Hope you appreciate this...

...because I could be napping right now! I am soooo pooped. It's been a long day and now I have peace and quiet and time for a nap, but... Thought I'd let y'all know we had a great week. Dax's lungs are still a little wet from all the fluids from his cath last week, but his oxygen needs are remaining low. He's actually able to stay on about .3-.5 now during the day, and .1 to .25 or so at night. That's huge for him! He sounds pretty rattly when he breathes but all in all the lungs are doing well.

He had a pulmonology appointment this morning and it went great. They made no changes and we'll keep on keeping on... They remain happy with what they see!

His girlfriend had her pulmo appointment today, too, so we peeped in on her... She's so cute!

Weight today was 18 lbs 8 oz, and length was 26 3/4 inches. He's continuing to have perfect growth!

We have cardiology and opthamology next week. Will let you know how they turn out as soonas we know.

As far as milestones, Dax continues to improve every week... He's just now figured out how to go from sitting to crawling without crash landing on his forehead first, and he's continuing to work out how to pull up. His PT says one of his biggest hurdles right now is his hip flexion, so we're working hard on staying in a kneeling position and other positions that will help flex his hips and get them moving...

His speech therapist just left a few minutes ago, and she also seems pleased with his progress. He's copying facial expressions better, and we had several minutes today of him (after much build-up) saying "ahhhhhh" to rounds of applause and lots of "yays" from the audience. She feels his speech is not that delayed for his corrected age. :) Big smiles from mama :)

The funniest new thing he is doing is this weird delayed laugh that he does when no one else can figure out what's funny. He'll just be sitting there looking at a toy, then throw his head back (hard enough to lift his feet off the ground) and open his mouth wide, and then just crack up. We've decided he's just a little slow catching jokes, and that somewhere in his mind he's thinking... "Oh, THAT'S what Elmo meant when he told Grover he couldn't find the letter 'M'." He's just so stinking funny.

And I hit video gold yesterday when I found The Sesame Street "Fuzzy Awards" video... Not only do Shep and I like it, Dax will just stare at the television, completely transfixed, for 10-15 minutes at a time. This is a kid who A.) hates sitting, and will only do so if he has something to play with right in front of him, and B.) spends 95% of his waking hours manipulating toys and figuring out how to make them play music or make lights, and then trying to put the music and lights in his mouth. C.) Has the attention span of a... baby. He just stares at the TV in complete fascination and won't even try to move out of sitting position because he's scared he'll miss something... It makes a great babysitter when mom needs to do chores! (Not that I would use the tv as a babysitter. In general. Unless I really need to. Or I'm tired of hearing BINGO.)

As for me, we had Ty's appointment after Dax's today and everything continues to look great. Tyler is officially 2 lbs now!!! What a big baby :) I'll have my glucose test next week to check for gestational diabetes, but I don't anticipate any issues there... I think I'm starting to feel the occasional contraction but my cervix still looks great. I'll be 27 weeks on Monday... I'm almost to the 3rd trimester!!! Who knew there were 3 of them?

And, finally, I haven't given an update on the house situation lately, so I thought I'd recap our house-buying escapades from the last few months...

First, we begin looking in Jan/Dec. It's a buyer's market, right? Houses are priced to sell. We find one right away that is super-cheap but needs some work. It's a foreclosure. We make a bid. So does someone else. They get the house. We find out later they bid $10,000 less than us, and had contingencies in the contract that we did not. Somebody had a friend. Good for them.

Moving on, we find another house with great potential. A little more expensive, and also requires some work. It's a foreclosure. We put in a bid. Someone else did too, just a day or two before. They got the house. Good for them.

We find another house. It's the first house we've found that gives us both the warm-fuzzies. Best school district in the county. Older, established neighborhood. The kind of place kids ride their bikes to their friends' houses and play in the street. Cul-de-sac with a pond across the street. Priced to sell. It's a short sale.

This is where the fun starts.

We place a bid. a little less than the asking price, but we'd be willing to pay asking price. It's priced well below market value.

The seller's realtor (SR) reports another family is also putting in a bid. Crap, we've been there before. It might be a trick, but we up to the asking price. No biggie.

The seller accepts our offer! Yay! We're getting our house!

The SR sends our offer to the seller's bank, who has to make the final approval on the house. We're not worried. I mean, we offered the asking price. There should be no problems.

We're told to expect to wait 2 weeks to hear a reply. We wait.

A month goes by...

A negotiator has been assigned at the bank, but he's not responding to the SR's emails or calls. She gets mad. Her client is trying to sell their house to avoid foreclosure. Speed it up already.

The SR files a complaint against the negotiator.

The negotiator turns down our offer and raises the price of the house by $30K. What????

Shep and I are disgusted we just wasted 6 weeks on a house when we could have been looking elsewhere or working on plans to build. Then we get the bright idea that maybe if we resubmit our original offer, the offer will get sent to a different negotiator at the bank. We really like this house, and we're willing to try one more time.

So we wait.

The seller gets another negotiator.

Then there was another negotiator.

(BTW- I'm leaving out that Shep and I are hearing about 3x a week that we'll def know something "by tomorrow." We discovered in short-sale terms that "tomorrow" = at least 2 weeks...)

A new appraisal is done. We wait for the results. We'll know by tomorrow if the bank accepts our offer.

And we wait. About a month, actually.

FINALLY, we get word that the bank will sell us the house, no more waiting, no questions asked, no more hassle, if we raise our offer by $6K. Not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it really pisses me off. I'm pregnant and hormonal, and we've been trying to buy this house for 3 months now. We look at it again, decide it's worth the extra $6K, and send in the offer.

We'll know by tomorrow.

A week later, we get word from our realtor that the bank has DECLINED our offer, and has raised the price of the house by another $900. Our realtor is extremely apologetic, and says he'll take the money out of his commission. He's just as tired of this game as we are. But remember, I'm pregnant and hormonal, and I'm really pissed now, and Shep and I aren't playing this game anymore. We're out. Game over. My pregnancy hormones tried to convince me to go torch the #%&$ house, then I'd feel better and the poor family trying to sell the %#$& house could collect the &^$# insurance and buy a new *$%& house. Luckily sensibility won out over the hormones, this time.

So we start talking to a guy about building our new house on some land we own on the other side of town. We get excited. It's what's meant to be.

Until, of course, the SR apparently called the negotiator and told him what a piece of work he was, and how we'd been trying to buy the %#$* house for months and they had strung us around and how unethical they were, yadda, yadda, yadda, and then suddenly the bank decided they would "eat" the $900 and would let us have the house for the price we had previously agreed upon.

"EAT" $900. The bank will "eat" the $900. Are you friggin kidding me? That's a business lunch for one of the executives we just paid a bonus to. And they'll "eat" the $900. (Calm down pregnancy hormones...)

At any rate, we decide to resubmit the agreed upon price, with the contingencies that we A.) close the 1st week of June, B.) have the month of May to clean and paint so Dax and I don't have to be smothered in fumes, and C.) have, in writing, from the bank, that they will not foreclose on the house in the meantime, or sell the house to someone else, or otherwise renege on our contract.

Simple enough, right?

The SR submits our requests to the bank, and they say it will happen. We'll get it in writing. It's all going to happen. We'll get the contract... Tomorrow.

That was last Thursday.

Still no contract.

So, if you happen to see on the nightly news that a pregnant woman outside of Nashville got caught burning down a house in a tidy little suburb, know it will probably be me, and that I feel a lot better now. (Still hoping sensibility wins out over the hormones, but it's a tough battle!)

At any rate, that's all for now! Time for that nap... Love you guys!