closed and funded!

After a two week delay, and some serious panic on our part, we closed on our old house last Friday.  Just two days prior to that we were seriously thinking we would be scrapping the contract and starting from square one.  Our buyers were a pain in the rump, but we're glad to have it all done with.  Construction on our new house started this week.  Well, nothing has happened technically but we had our pre-construction meeting last Friday as well to go over all our options and requests and they are officially able to start moving dirt now.  Please throw up a little prayer there will be no major hurricane activity this summer so 90-110 days from now we will be residing here...

 

And just for fun, here is Zoe at her second gig as a flower girl.  Such a better experience than try number one at my brother's wedding a couple months ago.

 

 

California

Rhys just told me he wants to go to California.  Okay, buddy!  This just made me think that we haven't updated you on all the great things Rhys is doing these days.  Mostly they pertain to his speech and cognition, but he continues to make progress with his motor development too.  If you would have explained to me one year ago that Rhys would speak in coherent sentences I would have told you that you're crazy!  I wish I could adequately explain how far Rhys's speech has come in the last 12 months.  It's like one day he had only a few word approximations and the next he was bossing me around.  We are so thrilled with the developments he's made.  Even in the last few weeks I've noticed he makes certain letters sounds more clearly than he did before.  He works so hard at therapy and we continue to see the difference.

 

He still lives with his iPad. I honestly don't know what we'd do if not for it. He plays his games, but he mostly watched his shows. And his shows are very unconventional for a 4-yr-old if you ask me, but we roll with it! He loves Mythbusters, How It's Made, Tanked, Wipeout and asks for the TV stations HUB, Science, Discovery, Animal Planet, and PBS by name. And shame on you if you try to trick him because he knows the station logos and will let you know you didn't change it to the right channel. He loves anything that blows up or crashes, and loves to watch things being put together.  I wish I knew where this interest came from because we've never said "hey Rhys, watch this", he found these shows all on his own.

 

Rhys is still in PPCD for half a day, with therapy sessions five times a week.  His teacher tells me he is on track for cognition and is up to speed with his peers in terms of readiness to go to Kinder.  We are so thankful for this, I mean he is a preemie, barely made the cutoff for K with his birth date and he's ready to be challenged by a regular Kindergarten class.  He will be pulled out for about half the day for subjects he needs more assistance with (mainly because of his lack of motor coordination to write, speak, etc.), but his regular classroom will be with average peers.  The new house is zoned to a different elementary school that we aren't familiar with, but his current teacher tells me she loves the resource teacher at the new school so that makes me feel better.  It's going to be a huge adjustment for him, and also a huge adjustment for us in getting a new schedule down.  We will have to change our therapy times, something I've literally been dreading for two whole years because I knew it was coming, so I hope all the transitions to new house, new school, and new therapists go smoothly.

 

movin' on up!

No, I'm not pregnant!  A friend called me to ask after she read my last post, which is the first I realized you could assume that given the wording, and how the surprise of B popped up.  So no new littles on the horizon at this time, but I did think it very funny.  We've been so busy because we're in the process of packing up our house to move (up to the front of the neighborhood)!  It started with a random thought of how nice it would be to have modified living space for Rhys.  That turned into a casual perusal of home builders and potential locations to build.  Fast forward two months later and here we are.  This was a very sudden decision on our part, but once we decided we jumped right in.

In the last two months we've finished last minute projects around the house (that had been sitting on the back burner for months and months, but that's what you get when a new baby arrives unexpectedly in the middle of a kitchen remodel), moved our extra clutter to a storage unit, decided on a new home/location to build, listed our current house for sale, accepted an offer a week later (impressive in our market!!), did required inspections/appraisals/home repairs, and started packing.  Which brings us to today.  We are currently looking for a temporary rental while our new house is being built.  Oh, and did I mention we are closing on this house next Friday?  Yes, you read that right.  We're one week from being homeless and we have no place (yet) to go!  It's in the works, and I know it will work out however it is supposed to.  We knew we would take temporary housing while waiting on our new house, but it still stinks to move seven years worth of living for five people.  Totally worth it in the end though.  We are incredibly excited about our new house.  As Rhys gets older and bigger it gets harder and harder for us to work with our current layout.  He needs a modified bathroom and doorways, and we need a continuous flooring of some sort for his eventual wheelchair use full time.  So we are taking advantage of the super low interest rates to get a "custom" house that will fit our needs.  Yea!