Archives

We just got word on the appraisal from the credit union, and the news is not good. Our house has lost about 10% of it’s value since we bought, which means we are nowhere near 80% equity and will have to pay mortgage insurance if we go ahead with the refinance. We are planning to cash out some of our retirement funds without penalty in order to pay off some of the loan and still maintain 80% equity, so I think we can still do it.

As if that wasn’t enough bad financial news, it looks like Northridge is going to have to lay off 8 more employees in order to stay afloat for the coming year. Some of the 8 include good friends of mine at the company.

All of this would be easier to deal with if Liam hadn’t decided to stop sleeping through the night. He now wakes up regularly around 2am and can only be soothed by watching television. We were hoping to make it until he was 2, but at least now I can catch up on SportsCenter.

Liam had his 15 month well-check today.  Here are the stats:

Weight: 23 lbs. 8 oz. = just below 50th percentile

Height: 31.75 inches = 75th percentile

Head circumference: 19 in. = 75th percentile

The only major hiccup (or highlight depending on how you look at it) is the fact that we’ve been referred to a speech therapist to deal with his feeding issues.  Our doctor said that he’s seen issues like this in the past that have progressed and gotten worse and he feels it’s much better to intervene early and get things back on track before there are any major issues.  We have an appointment on the morning of April 21st so we’ll keep the information about that updated here.  Our doctor also suggested several books on the subject and I’m going to see if the Amazon rebate I found when cleaning out the office the other day is still good and if so, go ahead and get copies.

So we just got a call from our appraiser at 7:40 pm tonight asking to come appraise our house at 2 pm tomorrow afternoon.  He originally wanted to open Liam’s door to look at his room while he’s napping.  I think we finally nixed that idea — I mean, I really want this to happen asap because the suspense is making me crazy and we have all our other projects on hold until we find out if a refinance is possible — but I’ve just spent three days getting Liam back to normal after his refusal to nap during our visit to Athens on Sunday and that’s just not worth it.  I am now freaking out for different reasons because, HELLO, someone is coming to judge my house tomorrow and it’s not exactly in judging shape at the moment…I mean, forget the fact that there still isn’t a baseboard on the wall in the living room that used to be covered in mirrors, and that the entire sliding glass door to the abysmal deck is now exposed because the window treatment fell out of the wall (and we can’t put another one up until we replace the doors which is on hold until we know how much the refinance will cost if we are able to go through with it), and the fact that I’ve been painting the windows in the family room for about two weeks now and I finally scraped one of them this afternoon, but the other one is still a mess so I need to scrape it tonight and somehow vacuum up the mess afterwards without waking Liam, also that our bathroom is a mess, the laundry is all over the house, the office is a total disaster, and there are still centipedes (albeit dead ones) all over the exercise/craft room, additionally that there are logs covering our backyard where the tree fell on our neighbor’s house a year ago, and the fact that the kitchen’s a mess and the bonus room has little bits of stuff all over it and the garage (which was completely emptied and organized a week ago) now has a huge window treatment lying on the floor covering the only space to walk…forget all of that…wait, I can’t…I definitely need chocolate cake and a mug of coffee.  STAT.

ETA:  The guy ended up coming at around 12:20 (after Matt had only been at the office for 45 minutes because he had to wait to vacuum the paint scrapings from the windows downstairs until Liam woke up and Liam decided that this would be a perfect morning to sleep until 10:30) so now it’s all just a waiting game.  Fingers crossed!

My son, who won’t swallow carrots, pea casings, apples, or animal protein of any kind just ate half my bowl of whole wheat penne with pesto, goat cheese, and parmesan.  Of course he did.

We totally forgot about setting an alarm so we could get up and try to register online at 7am this morning, so around 9am I remember and pull up ajc.com and try to register. Of course it says “registration volume higher than normal” and has some stuff on the landing page about how they are working on it. Gee, nobody could have possibly predicted this one. I mean, an extraordinarily popular race that always fills up instantly and has people that want to race but are just unlucky? All that was missing was the PDB delivered to the president.

I hope everyone that was up at 7am was able to register, otherwise I will feel kinda bad. Not bad enough to give up my spot, though.

Maybe we won’t get sick the day of the race this time!

Found while researching baby gates on Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/review/R26XWKLEF30ZIJ/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Fortunately, Liam is not yet a “leaping ferret.”

I made some lentil soup earlier in the week and we’re just now getting around to eating it.  Matt had a bowl for lunch and the result was the following conversation:

Shannon:  How’s the soup?

Matt:  It’s alright.

Shannon:  Well that’s a glowing compliment…What is it that you don’t really like about it?

Matt:  The taste.