Can't help myself

Since 80% of my long time followers are still on this blog, I wanted to share something with you guys:

House on Market

After going through numerous realtors, we found one this weekend and our house should be on the market by end of this week. I won't lie, we have A LOT of work that she wants us to do. With two full time jobs and two babies, that doesn't leave much free time. Thankfully my Aunt S is still visiting from California and taking care of Lilah. We did so much this weekend while the time was there and available. Here is our to do list:

• Rip up and install new carpet in the loft & utility room. We did rip up carpet in utility room this weekend!
• Re-paint utility room and all the door frames. We have Aunt S working on that!
• De-clutter house. We took out 3 truck loads of crap from the attic. De-cluttered the nursery, all closets in the house, utility room, bedroom.
• Replace rotted wood under gutters and re-paint the wood on house. Now this is a BIG task and not really sure how or when this is going to be done. It is an inspection violation though so it has to be done before selling.
• Before showing the house we have to get the cats and any cat affiliated things out of the house. Our realtor let us know that MANY people don't like cats and won't buy a house if cats are there.
• Before showing we also need to take the dogs away. So you got it, during a showing, me, Al, Cerra, Lilah, Olivia, Max, Lillie, Boomer, and Izzy need to disappear. This should definitely be interesting.

She wants a professional photographer to come in and take pictures of our house. She did compliment me on how well I have hide that we are cramped to capacity. She also said that I am a good stager and just gave me a few additional tips on what to do before a showing. People like the smell of vanilla or Cinnamon,  so Al and I are going to put some apples in our crockpot with a touch of vanilla and Cinnamon. 

Another issue we are going to deal with is a contingency on buying a home. It has to be contingent on selling our home. So it seems like many things will need to fall into place if we are going to sell our home and buy a new home. Oh did I mention we are on a very strict budget. It seems that sending two babies to daycare cost more than sending them to college....


Oh and a quick update on girls. They just turned 6 months old! Of course with their prematurity, they are developmentally behind a 6 month old that was full term, but their pediatrician is very happy with how they are progressing. Hoping one day they will actually be on the full term chart at doctors office. I am going to throw a huge party that day!

If you want to see picture of the girls, you need to go to my wordpress blog and enter your password.

Update

As you know I switched over to Wordpress and many of you haven't been able to follow me over. I wanted to update on the girls. Although I won't be sharing any pictures of them on this blog.

Lilah had her open heart surgery on January 27th. There were some complications and she lost a lot of blood. They also found another smaller hole in her heart, repaired a valve that narrowed and repaired the membrane around her heart. She was on the vent for 7 long days. After coming off the vent, she started going through withdrawals because of the amount of medications used to keep her sedated. She ended up in the hospital for two weeks, but everything was repaired! Initially we thought she would come home and be able to drink bottles. Since they had to send her home on methadone and she was on it for several weeks, she wasn't able to drink bottles and stayed on her tube. We were a little disappointed at first, but then a few weeks ago she came off the methadone and started drinking 100% of her bottles. She is now drinking almost 3 ounces per feeding! She went from being on over 8 medications daily to 1 heart medication. She is growing! My baby girl is up to almost 10lbs now. I can sit here and tell you how hard this journey has been, but there aren't words to truly explain unless you have been through it. I can honestly say I am so happy this is all over with. I hope I never have to watch my baby go through open heart surgery again in her life time. But the most important thing of all is we have our daughter. 

Olivia is doing fantastic. She is almost sleeping throughout the night and is such a charming baby. She is always smiling and loves to talk. Right now she is almost rolling over ( so close). She loves daycare and all the teachers love her so much. They tell me she is the smallest baby in the class and they just want to hold and cuddle her all day long ( which is okay with me). She goes shopping with her daddy every weekend. He packs her up and off they go. It is so cute seeing Al with her. And it is a special time for them. He told me the other day, now that Lilah is healed and off restrictions, he is so excited to take her with him also. 

Speaking of Al. He seems to amaze me each and every day with our girls. I always knew he would be a good dad, but never in my wildest dreams did I know it would be like this. He loves them so much. He changes diapers, he feeds in the middle of the night, he watches the girls so I can nap on days I am exhausted. He stayed home with Lilah for six weeks after her surgery and managed to still cook, clean and keep our daughter healthy. I am not sure what I did to deserve him, but I will definitely keep him. If I had a better paying job, we could let him stay home with the girls ( maybe one day it will happen).

We are also in the process of listing our house and finding a new home. I was so scared at first because I didn't want us to go into debt. After many months of budgeting and looking over things, we figure we could make this work. We can't go out and buy our dream home, but we can afford a bigger place with a few acres to raise the girls until they get older and then build our dream home on the property. I am really excited about this! We have three houses to look at this weekend. Hopefully we will be moving when Cierra graduates in May.

Cierra finally got her drivers license a few days ago. This has been a huge relief, because Al and I have been driving her back and forth to work for almost two years now. We are tired. She is graduating in May. I can't believe she is all grown up. I can't wait to see what she chooses to do with her life as an adult. Starting college would be the first step. And I have to say that Cierra is an amazing big sister. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine she would be so in love with her baby sisters. It truly makes my heart swell.

Before I go, I don't want to make it sound like our life is some dream world, because it's not, we do have our issues with the babies and life in general. That is such a small part though, it doesn't compare to everything in our life that is so blessed and we are blessed beyond measure. All my years of infertility, all the losses, everything, it was worth it to be where I am at right now. All. Worth. It.