It has been awhile to say the least, but a lot has happened since my last entry on May 1, 2012. The last 5 months has been a roller coaster for sure, but that seems to be the norm for us, and that probably won't change anytime soon. We have had some exciting things happen, but there have also been things that we wish we didn't have to deal with. Overall we always land on our feet and get through it together, which is all we can ask for.
Teri's Health
Let's start with Teri and how she has been doing. It really has been a rough year for her healthwise. I have probably written this before in a past update, but she has been suffering from something in the past year or two that has been pretty hard to deal with. It is this cycle where her lungs will get real mucousy to where she is always coughing and just generally feels like crap. As a result, her doctors will then put her on some anti-biotics (sometimes oral, but lately it is usually through IV) for 2-3 weeks. She will feel great during those few weeks. Her lung function will almost double, and she really starts to feel like herself again. Then exactly one week after coming off of her meds (we can predict it to the day), she starts to feel very sick. She gets a high fever, chills, achy joints, barely has enough energy to get up and down the stairs, and her appetite pretty much disappears. She tries to tough through it but always comes out at a minimum with crappy, mucousy lungs again. This then leads to the doctors putting her on anti-biotics again, and the cycle continues.
She was so sick back in August that they sent her to the hospital for a few days before sending her home with a PICC line. This then happened again a few weeks ago on the next cycle of sickness, when they sent her down to the Mayo hospital (St. Mary's) for almost a week on anti-biotics so they could monitor her more closely and do further testing to see what was going on.
This last stay at the Mayo was possibly a great breakthrough as they found out she tested positive for having C.Difficile. You can click the link to read about it, but basically it is a bacteria in your intestines that is a result of being on anti-biotics for a long period (go figure). The symptoms of it match almost exactly what she has been feeling after coming off anti-biotics, so it looks as though they finally found what is causing the reaction to the meds. It does have a treatment too... an anti-biotic.
Here is where we stand at this point in time: Her last dose of her latest 3-week IV anti-biotic treatment ends today, so she will get her PICC out tomorrow (YAY!). She has been taking the oral anti-biotic for C.Diff for the past 3 weeks as well, and has another week to go for a total of 4 weeks on that. Given the vicious cycle of sickness she has been on, we are anxious (and a little scared) to what life will be a week from now. We hope and pray that the medicine for the C.Diff takes care of the flu-like symptoms she has had after coming off anti-biotics for so long, which will lead to her maintaining decent lungs for awhile and being able to stay off anti-biotic meds as long as possible.
The Kids
Our little "chubbers" as Teri likes to call him (and now Ari every once in awhile) is aging extremely quickly it seems. He just had a doctors appointment and at 7 and a half months he is in the 50th percentile for weight and 90th percentile for height. In the last couple weeks, he has been scooting to wherever he wants to go and getting on his knees trying to crawl legit. It is funny how with the first child, you want to rush to the next step so you can brag that they are already doing this or that. But with Jameson, we feel like every time he hits a milestone it is kind of sad because it is a reminder of how fast he will grow and how these cute baby years will be gone before we know it. He has had a couple minor health troubles with a cough/cold on and off the last couple months, but he seems to be over it now and is the happiest, most laid back kid I know of.
Our little baby girl is definitely growing up too fast for my liking. She has been staying busy with dancing around and singing all day, and basically trying to run the house (often successfully). She is at that "terrible 2's/3's" stage, so whenever I come home from work, I never know if I am going to get the sweet, calm, caring, and listens-well version, or the bossy, whiny, hyper and loud version. At this point, I can only hope that the easy-going version wins in the end. Teri will be the first to tell you though that she has me wrapped around her finger, and she will be telling me what to do for years to come.
She plans to be a ballerina for halloween, so we bought her a couple outfits a couple of weeks ago. She has had at least one of them on everyday since we bought them, and tells us how excited she is to go to "dance class" (which she has never been to before). We plan on getting her in a class as soon as we move, which segues me to the next section perfectly...
I thought I would also add in this funny video of Ari in her ballerina outfit and Jameson laughing at the dinner table:
House Sold, House Bought
Another large part of our life since July has been trying to sell our house, and also figure out where we are going to move once we have to be out.
Selling
Selling a house is not very fun. Period. It is stressful and annoying and just generally a huge hassle. To anyone thinking about doing it, just ask yourself "is it worth the hassle to do this in order for us to be in a different house?" For us, that answer was absolutely "yes", so we decided to go through with it. The hardest part is having to be available for showings when you have two small children; 1.because you have to get them ready to leave the house at a moments notice, and 2.because you have to get the house to look spotless before you leave. We had to place a majority of the kids' toys in storage and rearrange the house a little bit in order for this to be possible.
We put the house on the market in mid-July and actually had a lot of action on it. After countless showings and trying to negotiate 3 separate low-ball offers (unsuccessfully), we had a great offer come in that we negotiated for only a day or two and had the papers signed to sell the place after about 45 days on the market for a price that we barely had to compromise on.
Buying
Once we had the place sold, we were on a mission to get a new house. We had been eyeing the town of Delano for awhile as it is a quiet and smaller town a little further outside the city (but still pretty close to my work), which made prices a lot more affordable so we could get much more of a house for our money.
There is a development we discovered early in the process that had been foreclosed and the bank was trying to get rid of the open lots left for sale. At the time we found it, there were only about 10 houses built out of 55 total lots in that phase of the development (so pretty empty). The lots were decent size and dirt cheap, so with those lots in mind, we decided to pursue building a new house. After some research, we landed on a builder and a lot, and the the builder created a custom plan based on what we wanted. We then selected the lot that would fit the plan he drew (since it was a sort of wide one-story that would require a wide lot). At this point, we signed the deal on selling our house and finalized quite a bit of detail on what the new house would look like. The last thing we needed was for the builder to go and buy the lot from the bank so we could get all the permits and start breaking ground.
Then I got this email from our builder coming into work one morning:
"Eric, I have bad news, I was trying to get the information yesterday from David (at the bank) on where to deliver the purchase agreement for the lot and he e-mailed me this morning that the lot is under contract to be sold. There are only 5 lots left, he gave me the list of the remaining lots, I will look it over."
Turns out someone bought the lot we had plans to buy literally a day before our builder went in to buy it. It foiled our plans completely since that lot was one of only a few lots that fit our floorplan, and the remaining 5 lots (of the original 45 available) were all less than desirable.
We were devastated and shocked, but a couple weeks later went on to continue looking at some houses that were already built and on the market. A few people told me (including Teri) "things happen for a reason". I typically hate that answer to most things, but in this case, I think it is dead on.
On our first trip to look at houses, we found one that we loved. It is in a culdesac and on 0.6 acres with tall, mature trees in a well-established neighborhood in Delano. As soon as I saw the yard, I knew we had found our house. The inside isn't bad either, although there is some room for improvement as far as updating some of the finishes. However, the property and size of the house are amazing, and those are the things you can't change.
We close on the house on January 4th. Luckily when we sold our house, we discovered that the people buying it planned to use it as a rental property, so we are going to close on 10/29, and then rent it from them through the end of January (which will be weird to live there still and pay someone else rent for it). This way we will have those few weeks in January to do any projects to the house and slowly move in. Again, things worked out amazingly well and we are very happy to get it all over with!
Here are a few pics of the outside of the house:
I know this was a long one, so congratulations if you made it this far into it (and thank you for caring enough to do so). I will try to send an update on here regarding how Teri does coming off her meds if I can. Enjoy your Halloween and upcoming holidays!
