So the fiance is playing with the baby while I'm working on schoolwork and the baby promptly spits up all over his onesie. Fiance's response? "Do you know how to do anything but destroy onesies? That's the third one today!... Don't smile, it's not funny..."

Travis: [GRINS]

I'm laughing so hard I'm crying.

First and foremost: the boyfriend proposed, we are officially engaged. I'm thrilled, my parents are ecstatic, he's pleased, all around happy things.

My baby has officially scrambled my brain. I took him to the store with the intention of getting three things... and forgot one of the three. Forgot the one that was the central reason for going, but by the time I realized it, it was too late to turn around and I didn't want to leave the sleeping baby in the car while I ran in or drag him in when I only needed one thing when the store was bizarrely busy for a Tuesday. So I'll go back tomorrow.

Just a btw: shopping with a sleeping baby is definitely the way to go. He fell asleep while I was running around, getting dressed and getting stuff together, and stayed asleep the entire way there, time there and way back. He's still asleep, but he's being noisy, so I have no idea how long that'll last.

I called work today to tell them I wanted to extend my leave until February 1st instead of January 1st. We're going to spend Christmas with my parents and I just can't imagine coming back from that and three or four days later having to give my baby to total strangers for the better part of the day... it's too soon. So, extended leave. Yeah for the fiance being super supportive of me staying home with the baby.

Not that I'm getting much done with all of this time at home. Most of the time the baby is sleeping is dedicated to sleeping, eating or working on school work (in an absolute nightmare of a class). I have three books I really want to read. I'm about a third of the way through one, and I have one book from each of two of my favorite authors (Laurell K. Hamilton and Sherrilyn Kenyon) which I have not even touched. They are sitting on my coffee table, where I set them after getting them from Amazon. I have not so much as skimmed through them. And the book I'm a third through, I started it two weeks before the baby was born. Oh, and sometime in the next several weeks I need to write 5 lesson plans. I'm basing them around a novel, so I have to read *that* too. Lucky me. At least the novel is for 5th graders so it shouldn't take long, but I'm going to have to read it much differently than I usually do.

Okay, I should totally be working on getting stuff done for my class. I have all these tutoring sessions I'm supposed to have done and haven't done a damned thing for. I'm debating actually doing them or just making a creative writing assignment out of it. My group busted our butts on a big group assignment and got 15/20 on it. Considering there are only 100 points in the class, that's a huge hit. I'm pissed, because I think the instructor is just being totally unreasonable, but as my dad pointed out to me, with everything else going on, a B is an acceptable grade.I just haven't gotten one yet, but I don't think, at this point, I'm going to ace the rest of my assignments, so it'll have to be all right.

Except I'm still really pissed about it. And really don't want anything to do with my class at the moment because of it. The instructor's expectations for things that should be simple are completely ridiculous. I'll have to do it, but rather than wasting hours of my time, I'm seriously considering making a creative writing assignment out of the reports I'm supposed to have on my tutoring sessions. It's really hard to get an hour to work with anyone with a hungry newborn in the house.

Speaking of said newborn, he just hit a growth spurt, meaning he was starving and fussy yesterday and I thought for sure I'd only get a half hour of sleep here and there, but at 2:30 he completely crashed. My 3 week old slept a solid 6 hours. He woke up to eat a couple more times, but otherwise, we both basically slept until 3:30 this afternoon. I desperately needed the sleep, but it means that I'm pretty much wide awake at midnight. Baby and boyfriend are out asleep on the couch. Thus the "awwww" part of the subject.

Anyway, yes, this is me procrastinating. I should probably stop doing that, because most of what I have left this week for my class is group involved, and, for a change, my group members are all competent. Since I have plans to take the baby to boyfriend's work (at his coworkers' insistence) and to see one of my old managers tomorrow, I don't know how much I'm gonna want to deal with the class then. So, I really should take advantage and work on my class.

But wow, I do not want to.

( More baby stuff )

My sisters are driving out tomorrow, parents are following on Thursday for Thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to seeing them. Should be interesting to see how Travis reacts to them. He's pretty partial to mom and dad at the moment. My sisters may be crushed if he's not cool with them.

So the baby boy finally decided to come see us on the 18th. Only 10 days late. He was due on the 8th. And sitting at home just waiting to go into labor really, *really* sucked. But, no induction necessary at least.

Travis Raighne was 7 lbs, 2 oz at birth and 21 inches long. He has more hair than most 6 month olds. He's beautiful (and although I admit to bias, everyone whose seen him agrees, including nurses and doctors). He's got Daddy's eyes and nose, mommy's mouth and chin. He acts like the world is ending when he's hungry but other than that, almost never cries. But we're having trouble getting him to sleep in his bassinet. He sleeps in our arms or on our chests fine, but put him in the bassinet, it's like flipping a switch. Within 5 minutes he's crying and wants to be held (or fed). And he eats, a lot. Nurses at the hospital said 20-30 minute feedings are considered "good feedings." His are generally 45 minutes to an hour or more. Somehow I'm just as glad we decided to breastfeed otherwise he'd be eating us out of house and home. ^_^

My family is coming out for Thanksgiving. Here's to hoping I can get a little more sleep with the extra hands.

So, we ran into our second bump in the new house. Our water heater started leaking. Fortunately, the basement isn't finished, it was a fairly minor leak, but trying to get it fixed was a headache. Enter home warranty again. Somehow, it took more than a week for the check from closing to actually go through at the home warranty company, and until that check posted, I could only get service once...which I did... for the toilet... which is now fixed by the way, and the boy fixed the hole in the ceiling. But it started leaking last Wednesday, and home warranty people said "your check hasn't posted, we can't service it till it does." I'm like, "I closed on the 9th, it's now the 21st, how the hell is it not posted?"

Stupid escrow. Took forever. The check from the title company didn't clear until Thursday. Then I called around all day (since I was off), trying to get home warranty people to realize that yes, the check had been posted and cleared and yes, I could in fact, get my water heater serviced. Once they realized that, they informed me that it qualified as an emergency service and they would try to get someone out that (Thursday) night. They never did. I never got a call back to know if/when someone was coming. I had to work 9-5 on Friday, so if they were coming Friday, there was no way in hell I was going to be available to be home. Fortunately, the boy was pulling one of his "work from home" days Stupid techie jobs and their "work from home" options. So, first thing before work Friday, I call home warranty people to find out if I'm getting service. Never get through. Check my e-mail and, look, there's an order for my service, including the phone number of the company it's going through. I call the contacting agency and find out when they'll be coming and give them the boy's number, informing them that while I will not be home all day, he will be, call him. They say "okay." (Btw, I beat the home warranty people to calling the contractor. The order was in, but no one had actually called to confirm yet).

So imagine my surprise when I go up for lunch, check my phone and have a message from contractor guy that says he's on his way, and wanted to confirm someone was home. The entire reason I called that morning was to make sure that wasn't going to be a problem. I call the dispatch people, who politely inform me that they sent the contractor on ahead, based on my call that morning, no worries.

Nice to know. Just panic me for the first 10 minutes of my break, thanks.

Anyway, water heater is now fixed. It needed an overflow tank, which is apparently supposed to be there by law, and is something else the inspector missed, and installation of which is not covered by home warranty. So, a little more out of pocket, but still cheaper than if we didn't have home warranty. We essentially got the installation for free.

Now to replace the fridge. We're waiting on our security deposit to come back from the last place before we start looking. The one that came included has a burn out light bulb (not replaceable, it's a problem with the socket), and a very small freezer. So, looking forward to a new fridge.

And a week and a half until I go on my leave of absence from work. Hopefully not to go back till the new year. Boy and I are planning to go to my parents' place for Christmas, which I didn't get to do last year. Looking forward to it. Mom is planning on coming out for a week or so after baby's born, and is talking about bringing her mother. Something tells me I will be very happy to have them around.

Now to finish the little things we want to in the house...

So, it is official. I closed on my house on Friday morning, with every nearly possible thing going almost wrong the day before (like having an exceptionally hard time getting a cashier's check to close on the house and having to wire it through at the last minute.)

Anyway, the boyfriend and I are taking the week and probably a little more to move in since the lease on our apartment isn't up till the end of the month, we have time. We're just sick of the small, poorly insulated apartment with the oven that burns the bottom of virtually everything put in it.

Oh, and it has roaches. It didn't when we moved in. Took about a month before they showed up. But I have never dealt with roaches before. Ants, bees, wasps, spiders, yes, roaches no. Yuck. Though frequent showers of Raid have kept them pretty much under control. It's not a big enough issue that it's worth arguing with the landlords over at this point. That's what we get for a short term lease though.

Anyway, if anyone has ever moved then you know it is pretty much impossible to move into a house without encountering some problem. After taking a load of stuff over yesterday, we noticed the upstairs toilet was a little loose and jiggled it to see how loose. Well, we should not have done that, cause apparently, it sprung a leak. The boy went over to paint the kitchen and powder room today and found that it had leaked into our living room. Actually, it's already leaked a hole into the ceiling. I'm actually hoping this is sort of a good thing and that it will continue to leak from that hole rather than spreading further damage through the ceiling.

Good thing the sellers included a home warranty for the first year. So I head back to the apartment to try and track down the home warranty info to call in the claim, only to be completely unable to find a single piece of paper in the million pieces I got Friday that actually mentions the home warranty. Not a single one. I log onto the website to try to register... only to be told that they can't find a policy for my house. I call my realtor, no answer. I  call my realtor's office and got a phone number to the home warranty company. Call the home warranty company. They have the policy on my house (thank God), it's just very new and the funds for it haven't gone through yet, which is why I can't register online. It is set up, however, and I can make a claim.

They'll cover the plumbing issue, with only $60 out of pocket for us, which I'm thinking is one hell of a deal. However, the damage to the ceiling in the living room is covered under homeowner's insurance, which I have, but it's a $1000 deductible. Probably not $1000 worth of damage. However, since Monday is Columbus Day (not to mention both boy and I are at work all day), it probably won't get fixed till Tuesday. We've turned off the water and emptied the toilet as best we can, which seems to have slowed the leak a lot, but that's still a lot of time for the damage to get worse. I'm personally hoping that they'll have to cut a big enough hole in the living room ceiling to fix the problem that when they patch it (because they'll patch any holes they make), it'll take care of all of the damaged part of the ceiling. *crosses fingers*

Other than that, we're really looking forward to getting into the shiny new (to us) home. It's a 2 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath townhouse. We're finding little things all over the house we want to change/fix (like none of the kitchen cabinets having handles. the analog thermostat), but the only major bump we've run into is the leak. What I want to know is how the inspection missed a toilet that was that loose? *sigh* Especially since it noticed the one in the powder room was loose. Maybe they mixed them up? Whatever. That's life. And since you really can't move without running into some sort of issue, I'd rather run into it sooner than later. Right now we're enjoying house. In about a month, we're pretty much going to be consumed with baby (which is where I mention, if anyone didn't know, that I'm pregnant--it's a boy, Travis Raighne and is also why I am not helping to paint).

Anyway, wish us luck. I'm sure I'll update periodically with how things are going in the new house. I'm extremely excited about having a permanent address again for the first time in 6 years. My dad and I counted, when he came into town to for closing, in the last 6 years (since leaving Wichita), I have had 9 addresses. At least this one will be permanent for the next three years, at least.

Nothing particularly interesting, just a quiz that caught my attention.

You Are a Lynx

You are a quiet observer of the world around you. Your wisdom comes from listening carefully. You've always been extra sensitive and aware. And it's made it difficult for you to fit in. You see past people's outward personas. You are able to penetrate a stranger's soul. What you've learned about people is both beautiful and ugly. And you keep these secrets to yourself.

Quick update: going back to school. While I enjoyed being away at school, adored Pitt and loved my major, I don't have the most versatile degree in the world. So, grad school for elementary education. I'm doing it online through University of Phoenix so I can still work full time. Also thinking of buying a house.

There is another reason behind the school thing, but I'm not sharing just yet.

February started badly, with me sick w/ some ugly viral infection from which I missed 5 days of work (when I only have 3 sick days a year). It was misdiagnosed as strep, they gave me amoxicillin for it, only to find out 7 days later, when I was finally feeling better (through no help of the medicine), that I was allergic to amoxicillin. I never used to be. I took it quite a bit as a kid, but when I woke up with a rash covering 3/4's of my body, I knew I had a problem.

So, there went the first two weeks of February.

It continued with crazy work hours, one of my roommates getting sick for a week, and me working a 12 hour shift on a Sunday.

For those of you who know me, and know how much I loved Sundays at my last store... the situation hasn't improved. A 12 hour Sunday is not my idea of fun.

March started with a burn. That is, one of my roommates coming home at stupid o'clock (say 4-ish), deciding to make spaghetti and then rest his eyes while it was cooking. I woke up at 5 AM to the smell of something burning. Pan was toast, and the house still smells like something burnt, even though the air cleaner I bought is making inroads on it... it'll probably linger for the rest of the month. At least we didn't burn the house down. But it was closer than I think any of us like to admit.

More crazy hours at work, and remind me to never, ever tell my boss I'm a little short on hours again. I have another 12 hour Sunday ahead of me. Oh, and the hour short I was, from my full-time hours was made up Wednesday night when I was there till nearly midnight, instead of 11. So... another 7-7 shift.

And a roommate has bronchitis. I took him to the emergency room yesterday before work and got to wait for more than 40 minutes for the valet at the hospital to bring my car around.

A few other things have happened, but what it comes down to, is the possibility of looking for a new place to live and stress, and it's only the 6th and March needs to end.

The only good thing is that after a week perched on the couch and in front of the TV, I've decided that TV is not very interesting again, and have gone through some almost dozen books in the past 3 weeks. It's been a while since I've done that ^_^

Kinda interesting.

As for what's up w/ me: a boyfriend and work which is busy because it's retail and Christmas shopping season.

This will be the first Christmas I won't spend w/ my family.

Not sure how I feel about that yet, but I will at least have my boyfriend here and friends of the family, who are nearly as good.

But it's only the first of December. I've got plenty of time before I start to worry. The boyfriend makes me amazingly happy so, everything else will come as it will.