Are We There Yet?

So, this blog was originally started to keep a record of my life with my husband and (at that point, future) kids. It IS called the Shankland Family Blog, right? However, the only thing I seem to write about is our sweet baby girl. She does take up pretty much all our time, and we do love her more than anything, but I thought it might be time for something a little more grown-up around here! Not to worry though, I’ll have plenty of adorable pictures and poopy diaper stories for you shortly. :)

So then, who wants to talk about money?! Yep, that’s the other thing that’s been taking up our time lately. Balancing a home that’s 300 miles away with a (not exactly cheap) apartment is getting tougher every month. And now that it’s getting colder and we have to do things like turn the heat on and cook with something other than the BBQ grill, we have less of that precious green commodity than ever. We can’t sell the house because we’re upside down (like the rest of the home-owning population I’m sure) and we can’t live in it because the people with the paychecks want us here. Rock, meet hard place.

Rob is doing really well at his job, and we’re extremely blessed that he got hired by such a good company when he did. It’s nice for him to have time to come home for lunch now and then! We love Seattle, and we’re finally getting settled in and making friends (YAY!) and I think it’s safe to say we’re happy here! Except for that whole house thing, life is good.

I guess I don’t have much of a point here and I’m sort of just venting. I’m tired of wondering what will happen with the house and hoping the market improves enough for us to sell it, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. So, what do we do? Can’t we just pick up the house and move it over here? People do that, right? There’s an entire TV show devoted to it! Anyone have a really big truck?

I know things will all fall into place one way or the other, they always do. I’m just not so good at that whole waiting thing.

But, just to make it all a little better, guess what?

65 DAYS LEFT UNTIL CHRISTMAS!!!

Wait, is that better? Or worse??? Yikes.

Sunday Update

So, not much to report over the last few weeks, but I do have a few pictures to share!

26 Weeks:

27 Weeks:

It feels like I’m getting bigger by the minute! Here’s where the baby is at 27 weeks:

27 weeks: a cauliflower!

I’m feeling pretty good lately! We’ve started taking Bradley Birth classes, and we LOVE them. I’m really learning a lot about why so many people have complications during birth, and how to (hopefully) avoid those complications. We’re going to try and bring this baby into the world without drugs, and this class is really helping to prepare us for that.

On Tuesday we have an appointment with our doctor and we plan to discuss how they feel about natural birth. Last week we toured the hospital where we plan to deliver, and they seemed very open and willing to work with us there; I hope the doctor feels the same way. Because it’s a whole “practice” that we go to and not just one specific doctor, it’s been hard to get a feel for that kind of thing at each of our 5-minute doctor visits when we’ve gone in. So this time we’re just going to ask a ton of questions and see what we get! So many people have scoffed at us for our choice of having a natural birth, be it friends or acquaintances, unfortunately I’m kind of getting used to it. If the doctor turns out to be the same way we have no problem finding a midwife or different doctor more in tune with our expectations. I just hope we don’t have to go through that!! Wish us luck, I’m not really looking forward to that part of the appointment.

Also, I took the glucose test for gestational diabetes last week and passed with flying colors. I am SO GLAD I don’t have to do that again- whoever decided that making an already dizzy pregnant lady drink some overly-sweet, syrupy, sugar-high-inducing drink and then drawing her blood, was a cruel, evil person. Oh, and did I forget to mention that they don’t want you to eat anything other than toast before the test?? It was awful! I thought I might pass out in the lab as we were leaving, and I think I scared another pregnant mom walking in after me… oops! But at least she knew what she was in for! YUCK, I don’t look forward to doing that again for the next baby. But, lets not get ahead of ourselves there… :)

In other news, we started the Dave Ramsey envelope system for our money this month, and so far it’s working pretty well. It will take another month or so to get used to it, and get out of the habit of just handing over the plastic card all the time. Even with debit cards it’s too easy to just spend and not think about it, so this cash-only system seems like it will help us immensely. So far so good! My sis-in-law Katrina sent me a link to a really neat site that has templates to make your own envelopes to use (go here to check it out!), and I got out my craft stuff and went to work! I’ll post pictures of how it turned out later, but I’m pretty impressed!

And now, I would like to highly recommend you all go out and get a new bed. Not just any bed, THIS bed. We were blessed with it as a Christmas gift (THANK YOU MAMA AND POP SHANKLAND!!) and until we slept on it for a few nights I really had no idea how bad our other mattress had gotten. So go. Now. Go out and get one! It will change your life. I promise. :)