes) which isn’t a huge deal to her.  So then we’re off to the races looking at going to the open house and figuring out what it takes to make an offer.  Don’t ask me how or why things suddenly changed, I’m thinking it was because I didn’t suggest it this time.  You see, she didn’t actually agree to any of the houses I picked out, so it was kind of like she came up with the idea on her own.  The funny thing is, she makes fun of me for doing the same thing all the time… I love you honey!! 

We went to the open house and both really loved the place.  The owners had taken really good care of it and we got the feeling that they were eager to sell.  The nice thing is that it is really a buyer’s market out there and the credit union was offering all kinds of financial incentives to encourage us to buy a house.  By using their realtor we get a bunch of cash back and they pay $2,500 toward our closing costs.  So after we talked and agreed that we wanted to make an offer, we got in touch with their real estate agent and started the negotiations.  This is quite possibly the easiest commission she’s ever made!  We went back and forth a few times and were able to get much closer to our original offer than the seller was to their asking price, so I think we did well.  We went through the inspection process and the only significant issue is that the roof is original to the house so it’s almost 25 years old.  We were able to use this to get the sellers to help us out financially with the closing costs and they also agreed to fix up a bunch of smaller things around the house.  Now we’re almost to the point of being approved for the loan.  We’ve submitted about a zillion documents, gone through all the inspections and are just waiting for the final ok.  We should have it by November 28^th after which point we just have to schedule the closing!  We originally were scheduled to close the 19^th of December, but that makes moving problematic as we’d have to move over the holidays and finding help would be tough.  So we’re hoping to bump it back a bit so we can move the weekend of the 16^th, more to come on that later. 

The last real issue is figuring out how to deal with our current lease.  When we originally rented the place we signed on for a two year lease because we wanted to owners to wait a month before renting it (we were still in our other apartment).  They agreed to wait a month but wanted two years guaranteed.  The way it is now we’ll be there just over a year and a half.  Thankfully, the owners are really nice and easy to work with.  As soon as we can get the place ready (i.e. move all our stuff out and paint like crazy) they’ll start showing the place.  As soon as they get someone to agree to a new lease, they’ll break ours and we’ll be officially done.  I’m hoping that we’ll only have to pay through January as the place hasn’t lasted more than a week on the market any other time it’s been out.  The only thing that may hold it up is that it’s the middle of the winter, so keep your fingers crossed!!

To sum things up, the moving process has gone entirely different than I ever expected, but I’m super excited to soon have a house that I can truly call a home. With a nice yard, plenty of room inside and a quiet neighborhood, I think it will be a great place for our family to settle down!