17 weeks!

How your baby's growing:

Your baby's skeleton is changing from soft cartilage to bone, and the umbilical cord — her lifeline to the placenta — is growing stronger and thicker. Your baby weighs 5 ounces now (about as much as a turnip), and she's around 5 inches long from head to bottom. She can move her joints, and her sweat glands are starting to develop.

It's silly how much you can love a little sweating turnip! :)

Next week, we'll find out if it's a little girl turnip or a little boy turnip!! If you haven't voted, now's your chance!

Moving Wisdom

With another move quickly approaching, I thought I'd share some of the wisdom I've learned over the years. After all, I have moved once a year, sometimes twice a year, for the past seven years.

1. Always help your friends. You will need their help. Especially when it involves lugging a washing machine down 3 flights of stairs.
2. Always label. And label well. You will forget where you put that oven mit.
3. Always keep up with your laundry and dishes in the weeks before a move. Trust me, you don't want to pack up dirty clothes. There's a chance you'll forget which tub they're in (see #2).
4. Never ignore the weight of a box. It may be small but it can weigh upwards of 40 pounds... if you pack it full of books or dishes.
5. Always utilize towels and blankets to wrap breakables. This way you're filling precious box space with things that need to be moved, not things like packing peanuts that you'll just throw out when you get to the new place.
6. Always wait until after you move to purchase new things for your new home.
7. Never underestimate how much junk you have. It multiplies as you pack. Trust me.
8. Always be prepared - with a hand truck and a utility dolly, no matter how much it costs to rent them. It's worth it.
9. Always start the purge early. If you forgot you had it, you don't need to move it.
10. Always have a game plan. Know how you're going to pack the truck and do not deviate from the plan, no matter how much advice you get. This will make things move quicker, something that will please everyone.
11. Pack an overnight bag with a change of clothes, your toothbrush, toothpaste and soap. Put it in your car - this part is key.
12. Dust off that air mattress - After moving everything you own, you are not gonna feel like setting up your bed.

Remembering all this is tough, I'll admit. For past 3 years, our moves have looked a little more like this:

16 Weeks

How your baby's growing:

Get ready for a growth spurt. In the next few weeks, your baby will double his weight and add inches to his length. Right now, he's about the size of an avocado: 4 1/2 inches long (head to rump) and 3 1/2 ounces. His legs are much more developed, his head is more erect than it has been, and his eyes have moved closer to the front of his head. His ears are close to their final position, too. The patterning of his scalp has begun, though his locks aren't recognizable yet. He's even started growing toenails. And there's a lot happening inside as well. For example, his heart is now pumping about 25 quarts of blood each day, and this amount will continue to increase as your baby continues to develop.

Negotiating

Things were going so smoothly... too smoothly apparently. Suddenly, out of no where, we are dealing with an antagonistic listing agent who blatantly misrepresents her sellers and is sabotaging our plans! Yes. I'm not exaggerating.

I'm done playing nice. We're under contract, people. You have agreed to sell us your house. We have agreed to buy your house. Are you really going to let repairs disrupt the process? Come on. It's called negotiating. We request X repairs... you counter with half of X repairs. End of story. Done.

Will this ever be over? Will we ever get our keys?

Inspection update

So, inspections went well and we now have a $395 binder that includes all the faults of our new home.
How lucky are we?!

In all seriousness, the inspector found only minor fixes, so we are very relieved! We've got the HVAC inspector coming out on Monday, which is also when our Radon canister test results will be available.

Now, we just have to see if the sellers are willing to fix everything we asked for...

Stay tuned!

Go, go, gadget... checkbook!

So, after searching for 4 months, we've finally found the right house. Our house. It IS true that you know the minute you walk in that it's the right house. Knowing it was THE ONE, we put in an offer, reading every word of the offer to purchase before signing it, wrote a chunky check for earnest money to show we were serious, entered into negotiations lasting 3 days and, finally, went under contract. We've gone to the bank, been approved for the loan, ordered and paid for the appraisal, too.

But tomorrow begins the next step of our home-buying journey: the inspections. Expensive, yes. Daunting, I know. Between the general home inspection, the termite inspection and the radon inspection, I'm wondering if we shouldn't be hiring an inspector to inspect the inspections. Oh, wait... that's us.

So, Mr. Checkbook, be prepared because you're getting a work out tomorrow. And don't think it's going to let up anytime soon. This is just the beginning of your go-go-gadget-ness. Over the next 20 years, you'll need to bend and stretch in unimaginable ways, performing magical feats of flexible greatness. Because, you see, we're also having a baby.

15 Weeks!

How your baby's growing:

Your growing baby now measures about 4 inches long, crown to rump, and weighs in at about 2 1/2 ounces (about the size of an apple). She's busy moving amniotic fluid through her nose and upper respiratory tract, which helps the primitive air sacs in her lungs begin to develop. Her legs are growing longer than her arms now, and she can move all of her joints and limbs. Although her eyelids are still fused shut, she can sense light. If you shine a flashlight at your tummy, for instance, she's likely to move away from the beam. There's not much for your baby to taste at this point, but she is forming taste buds.

Appointment update:
I know I've been remiss in not posting about our last doctor's appointment. It hasn't been on purpose... just that there isn't really anything to tell. It was our first "hey-how-are-you-doing" kind of visit. No bloodwork, no ultrasound, nothing. I did, however, have my first encounter with a medical student. UNC is a well-known teaching hospital, so it was only a matter of time before Biff-the-doctor-wannabe and Bippy-the-almost-nurse came into play. All in all, it went well. She wasn't too nervous and she did let me hear the heartbeat for the first time, so I'll give her bonus points for that. We'll see if I continue to enjoy the Biff and Bippy visits as the appointments become more thorough...

14 Weeks!

How your baby's growing:

This week's big developments: Your baby can now squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck his thumb! Thanks to brain impulses, his facial muscles are getting a workout as his tiny features form one expression after another. His kidneys are producing urine, which he releases into the amniotic fluid around him — a process he'll keep up until birth. He can grasp, too, and if you're having an ultrasound now, you may even catch him sucking his thumb.

In other news: Your baby's stretching out. From head to bottom, he measures 3 1/2 inches — about the size of a lemon — and he weighs 1 1/2 ounces. His body's growing faster than his head, which now sits upon a more distinct neck. By the end of this week, his arms will have grown to a length that's in proportion to the rest of his body. (His legs still have some lengthening to do.) He's starting to develop an ultra-fine, downy covering of hair, called lanugo, all over his body. Your baby's liver starts making bile this week — a sign that it's doing its job right — and his spleen starts helping in the production of red blood cells. Though you can't feel his tiny punches and kicks yet, your little boxer's hands and feet (which now measure about 1/2 inch long) are more flexible and active.