My birthday present.

So I have mentioned before that I've never really had one specific place that I have thought of as "home." We moved a lot as a kid, and my parents have now moved twice since I left for college. Eric and I have joked about my life as a vagabond (he says I'm like cranial nerve 10 - the wandering nerve. Nerd).

Maybe rather than saying I don't have a home, it's better to say that I have several. But whatever the case, Winston-Salem is as much my home as anywhere else I've lived.

And the house we were renting was as homey as I'd felt in a long time. I was going to be sad to leave it when we moved away. It had its issues, and I had a nice long list of things I wanted in a new house if possible. But when we found out we were staying in Winston-Salem for residency, we pretty much just decided to settle in a little more where we were.

Then we found out about the nice physician's mortgage one of the local banks offer. Super low rates, no down payment, and no mortgage insurance. We realized we could get a pretty good-sized loan and pay quite a bit less per month than what we'd been paying in rent.

Still, we liked where we were. We explored several neighborhoods with nice, big houses for sale in our price range. We agreed pretty quickly that, even though the houses were bigger and newer, we LOVED living in our current neighborhood, Ardmore. It's SUPER close to everything, including the hospital. We're within 2 miles of great shopping, restaurants, grocery stores, and the gym. It's got lots of sidewalks and connecting roads for running. The homes are old, but (usually) charming. And the side of the neighborhood we live on is relatively safe compared to other areas of town.

Of course, updated older homes in a resident's price range are pretty few and far between. Especially ones with same-level laundry, a working fireplace, lots of closet space, and a deck. Those were my requirements.

SO we agreed to look online and just see if anything looked like something we might be interested in. And if not, we'd just stay where we were. We didn't think we'd actually find what we were looking for, but we wanted to at least be able to say we looked.

I searched the MLS website daily. I found lots of things I loved, but they were all WAY over our budget. And everything in our budget was NOT up to par. I was being picky. Extremely picky.

Finally I saw two houses that interested me. They were the only two we looked at. And one of them had everything on my list. A pretty new kitchen. A huge walk-in closet. A laundry room. A deck. A fireplace that worked. It had a few things I wish were different -- only 1 1/2 baths instead of 2, and an upstairs whose ceilings are lower than normal. But, overall, it was by FAR the best things we'd found for the price.

After talking with a mortgage lender and looking at amortization charts (Now I'm the nerd. So fun!), we found out it would be about $200 less per month than what we had been paying in rent, and, after 3 years, we should have about $10,000 in equity. So even if we were to sell at $5-7K less than what we bought it for, including realtor fees, we should still come out a little ahead. And we would get to live in a house that had everything we'd been looking for.

So on my birthday, April 10, we spent the whole day debating about whether or not this was the right choice. It wasn't the most exciting birthday ever, since I spent the whole day distracted. BUT, by that afternoon, we'd called our realtor to put in an offer!

It took a couple of days of offers and counter offers and signing documents via our iPhones. But by Friday, April 12, we finally reached an agreement. While we were traveling down to Charleston for our vacation, we signed all of our documents electronically and bought a house. Happy birthday to me!

We spent a lot of the next month doing inspections and going back and the forth with the sellers about them fixing a few minor problems (electrical outlets and such). It was weird to kind of have a house, but not really.  More than a month later, on May 23, we finally closed. Then, keys in hand, we took off to Arkansas. :-)

Since coming back, we've finally got moved in, and we're slowly getting settled. We've updated Samuel's room with new paint, a new closet door handle and a new light fixture (for which we had to call an electrician because someone seriously ghetto-rigged the previous one). I've just about finished converting our weird back room into a mud room (and it's super cute! Can't wait to show off the finished product)! We've gotten a new dining set, ordered patio furniture that's coming Thursday, and we're getting a security system installed Thursday too. We've bought a new lawnmower and desk for Eric. And we're having the exterior painted soon too.
It's a work in progress, but it's coming along!

It's so funny to me that we really had no intentions of getting a place, yet here we are. I feel beyond blessed that God worked it out so that we could get a place we loved. I hope we continue to love it... because we're here for a while! :-)

Oh sleep, how I love thee.

And how I have NOT been getting any.

Okay, that's not completely true. In actuality, I've been getting 7 hours a night, it's just been broken up thanks to Samuel's sleep regression, which is a REAL THING for anyone who was wondering.

My sweet little sleep-through-the-night-at-2-months-old child suddenly started waking up multiple times a night. Not cool. At first I thought it was because he learned to roll from front to back and couldn't get back. That was part of it. But even after learning to roll the other way, the nighttime wakings have continued. :/ Not to mention that he has been uber-fussy during the day, waking up SCREAMING from naps, and just generally not his normal, happy self. Not a great time to start stay-at-home-mommying!

I did some research, though, and from what I've read, it looks like this is the time when infant sleep becomes more like adult sleep. Circadian rhythms get established, and babies have more periods of deep sleep as to opposed to constant REM cycles. And when they come out of deep sleep, it can scare the living daylights out of them, thus the waking up and freaking out.

Paired with that, a lot of babies (Samuel included) have a growth spurt of sorts at the same time. They not only grow really quickly, but learn a lot of new skills like rolling all over the place, picking objects up off the floor and moving objects from hand to hand, all of which Samuel has learned in the last two weeks. I guess it's probably hard learning that many gross motor skills all at once.

Anyway, long story short, it's been a rough week or so with him. Last night was a lot better (only one wake-up around 4:30) and he's in a much better mood today. Perhaps the growth spurt is coming to an end??

On another note (once again, for my own memory's sake), I also didn't realize that 4 months would mean a lot of changes for me too. In the last two weeks I've suddenly started losing all my hair (a lot of people told me that happened to them around 2 months postpartum, so I thought maybe I'd just skipped it), and also losing the rest of my baby weight (yay!). I haven't even really been working out much since we've been moving, but I've magically dropped 6 pounds while eating pretty un-healthily. Can't complain about that one! I've also had a few days where I felt so crazy hormonal I didn't know what to do with myself. In fact, I actually took a pregnancy test one day to make sure I wasn't pregnant again (I'm not!!)! I thought I was pretty much back to "normal," but apparently my body wasn't quite done with the changes yet.

Anyway, things seem to be stabilizing, and I'm oh-so glad. Next time around (assuming there's a next time!) I'll know what to expect. For now... I think I'll go take a nap. :-)

4 Months

We had Samuel's 4 month appointment a little late because of our trip. At 4 months, 6 days, Samuel...

weighs 15 lbs. 15 oz. (54%)
is 26 1/2" long (87%)
has a 16" head circumference (15%)

I guess I'm destined to have a tall, tiny-headed son! At least he's cute. :-)

The pediatrician also noted how super-social Samuel is, and how strong and well-balanced he is (maybe because of his little head???) He started "talking" to her as soon as she came in, and tried to stand up the entire time she was there. Such a ham!

Samuel did SO great on our trip to Arkansas. He had trouble sleeping the first night each place we went, but pretty much slept through every night thereafter. The only problem was that he consistently woke up an hour earlier than he does here, and when we moved his bedtime back, he woke up even earlier. Not very vacationy of him.

He was generally happy and fun, though he did get grouchy a few times. However, considering the time change and the fact that he missed WAY more naps than he should have, we couldn't have asked for better!

It was really fun to watch Samuel learn things this week.

The first day of the trip I put a toy bar on his car seat. He stared at it. A lot. I tried to show him how to play with the toys (spin them around, shake them, etc). He just looked. So I just shrugged it off and gave him his rattle and he was happy as a clam. Five days in, I started hearing weird noises in the back seat... It took him a while, but he finally figured out how to work the toy bar. Now he loves it!

He also kind of dropped his yelling thing he'd been doing (well, except for the night we were out with our friends at On the Border. Whoops). Instead, he decided it would be fun to start spitting. Not so much blowing bubbles or doing anything slobbery, just making a spitting noise. He liked the sound. And if anyone would spit back at him, he would go NUTS and start doing his other new thing...

Laughing/squealing. Little man has been attempting to laugh for a while now. We totally know what he means when he makes his weird gulping laugh sounds. But now he's learned how to squeal with delight instead. It's SUCH a cute sound (even if it is really loud!).

The last night of our trip and the two nights since, Samuel has started purposely rolling over from back to front in his crib. Multiple times. It's really fun for him, but, unfortunately, he has to be in the right position to turn himself back over from front to back (i.e. if his arm is in front of him, not under him, he doesn't know what to do). Unfortunately, that's resulted in a lot less sleep for me. He doesn't fuss a whole lot or anything, but I've had to go roll him back over two or three times. Silly kid.
Needless to say, we are doing LOTS of tummy time right now to get some practice!

There's probably a lot more that he's doing right now that I need to note. I figure I'll want to remember all of this later. I'm SO amazed every day at how much this kid has changed in such a short period of time! He really is a miracle!

We might be a little bit loco...

But a little bit crazy's all right, right?? 

So since my last post a week and a half ago, we bought our house (seriously, I WILL write more about that one day) and then took off for our first trip driving to Texas/Arkansas with a now-four-month-old. We spent two days in the car, survived a blowout on I-40. I was forced to enter a Wal-Mart for the first time since Samuel was born so we could get tires and to feed my sweet baby in Wal-Mart. Can you say "awkward??"

We had dinner with friends in Little Rock. 

We went out to the deer camp in the boonies with my fam. 

We went to see Eric's people in Magnolia where we took Samuel swimming and watched a TON of Food Network Star. 

We drove to Texarkana to eat dinner with some wonderful college friends. 

We ate bbq and Tex-Mex and then we got back in the car and spent two more days driving through the southern states (where I got wished a happy mother's day by a random mechanic at a gas station?? It's June). 

Now we just have to survive the moving. 

Have I mentioned how this has been the craziest month ever?