2012: Year in Review

We started off the year on a high note, Scotty made partner at his law firm and we'd just found out on Christmas Day, a week before, that we were expecting a sweet baby.  But our excitement was short-lived as I ended up having a miscarriage on January 3rd. We were sad, of course, but I know they are very common with many friends and family having gone through similar situations. And after having gone through it with Rachel almost exactly a year before and then watching her with Anders about 10 months later, I knew we'd be fine.

January is always a tough month for Scotty at work.  And at the end of the month, we went ahead and put our house back on the market thinking it would take a while to sell and knowing that we would eventually need the extra space, hoping it would be sooner rather than later. About 6 weeks later, we had an offer. Yay! It was around this same time that Scotty started having some health issues.

Ongoing headaches, anxiety, sleeplessness, and eventually, tingling extremities were his symptoms. At first we thought it was just the stress of how crazy our first two months of the year had been (I didn't even mention the shut-out LSU rec'd by 'Bama in the Nat'l Championship...it took a while for the sting of that loss to go away...he still doesn't like to talk about it). Throughout the ordeal, Scotty saw an internist, optometrist, ENT, ER doctor, and neurologist. The eventual diagnosis was high blood pressure (which at least one of the docs commented on initially). However, we found out also that he had some nerve damage from overdoing it at the gym as a result of trying to de-stress AND he had undiagnosed carpal tunnel in his wrists which was also exacerbated by certain exercises. So medication, wrist supports, and a change-up of gym routines seemed to help.  Thankfully, as we'd like to keep him around for a while.

In mid-April, we sold our house in Gonzales and moved into a cozy apartment in BR. We were undecided whether or not we wanted to build a house or buy something move-in ready. About a month later, we found out I was pregnant, and the decision to buy a house was made.  In hindsight, after now going through a renovation, I don't know that I'd ever want to build a house given all the decisions you have to make about everything, constant phone calls, running over to the house, etc. -- granted, Scotty took the brunt of the phone calls and impromptu trips to the house to meet with whomever needed to be met with.

Our summer was spent looking at houses, swimming in the pool at the apartment, looking at more houses, and coming to the realization that the 4 BR/3 BA newer house with a decent-sized yard in a good neighborhood was not available in our budget. So we expanded our horizons and found a house about 25-years old that desperately needed updating but had an awesome backyard, was in a great location, and had the 4 bedrooms we needed. You know what they say -- location, location, location!  The sellers finally accepted our 3rd offer.  Talk about frustrating; although our realtor was great and we got to become really good friends with her. We later found out why it took so long for the sellers to accept our offer...it's because there were 6 sellers -- 3 direct heirs and 3 descendants of the 4th heir. Eek. After we closed on the house (mid-September), we quickly got started with pulling down wallpaper, pulling up the carpet (white with stains, navy, and green-- gag), and finalizing our updates with the contractor. And although it took several weeks longer than we were told it would, they finally finished, and we are so happy with the results. We updated everything except the kitchen, which we anticipate taking place in a year or so.  Living through the final phase of renovations...yay...looking forward to that.

Throughout the year, we celebrated birthdays and anniversaries, had health scares with other family members, get togethers with friends and family, and went on a couple of trips to the beach. We worked hard so we could play hard. And we loved watching David Scott play hard and grow, turning from a toddler into a little boy. In the summertime, we concentrated on potty-training and after a few weeks, it was done -- really less than that as I'd kept him in pull-ups at night for a while just being cautious (and not wanting to change the sheets in the middle of the night).  He's learned so much over the course of this last year (colors, numbers, ABCs, words, songs, talking in complete sentences, and greatly improved on his swimming skills which turned out to be very helpful when he fell in the pool a few weeks ago).  He is even getting ready to be moved up to the pre-school class next week. Our sweet boy is also looking forward to meeting his little brother in the next week or so as are we.

2012 was an overall good year, but I am ready for what the New Year will bring. I know 2013 will be an adjustment for our family. But hopefully we won't have any medical mysteries or apartment life to contend with. And life with two little boys can begin...

Christmas 2012...

Christmas 2012 has come and gone but I wanted to document it as this year's celebrations were a first for us. We got to spend the holiday at home...as in our home that's finally refinished (for the time being, anyway). And we got to spend it with both sides of our family.

Since I was (and still am for that matter) so pregnant -- too pregnant to travel to North LA -- we were able to host each of our families here at home, although at separate times. The Anders/Randall/McGehees all made the trek down two weekends before Christmas...about a week and a half before the actual holiday. And we had Mamaw, Debbie, and Lee come down Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. I'm a big fan of tradition so I was sad that we weren't able to do our annual Christmas Eve trip to Sue Sue's followed by Christmas Eve night with the rest of the Wrights. However, it was really nice not to spend any time in the car burning rubber up and down I-20 and Hwy. 15. And it definitely made the holiday last longer since everything wasn't crammed into two or three days. We were able to start/continue some new and old traditions, though -- building a gingerbread house (new), making Christmas cookies with Mamaw and Mimi (continued), and Christmas Day pancake breakfast (continued). And for each celebration we did have some traditional holiday fare mixed with some new stuff...luckily, both sides of the family like to eat so there was no lack of food at all.  We are so grateful to our families for being flexible with their plans and being able to accomodate us/me.

Here are a few pics from each get together:

Cousins (in coordinating outfits)!

Making Christmas cookies

Christmas with a 3- year old was lots of fun. Anders was cute too (as always), but with him only being a year old, didn't really understand what was going on. Maybe he was slightly overwhelmed with everything, but DS was very particular in opening his presents and inspected each one carefully which I thought was so sweet. He loved his train table but has spent hours and hours working and re-working the puzzles Santa brought. I suppose Santa could've spent a lot less money had he just brought this kid a ton of puzzles. Speaking of Santa, DS was really into Santa this year and also Clarke, our elf. Clarke even stayed in DS' room a few nights to make sure he slept in his bed all night (he did).

Santa came!

And look at my trains!!!

And in between the family get togethers, we had David Scott's Christmas party at daycare:

As for me, as I type this post, I am almost 38 weeks, so Baby Drew is now considered to be full-term in case he makes an earlier-than-planned debut. I can't wait to meet this big boy with his head full of hair. As of my 35-week visit, this guy was weighing approx 6#, 10 oz so we'll see how big he really is whenever he arrives. I've felt for a couple of months that he was big. And I've also been having acid reflux really bad at night. So as confirmed by the sonographer, he has lots of hair -- which better turn out to be true since Tums is my new bff. And now, we're just waiting...

Need More Time...

Between trying to finish getting the house set up, baby room ready, Christmas shopping done, working full-time, general life stuff, I have almost reached my limit. I've come to the conclusion many times, especially recently, that there just isn't enough time for me to get to everything that needs my attention and unfortunately for all three of you who read my blog, it has been the casualty of this prioritization. Oh well. The important/big stuff that's happened recently is...
- We spent Thanksgiving in North LA. Really it was a glorified long weekend since we didn't get up there til noon on Thursday and we left Saturday morning. That was our last trip up before the arrival of Baby Drew.
- We are having a couple of Christmas get-togethers with our families this weekend and on Christmas. My family is here for this weekend; Scotty's is coming for Christmas Eve. It will be so nice to spend a major holiday in our home although I know we will all miss the traditions we've had for our whole lives. Some of them, though, will be continued this year -- the Christmas Day pancake breakfast that has been enjoyed by Scotty's family for decades for one. And if I can come up with some kind of tradition our own little family can have, perhaps we'll incorporate that as well. While this may be our first Christmas at our home, it probably won't be our last and when our kids are older, I want them to remember the different traditions we have and get all warm and fuzzy inside too.
- Since so much of our stuff that was in storage got ruined -- just by being in storage at the apartment, I've had to buy so much new baby stuff -- travel system and carseat, bouncy seat/swing, exersaucer (I'll have to get one), and who knows what else I have yet to discover is ruined or missing. I'm still so p-o'd (as my dad would have said) at all the issues living in that apartment caused. However, the one thing I am so glad we got to experience while living there was the frequent swimming. DS learned so much just from us playing with him in the water and teaching him how to move his arms and kick his feet. And that knowledge came in handy this past weekend when our sweet boy fell into the pool at our house. He wasn't paying attention to what was going on and ran into a table which threw him off balance and into the pool. And amazingly, he did not sink to the bottom and in my opinion did a pretty good job of keeping his head above water while kicking his feet and moving his arms. Of course, Scotty was a split second behind him in going into the pool after his boy. We remained calm, but David Scott was cold and "soaking wet" and was upset that he'd gotten the sticker on his shirt wet. The only casualty of the day was Scotty's phone (Thank you, Lord!), so that wasn't a big deal.

"Batman" watching Batman (above) and the official Santa pic for 2012 (below).