The Small Family     

Well, let me launch into this week’s post by saying that for those of you who didn’t see the update on Thursday (or our Facebook posts), I hereby admit that I was wrong (something that very rarely ever happens--HA!): Chickpea is a Garbanzo, not a Chickpea! I could’ve sworn it was a girl, but nope--we have another beautiful baby boy on the way! And he left no doubt as to his gender--much like his big brother, Garbanzo was all too happy to show us his parts during my ultrasound. ;-)

I was determined to find out the little guy’s gender, so I made Chris stop for a donut on the way to the ultrasound. (Sugar usually gets the little ones moving, and I figured that way he’d move his legs so we could see what he was. Would’ve opted for the healthier orange juice for my sugar shot, but I already had to pee like crazy because they make you chug a bunch of water before ultrasounds and then don’t let you go to the bathroom. Torture!) And sure enough, the sugar jolt worked--he was moving quite a bit during the u/s. The u/s tech commented that he was very active, but I personally think Theo was even more active during his--he waved his arms and legs like crazy the whole time! (Does this surprise anyone who actually knows Theo? I suspect not!) Anyway, little Garbanzo did his share of moving, too, so we were happy.

I found out Friday that everything looked normal on the u/s, so as far as we all know, we have a very healthy, active little guy growing in there. He’s currently 13 ounces--closing in on a pound! And he’s about the size of a banana. We got to see his little heart pumping and his little fingers and toes. At one point he was stretching and wiggling his little feet around, and it was so neat to see! He was also trying to suck his thumb. Theo appeared to do the same thing during his u/s, but he didn’t turn out to be a thumb-sucker (or a pacifier-sucker, for that matter) once he came out, so who knows about this one? It’s pretty cute to see them trying to suck their thumb in there, though.

We brought home several pictures of the little guy (check out Thursday’s blog post to see them), and one copy was slightly mangled in the printer. So we gave that one to Theo as his very own picture of his baby brother, and he’s been carrying it around with him. Very cute--he wanted to take it in the car with him the other day, and then when we got home, he insisted on bringing it back in the house with him.

In other big news, we secured a rental house! In fact, it’s the one I linked to on our blog last week. Should be a good place for us to live for the next couple of years. It’s really not as much space as we could stand (it’s only slightly more space than our current house, and it doesn’t have the extra bedroom we were hoping to use as an office), but it’ll certainly work for a couple of years, until we can afford something roomier. And we really like the neighborhood, so that’s a big plus. And it’s a tad closer to Theo’s preschool, which is a nice bonus.

But of course, the laws of timing were not with us. We turned in our rental deposit on Tuesday, and Thursday Chris got an email from Genentech, saying that they’re in the final stages of interviewing and should be making a decision on the job next week. Sigh… NOW you tell us this?! Now that we waited five weeks and finally decided to just settle here for the moment?! So we’ll see what happens. We can break the lease for a small penalty (it’s not technically signed yet, so we’d just lose a portion of our deposit), but it’s just kind of stressful not knowing what we’ll be doing.

To make things a bit more stressful, we are apparently the lucky recipients of the fastest short sale in history! We got an email Friday that the short sale on our first mortgage has been approved, and we’re just waiting to hear on the second. And technically, the second should’ve been approved with the first--it was only a paperwork botch on CitiMortgage’s part that caused the delay. As I’ve mentioned, once the sale is approved, we only have two weeks to get out. We had been told this would take 4 to 14 months, but apparently in our case it’s more like 4 weeks! Which is wonderful, in a way--the quicker this goes, the less the hit on our credit and the sooner we'll be back in the world of good credit standing. But it’s not so wonderful given that we’re still somewhat in limbo as to where we’ll be: the house we’ve secured in Rocklin or suddenly scrambling to figure out a relocation to the Bay Area. Oh, Genentech, couldn’t you have made this decision by the end of September, as originally promised? Ah well…what’s life without some stress?! So at the moment, we’re trying to pack (somewhat challenging when a certain blond gremlin tries to unpack whatever we’ve packed--and we can’t store much in the garage because we’re not allowed to park our cars on the street overnight, due to our militant homeowners’ association) and trying to research/set up utilities and such at the new place--while keeping in mind that we might have to change those arrangements should we end up relocating to the Bay Area.

Add to the madness crazy work hours early this week for Chris (he worked until 3am one day!) and three problem-children books on my schedule, and you can imagine that we’re a little nuts right now. :-) I always work on multiple books at a time (right now I have 15--sometimes I have as many as 21 or 22), and I’m used to juggling a lot, but three of my books are evil right now, for various reasons. Let’s just say that these problem children are making me really look forward to my self-imposed “maternity leave” coming up in a few months!! (Since I'm freelance, I don't get a traditional maternity leave--all I can do is stop taking projects for a few months as we scrimp to live on Chris's salary alone. But we're doing it--we will just eat peanut butter and Ramen noodles for three months!! I went back to work three days after I had Theo, and I have to say it was probably one of the dumbest things I've ever done in my life. Won't make that mistake again...)

We did enjoy a nice, leisurely Saturday, for the most part. We had invites to a couple of things down in the Bay Area, but I was too tired to make the long trip, as I’m making it on Sunday as well. (More on that in a moment.) I told Chris he could go without me, but he decided he ought to stay here and pack…exciting (HA!) as that sounds. So, we stayed put. We walked to the farmer’s market in the morning and then took Theo to the park, and when Theo went down for a much-needed nap, Chris and I went into a packing/sorting/organizing frenzy. Chris handled the chaos that is our garage, and I worked inside the house, taking pictures off the wall and wrapping them, boxing up a bunch of games and toys, and wrapping and boxing a bunch of breakable stuff. All in all, a productive and semi-leisurely day….

Now back to why I’m headed to the Bay Area on Sunday… In fact, I’m posting this blog a day early because I’m off on a grand adventure on Sunday and may not get home in time to post before I conk out. For my Mom’s birthday, I got her tickets to see Joshua Bell, a violinist we love, in San Francisco. (Anyone at our wedding might remember we had violin music playing for the processional--it was two songs by Josh Bell!) It also happens to be Fleet Week in San Francisco, which equals big crowds, so we’ll be heading down there early to beat the traffic, enjoying a nice, leisurely lunch and then our violin performance, and then heading home--an all-day adventure!

Hope you’ve all had wonderful weeks--and perhaps less hectic than ours! I'm rather excited about this coming week: I get to go on Theo's first fieldtrip! On Tuesday, we're headed to the Pumpkin Patch up in Wheatland (about 45 minutes from here), where the kids get to choose a pumpkin, go on a hay ride and a train ride, see the pig races and chicken show, and visit the petting zoo and play areas. It's either going to be a whole lot of fun or serious chaos--hmmm.... :-)