11/13/09 and 11/20/09 ultrasounds and house

I know. I KNOW. It's been two weeks, and this is completely unacceptable. The only real reason that I can offer is that I'm constantly EXHAUSTED, and the fact that I've made it to work every day for the past couple of weeks (although a bit later than I used to make it to work) is a miracle to me, especially since all I want to do these days is sleep. Unless, of course, I'm already asleep and something wakes me up (one of the cats crying, J coming to bed, things like that), in which case I can't seem to fall asleep again and thus, I am writing this entry at about 5:45 on a Sunday morning when I would much rather be asleep. Oh, well. It's a Sunday. I can nap while I'm doing laundry, right?

Moving on, we've had our last two ultrasounds at the fertility clinic. Both of them were great. On 11/13 we were able to see the heartbeat...it was a little flickering on the screen. It was completely amazing. I would have loved to have heard it, but at that point, the heart was too small and wasn't beating hard enough to be heard via Doppler. But we did get to see the baby, and could see that it had grown. We could actually see the baby itself, and not just a line where the baby would be some day. And we could tell that the amniotic sac had grown, and it looked like the yolk sac had gotten smaller (although that could have been my imagination). But we could see the baby!! We were so excited.

On 11/20 we got to see the heartbeat again. Again, we weren't able to hear it, but the ultrasound tech did a measurement, and it came out to be ~144 beats per minute. That little heart sure is beating fast!! The baby had grown, just as expected, and we could see it much more clearly this time (although the pictures that we brought home with us weren't the greatest this time around). We were both glad to be graduating from the fertility doctor's office but also a little bit sad, because after this appointment, I won't have another doctor's appointment (assuming everything continues along as well as it has) until December 17. And even then, we won't be getting to see pics of the baby at every visit like we have so far. I'm telling you, seeing a fertility specialist sure has us spoiled!!

So far, my two biggest symptoms have continued to be exhaustion and sore boobs. I had a couple of bouts with morning sickness earlier this week, but I haven't had any the rest of the week. My pants still seem to be fitting for the most part, which is good - I'm dreading having to go shopping for maternity pants. I seem to be hungry all the time, which is new. I've resorted to carrying an apple in my purse when I go to work so I have something healthy to snack on mid-morning when I'm suddenly ravenous. I haven't yet figured out a solution for what to eat mid-afternoon yet, but I'm working on it. Despite all of this, I'm feeling pretty good. And I was a good pregnant lady and got both the seasonal flu shot (actually, I got that before I got knocked up) and the H1N1 vaccine, so hopefully I can avoid any major illness during this flu season.

And in house news, I think I mentioned last time that there was a question about whether the wiring for the house all had to be in conduit or not. J and I were both under the impression that "low voltage" means anything under 240 V, or somewhere in that range. That's based on our work, him as a EE, and me, in the utility industry. As it turns out, "low voltage" when it comes to houses means "really low voltage" - things like doorbells. We had asked the seller to fix several items that were on the home inspector's list of things that needed to be addressed, including the wiring issue, and he agreed to fix almost all of them except the conduit thing. His response to that was that he hadn't done anything to the wiring in the house, and that it was all up to code. J wound up calling the electrical inspector for the city that we're moving to, and got clarification on the code. Apparently the code was changed in either the late 60's or the early 70's, so depending on when the house was built, not having all of the wiring in conduit is considered "up to code" because it complied with the code at the time that the house was built. We finally were able to track down when the house was built, and it looks like it was built in 1962, which means that it the wiring should be just fine, so that issue was finally resolved and we were ready to move on.

But then came Thursday.

*sigh*

I got a call at work on Wednesday from somebody in the mortgage office asking who she could contact to verify proof of employment for me. I gave her the phone number, told her to listen to the options and that it was buried in there somewhere, and that was that. Then on Thursday she called back while I was gone to lunch. Her message said that everything was still on track so that they were going to be able to complete the loan and close on Tuesday, which is when we were trying to have our closing. But she said that she hadn't heard back from my company yet with my employment verification, and she was still waiting on something from the attorneys regarding the title. I called her back to try to get clarification on what she needed, but she didn't answer so I left her a message. An hour later she hadn't called me back, so I called her, only to have her tell me that she'd gotten everything that she needed, and that we were ready to go. I breathed a sigh of relief.

About two hours later I got a call from J, and the first thing he said was that we're not going to be closing next Tuesday. I asked him why not. He said that, since we're getting an FHA loan, there's a requirement that the contract for the house cannot be dated less than 90 days past when the seller closed on the house. It's an anti-flipping law, or something. And, which we already suspected, the seller of our house is a flipper, and our contract was just barely within that 90-day mark. To get around that, the solution was for us to write a new contract, with all of the same terms, and just have it dated later. That all got taken care of on Friday, so we should be good to go on that part. The thing that is holding us up now is the fact that there's also a requirement that if the contract date is 91-180 days past when the seller closed on the house, there has to be a second appraisal. Since it takes a few days for the appraisal to get scheduled and then processed, and given that Thanksgiving is next week and a lot of people are taking vacations, it may be difficult to get the second appraisal in next week, so it may not happen until early December. Since the bank won't be able to finalize the loan paperwork until the second appraisal is done, that means that we could be looking at mid-December for closing. And that's all well and good, we just want to know when we should plan on doing it so we can line people up to help us move and figure out when to go appliance shopping, since we'll want to do that (and have them installed) before we move in.

Ok. So that's the summary of everything that's gone on for the past two weeks. Well, other than the fact that I went to see New Moon yesterday with a friend, and it was wonderful. I'm looking forward to the next two movies coming out...I can't wait to see them, and I can't believe that we're going to have a baby and a house by the time the next one comes out!! Since I most likely won't post another update before next Thursday, I want wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving! May your day be filled with good food and friendship or family, and may you find many blessings for which to be thankful. I know I have more than my share!