Acuras All Around

We bought a car tonight!!! Yeah. We found a 2003 MDX from a private seller for a really good price. So, my TL has it's brother in the garage now. :-)

The MDX is one of the Acura SUV's. It has a silver exterior with black leather interior. (I don't actually even think you can buy an Acura these days with cloth interior...maybe back in '03 when this was made, but not now.) It's got a sunroof and third row seats that can either pop up or fold down to give more trunk space. We think we'll be very happy with it.

It's just nice to have a second car again.

And to kill time during rush hour before heading back home after buying the car, we stopped in to buy some stuff at Babies R Us. Since I'm not having any more showers, I figured that I needed to buy anything on my registry that I really had to have. So, we bought our second car seat bases for both of the girls and our swing. Those were the big ticket items. The other stuff we bought was small, like our changing pad, a second set of sheets for the cribs, etc. It's good to be done with that. The babies truly have just about everything that they need at this point, but they're still not welcome home...they need a few more weeks to cook. :-) I hope they hang in there.

U/S appt on Wed. I'll let you know what happens with Baby B. Will she still be breech??? Who knows?

Still No Car

We've been hunting for a car for a while now and still no luck. We hit the pavement hard over the weekend. We left the house on Saturday around 10am and didn't pull back in the driveway until 10pm!!!! Then, on Sunday, we had a baby class through Northside that was supposed to be about multiples (I'll get to that in another post another day), and we continued car shopping after the class let out. So, needless to say, we spend almost zero time at the house over the weekend. I even lost a pound or two over the weekend. I figure it's from all the walking. No fear...I've found it again. :-)

Our first goal was to buy a private party car. They're usually more affordable and they obviously don't come with tax, tag and title which can save around $2,000. We weren't finding what we're truly looking for though which is why we ended up at all these dealers. But after negotiating a few good deals, when they show you the bottom line, we just kind of gulp. It's that pesky tax, tag and title. You think you've done a great job when you talk them down almost $5500 from the sticker, but in reality it's really still so expesive for the cash out the door. AH!!!!

So...we're back to private party cars. We figure this is actually one instance where it's a good thing that Mike doesn't have a job yet. He's still doing a bunch of odd jobs to keep busy. (He's actually doing bead board for a big girl room for Mackenzie over at Grandma Mary's house right now.) But these aren't situations where we both have to be to work at the same time. He's been dropping me off and picking me up for over a week now. And with it being 10Q season, some of my departure times have been unpredictable. I felt bad that he sat in the parking lot for about 40 minutes one evening last week. :-(

Anyway, we're going to just suck it up and keep sharing the one car until that perfect private party car comes along. We just hope it's sooner than later.

June 21st????

I had an appt yesterday with the regular doctor. I mentioned my new predicament about Mike's job and the start date. His company sounded like they would work with him when he accepted the job offer, but to what extent we're unsure. So, we figure the safest route to pursue at this point is a Thursday c-section so that hopefully he could miss Thursday and Friday from work. Then, with the weekend following, at least we'd have four straight days together to try to figure this parenting thing out. And if we're really lucky, maybe his company would even let him have Monday.

Anyway, the doctor said that June 21st was looking like a real possibility if Baby B stays breech. (June 15th was too soon...it's just before 36 weeks, and he was uncomfortable with that timing.) I have an u/s appt on the 16th. He told me to get an appt with him just after that (so I have one lined up for the 18th), and if Baby B is still breech in the 16th u/s that he would "put me on the books" for a c-section on the 21st. So, I might have a potential due date!!! That's 7 weeks from today. :-)

If Baby B has flipped, who knows what then? He still said he'd consider a c-section if that's what I prefer. Twins give them opportunities to be flexible with stuff like that where they might not be otherwise with a singleton.

AHHHHHHHHH!!! As I'm typing this, I just realized that the zodiac sign flips on the 20th, so if they're born on the 21st, they won't be gemini. I thought that would be neat if they were born under the sign of the twins. Oh well. Hey, maybe Mike's work will let him have a Wed, Thurs, Fri off so we can have them on the 20th????

Why am I trying to plan birth? That's not really able to be controlled, huh? Oh well...you know me.

The Good News Continues

We sold the Prelude on Saturday and for about $300-500 more than we would have settled for. He bought it for his 16 or 17 year old daughter. I figured that might be the market for our car...it's a perfect high school teenager car.

So, we'll be car shopping this week. It's tough when it's a work week, and not just because time is limited but because traffic really sucks to get anywhere on a weekday as all of us Atlantans are familiar with. :-( Wish us luck on our hunt. We'll be an SUV family finally. Yeah!

Dr appt with the regular doctor on Wednesday...it's a specific appt just to give me the Rhogam shot because my blood type and Mike's blood type don't get along. I hate shots!!!

MIKE WAS OFFERED A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOLY COW!!!

He just called me and told me that a company he interviewed with yesterday wanted to offer him a job. And of all the interview prospects he's had since college, this was the one that was most like something that he'd actually want to pursue as a career, so this isn't just a job...it's "the" job!!!!

He was told yesterday during the interview process that they do an 8-week training program that begins on June 11th. (That's our anniversary...maybe this was meant to be.) And I think they were hiring more than one or two candidates, so it would kind of be like public accounting where he's got a "start class" although much smaller than a public accounting start class.

Now, if anyone's been paying attention, June 11th is dangerously close to when I'm likely to deliver the twins. In fact, I had a dr appt on Wed with my regular doctor and told him that I was thinking June 19th or 20th for a c-section...yep, I'm a planner. He agreed that those would be very reasonable dates to give birth to two healthy girls. So...now what! He's certainly not going to be able to take any one or two week vacation when they're born. At this point, I guess I'm just hoping that they'll allow him to miss even one or two days of work to be with me in the hospital. We'll see.

For now, we're just excited that he got a job offer, which of course he'll take!!!!!!

THIRD TRIMESTER!!!!

I'm at 28 weeks (well, in just over an hour...it's not quite Saturday yet), which means I'm finally in the third trimester. Woo Hoo!!! I had an u/s appt earlier today too. The girls both weigh exactly the same thing, which the primary reason I go see the u/s doctor. It's cause for concern if they aren't growing at the same rate. They're exactly 2 1/2 pounds each. That's 5 lbs of baby in me as of now, and that will at least double over these remaining weeks. I'm hoping for another 8 1/2 weeks which would put me delivering between 36 and 37 weeks which is healthy. Let's hope Kaitlyn and Nicole agree. :-)

Oh, and Baby B has gone back to breech position. I've said in earlier posts that Baby A has a position more towards the birth canal (which apparently is the "desirable" position, so it's not likely that she's going to give it up). That leaves Baby B with all the rest of the room to flip as many times as she likes. She had been breech at the first two u/s appts and then flipped for the one prior to this and has now flipped back. Who knows what she'll do over the next month before my next appt???

Finally. Whew....

Well, it worked tonight. Whatever! Here they are....

It's worth mentioning that we found these letters in naked wood at Hobby Lobby and painted them ourselves using colors from our nursery. We went to a few of those boutique stores, and depending on the type of the letter, prices ranged from $8 - $24, yes TWENTY FOUR DOLLARS PER LETTER!!! And we're having 2!!! No way!!! Hobby Lobby had the naked wood for $2.50 per letter. The tulips in the pot were also naked wood (they may have been $0.75 each). And I bought a flower pot and then painted it white. Oh yes...I went Martha Stewart on this nursery. Who knew I could be so crafty! :-)

See the space for the mirror above the changing table. We've got to transform it white before we can put it back up. It looked too funny next to the lighter pink in the curtains.

The lamp was on clearance at Bed, Bath and Beyond. It was wood color with a plain white shade. Again, I painted the base and then picked out some pink ribbon and hot glued it to the shade to give it something extra. We sponged the white over the pink on the base. Now that I've had a few days to look at it, I don't think I like the sponging. I think I'll probably just paint over it and paint the base a solid white. What do any of you think? The glare is bad in this picture. I think there's another one later in the post where you can see it better.

K, here's some more Martha Stewart for you. I saw on an episode of Trading Spaces that wrapping paper or other neat household items can sometimes make the coolest art work. When Mike and I were at Hobby Lobby picking up letters, we stumbled into several scrapbooking aisles. They had TONS AND TONS of paper. I suppose people hole punch the paper and mount their pictures to these neat backgrounds. Anyway, we were lucky enough to find a pattern that says Baby Girl over and over again. I thought of the idea to frame that. But, what's fun about that...so, I continued brain storming and thought about using scrapbooking letters to make their names at the top. Then, you know how people sometimes get a picture of their newborn and have people sign around the mat of the frame. Well, I thought that with a white or silver paint pen, that these could be my "mats." So, when each girl is born, I'll put a picture in the middle and have people sign around them. I have close ups of these later in the post. Oh, and as for the frames. We couldn't find white 12x12 frames. We found black though...so, I got out my best friend...paint...again. :-) You see that there's a third picture. I'll mention that later.

This is the middle picture. It says, "Mommy and Daddy Love You." We're going to put a picture of us holding them when they're born in the middle. Ahhh....

Last nursery picture. Just another close up of something on the wall. And of course the flower pegs...you guessed it...naked wood at Hobby Lobby ($0.50 each) that we painted yellow. Oh, we're good!!!! (The Baby's Room sign is Babies R Us. Can't take any creative credit on that one.)

That's enough for tonight. I'll post photos of the baby showers another night.