Family Alive

I’m so far behind, I don’t know where to catch up. But

I if I didn’t catch you up, it would be like you somehow

missed a couple chapters of our life! It’s been a crazy

week and a half! Let me start by telling you about the

sofa…

The Sofa Story
We’ve wanted a new sofa for a long time. Our

hand-me-down sectional was pretty comfortable and good

for seating large groups of people that we regularly

host, but it’s had a good life, and we’ve talked about

getting a new one for some time. With some extra work

Brian’s done over the summer, he told me to “go get a

room” as we’ve joked about doing at Rooms To Go. So I

did. But when i took him back to see what I’d put money

down on, he found something we liked better, a beautiful

brown microfiber plush with faux leather sectional.

Very trendy. We were excited to get it, but it wasn’t

going to be delivered until August 16th.

Then the piano deal happened. That was an obvious “yes”

decision, because we’ve wanted a piano for so long and been looking for the right “deal”… but we thought maybe we should cancel the

big purchase of the sofa. When we tried, we found we’d

lose 20% of what we paid, almost $200. That didn’t

sound smart, especially since we’d probably still be

buying a sofa within the year. So we decided to keep

the sofa coming last week, on Wednesday.

Delivery day came… we had some problems with the

delivery guys, and when the sofa was finally set up in our

family room, much to our dismay, it protruded into the

doorway about 4 inches! AG! In the showroom, it didn’t

seem so huge, and for some insane reason, it never

crossed our mind that it would be too big. Because of

our delivery problems, Rooms to Go graciously offered to

let us do a “reselect” which is practically unheard of

in their policies. So we were going in on Thursday to

pick out a new sofa and loveseat that would hopefully

fit.

Another blow to the pocketbook
Thursday, we got a call from the a/c serviceman, who happened to be in the area and could give us a yearly service call

for their “special price”. Sounded like a good idea, since we hadn’t had ours checked since we moved in, definitely more than a year ago. Well. Lucky – or unlucky – for us, the tech found a small carbon monoxide leak caused by the heating coils being heavily rusted. AG. We don’t have a CO monitor – but we will soon! – so we’re glad he came when he did. It wasn’t bad enough to cause Brian or I problems, but it could have been a problem for Josiah if left unnoticed. Well, the work on the a/c was estimated at $1500, but our unit was 15 years old and not given more than a couple years left. Yes, the sad news is we had to shell out $$$$ for a new ac/heating unit. I’ll spare you the amount, but let me tell you, it was very expensive. I guess we can say it has raised the value of our house, but since we’re not planning on leaving anytime soon, that’s not much consolation.

Back to the sofa situation
Later that day, we headed to Rooms to Go to check out a sofa/loveseat set we’d seen online. Our sectional had been growing on us, though, and we reallly had a rough time justifying trading in something we really liked for a sofa/loveseat set with less seating and having to pay more $$ (because we bought ours on clearance, and we were having to pay the difference in price AND another delivery charge). In the end, we decided to keep the sectional sofa and ignore the fact that it hangs into the doorway:) And after a week, we love it. It’s so comfortable, and it really looks good in our family room, so good that you don’t even notice it’s a bit in the way when you head to the kitchen. I know that sounds crazy, but I promise you, it isn’t as quirky as it seems! Everyone that’s been here said they don’t notice. Hopefully, they’re not just being nice:)

And last but not least!
Oh! I almost forgot! In between the piano delivery and the sofa delivery, our dishwasher started leaking water. We’ve known for a while that it would need to be replaced in the very near future. The “very near future” arrived this month. Unfortunate timing, but we’re happy with the new dishwasher, and again… the house is worth more now!

This has been the most expensive month of our marriage, by far (except for when we bought our house, but even then, we’ve paid more out-of-pocket this month than we did then!). We had been contemplating the need for a larger car, but now I’m going to be praying everytime we get into ours that it stays in good working order for a while. Definitely a question mark, given that it’s a 1997 Altima with 140,000 miles. It’s done well for us thus far, so hopefully we’ll continue to have good times with it.

So this is what normal looks like with 2 children
Brian went back to normal work hours at Samford on Monday, so we were on our own for the first “normal” day. Monday was TERIFFIC… almost no whining or tantrums from Analise, she was sweet enough to eat fruit snacks in her crib listening to a Bible story CD while Josiah napped so I got a shower – before 10 am! Amazing how athat little thing, a shower, can determine my mood for the whole day:) That started the day off well, and it continued smoothly. The week has gone really well, and I’m even back to cooking more regularly. I think in the last couple weeks we’ve started to settle into life with 2, and it’s not seeming nearly as overwhelming. Josiah doesn’t need to be held as much (though he would prefer to be!), he’s sleeping through the night (yeah!!!), and we’re all feeling much better about life:)

Josiah news
Remember back in June when I mentioned Josiah had an ultrasound to check for spina bifida? (You can be reminded here, in the last paragraph. That was negative, but they did notice something peculiar on one kidney, so they scheduled a follow-up ultrasound for around 2 months. We had that earlier this month, and again, they noticed something peculiar, but this time on the other kidney. After consulting with a pediatric urologist, our pediatrician advised another test and an appointment with the specialist. So that test was this week, and it’s been determined that Josiah has a condition called urinary reflux. Simply put, urine backs up from his bladder to his kidneys, which puts him at high risk for kidney infections. Thankfully, this was found before he had any urinary tract infections, which could very easily lead to a kidney infection, and potentially kidney damage. At this point, he’ll be taking a low dose antibiotic daily to prevent any infections, and hopefully grow out of the condition in the next couple years. His kidneys look good, so we’ll have regular ultrasounds on them every three months and continue to see the urologist. As long as he doesn’t have “breakthrough” infections while he’s taking the antibiotics, this should not be too big of a deal. If you’re interested in understanding more of the details, here’s a good site on vesicoureteral reflux, as it’s technically called.

Check back for more…
Ok, this is a LONG blog, and I’d love to add more pictures to it, but I’m going to post it because it’s midnight and it’s been WAYYYYY too long since you’ve heard from us! I WILL come back to the computer tomorrow to post pictures of my beautiful little ones and and the lovely couch:) Check back! We’ll try to be better about posting… I know you’ve missed us, because we’ve missed you!