We're doing our part to get the economy back on track - this afternoon we bought a minivan! It's a 2009 Volkswagen Routan SE in Antigua Blue. I think they threw some more acronyms at us, but that's about all I remember. I have mixed feelings. Part of me is pretty excited about buying a new car, and it's a pretty nice one. But at the same time, that's one more giant step towards being a soccer mom, and I always swore I'd never get a minivan. But that ship has sailed, so I guess I'll have to just focus on being excited about all that we're getting. Although I am sad to have traded in D'Artagnan. He was a good little car.
The van is definitely a lot swankier than D'Artagnan was, though. We were excited about the basics that come standard on just about everything anymore - power windows and locks, cruise control, LATCH system, that kind of thing. But we got so much more than that too. Adam's particularly excited about the auto-dimming rearview mirror. His old car had that, and he's missed it since we've started doing all of our traveling at night. Another cool feature, although I don't know how much we'll actually use it, is that the third row of seats rotates 180 degrees to face out the back for tailgating or a drive-in or something like that.
Here's the auto-dimming rearview mirror that's made Adam so happy:
We ended up getting a few things that we didn't necessarily want since they were in the one that the dealer had. So we now have the ability to play not one, but two DVDs (can't expect the kids in the 2nd and 3rd rows to watch the same thing), a hard drive to store our music so that we don't have to bring CDs in and out of the car, a touchscreen radio, satellite radio, a sunroof, a power lift rear gate, remote start, automatic doors (can't expect the kids to close a door), an engine block heater (useful if we ever move to Minnesota), all sorts of swanky things.
The next trick was to make sure that it fit in the garage. Surprisingly, it's a tighter fit lengthwise than heightwise, but we were able to get it in this evening, even with all of the other stuff we have stored in there from our myriad on-going house projects. I think Adam's a little worried about me running it into the wall, though. He mentioned hanging up a string or something where we should stop the front of the car to make it fit in there.
We had our 20 week ultrasound yesterday, and our first chance to see Astronaut. The first thing we learned was that he's breech right now (but not a big deal because there's plenty of time for him to turn around). Unfortunately, breech is a bad position for gender determination, and we weren't able to tell whether we're having a boy or a girl. The ultrasound technician thought we'd come back in 3 weeks for another look, since he wasn't able to get all of the measurements and checks that they look for, but at the appointment following the sonogram the nurse told us that our doctor usually doesn't have people come back until 32 weeks. So it looks like it'll be the middle of November before we get a chance to find out whether he's a boy or a girl.
We also found out that the hospital has changed their policy, and they no longer let you get a video of the ultrasound like we had for Abby. That was a bit of a disappointment. We did get a few pictures though, so that was exciting. And everything is looking good so far. We were able to see all the important parts (heart, brain) and the fun parts (face, hands). And everything seems to be measuring at right around 20 weeks, which is where the original due date had us. I was hoping that they'd find out that we were actually due a week earlier and Astronaut would be here in time for Christmas, but it looks like we'll have more of a New Year's baby.
Here are the pictures we have from the ultrasound:
We had a great time visiting with Adam's parents and grandparents and some of our old friends from high school this weekend. Our friend Ryan got married on Saturday (congrats Ryan and Christine!), so Friday night we headed up to Ligonier. Saturday morning, it turned out, quite a few of my friends from band were going to be in/near Warsaw, so we all met for brunch at Maria's House of Pancakes in Warsaw. It was a lot of fun to see people again, some of them for the first time since we graduated, and find out what everyone's been up to. And of course, it was a lot of fun to show off Abby! She did us proud, and looked very cute in the outfit my mom made her for her birthday. On a sidenote, we also learned that Mom needs to finish her projects herself. I was supposed to finish sewing in the straps on the top when I measured Abby to make sure that it fit right, and I think it'll hold, but it doesn't look anywhere near as nice as Mom could make it look.
The wedding was a lot of fun, too, especially seeing old friends again. My best friend from high school, Debi, has a three month old daughter who made an appearance at the reception. She's so adorable, and so tiny! It's funny, I know that Abby has grown a lot in the last year, but I tend to forget just how tiny she really was until I see a little baby again. Astronaut is going to seem so small! While we were at the wedding, Abby was busy entertaining Adam's parents and his aunt and uncle who stopped by for the evening. We're told she did a great job, playing and dancing with everyone!
Sunday Adam's grandparents came for the afternoon, and we celebrated his grandma's birthday. Abby was pretty shy around them at first, but when Grandma started giving her grapes, she suddenly got a lot more friendly.
One of Abby's favorite things this weekend was a digital organ Adam's parents have that has a few different songs programmed into it. She danced and danced and danced, all weekend long! All her stuffed animals got to dance with her too, since they like to do whatever she likes to do.
These days we travel at night so that Abby will sleep on the car ride, so it was pretty late when we got home on Sunday night. By the time we got the car unloaded, our little ones put to bed/condo, and got to bed ourselves it was a little past midnight. Around 4 o'clock, I woke up when Adam jumped out of bed, grabbed his glasses, and turned on the light. Then I saw what had made him get up - a bat flying around our room! I wasn't awake enough to think super clearly, which is good because I didn't scream (which seems to be surprising to everyone) and wake up Abby, I just ran out of the room, hoping that it wouldn't land in my hair on my way out. So we ended up spending one more night on the air mattress in the east room, and in the morning Adam went up there and killed the bat with a broom and a sledgehammer. I was a little nervous about going to bed last night, but it was incident free, so hopefully that was just a one-time occurrence!
It's been quite the week for us here in Champaign. We've been working for the past couple weeks on tearing out the two rooms upstairs, and we're making good progress on that front. We aren't back in an actual bed upstairs yet, but we're close. The plan was to be back in there by Sunday or Monday night, but as usual, life intervened.
When my parents were here a few weeks ago, we discovered a leak in the ceiling of the pantry. Luckily, our homeowner's warranty that the sellers bought for us when we got the house covers plumbing leaks, so we had a plumber out to look at it. It turned out that there was a leak in the drain pipe coming out of the bathroom, and whenever we used the sink or toilet it let water into the ceiling. He told us that he could fix the problem, but it would take all day, so he arranged to come by last Wednesday to get it taken care of. Well, it turned out to be a bigger project than he had anticipated because when the house was built, all of the plumbing was put in the subfloor, so it's kind of hard to get to without ripping out the whole floor. He was able to fix the problem by diverting the drain into an unused drain pipe in the kitchen. So it was a messy, hard work day, but we thought it was taken care of.
Before:
During:
After:
So that worked for a couple of days, until we gave Abby a bath on Sunday night. Monday morning we woke up to a basement full of water. Okay, maybe "full" is a bit of an overstatement, but we clearly had a pretty big leak that left water in huge puddles all over the laundry room and bathroom down there. The logical assumption was that it had something to do with the plumbing we had just fixed, so Adam spent Monday and Tuesday nights trying to find where the leak was coming from. He had the plumber come back today, and they eventually found the problem.
The Problem:
The kitchen sink was originally along the same wall as the pantry, and it had used the drain pipe that we diverted the bathroom drainage into. But when whoever moved the sink moved it, they didn't cap off the sink drain, so when we pushed a large amount of water at once, like from draining a bath, it came shooting straight out of that pipe and into the wall. So Adam's at Home Depot right now getting a cap to cover that, and then hopefully our plumbing problems will be over. Keep your fingers crossed for us!
On the Abby front, she's picked up lots of new tricks lately. We didn't get any pictures of this, but one of her new favorite things is to blow her nose. She'll hold a tissue or napkin up to her face and blow out her nose, then run over to her stuffed animals, or Lucy, or Adam or me, and hold it up to our face and blow out her nose. Jenn, you'd better learn how to blow your nose pretty soon. Your one year old niece is one up on you.
Abby's also decided that either walking or crawling backwards is just hilarious, so she'll get into a mood and just walk backwards all around the house. I think it must be in her genes - she's a little tour guide in training! She does pretty well with it. She's not as fast as when she walks forward, but she hardly ever runs into anything or falls down.
She's also a big fan of giving her stuffed animals rides on any of our furniture that moves. So she'll push them back and forth on the ottoman, or spin them around on the patio chairs. The other day I was sitting in the chair, and she decided to give me a ride, too.
She's a big fan of that porch. She likes to play peek-a-boo around the door when you're out on the porch and she's inside.
She also likes to play under the table that we have out there. It's a good size for a little one to get underneath and poke all the little parts that stick out!
