House Hunting Blues

Three months into the house hunting process, and two months into the house selling process, and I AM SO DONE WITH THIS SHIT.

I'm getting impatient. (Obviously.) We are having very little luck, and it is tremendously frustrating.

At the very beginning of this month, we put in an offer on a house we loved only to have it rejected because we were unwilling to remove our contingency. And, well, come to find out, that was a smart decision on our part, because have we sold our current place? No, we haven't.

In fact, we have not had a single showing in nearly three weeks. Not good. When we first put our place on the market, we were doing well for the first 5 weeks or so--at least one showing a week, and we had an open house as well. We received great feedback from people, but no one willing to put an actual offer on the table. Now, we're feeling a bit of pressure from our realtor to lower our asking price. Although we're not necessarily against that, we are disagreeing over how much. We'd like to lower it about 2.5%, and she would like to lower it about 4-5%. As a result of our disagreement, we haven't lowered it at all.

Honestly, we're not sure what to do. We are heading into April, and supposedly the market is supposed to pick up. Do we lower the price to make our listing appear "fresh" and to try to attract more buyers? Or do we hold tight, assuming that the right buyer will come along now that "the season" for real estate is upon us?

There's also part of us that doesn't even care if we can't sell our place right now because, well, it's not like we have a place to go. We don't have a new house to move into, so what's the rush? Of course, the other side of that argument is that if the right house for us does pop up onto the market, we would be in much better shape to make an "attractive" offer on it if we were already under contract on our current place.

This is such a balancing act and a waiting game. I hate it.

Last weekend, we looked at a house that we weren't expecting to like that much. It needed A LOT of work, and it was evident in the pictures. Even more evident as we walked through it. It was a house built in the 1960s, and I'm not kidding when I say that the sellers have lived in the house and HAVE NOT UPDATED A SINGLE THING. Kitchen? Needed to be gutted. Bathrooms? Needed to be gutted. All interior and exterior doors needed replacing. It needed new carpeting in the family room, stairs, and upstairs hallway. The entire house needed to be freshly painted. In other words, this was so totally the opposite of what we said we wanted when we set out on our house hunt.

But, you know, somehow, we fell in love with it. We fell in love with the idea of being able to choose everything according to our taste. Being able to make everything fresh and bright and brand new. Being able to buy more house for the money. We weren't CRAZY in love with the place, because we knew it was going to cost a lot of money to do all of these things. But we were seriously considering our options. We were researching costs for renovations and materials we would need. We figured if we could get the house for a good price (which, by our definition, was a good chunk below asking price), it would be worth buying. So, we had an appointment to return to the house with our parents to get their opinions.

And just 10 minutes before I was supposed to leave work to go to the appointment, our realtor called and said that the sellers of the house were dealing with an offer they had received earlier that afternoon. That the offer was reasonable and that the sellers were working with it.

We weren't willing to compete with someone else for the house. We had a price that we were willing to pay for it, and we knew that we would have to be willing to pay more. And we weren't.

So we let the house go.

And now we are back at square one. Again.

Unfortunately, there has not been a single new listing (meeting our criteria) that has popped up this week. Isn't the market supposed to be picking up? That's what everyone keeps telling us, but we have yet to see this big "boom" in listings.

Believe me, we are waiting.

Impatiently.

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Flicks

We've never been huge movie watchers, but we see most of the "hit" stuff... once it's a rental, that is. We very rarely go to the theater. In fact, I think the last movie we saw at the theater was on 1/1/10 (it was Sherlock Holmes). So, yeah, it's been a while. I don't know--I guess we would rather curl up on our own couch under some blankets with glasses of wine or bottles of beer, with snacks readily available in our kitchen cupboards. That's just how we roll. And it also saves us mucho dinero, so {shrug} WIN-WIN.

A few years ago, we had Blockbuster Online for several months, but we came to realize that we normally didn't watch enough movies to make the subscription worth having, so we cancelled it. We have a Blockbuster within walking distance of our house, so it was never an issue. In the mood for a movie? We'd go pick one up. In the spring/summer/fall, when the weather was favorable, it was especially nice because we'd actually walk over there. We would even take Tessa with us, and the Blockbuster employees were always cool about us bringing her inside with us (we carried her, of course).

Back around Christmas time, I really wanted to watch Season 1 of Modern Family so I could catch up. Unfortunately, our local Blockbuster stores didn't carry it (why? I have no idea), but we discovered that if we signed up for a free trial of Netflix, we could rent it through there. So we did, but we soon let our trial expire, again thinking that we don't watch enough movies to make it worth it.

Oddly enough, a few weeks later, we were driving by our Blockbuster when we saw a huge banner hanging across the front: STORE CLOSING.

Well, damn.

After a few days of debate, we went ahead and signed up for Netflix. Now, we have a subscription and we are doing everything we can to watch more movies. Of course, having the instant streaming is pretty awesome, though I do wish they had more of a selection available (especially more recent stuff). We're in our first month of the subscription and we have already watched enough movies to compensate for the fee. And although we have plenty of things in our Bluray queue, I would love to have recommendations for things to put in our instant queue. Older stuff that maybe we haven't seen or should see again.

We've browsed, but for those of you who have Netflix, what have been your favorite instant movies? Anything obscure that ended up being good? Any old movies that you've rediscovered?

And while we're at it, let's just give recommendations for recent movies as well. What have you seen? What have you loved?

Annnnnd... GO! :)

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Jazz Hands

At a family dinner this past weekend, Hunter sure put on a show. The kid had all of these special dance moves, knew exactly when certain parts were coming in the song, and even ended with a spectacular display of jazz hands. So, we did what any family would do--

We made him do it three times in a row.

His first rendition was by far the best one, and sadly, we didn't capture it on camera. But all three versions were some form of HILARIOUS.

As an aside... Hunter's parents are having trouble finding anything "Blue's Clues" for him, since this show is considered "old." Has anyone seen anything out and about? Hunter's birthday is coming up, after all. :)

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Storytime with Daddy

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Raspberries

One day last week, I picked up Nora from daycare, and as I was putting her into her car seat, she started blowing raspberries at me. I laughed and said, "Whoa! That's new!" Our daycare provider told me that she had picked it up from Amelia, her daycare buddy (who is just two weeks younger than Nora). She said they were blowing raspberries at each other. How cute is that?

Now, she does it all the time, at random times. We try to get her to do it on demand but it rarely happens. She usually reserves it for 1) other kids and 2) Tessa. She loves to coo and blow raspberries at Tessa.

I happened to catch a couple seconds of her on video. I know they're not "real" raspberries--with the tongue sticking out--but it's still hilarious. Except when she does it with food in her mouth. That's just messy.

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Who needs toys?

Nora has tags on toys. Tags are the coolest.

And yummiest.

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The Spider Chronicles

After my last post, did y'all think the story was over?

*I* thought the story was over. Or, I was trying really hard to believe that it was. I convinced myself that the spider MUST have exited the car the same way it came in, because every time I got in there, it was nowhere to be found. Because, trust me, I checked. Being the paranoid freak that I am, I've been quickly canvasing the car before I enter it.

No signs of Mr. Spider.

Well, I shouldn't say NO signs. Because, well... there kind of were. When I got into my car yesterday morning, the sun was shining brightly, and I could see cob webs on my dashboard. Pretty disconcerting, but I figured Mr. Spider could've easily planted those before I spotted him on Wednesday morning. The weather on Wednesday was overcast and dark, so cob webs wouldn't have been as easily visible. I kept trying to convince myself that they were old cob webs, but a little nagging feeling kept saying, "But what if they're new??"

Then, last night, I got into my car to drive home and I saw some small cob webs on my driver side door. I'll admit again to being a bit freaked out about it, but again I thought, "They could've been there all along. I just didn't see them before." I cleared out all of the cob webs before exiting my car for the evening, knowing that if I saw cob webs in the morning, they would be fresh ones.

This morning, I did my usual inspection of the roof, the dashboard, and my seat before getting into the car. When I pulled out of the garage and into the bright sunshine, I took a quick look at my dashboard and driver side door, and didn't notice any new cob webs. I let my guard down a little, relaxing a bit... although I've never been 100% comfortable in my car since the incident on Wednesday morning.

As I got to the end of my street, the sun was shining directly into my face, so I reached up, pulled down my sun visor and...

OH MY GOD HELP ME I WAS STARING AT THE BIG BLACK DISGUSTING SPIDER, ONLY SIX INCHES FROM MY FACE.

That little bastard was clinging to the sun visor. And--AND!!!--had clearly been living in my car for the past two days. I will pause for a moment while the shivers travel down your spines. Because, EWWWWW.

Anyway, you better believe I immediately hit the brakes, threw the car into park, and got my ass out of there. I even left my poor, defenseless baby in the back seat, but she was happily chilling out and didn't know about the killer spider in the front seat and frankly, hasn't had an opportunity or the life experience to develop a fear of spiders yet so it doesn't make me a bad mom, right? Right. *deep breath*

As I stood beside the car, with the driver door open, I started to come up with a plan to rid myself of this spider, once and for all. Tissues? No. NO, because then I would actually have to get close enough to TOUCH the thing. Shoe? No, because then I would have to smash it and it would either scamper away or fall onto my steering wheel or seat. NO. I opened the door to the back seat and spotted my snow brush. Michael had actually questioned why I hadn't used my snow brush to kill it on Wednesday morning, but at that time, my snow brush had been in my trunk, so--out of sight, out of mind. But now it was in my back seat and it was the perfect solution because it has a long handle and I did not need to get closer than a few feet from that nasty, big, black, disgusting spider.

I took one swipe at the spider to attempt to "sweep" it right out onto the ground but really only managed to knock him off of the visor. To my horror, he was now HANGING by his disgusting little web. After taking a deep breath, I held the snow brush out and let him crawl onto it, and once he was on it, I whipped the snow brush around and flung that bastard onto the pavement.

THE SPIDER WAS OFFICIALLY EVICTED FROM MY CAR.

Mission accomplished, but I found afterward that I was seriously trembling! My knees were shaking, people. I am such a freakin' wuss. I'm actually ashamed of myself.

I wish I could tell you that I can now ride in comfort, but I'm still a little freaked out by the whole thing. It's going to take some time to get over the trauma.

And I sure as hell hope he didn't leave behind any friends or babies.

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Arachnophobia

This morning was a normal morning. I left the house, dropped Nora off at daycare, and was making my merry way to work. (Well, I was as merry as one can be when heading into a full day of work on a Wednesday morning. You know.)

I was about three quarters of a mile from my office when, out of nowhere, something moving across my dashboard caught my eye.

It was a big, BLACK, disgusting SPIDER.

OK, so it wasn't so much big as it was disgusting. Totally disgusting. But, despite its overall petite size, it was... thick. Crunchy, if you will. It had a thick black body and thick black legs. In other words, it wasn't your normal, everyday, wimpy ol' spider.

As it walked across my dashboard, coming uncomfortably close to me and then moving back toward the windshield (repeatedly. The thing did this multiple times, as if to taunt me), I tried my best to keep my eyes on the road. I was very close to work, so my main goal was just to get myself in the parking lot without hitting anyone or anything.

Meanwhile, I literally started shaking from the heebie jeebies. That's how gross this thing was... it gave me goosebumps. And, while I fully admit to being a huge baby when it comes to dealing with insects, I'm not usually THAT big of a baby. This thing was just particularly nasty; it was like a miniature version of a tarantula!

Upon throwing my car into park, I quickly shut off the engine and jumped out of my car, keeping my eyes on the spider at all times. I frantically searched my car for something, ANYTHING with which I could squash this thing. Finding nothing appropriate, I started scanning the parking lot. Not for tools of death, but for MEN. I just needed A MAN. Any man from my office would do. However, as luck would have it, the parking lot was completely void of human life.

MOTHER EFFER.

By this time, the spider had curled into a little ball of ewww and seemed to be hibernating in the tiny corner between my dashboard and windshield. After observing him for what seemed like a couple of minutes and seeing no movement, I made the decision to run into my office for reinforcements.

My teammate (and cubicle neighbor) was my chosen rescuer. Poor guy. He was a good sport and, after grabbing half a roll of paper towels from the kitchen, immediately put on his coat and followed me out into the snow to take care of the situation.

Imagine my horror when we arrived at my car to find that THE SPIDER WAS GONE.

OHHH.EM.GEEEE.

That little bastard was nowhere to be found.

So, the bottom line: That disgusting creature lives to see another day, and me? Well, I'm pretty sure I will never be able to drive my car again. Never ever.

*shudder*

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Skydivin'

Nora may have the position down, but she better not be planning on jumping out of planes any time soon. Or, you know, EVER.

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Blogger --> Wordpress?

I have been blogging at Blogger for almost four years, and well... change is hard, y'all.

Still, I am seriously contemplating making the leap from Blogger to Wordpress. There are a few reasons, but the biggest one is the comment system. I freaking HATE the Blogger comment system. I know there are options to add a comment plug-in (like Disqus), but I'm not 100% in love with those options.

Meanwhile, I am in the beginning stages of a blog redesign (to be done by a professional this time; I can't commit the time needed in order to do it!), so if I am going to make the jump, now is the time to do it.

Has anyone made the move before? If so, are you glad you did it?
Does anyone have any good reasons NOT to do it?

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Oreo Ice Cream Cake

I first discovered this Oreo ice cream cake when Michael and I were still in college. I made it for him for his birthday during the first year we were together. Since then, I've made it at least another time or two, which is not nearly enough times, frankly.

I was feeling the need to dig this one out of the archives, so I made it to take over to my in-laws' this weekend.

A layer of crushed Oreos on the bottom makes the "crust," and a layer of ice cream (in this case, vanilla, but it could easily be jazzed up with a fancier flavor, if you so choose) gives this cold treat its name. Duh. A thin layer of chocolate syrup (could also be substituted by caramel sauce or butterscotch... holy hell that sounds good) separates the ice cream from the Cool Whip, which serves as the topping. Sprinkle some additional crushed Oreos at the finish, and you have yourself an easy, delicious dessert.

Once in the freezer, this has the tendency to disappear VERY quickly. You've been warned.

I have no idea where I originally got the recipe, as it was about 8 years ago. But here is a similar one.

Oreo Ice Cream Cake
(Source: Unknown)

Ingredients:
- 2 (8 oz.) containers Cool Whip, softened
- 1 (1/2 gallon) container of vanilla ice cream, softened
- Chocolate syrup
- 1 package Oreo cookies
- 2 tbsp. melted butter

Directions:
1. Crush Oreos. (You can crush them in a bowl or zip-loc bag using your hands or something heavy, or run them through your food processor.) Reserve 1/2 cup Oreo crumbles, and set aside for later. In the bowl of crushed Oreos, add melted butter and mix.

2. Spread Oreo and butter mixture into the bottom of a 9 x 13" pan, pressing firmly to form a crust.

3. Spoon vanilla ice cream on top of Oreo crust, spreading evenly.

4. Drizzle a thin layer of chocolate syrup on top of the ice cream.

5. Spread Cool Whip on top of the cake. Top with reserved Oreo crumbles.

6. Freeze overnight for best results. Remove from the freezer about 10-15 minutes prior to serving.

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Separation

What started off as a little "stranger danger" has seemingly escalated into full-blown separation anxiety. Well, at least at bedtime.

This week, Nora suddenly changed from being the type of baby we could put to bed wide awake, to the baby who's head will shoot up as soon as it hits the mattress, and who will scream bloody murder as soon as we turn our backs to walk out of the nursery door. As soon as we go back in, she's fine. As soon as we turn around to walk out again, screaming. Not just crying, SCREAMING.

You wouldn't guess that this sweet little face could scream like that, but she can. It's the "OH.MY.GOSH HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!" scream. It's heartbreaking.

We've tried different methods every night. First, we tried to do "modified" cry-it-out, where we let her cry for a few minutes, go in, shush-pat, and then walk back out. Previous to this separation anxiety stuff, if we ever had a night where she cried (rare), this is what we would do, and we were very successful with it. Now? Not so much. Two hours later, I had gone in at least a dozen times (had even picked her up and tried to rock her to sleep, but she woke up as soon as she was back in her crib), and she was still awake and crying whenever we were not in the room. Michael ended up patting her back until she fell asleep, and at that point she was finally out for the night.

The second night, I couldn't take anymore crying, so I stayed in there with her, patting/rubbing her back until she was sleeping. At one point, I was just sitting there, and that was apparently fine with her, too. Once she was out, I was able to sneak out of the room and all was fine.

Third night? She was really tired, so she actually went down really easily. But don't you worry--she still made sure to lift her head up to make sure I wasn't going anywhere before closing her eyes for the night.

Now, we are back to the SCREAM-YOUR-HEART-OUT fest. I'm sort of at a loss for what to do. I keep reading that the fear of separation is real, to not ignore it--and we don't. We go in there and comfort her. But she doesn't STAY comforted. And she really doesn't care to be rocked to sleep. It happens every once in a while that she'll fall dead asleep on me, but usually, she rests her head but she wriggles around like she wants to be put down so she can stretch out. It's like she can't get 100% comfortable. Patting her back to sleep doesn't always work, either. A lot of times it's a distraction and she keeps lifting her head to look at us.

*sigh*

I hope this phase is a short one! It's just too sad. :(

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Luck O' The Irish

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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Peanut

Everyone describes small babies as "peanuts." I don't know why, but it's easily the most-used word to describe Nora since the day she was born. We hear it from everyone: "What a peanut!" And we use it ourselves, too. I just think it's kind of interesting when you step back and think about it. Where did that originate?

Anyway...

Our peanut continues to be a peanut. She had her six-month well-baby pediatrician's appointment today, and she weighs in at 13 lbs., 3 oz. (less than 10%); she is 25 inches long (25%); and I don't know her head measurement exactly, but it was 40%. Despite the differences in the percentiles, she's pretty well-proportioned. And despite being somewhat teeny, she has been declared perfectly healthy.

We practiced sitting up this weekend. She can do it for a minute or so if we balance her in exactly the right way. :) I was a little worried she might be a bit behind with this, but our pediatrician said it's more common to have a six-month-old baby who cannot sit up than it is to have one that can. That was enough to put this mama at ease.

And, in our doctor's words, she's "not even close" to teething. I guess I am totally imagining things! I guess it'll be a little while before I get to tell you all about that amber teething necklace she's wearing in the above picture--I have to know whether it works first, and she needs some teeth for that! Hmph. ;)

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The Great Poppy & The Boy Cousins

Brendan, Logan, and Nora are awfully fond of their great-grandfather, Michael's poppy. We just had to get a pic of him with his three great-grandchildren at Logan's 2nd birthday party on Saturday.

(Brendan was totally fascinated by Nora's ponytail.)

They *LOVE* her. Nora is a very lucky girl to have all these big boy cousins to look after her! :)

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Six Months Old

Dear Nora,

Happy Half-Birthday, my little one! You are six months old today.

Time is flying. All parents say that when it comes to raising their kids, but it’s just so… true. I can’t believe it was six months ago that you were born (and I’d like you to know that my tailbone is FINALLY completely healed, thankyouverymuch).

The word of the month is ATTITUDE. You’ve got one. I have no idea where you would get that from, as your dad is a pretty mellow guy, and it’s not like I have an attitude about anything. Nope. Not me.

Anyway, I’ve always described you as a laidback and sweet baby, and it’s not that I’ve been a liar. But I guess you’ve always liked to do certain things your way, and it’s become very obvious in certain situations this month. On the weeknights, when we get home from work and daycare, you really like to be held. If we put you down, WATCH OUT. You scream your little head off. And while it’s never pleasant to hear you cry, we can’t help but laugh a little bit, because the scream is so clearly a pissed off scream. You’re not in distress. You’re not in pain. You are simply saying, “HEY! I DO NOT LIKE THIS ARRANGEMENT!! PICK ME UP!! PICK ME UP NOW!!!!” This is made even clearer because of the way you are able to turn it on and off. If we start to walk toward you, you immediately stop crying. If you become distracted by a toy, you immediately stop crying. You are such a stinker.

Overall, you’ve continued to be a good sleeper this month, but you’ve changed things up a little. Sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night or very early morning just to “talk” to yourself. Other times you cry until we come in and put your pacifier back in and help you turn back onto your stomach. If it happens, it’s usually only once a night, so still, we cannot complain one bit. When you wake up in the mornings, you’ll usually coo and “play” happily in your crib for quite some time before we come to get you.

The biggest milestone this month has been FOOD! You’ve started solids. Your pediatrician recommended that we start you on a little baby cereal sometime between five and six months old. At first, we tried to give you a little oatmeal, but you were not thrilled with it. After a few tries, I thought maybe you would enjoy something with a little more flavor, so we began to mix in some homemade baby foods—sweet potatoes, pears, or bananas. We never pushed you; we were just consistent, offering you a little food every night. Eventually, you started taking bites—sweet potatoes were your initial favorite. Bananas were OK, and with pears, you would make a hilarious “tart” face. But at your best, you would still only take maybe 5-6 bites.

Then, last weekend, it all “clicked” for you. Starting with breakfast on Saturday morning (bananas with oatmeal), you polished off the whole bowl. You’ve been a champion eater ever since. Now, you not only love sweet potatoes, but you seem to love pears, bananas, and butternut squash, too. You’ve also eaten avocado, but while you’ll finish it, you don’t seem to enjoy it as much as the others. I can’t wait to make other foods for you to try. It has been a new adventure!

These days, it is easy to see when you are excited. You wave your arms wildly, kick your legs, and coo or squeal. Quite simply, it is adorable. You have this thing you do with your right arm in particular; you lock it at the elbow so it is perfectly straight, and you move it up and down repeatedly. It is so funny to watch you gain control of all of your movements. You grab things with purpose. You rub your eyes when you are tired.

Daddy and I swear that you give us open-mouth kisses. You have to be in the right mood, but we’ll say, “Nora, give me a kiss!” and pucker up, and you lean in and put your mouth on our puckered lips. We LOVE this and cannot wait until you do it “for real.”

At daycare, you and your playmate, Amelia (she is your age—just a few weeks younger) have discovered each other. Mary says that you stare at each other and interact. You grab at each other, touch each other. She says it is just the cutest thing. I’m so glad that you’ll have someone to grow up with at daycare. Knowing that you’ll get to share your life with a little “friend” makes it just a tiny bit easier to leave you there every day.

We won’t know what you weigh until Monday, but I would guess you’re maybe around 13 lbs.? You are wearing 3-6 months clothes, most of which are still big on you. In fact, I just packed up your 0-3 month stuff this month, because up until a few weeks ago, you were actually still able to wear most of them. We went shopping for some spring/summer clothing for you, and it was difficult to decide which size you would be wearing. It’s hard to imagine you’ll ever even fit into the 6-9 month stuff, but I know you will.

I have a feeling you are going to sprout your first tooth this month, but it’s just a guess. It looks to me like your lower gums are getting a little bit white in color, like your teeth are starting to push to the surface. You are also chewing on things and like to put everything in your mouth, and drooling, although it’s not at the point where it’s excessive. I guess only time will tell!

Just when we think you couldn’t possibly get more fun, you do. So I guess that means that with month #7, we’re in for the best one yet!

I love you every minute of every day.

XOXO
Mommy

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Organic Foods: Difficult to Swallow

I've never been a big "believer" in organic foods.

In reading about them, I kept turning my back on organic for a few reasons:

1) It's always been my understanding that the word "organic" is largely unregulated, meaning that just about anyone can choose to put it on their packaging. It's a "buzz word"--a trend--that people are buying into. Therefore, food manufacturers and suppliers are all trying to compete in this market, and who knows what kind of shenanigans they're pulling in order to do so.

2) Because of the whole unregulated factor, I'm distrustful. How do you really know something is organic? For instance, when I'm in my grocery store, and I see organic pears, they look the same as regular pears. They have an organic sticker on them, but how do I really know? Someone could just be slapping an organic sticker on a piece of regular ol' fruit and charging me a premium for it. I mean, seriously. How do you know?

3) The cost. For crying out loud, THE COST. A regular gallon of milk = $1.89. An organic gallon of milk = $5.99. A quart of regular strawberries (in season) = $1.50. A quart of organic strawberries (in season) = $5.99. I really don't know what else to say about that, except OUCH.

4) Related to the cost, it's like I almost can't bring myself to buy organic because I'm just against the principle of the whole thing. If organic farming is that much better for all of us, WHY ISN'T IT THE STANDARD? If that's truly the case, don't even offer me tainted, hormone-laced milk for $1.89. Honestly. And I know we're in America and it's all about being able to make our own choices, but DAMN. If we don't make it cheaper for people to eat healthy in this country, we are never going to combat the issues we have with our healthcare system. Period.

I will totally admit to not being very educated on this subject. That's kind of the point of this post. I've willingly kept myself in the dark about a lot of this stuff, because truthfully, there is part of me that just doesn't even want to know. To date, I have refused to watch Food Inc. because LA-LA-LA-LA! I'd rather stay here in my little bubble where I do not have to think about how the "healthy" food I'm eating is actually poisoning me.

So, as I said, I've never been a big believer in organics.

But then I had Nora.

And now I'm terrified of hormones and pesticides and antibiotics in food. I guess it's the parental line of thinking that is kicking in--I want the best for my baby. I want her to be healthy. I don't want her to start puberty at the age of 8. I'm interested in knowing why there seems to be this huge increase in the prevalence of cancer, and I want to do my part to FIX it.

Lately, I've found myself in the organic sections at the grocery store. I've found myself prioritizing, figuring out which organic things we can afford, and which we'll have to do without. I've been reading up on the "Dirty Dozen" and "Clean 15." I've been talking to my coworker (a fellow mommy) about the types of organic snack foods she feeds her kids.

Have I made a complete lifestyle change? No. At least not yet. Because I'm still struggling to see how it will be possible with the sky-high prices of organic foods. But I'm interested to check out our local farmer's markets this summer to see what kind of organic treasures we can uncover.

What say you, readers? Are organics a must in your house, or do you still believe it's all hype? Does anyone have any great resources they would recommend for me (and others) to get better educated on the subject?

P.S. For those who read blogs through a reader of some sort, you are probably seeing this post show up twice. Sorry about that, but I was having some problems with my blog feed. I deleted the duplicate post, so if you try to click through to the blog using the second link, it will likely take you to a page that says "Page Not Found." However, if you try the second link, you should be able to click through like normal. I apologize for any inconvenience.

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Baby's First Ponytail

Short on the sides + long on the top = CRAZY CUTENESS.

As an added bonus, when we take the ponytail out at night, it looks like this:

She looks like Ace Ventura.

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Smooches

We had dinner with my family tonight, and Hunter was (as always) obsessed with Nora. The kid loves babies; it's adorable. He points to her eyes and says "eye!" and points to her pacifier and says "baby binky!" and pinches her little nose between his thumb and forefinger and says "honk honk!" It's too cute.

He also doles out a healthy number of smooches, complete with long, drawn-out "MWAAAAH!" sounds.

For some of the kisses, he even put his hands on the sides of her face to pull her toward him. *LOVE*

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Onto the Next

Or something.

We didn't get the house.

As some of you may have seen on Twitter, we put in an offer on Tuesday. After much debate, we decided to go in with a contingent offer at almost full list price. Although we qualify to be able to carry mortgages on both our current home and a new one, we are not keen on the idea of having to pay two at the same time. We can do it, we just don't want to do it. Still, the seller's realtor hinted that they would not be happy with a contingent offer, so we considered going in noncontingent... but ultimately just couldn't do it. As much as we love the house, it was just not worth the risk right now.

As we discussed with each other and our realtor, we all figured that it didn't make any sense for the seller to ignore our contingent offer. They don't have any other offers on the table right now, so why not look at and deal with a contingency? Even if they accept it, they still have the right to continue to market the house to noncontingent buyers, and should they receive a noncontingent offer during our contingency period, they have a right to "bump" our offer (at which time we would also have the right to remove our contingency). Seems like a win-win situation for them, right?

Well, it would be for sellers with a brain. Apparently, this seller isn't one of those.

Less than an hour after submitting our offer, we received word that they had rejected it. "They loved everything about it," we were told. "Except the contingency." The sellers said that they couldn't emotionally handle a contingent offer. I guess that's their prerogative, but...

Whatever.

We were really disappointed. Our realtor was downright pissed. She says that they are ignoring the whole purpose of the contingency system, and she thinks that their realtor is being irresponsible with her advice to her sellers.

Now, as much as it pains us to do so, we are attempting to move on. We've kept our eyes on the listings, and we actually went to see another house yesterday, but we found ourselves comparing it to the one that we lost. It's hard to believe that anything will ever pop up that was as good a deal and in as good condition as that one was. It's a real bummer.

Of course, we could change our minds and go back to them with a noncontingent offer and still get the house. But, although it is very likely that we WILL sell our current home before we would be in a situation in which we have to pay two mortgages, it's a very hard pill to swallow. Right now, our only glimmer of hope is that perhaps we will get someone in here that will love our place and we'll get a nice noncontingent offer of our own that will put us in a position to be able to go back and make a (substantially less risky) noncontingent offer on the house WE want--but obviously, all of this would need to happen before someone else puts an offer on the house we want. *sigh* We had a showing yesterday (they won't be making an offer), and we have another scheduled for tomorrow (pleasepleaseplease).

I'm trying to keep the faith that things will work out like they are supposed to, but I'm not going to lie: It's hard.

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