sigh

the house has been on the market for four full weeks now with minimal interest. we dropped the price earlier this week but no bites yet. we haven't even had anyone come see it since last sunday :( hopefully something will happen soon!

23 weeks

the belly is getting huge! all non-maternity clothes are officially booted from the clothing rotation which means it's time to buy some more maternity clothes (or start doing laundry like 5 times a week!) from babycenter.com: Your baby is more than 11 inches long and weighs just over a pound. His skin is red and wrinkled. Blood vessels in his lungs are developing to prepare him for breathing. He can swallow, but he normally won't pass his first stool (called meconium) until after birth. Loud noises heard often in utero — such as your dog barking or the roar of a vacuum cleaner — probably won't faze your baby when he hears them outside the womb. look at that - i was right a few days ago when the wiener dog woke up roo :) hopefully roo will learn to sleep through anything, like a true bard!

We got a Wii

Hope everyone is doing well. We've been kind of bummed with the house selling and some of the other stressors in our life, er the baby moving etc. anywho, we had sort of wanted a Wii for a little while but they are hard to come by. Yesterday, Keira was not feeling well, so I took her to work. She figured she wouldn't be there for long so I lingered around the west end of richmond. I decided I would try to find the elusive Wii, mainly because I thought I wouldn't find one and it would kill some time. I went to Best Buy, 2 Circuit Cities, Target and CompUSa. No Wiis to be found. Then I went to Walmart and they had like 10. I went and picked Keira up and told her Walmart had Wiis and she said let's go get one. So we did, and it is soooooo much fun. By the time we got back, the had already sold 4 of them! The Wii has brought some fun back in our lives. The sports games are way fun to play. I got a Mario game which is a lot of fun too. But the best part is this morning I downloaded the original Super Mario Brothers. There are so many fun old games to download. We figured this was justified since we might as well have something to do in the middle of the night with the baby crying :)

can dogs smell pregnancy?

we've been wondering, because the dogs here have been very clingy, martini the dachshund especially. she insists on snuggling with my belly whenever possible. jackson has been cuddlier than normal as well. dogs can smell cancer and termites, why not unborn babies?? apparently it could be for real!

good luck jodi!

roo's "aunt" jodi is defending for her PhD tomorrow - best of luck dr. jodes!!!!

roo can hear! (and it thinks wiener dogs are annoying too!)

aunt lois, her friend carol, and their irish setter puppies spent the night here last night. richmond was a good halfway stopover point for their boston to florida trip for a dog show. the red dogs were sleeping in their crates downstairs in the living room and our dogs were upstairs in bed with us. i was laying in bed awake around 4 a.m. this morning (i have a cold - more about that later) thinking to myself how lucky roo is that it was able to sleep. one of the setters was rustling in its cage which caused tini the wiener dog to commence her high-pitched yapping. roo immediately kicked me hard as if to say, "mom, shut that dang dog up!" :) so having a cold when pregnant is no fun. the only cough medicine allowed is robitussin dm which doesn't seem to do anything. i can't take any of the good stuff :( i haven't gotten a good night's sleep in days since i am coughing so much. and the house situation still sucks. we got a call from our realtor today at 2:15 to see if someone could come see it in 30 minutes. jeremy and i were both asleep on the couch at the time and the house had not yet recovered from our having our overnight guests. somehow we managed to get up and get going. we got all the vacuuming done and the house in respectable condition within a half an hour - not too shabby. i'm sure we could have said no but at this point we just want to sell it so badly. it's like we're being held hostage by this house. the realtor thinks we should drop the price a bit to see if that helps. we're open to that but it just sucks to not make as much money as you hoped. the feedback we've gotten from people who have looked at the house so far has been less than helpful. most of it is stuff we can't do anything about and the other things are things people could change if they wanted. someone said they wished our kitchen cabinets were taller. someone else wished the family room was more formal. someone didn't want a newer home (???) and others are concerned about the fate of the empty lot across the street since we don't know what will go up there. we can't make our next move (buying a house in boston, moving, etc.) without selling this place so we're screwed. kinda sucks.

22 weeks

another week down! they seem to be flying by! from babycenter.com: Your baby now looks like a miniature newborn, checking in at 10.9 inches and almost 1 pound. Her skin will continue to appear wrinkled until she gains enough weight to fill it out, and the fine hair (lanugo) that covers her head and body is now visible. Her lips are becoming more distinct, and the first signs of teeth are appearing as buds beneath her gum line. Her eyes are developed, though the iris (the colored part of the eye) still lacks pigment. Eyelids and eyebrows are in place, and her pancreas, essential for hormone production, is developing steadily.

i have decided that roo is a fitting name for this child as all it seems to do it jump up and down in my belly all day. it's a real wiggler!

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we've had 2 more private showings of the house this week and another tomorrow. maybe one of these will work out!!!! we had to take the dogs to doggie day care today since someone was coming to see the house, and jeremy had to take his boards today (and i had to work of course.) the dogs are so tired now and it'll only get worse - beaglefest is tomorrow. they'll be pooped!

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yeah for jer! 24 years of schooling and he's done!!!! :)

boston update - day 2 - sunday

after thoroughly enjoying our good night sleep in the westin, we got up and going pretty early on sunday. after a botched attempt to find the realtor's office on our own, we got directions and made it there. we had a bunch of houses to see so off we went... house #6 was a nice old victorian in quincy. beautiful house just didn't meet most of our needs. the front yard was fenced but not the backyard which doesn't work for the dogs. the rooms were small and none of our furniture would fit. house #7 was also in quincy. it was really cheap but being sold as is. we pulled up to see it but soon found out that it had actually sold the day before. too bad, since it had promise. house #8 had an AWESOME view of quincy harbor - right on the water. unfortunately the house itself was not nearly as nice. it was obvious that the owner "fixed" it up to sell, but only really took care of the cosmetic stuff. dad said the house was in lousy shape and was the worst one we saw. we had really high hopes for house #9. from the internet listing, it looked like an exact replica of our current house (which of course we love.) too good to be true. the house was as awesome as described, but they did fail to note in the listing that the 1/3 of an acre was almost entirely unusable swamp land :( that wouldn't work so hot for us or the dogs. house #10 was also in quincy. it was an ok house but didn't have a garage. it also backed directly up to an apartment complex which makes us wary. we had to take off our shoes to look through this house which was a little weird. nothing really wowed us about this one unfortunately. we liked house #11 quite a bit. it was also in quincy and had a ton of square footage. it has an in-law suite, which we don't really need, but did provide a lot of space. the only issues were that it didn't have any fencing at all (would be pricey to add) and it has been on the market for close to a year which just made us wonder if there was something wrong with it that we just didn't notice. we've ranked this one as #2 for now we LOVE house #12 in milton which just went on the market. it is perfect perfect perfect for us. what is unfortunate is that there is already an offer on it. we could put in an offer too but given that our house hasn't sold yet, it's highly unlikely that our offer would be accepted. wicked bummer as this was our #1 favorite house from the weekend. house #13 was in milton and was built in 1765. it has a ton of character but just needs more work than we can handle (both time and money wise.) jeremy could hardly stand up straight since the ceilings were so low. house #14 in milton was a similar story. lots of charm and space. good bones and could be an awesome house if you have the time and money to put in to it. unfortunately, it was already close to the top of our budget and my dad estimated that it needed another $100K of work to make it right. so at this point we have one house that we love but can't have. there are 2 others that we'll keep on the list but aren't ready to commit to. we're just going to keep our eye on what's out there but we feel stuck until our house sells. somewhat depressing since we loved the house in milton but just couldn't get in fast enough. we feel like we're at a disadvantage being so far away - we just can't act as fast as the local house hunters. :( the good houses are going to get gobbled up before we could even see them. we're going to get stuck choosing from the leftovers :( and add on top of that - the train ride home sucked. the train was filled to capacity due to the weather and all the airline cancellations. we couldn't sleep sprawling across multiple seats so it was difficult to get any sleep at all. the train also got in almost 2 hours late because of the bad weather along the way.

boston update - day 1 - saturday

we're back! the train ride up to boston on friday nite and saturday morning was good - the train wasn't very crowded so we were able to each use 2 seats and sleep a bit. we pulled into south station right on time at 8 a.m. and walked the 1/2 mile to our hotel. we were too early to check in so we found a restroom in the lobby and got changed and cleaned up a bit. we grabbed breakfast in the hotel restaurant - jeremy loves hotel restaurants. it was yummy but pricey - jer's breakfast buffet was $21! we grabbed a cab and headed over to the realtors' office where we met up with my parents. we were scheduled to see 5 houses on saturday so we headed out. house #1 was in quincy and only a short walk to the t station - good for jeremy's commute. it was our favorite house of the day, but it did have some drawbacks. there's a gorgeous in ground pool in the backyard, but it isn't fenced off in any way which isn't good for beagles or babies. my dad also had some concerns about the lack of insulation in the attic as well as how the roof was vented. that's why dad was there - because that's not stuff we would notice on our own! despite the drawbacks, we're keeping this one on the list. house #2 was in milton, a little further from the t, but a better overall town with a better school system. the house was ok but there were just too many things wrong with it for us to keep in on our list. the yard was tiny which doesn't really work for all the hounds. there was also some weirdness going on in the attic with some really classy cardboard-box insulation. not sure what they were hiding with that. my dad had a bunch of other concerns, making this one just not worth the money :( house #3 had a ton of promise. it is an 1870 farmhouse on a gorgeous lot in milton. the yard and landscaping were awesome so we had a ton of hope for the inside. unwarranted, unfortunately. the inside was interesting. very quirky, with little rhyme or reason to the decor and finishes. some rooms were really nice and others were horribly outdated. it was listed as 2 bath house, but unfortunately one of the bathrooms was in the unfinished basement just like our last house we rented on kensington avenue here in richmond. good for jeremy and monkey, except that they'd bump their heads since the ceilings were only 6' high. also the rooms were just too small and would never fit our current furniture. this one did not make the list :( we were SO excited about house #4. it was our favorite house from our internet research before the trip. it is a gorgeous 6 (yes 6!!!) bedroom colonial built in 1893. it has everything we want (except central air - sorry jeremy!) we pulled up for our showing and rang the bell. nothing. so our realtor called the listing agent only to find out that the owners took it off the market because the offer they had made on another house had fallen through. wicked bummer. :( house #5 really only made our list to look at because of the central air and promise of a short walk to the beach. it is not enough square footage but we figured we'd check it out anyway. the layout actually made the smaller size workable, but again my dad found too much wrong with it. it needed a new roof and a complete exterior paint job. more work than we have time for! no dice :( so day one we saw 5 houses and only one was good enough to keep in consideration. oh well. after the houses, we had tickets to the red sox game. our realtor sent us in the direction of fenway park and we were off. somewhere along the way, my dad decided that we had plenty of time to go back to the hotel before the game despite the fact that none of us are too familiar with the city of boston. we had a map that mom had bought but it was a terribly un-user-friendly map that just caused more issues than it helped. we proceeded to drive around all of boston for almost 3 hours trying to get to the hotel and then just back to the fenway area. my dad was driving like a madman - pretty much just fitting in with the rest of beantown drivers - and cursing up a storm. finally we figured out how to get near fenway. we found a parking lot where they were charging $30 for parking. at that point we didn't care - we were late for the game and we all had needed to pee for hours at that point. we were just happy to be getting out of the car. but just as we were about to pull into the lot, a parking spot on the street opened up so we grabbed that. (but, none of us considered putting quarters in the meter... more on this later.) the game was fun. fenway was packed as it was home opening weekend for the sox. sox won 8-0 which was good given the drama we endured getting there. we headed back out to the car to head back to the hotel. there we found a fluorescent orange parking ticket waiting for us. bummer - until we realized that it was for only $25, which is still cheaper than they were charging to park in the lot! considering all the numerous traffic violations my dad had committed that day, this was a blessing. it could have been so much worse! somehow jeremy figured out how to use the bad, bad map to get us back to the hotels with minimal cursing and crazy dad driving. we grabbed some more expensive dinner at the hotel and crashed - happy to be sleeping in a comfy bed rather than on a train!

21 weeks

here's the latest from babycenter.com: Your baby now weighs about three-quarters of a pound and is approximately 10 1/2 inches long. His eyebrows and eyelids are fully developed. And you can certainly feel him move. He's oblivious to your schedule, though, so don't be surprised if he starts working out just when you're settling down for the night. If you're having a girl, her vagina is formed now, though it will continue to develop until birth. so roo should be 3/4 of a pound but according to our ultrasound this morning roo is already 1 pound and 1 ounce! big little roo! my doctor said that roo is about 10 days ahead of schedule! roo is very, very cute. we got to see it crying and kicking me on the ultrasound. we also have some fun new roo pictures that we will post as soon as we can get them scanned in. roo was not shy and the ultrasound nurse could tell what gender roo is, but we didn't find out. it will be a surprise!! now we need to quickly get the house clean and get packed for our trip to boston this weekend. someone is coming to see our house today at 3:30 and our train to massachusetts leaves at 6. crazy!

peeps are peeping and so are we

we've got someone coming to see the house on friday and someone else coming on saturday! fingers crossed - our realtor said he's feels pretty good about the lady coming to see it on friday!

meanwhile, we're almost ready for our trip to the town of beans this weekend. we've sent our realtor up there a massive list of houses we like, and have flagged the ones we really, really like. i think he has a much better sense for what we're looking for now! we'll be seeing 5-6 houses in milton and braintree on saturday and a whole bunch of houses in quincy on sunday. most of our faves are in quincy, which is really convenient for jeremy. it's about a 25 minute subway ride to mass general from quincy - not too bad!

Jeremy's Weekly Post 4/7

Hello all. As you can see we woke up to find about 1/2 inch of snow on the ground. Good thing we planted all those flowers :( I can't believe how big the baby is getting. We are already half-way home! I think Roo may be grounded on its birthday for all the kicking, nausea, and stress it's putting on Keira :) Hey, anyone wanna buy a nice house in Richmond? Open house was less than stellar but hopefully it will all work out. I've seen a lot of people take flyers about our house, that can't be too bad. We're going to look at houses next week in Boston. We were hoping to have an offer on our house by then, but who knows. It's kind of exciting b/c this is the house that Roo is going to come home to! I hope he or she likes it :) This week I take the clinical skills portion of my boards Thursday in Philly. Wish me luck. It shouldn't be too bad, but will be a long day and a little bit of driving. The following week I take the written part. Looking forward to putting all my efforts into moving and preparing for graduation!

snow!

we haven't had any snow all year here in the RIC, why not now???

there goes all the nice flowers we planted!

a good reason to buy our house

richmond is less deadly than normal this year

20 weeks

half way there!!!! no more produce comparisons. i guess roo is just a baby now: from babycenter.com : "Your baby weighs about 10 1/2 ounces now. She's also around 6 1/2 inches long from head to bottom, and about 10 inches from head to heel. (For the first 20 weeks, we use measurements taken from the top of the baby's head to her bottom — known as the "crown to rump" measurement. After that, we use measurements from head to toe. This is because a baby's legs are curled up against her torso during the first half of pregnancy and are very hard to measure.)A greasy white substance called vernix caseosa coats her entire body to protect her skin during its long submersion in amniotic fluid. (This slick coating also eases the journey down the birth canal.)Your baby is swallowing more, which is good practice for her digestive system. She's also producing meconium, a black, sticky substance that's the result of cell loss, digestive secretion, and swallowed amniotic fluid. This meconium will accumulate in her bowels, and you'll see it in her first messy diaper (although a few babies pass it in utero or during delivery)." it's hard to believe that we're halfway there! roo is definitely getting big as evidenced by the rapidly increasing size of my belly. it's a wiggly little thing with a powerful little kick. and 10 inches long - that's almost as long as tini, our dachshund! in general, i am feeling much better. i am eating more actual human food and not throwing up nearly as much. what's weird is that the random aversion to tissues is back this week and has made me throw up a couple of times this week. just can't win! no hits on the house yet, but we must be patient :) fingers crossed that the cold temps this weekend don't ruin all the nice work we did out in the yard last week!

if a house is open and no one comes, is it still open?

no good news to report from the open house. it's was pretty darn slow according to our realtor - only three families came in. :( at least they were all actual house hunters as opposed to nosy neighbors. but he said it's pretty rare to get an offer straight from an open house unless it's a super desirable house for whatever reason. fingers crossed that we have better luck with realtors showing it to individual clients. at least the house is super duper clean right now so we can keep it this way and be ready for additional showings at the drop of a hat. our house needs someone to love it as much as we do!!!! it really sucks that there are now 3 houses on our block of our street for sale. the one to our right is for sale and so is the one three doors down on the left. the one right next door is smaller and more expensive, but does have a garage which we don't. the one on the other side is also more expensive. it has one additional bedroom and a formal living room but is still the same (or less) total square footage. it will be interesting to see how this all works out! one of the houses has been on the market since 2/28 and the other has been on the market forever, since the fall i think (i can't find it on the yahoo real estate site or on the local prudential office's site, but the sign is still out front.) so yesterday for the open house we had to scoot and take all the pets with us, so jer and i drove around richmond for a few hours with 5 dogs and a cat in my jetta. loads of fun. how does it work for private showings? any experts know (carey!!!)? do we have to do something with the dogs during the showings? if it's on the weekend or at night we can load them into the car again, but if it's during the day, we can't exactly take them to work with us! doggy/kitty day care would be expensive! people have to understand that we still live here, right???

open house

the house is listed - 4 and 1/2 hours until the open house! got some last minute touch ups to do but we're ready. amazing! check it out! wish us luck! we've got our fingers crossed for a quick sale! wanna buy a house?