16 Weeks

I'm 16 weeks now and even though it feels like a long road ahead with all we need to accomplish before this baby is born the time is flying.  He is apparently the size of an avocado at the moment.

At my 11 week appointment I had blood drawn to do the DNA testing to find out the gender and if the baby had any health issues.  They told me the results would be back in 5-10 days.  On the 9th day (March 14th) I called and they had just gotten the results in.  The wait was agonizing because once we found out we could tell Madison and Jackson and I was so excited to do that.  The results were that he is perfectly healthy and is male.  We told the kids that night.  Jackson was over the moon jumping up and down  yelling "We're having a baby brother!!!!"  Madison was confused I think.  Her reaction was much more reserved but that's normal for her personality anyway.

Chris and I have been having a difficult time deciding where to move.  By this point I would have hoped to already be at least close to moving in to a new house but we've spent so much time pleading our cases that we have made no progress.  Chris wants a nice new house in a neighborhood which in Peabody (and anywhere close to here) is out of our budget so he was hoping to move to a town about 40 minutes away from our families and all of my friends and all of the kids friends in order to find one in our budget.  I want a nice new house in a neighborhood too but my friends and family are WAY more important to me especially where I will now have THREE kids to take care of while he is at work (in Peabody....) all day long.

On January 19th I drove the kids to school in the morning.  I came back home and took the pregnancy test.  When I went to pick them up that afternoon, now knowing we needed a bigger house, there was a for sale sign on one of my favorite houses that I drive by everyday to get to school.  The sign was not there in the morning when I dropped them off.  My heart started racing and as soon as I parked my car I looked up the listing thinking it would never be in our budget because it's so big.  My jaw fell to the ground when I saw the price and that it had 4 bedrooms (It's listed as a 4 bedroom but it's actually 5!) and the pictures looked decent.  I immediately made an appointment to see it and fell in love.  The house is on a main road so Chris said absolutely not.  I spent the next two months daydreaming about the house and being so sad that I would probably never live in it.    Last week Chris and I finally had a long discussion about how unhappy the kids and I would be moving 40 (or more) minutes away and how incredibly happy I would be in the Peabody house.  He shockingly agreed to put an offer in on it!  I felt so much relief and was over the moon happy.  Until then I had no motivation to even do the things to our current house that need to be done to get it on the market.  In less that a week we have cleaned out the basement (with the help of my father), packed up some unnecessary items in the living room and kitchen and kids rooms and have a handy man here doing some odd jobs.  We still have a long list to go but it's all scheduled and is very doable.

We will be putting in an offer hopefully in the next week. The hard part was getting Chris to agree so hopefully the rest of the process goes smoothly!  The kids and all of our friends and family are so happy for us.  Fingers crossed this will be our new home for our new family!