Brett and Sara Musick: And the move goes on

Much excitement in the Musick family as of late. We have been working on the house during every spare moment. I convinced Brett that we needed to paint the entire house before we moved in, and now I'm sort of regretting it. We closed on the house on March 20, and we STILL haven't moved in. I wish the house were closer, and we didn't have to drive and hour to go work on it. If it were a little closer to Lafayette, I would be over there every day! Of course, then I would be exhausted and not want to go back to work. This prego body can only take so much physical work before it just quits.

So the walls in all the rooms have been painted, thanks to both our family's help. We couldn't have painted the place without them. The people who lived in the house before did a real terrible job of painting it, so I'm happy to cover it all up. The ceilings probably hadn't been painted since the house was built in 1998. My dad painted the ceiling of the great room, and all of a sudden the place looked 10 times brighter and newer. Amazing what paint will do. Brett and I are going to tackle trim and doors after we move in. I figure we can do a room a weekend or something. Sadly, the smallest room in the house has been the biggest project. The first day we worked on the house, I spent 6 hours in the master bathroom pealing wallpaper. After spackling and sanding about 10 times, we finally have clean, smooth walls in that little bathroom. We'll eventually paint it, but it will have to wait until boxes get moved in.

Right now, I'm waiting to hear back from an exterminator. We seem to have an ant and cockroach problem in the house. I guess that's a bit expected, since the backyard is up against the woods. We want to get everything sprayed and the carpets cleaned before moving in any furniture etc. I'm hoping we can get it taken care of this weekend or at least early next week. Fingers crossed. Being able to move in to the house would be a great Easter present.

Brett's parents painting Sophia's bedroom.

View in to the kitchen, which is now RED.

We painted the foyer, which used to have this ugly sponge-painted texture on it.

Navy blue door, which still needs another coat. We'll eventually paint the shutters to match.

Dad and Aaron painting the sunroom yellow, which used to be a red/orange color.

Mom fits perfectly on the counter to paint the wall in the kitchen.

Sophia is doing well, as always. She's getting smarter by the day, and her vocabulary seems to double every week. After a few months of constant repetition, she's finally saying "please" on a regular basis. It's honestly music to my ears! Other words she can say:

• juice
• apple
• book
• ball
• up
• down
• duck
• box
• cracker
• cheese (this is an important one since cheese is pretty much 50% of her diet now)
• cake
• body parts - eyes, ears, teeth, nose, chin, toes, knees, head, hair, hand
• brush
• bubbles (comical even when she's standing outside my shower curtain letting in all the cold air)
• bath
• shoes
• socks
• airplane (imagine that)
• light
• moon
• bird
• outside
• tree
• grass
• wash
• watch (yes, you can tell the difference between wash and watch)
• Dada

Notice that no where on that list is there "Mama." Sometimes I feel a bit like chopped liver. My daughter doesn't say Mama. Ugh. She will if you repeat it to her. Most of the time, I am just called Dada or BaBa, which sounds more like BobBob.

Sophia's sleeping habits are incredibly sporatic. I think she's training me for a newborn. Most of the time, she will wake up in the middle of the night. Brett and I have started to just go in to her room and sit down in the glider while she cries for a bit, and then we tell her to lay down and go to sleep. She sits up to check that we're still there about 20 times, but she'll eventually fall back asleep within about 15 minutes or so. We are going to engage in some serious nap and night time sleep training when we move in to the new house. I am NOT going to have two kids up regularly in the middle of the night once the next one comes along, especially when Brett is gone on his trips and not there for 3-4 nights in a row. I have a mission! If I could find my sleep training book in a box somewhere, I would definitely be reading it...

Baby #2 is growing and growing. We just went to our last doctor's checkup this past Tuesday, and everything is going swimmingly. My feeling that I had gained about 10 lbs was confirm when I stepped on the scale and gained a whopping 8 lbs, which brings the grand total to 18 lbs. Ugh. All of a sudden, I feel PREGNANT. It's harder to move around, get up and down from the floor, and even roll over in bed. I had to break out the body pillow again, which Brett isn't too thrilled about. It's like having a third person in bed with you sometimes. I took my gestational diabetes test on Tuesday too. Cross your fingers and hope that I don't fail it and have to go through the second round of testing like I did with Sophia. I still think this kid is going to be taller and bigger than Sophia was, which makes the idea of a VBAC even more looming.

I think I've convinced myself that a VBAC is the way to go for this delivery. Although I'm not looking forward to the pain of childbirth, the recovery time will be much easier and much shorter than the c-section I had with Sophia. It almost feels like I'm going through my first pregnancy again. I know what it's like to be pregnant, but I have no idea what it's like to deliver a baby. Yikes. It makes me a bit nervous. I just hope that Brett will actually be at home and not at work when I go in to labor. At my last appointment, my doc said that she doesn't like to induce VBAC patients, so I guess it's just a waiting game like every other normal pregnant woman in the world.

On another note, we found out on Tuesday that my doc is pregnant too. WONDERFUL! Guess when she's due? July 3. Guess when I'm due? July 12. Yup. So I won't be seeing my doctor for my first "real" delivery. I'm not too thrilled about that one. So I'll end up with some doctor who knows me by my name and my chart. Sigh. I know they're all trained professionals, but sheesh, why couldn't they have put me with a doctor that wasn't going to be in the hospital the same time as me?

So for now, it's working on the house, taking care of clients, taking care of Sophia, and recuperating my tired body from all the work - that's my weekly chore list, among other things. I still haven't tracked down my camera, so pictures are still from my phone.