Here she comes!

Ready or not... baby number 3 is on the way! If you're surprised by this, don't worry, you're not alone. I hate saying this but it wasn't planned by any means. I'm about 16 weeks along and my due date is Feb. 3rd 2009, my mother-in-law's bday =). I hope Connie doesn't mind sharing! I had my first doctors appointment at about 14 weeks. NO sign of any problems with the baby... and by the looks of things we're having a GIRL but we were told that it's not 100% since I wasn't super far along to check for that kind of thing but I'm pretty sure we got a clear enough look to start picking out girl names. Any suggestions? We don't agree on much. I'm kind of pick with girl names. I don't like them to be very girly but I also don't like strange. Any help would be great =). Bennett will tell anyone who asks that mommy has a baby in her tummy. We're just happy that he kept his mouth shut before we decided to spill the beans.

Picture of our little one with her arm up over her read. I LOVE profile shots!

Here's the lovely "skull baby" picture. If you can't figure out what you're looking at, on the left is her face, front on, and then above that is one of her arms/hand. On the right side is her rib cage. She looks like her daddy in this one! j/k

Anyways, this should make things really interesting in Ohio. ALL of our bedrooms are on the 2nd floor. I can just picture myself trying to get Jordan up and down the stairs when she'll be 40 lbs of dead weight and me being 8 or 9 months prego. Not a pretty site =).

My parents did something SO unexpected I don't even have words to express it. They are buying us a minivan!!! I know! It's crazy! It's a 2006 Toyota Sienna and is suppose to be rated really high in consumer reports. We can't wait. It'll be nice to have a vehicle to drive to Ohio in that I'm not praying every second of the drive that it'll keep going. And it's obviously great for Jordan and her future needs (and her wheelchair right now...). We were basically speechless when my dad told us earlier today. I can't wait to be minivanners!!

Update

I LOVE my new teeth!! To clarify, I only had 3 of them put on. The new blend in really well with the other ones. If you're debating having them put on yourself, do it!! I think it's a myth that they have to shave your teeth down to nubs to put them on. Just not true, at least it's not the way my dentist does it.

Housing...
We got the housing we wanted! Some of the places we looked at in Dayton were REALLY scary. The more inward you got into the city the scarier they got. We were driving around Fairborn (the little city the school is in) on Sunday night after we flew in, just looking to see what stuff there was close to the school and we ran across these really cute town homes. There were TONS of them! We saw this guy out in front of one of them and so we stopped to ask him if they were military housing (there's a huge airforce base in the area) or privately owned or what. He told us that they use to be military housing, and still were, partially, but that they were starting to rent them out to civilians as well. We got right on that. He have us the contact info for the housing office. We showed up Monday afternoon, had them show us the homes Tuesday morning, turned in our application (which we had to fax to Rhett the night before to have him sign as well...) and prayed we qualified. We did! They're really nice. We have a 1 car attached garage and 2 extra spots in the drive way (which we don't need both but it's nice to have the space...). We have a front yard, back yard full of grass, plenty of room in the garage to put our bikes, food storage, and our grill. They have a pond/river thing that they keep stocked with fish. Bennett's going to love that! They told us we can fish whenever we want, and that we don't need a fishing license which is awesome. It's about a 10 minute drive to the University so as long as there isn't snow on the ground, Rhett will get at least 20 minutes of exercise a day! We only pay gas and electric for our utilities, and those are discounted because it's military housing. So she said that we'll average about $85 a month TOTAL for the 2 of those. AMAZING! When we're use to paying $300 a month just for electric where we're living now, this will be great. The kids will each get their own room. I get a dish washer, garbage disposal, and washer/dryer hook ups. Thank goodness! And there's plenty of room for our piano =). The ONLY downer is that all 3 bedrooms are upstairs =(. that's going to be fun carrying Jordan up and down those when she's 5 in 2 years. Yikes. She's already 30 pounds of dead weight and she hasn't even hit 3 years old... Diet time =).

Hospital...
Since we were banking on getting this housing, my mom and I took the liberty of going to the Dayton Childrens Hospital to check out the Spina Bifida clinic. I really wanted to see if they were going to be able to offer her what she needs, or if we were going to have to travel to Cincinnati or Columbus (each just an hour drive...) for treatment. We LOVED the facilities. We were introduced to one of the main spina bifida nurses there. She told us she had just a couple minutes to talk to us (which is more than we hoped for). We ended up talking to her for 2 hours! We got paperwork filled out to transfer all her records there. She said she's NEVER had someone come in before they moved to talk to or see them. CRAZY! When you have a "fragile" child with lots of medical condition, isn't that just what you do? Duh. I guess that's not the first thing people think of... Strange. You tell me Bethany S. Isn't that the FIRST thing you'd do? Find out where your child is going to be treated!? Blows my mind. So I'm really glad we made a good, lasting impression! I think Jordan will get just about everything she need through this clinic. The only thing i'm a little concerned with is that it doesn't include Pulmonology (heart and lungs I think), which Jordan will need in the future if they're correct that her spinal nerves are damaged so high up that it'll effect her breathing.

Anyways, that's the update. We got our Uhaul rented today so that's one thing checked off our to do list. Now we just need to figure out why our car doesn't run =). Small detail when you're driving across the country in it in 11 days...

BTW, we found 3 more kittens in our backyard yesterday. They're really cute. Let us know if you want any =). I'm running out of time to find places for them.