17 Weeks - Home Offers!

Today E and I officially signed a sellers counter offer to accept our first house! This house and lot is a little smaller than the previous one we offered on (with less closets, boo) but it's got good bones and is very cute. It's far from a done deal though, there were counters sent to several people but I have a feeling they're going to pick ours. Then, we move into a whirlwind of inspections and contractors because the house we offered on needs some work before we can move in.

Another row of bumps!

Actually, some work might be an understatement. It needs a new kitchen, with walls knocked down, a small addition to add a bathroom, flooring replaced, laundry moved to the garage and the sliding doors moved to a different wall. It also needs some fencing, drywall and insulation in the garage, and floors refinished. So really, most of the house when you think about it. As long as the addition is done, we could probably wait to renovate the homes two existing bathrooms. One is kind of unusable but the other is in good shape despite being outdated. The floors could also probably wait to be refinished, but it would be so much easier to do that before all our furniture is all moved in.

In the meantime, our house hunt has started to merge with my pregnancy in my dreams. The other day I dreamt that I had to meet the contractor but I couldn't because I went into labor. I was trying to find someone else to meet the contractor while sitting in my hospital bed arguing with the nurses that I couldn't be in labor because I had a house to renovate. Clearly I've got a lot on the brain!

16 Weeks - Little Cutie

After several more unsuccessful house hunting ventures, I finally had my 16 week OB appointment yesterday. Although it's not usually an ultrasound appointment, I got to have a little peak at our baby anyway. They were so darn cute, kicking their legs and waving their arms.

Such a cutie already!

This was my first appointment with my awesome midwife S who I haven't seen in a few weeks since I stopped acupuncture. Although she prefers to use her hands and the doppler to check on baby, she hadn't seen our bean yet in person and knew I wanted to check on them so she obliged me with the ultrasound. I'm so glad she did, seeing their heart beating and legs kicking always makes me feel better. Overall I'm doing pretty well with the pregnancy too, no more morning sickness and I've come to accept that heartburn is clearly my new way of life. Considering that I'm a couple weeks into the second trimester now, I thought I would have gained a few pounds too but it looks like I'm still at 0. It's not a problem since I started off so chubby to begin with, thanks FXPOI and IVF, but I'm sure that will change over the next few weeks. 

That morning the traffic had been absolutely horrible, apparently Vice President Biden was in town blocking roads, so I'd ended up getting to my appointment at least 20 minutes late. S had been planning on putting in some needles for me but now we didn't have the time, which was a bummer. I think I'm going to schedule a regular acupuncture session at the center instead, certain points in my foot and on the inside of my knee are feeling kind of sore. Plus, I always feel better in general when I'm doing acupuncture. 

I also had a little bit of an upset tummy yesterday, something I ate the day before didn't agree with me. That coupled with skipping breakfast since I had to leave so early meant that I was super dehydrated by the time I got to Kaiser. I couldn't pee for them for over an hour, even chugging down water, and once I finally did, they weren't thrilled that my urine sample had some protein in it. I gave them a second one that looked much better that they had tested in the lab and thankfully it came back totally clear. No bladder infection, no protein, no sugar, nothing to suggest anything out of the ordinary. Basically, I have to be more careful about drinking even more water in this heat. Otherwise, everything looks nice and normal with little bean and I won't get to see them again until our anatomy scan at almost 20 weeks.  

15.5 weeks - So busy!

Oh man, it's been such a busy couple of weeks! It's still early stages, but E and I have officially thrown our hat in the game to buy our first house. As exciting as it is, it's also kind of terrifying. SoCal has an incredibly competitive and expensive housing market and trying to break into that is not easy, especially at a price point where we're comfortable.

For starters, our current neighborhood is totally out. The properties here are all well over a million, as are in they in pretty much every other neighborhood we'd like to live in. To find a place in a "normal" price range,  you know, half a million (can you feel my sarcasm from there?) we're having to stretch both our budget and our location comfort zone. A good school district is pretty much out of reach as well, so we're looking at a charter, private school or moving in 5 years.

We've been trying to avoid falling into the usual pitfalls of first time home buyers. The market here is so competitive that most people need to offer on 5-10 properties before they get accepted. We told ourselves this over and over but of course, we ended up getting caught in the most obvious, giant, glaring pot hole. We fell in love with a house. It was gorgeous, the neighborhood would work for us, and we wanted it, bad. 3 beds, 2 baths, hardwood floors, a gorgeous, spacious kitchen and a huge yard I could picture our baby and dog playing in. Since this is SoCal, it already had two over asking price offers on the table, so we put in an offer 5k higher with super appealing closing terms. Then we began dreaming about where furniture would go, made an appointment to bring our dog to walk the neighborhood and show our parents and.....

We didn't get it. 

Of course we didn't get it. 

In this case, there's nothing we could have done to get it. The owner was a real estate company who was acting as their own listing agent and who we're pretty sure was representing their own buyer. Super, super sketchy. They let over asking price offers pile up, told their preferred buyer what to offer over, and then accepted. We didn't stand a chance and predictably, I am heartbroken. 

We're now back at square one and none of the other houses seem to measure up. There are so few in our price range to begin with that finding something to look at is difficult enough, let alone finding something you actually want to offer on. Luckily, we're not in a huge rush to buy and we still have 5 months before we need to start moving if we want to get settled before baby comes. Although there doesn't seem to be anything special out there now, I'm hoping that our new home will be among the properties that hit the market over the next 5 months.