Lewis just spent an hour crying inconsolably for no apparent reason. He is now miraculously fully recovered. And you know what? He isn’t even embarrassed. If I had lost my shit like that in front of people I’d be humiliated. But Lewis? Nahhh. He’s just grinning up at me like it never happened. Weirdo.

Lewis is a week and a half away from being 6 months old. Time to start solid foods.

We’re interested in trying the baby-led weaning method. But Lewis has no teeth still, so we’re going to go with a hybrid approach and try some purees too.

Today we had some string cheese, which you saw, and some cheesy mashed potatoes with pureed veggies. Both were a big hit! Lewis makes some pretty funny faces when he gets a mouthful, but he always erupts in smiles.

This is going to be fun. Messy! But fun.

We accepted an offer on our house on Friday evening. After our realtor got the word out we had a sneak showing for a pocket listing, and 3 of the 4 couples that came through made offers. All of them were above what we planned to list for.

Obviously, we were thrilled. None of the pain of going on the market and having to be out of the house and keep it perfect for showings. Out of the 3 offers we got, we went with the cash offer, because then we wouldn’t have to worry about an appraisal coming in lower than the agreed upon price. The buyer also said we did not need to do any repairs after the inspection. It seemed very clean and easy to us.

We still need to finish some things up around here before we close. But we’re nearly done already. Today we fixed the light fixture in the living room and painted the back stairwell and back door. Next weekend Kyle will haul away the debris in the backyard and finish up the bathroom. Then we’ll be done!

Because the sale is a cash deal, we have a very quick close. We’ll be moving out by the 19th of October and temporarily moving into Kyle’s mom’s house until we can find a new house. It’ll be pretty tight living there, but it will be worth the brief discomfort in the end, we’re sure.

We did go to a couple open houses today, and we were supposed to go to another showing as well. The other showing accepted an offer before we could go, and the open house home we loved had accepted an offer before they even had the open house. So on day one of hunting, we’ve already lost out on 2 houses. This market is insane!

The open house home that we were planning to make an offer on said they’d consider us as a back up offer. So tomorrow we’ll get all the paperwork in order and submit an offer for the back up position. It is a very long shot, but we love that house so we figured we had to try or we’d kick ourselves forever.

We anticipate a long journey to find our next house. We’ll probably fall in love with many houses and lose out on all of them before one finally sticks. But we’re mentally prepared and will be patient. We are confident that the perfect place will come to us eventually.

Woke up to Lewis’ happy noises for his 3am feeding, and although I’m tired and drippy still, I think I am significantly improved over yesterday. I don’t feel like death on a stick anymore.

I think I’m improving due to some good sleep and some Tom Yum soup. Tom Yum is my favorite soup for sick days, so I picked some up for lunch yesterday and there was enough that I was able to eat it for dinner too. It is hot and spicy and does wonders for a cold.

And Lewis took a 2 hr nap yesterday afternoon, which I took full advantage of and got an hour nap in myself. Plus my first sleeping shift tonight. I’m on my way back to normalcy!

Good thing Lewis is good at entertaining himself. I’m so beat down with this cold that I can’t do anything. It has come complete with a fever, so my whole body hurts.

After a 60+ hr work week, selling our house (yes, we accepted an offer! More on that later), and taking care of a sick baby, I think I was already so run down that I was an easy target for this stupid cold. Stretched too thin.

Oh… and I have to work for a few hours today too.

I caught Lewis’ cold. I knew I would. It was just a matter of time. How on earth he remained so cheerful while feeling like this will stay a mystery to me. I’m quite tired and very grumpy. But unable to sleep due to the sinus pain and dripping nose. Oh…and because Lewis keeps waking up. There’s that too. 😛

Today I drove home from daycare with the cooler full of bottles on top of my car.

After 3 trips back and forth from daycare trying to find the cooler full of bottles on the side of the road, I found it down the street from our house.

A symptom of the exhaustion of working mommy-hood. I am not nailing it this week.

This has been one of the craziest weeks of my life. I’m very, very exhausted. Please see the cliff-notes below.

• We fell into some turbulence with our big project at work, which resulted in everyone working late into the night every evening this week so far. We are back on top of things now, so tonight should be calmer. But the experience highlighted how difficult it truly is to be a working mom. My team members do not have children, so they worked until midnight 3 days in a row, and then got up and came in to work again at 6 am. I had to keep leaving to take care of the kiddo. As the leader, I feel like I should be the one to work the hardest, but I wasn’t able to do that. And I felt awful. I couldn’t give 100% to my job, and I couldn’t even give 50% to my son. It feels so unfair to him to be working from my phone while I’m “playing” with him or feeding him. And it felt equally unfair to my team that I wasn’t pulling all-nighters with them. But I’m only one person… and I can’t do everything, it turns out.
• As I mentioned, Lewis has another cold. This seems to be the worst one yet. I’m surprised they even let me leave him at daycare this morning.
• We had some pocket-viewings today of our house. Our realtor knew of some other realtors with clients who were looking in our area, and they came to take a sneak peek today before we list. 3 of the 4 buyers are seriously considering making offers. This is all very exciting, but nothing is in stone yet. Oh… and getting the house tidied up and ready to show (big projects excluded – those are still in progress) was a real bear while I was working basically around the clock. But we did it.

I guess the moral of the story is: when it rains, it pours. Sick baby, house preparations, and work insanity all at once. We’re not the type of people who just glide through life, that’s for sure. Always moving and shaking!

We have a sick baby on our hands again, my friends.

Monster cold.

And because of the snot sucking, I’m looking forward to getting it myself.

At least Lewis is still cheerful as always.

Neverending Monday. I am currently working via iPhone while feeding Lewis and rocking him to sleep. There aren’t enough Carolyns to do it all.

Tonight Lewis bit my nipple while I was feeding him. So I stopped feeding him.

And then he was very angry.

Actions have consequences, kiddo.

We’re busy bees today. Already we’ve knocked a half dozen items off our house prep list!

I’m currently on break because kiddo needs to eat and go down for a nap. When he is asleep I’m going to rock and roll again.

Kyle has been going nonstop. This whole experience is highlighting how he feels about this house. He hated it here so much that he wouldn’t work on it. It didn’t feel like it was worth his time, putting a bunch of effort into making it nicer when he knew he still wouldn’t like it.

But now that the work means we’ll get out of here, he is all about it! So together, we’re making a ton of progress and getting very excited. It’s pretty fantastic.

This little family is rockin’ and rollin’.

We’re harmoniously united in the same goal – movin’ on up. And to that end, we now have a planted, raked and watered yard. Lawn should be coming up in a jiffy.

We also turned our to-do list into a timeline.We’re knocking out most of it this weekend, and then we’ll tackle some of the bigger tasks the following two. House will be on the market around the 5th of October.

Best part of house prep so far? When Kyle was baby-wearing while we were spreading the grass seed, he said to me, “How did you handle being pregnant? My back is killing me and it has only been 5 minutes!”

Yes, Lewis is much bigger now. But I’d argue wearing him now is about the same as being 9 months pregnant with him, since you have so much more in there than just the 8 lb baby. So funny that Kyle got a taste of it. He was always kind and as understanding as he could be when I was pregnant… but I think he had an eye opening experience today. And I got a good laugh.

Kyle and I have decided to take a risk and list our house for sale. We are completely done with living where we are, and it is time to move on.

Why is this a risk?

1. Financially, we are only 90% positive that we can make it work. Financial risks when you have children are 190% more terrifying than gambles without children.
2. We have no idea where we want to move to. Anywhere would be better than where we are. But we want to love the neighborhood even if the house itself isn’t a forever-home because we don’t want to uproot children from friends and schools if we need to upgrade the house again at a later date.
3. We have to get the house ready really really really fast if we want to get it on the market in time for it to sell before the holidays. We’ve really missed the height of real estate season.

I’m both excited and totally losing my mind over this decision. As a type-A planner, I do not like not knowing what the plan is. Taking gambles on our finances and listing our house without a definite idea of where we’re going to move are not things I would typically do.

This could either be the best decision we ever make for our family, or it could be a big fat flop. If the gamble pays off, we’ll end up in a neighborhood we can stay in forever, providing stability for our kids.

If it doesn’t work out and we bite off more than we can chew, or end up choosing the wrong place for our family, we could end up taking a financial hit or have to uproot our kids anyway.

The vision of the best-case-scenario excites me beyond words. Providing a stable, happy home is our ultimate goal for our babies. I just so
badly want to nail this.

But I feel completely lost without a clear
plan. Kyle’s enthusiasm and confidence are bolstering me, and having a great safety net of family is comforting both of us. I’m attempting to remain calm as I go against my natural inclinations, letting go of having a perfectly laid out plan, and latching onto Kyle as we take this leap of faith.

Sweet lord. Wish me luck. I can already feel my body temperature rising from the stress.

Fussbox made another appearance tonight. He is showing up frequently lately. I keep suspecting teething, but I keep being wrong. Eventually, however, I will be right. Maybe this is that time?

Anyway… naps were a mess today. Reminiscent of last night’s sleep. So he could have just been fussy because he was super tired. Hard to say.

We did manage to get a few things done in spite of Lewis’ strange day. Laundry and dishes were a must, but the highlights started in the afternoon when we went shopping for some new clothes.

Lewis needed to stock up in 12 month size since we’re less than 2 lbs away from growing out of our current wardrobe and the next size is seriously lacking in the winter-preparedness category. Grammy was especially helpful in the jammies arena, where we started the day with zero and ended up with 5 sets. Woohoo!

We also made a trip to the fabric store to get fabric for a LION QUILT for Lewis. Grammy is going to make it for him since it is a little out of my league skills-wise. I can’t wait. It hasn’t even been started and it is already my favorite.

The evening was capped by Mexican food for dinner, brought home by Kyle and his dad after a round of golf. And then Lewis got his first bath all week. We’ve been so busy that we neglected bath time. Clean baby is back!

Productive day. Now mama needs some sleep!

Kiddo finally did go back to sleep after an hour and a half of mommy rocking him and singing a lullaby on repeat.

I emailed Kyle about the saga of last night so he’d be aware when he woke up.

It worked. When Lewis woke up at 7:30, I didn’t even need to ask. Kyle was already up, had read the email, and went in to Lewis. And now it is almost 8 and I’m still in bed.

It won’t last forever since eventually the kid has gotta eat. But I am so grateful to just get to lay here for a bit.

Wonderful, sweet husband.

Lewis has woken up every hour for the last 4 hours. Not to eat, but because he can’t breathe through his nose and he is very very angry about it. I can only suck out so much snot.

I wish I could do more for him. Him sleeping better would be good for both of us. I’m so exhausted.

UPDATE: He seems to have given up on sleeping altogether. His yawns indicate he is still tired, but apparently it isn’t worth trying to sleep with the stuffy nose. I kinda don’t blame him. But… darn it.

Several exciting things happened yesterday. One of them I’m going to hold onto for another time. But check out the rest!

1. I got my wedding ring back from being resized. A half size bigger really made all the difference. I think I was 26 weeks pregnant the last time I wore it. So lovely to have it back on.

2. I got new glasses and my first ever pair of prescription sunglasses. They’re also polarized, which is new to me as well. Let’s here it for buy-one-get-one deals!

3. Lewis “tried solids” last night. We were at my father-in-law’s house for dinner, and he has a highchair on standby because he’s an awesome grandpa to both Lewis and Lewis’ cousin who is a couple years older. He whipped the highchair out for Lewis to test out, and we figured since he was sitting in it, might as well put some food in front of him. We got him to try some of the cheesy chive mashed potatoes. But just one tiny bite. Then he was done with the experience. It was very cute. And of course Kyle let him play with the bone from his pork chop, because he is excited to have another non-vegetarian in the house soon. 🙂