Building a Life and Living Through It

Aside from sitting next to my husband on the couch and drinking red wine, or listening to my kids laugh together, writing is my favorite.  It makes me happy and makes me feel smart, so why would I go three months without a blip?!

We have had a BIT going on lately.  All of the bits put together would make a hilarious sit-com and are fabulous fodder for blog writing but alas, I'm going to jam it into one post.

After a year of looking for the perfect house to remodel, we decided to start from scratch.  Like tear it down, scratch the dirt, wood and nails.... "build a whole house for real people to live in" type scratch.

It's a great story, really.

My husband's best friend since the 6th grade... (like if he had to move to a desert island and take one human with him, he would chose to take this man and then write me letters in a bottle, instead of be romantic and take me with him and teach me to build a fire and clean my own fish.)  So this friend and his wife (whom I also love dearly) were adding a second story to their house. (*you can check out that story here!)  Their neighbor, who also happened to be their builder, had bought the "tear down" across the street and planned to build a house there once he found the right client.

Enter our little family in need of something amazing to fall into our laps.

So now we are building the "perfect for us" little house across the street from some of our nearest and dearest, on a busy little block with a lot of happy people under the age of 8, and their parents who like to stand in the front yard with a glass of wine after dinner and watch the kids play.

See: sit-com worthy.

Our house is now a house with walls and windows and a chimney and a garage and we don't deserve one inch of it.  A few (or many) months left to go, but when we get there and get to stay, there will be happy happy tears.

Whilst we are building our house we are doing our absolute BEST to wear out our welcome at my in-laws house.  Again.  (We lived here for a few months almost two years ago before moving away for my husband's fellowship; I'm sure there's a blog post about that somewhere... two Aprils ago)  We are more than comfortable here and I have told many people that the good/great/amazing things about living here FAR outweigh the frustrations of living in boxes and in my husband's high school bedroom.  Although, this is where the sit-com really kicks in.

I go to sleep and wake up every morning to the shrine that is my brother-in-law's news paper clippings from his amazing basketball career; beautifully framed and displayed as they should be.  Then when I roll over to lay on my back, a stuffed bobcat stares at me and perches on a piece of drift wood; this is good motivation to get out of bed in the morning.  Then as I get up, too many deer heads brush my shoulder on my way to the bathroom.  Then the bathroom.  My favorite: a stuffed squirrel, terrified, clinging to another piece of wood.  Mounted on the wall next to the sink, it's huge glossy eyes watching you brush every tooth and apply makeup and dry your hair.  It's strange, but a dead almost-rat keeps me in check after I've admired my eyeliner job and leopard heels in the mirror before heading out to a fancy dinner.

Other than that our living situation is only a luxury.  The girls have their own bedrooms and bathrooms, we have a playroom which serves as our living room, complete with a huge TV, a small refrigerator and tons of space to store our BOXES!  I call the upstairs of this house our apartment and remind myself daily; that were it an actual apartment it would be huge and extremely out of my price range!

Then there are two lovely people who live downstairs and split utilities with us, and happen to love and understand our children sometimes better than my husband and I do.  Our personalities are different just enough to keep things running smoothly and between the four of us our children want for nothing and are completely, and in the best ways  possible, spoiled!

In the middle of all of this I have felt so awful.

I have felt sick and exhausted and forgetful and angry at my skinny jeans.  I have driven across town for specific sandwich because their tomatoes are better and I have seriously debated asking a certain bakery in Dallas, TX if they would air flight a cake to me with extra icing.  I have fallen asleep in the car pool line and let my children log entirely too many hours watching TV.

I am four months pregnant.

Isn't it crazy how excited we can get about a new baby?!  Of course we would.  It's another human life!  Another heartbeat that the Lord has entrusted to us.  Another heartbeat that has me standing in front of the refrigerator every 30 minutes and sleeping as often as possible.  Another heartbeat that has me crying during every commercial with puppies or babies or people sleeping soundly.  And storming away from the mirror every time I get dressed because "this outfit used to fit me!"

I am now about 16 weeks along and finally coming out of the first trimester mess.  With my first two I started feeling sick at 7 weeks and better at 12 and 14 weeks.  This stinker has had me feeling gross and tired from week 4 to week 15.  I have no clue as to the flavor of this baby and I won't be making any guesses; but we will find out in a few weeks.

The baby is due in May and I'm afraid to ask, but I really hope our house will be finished by April.  I do have realistic expectations, and I realize that in the sit-com respect, I'm sure it would be great for ratings if we brought a baby back to the in-laws' house and had to move into our house with tiny, screechy, pink, baby in the mix.

But wouldn't it be nice if it all just went smoothly?!

HA!

In the mean time we will continue to build our life and do our best to live through it gracefully and humbly.