confucius says

We've really appreciated the comments and advice on our home buying venture. We haven't made an official decision yet, but today we met with the sales staff and priced options in addition to learning about the incentives offered now by the builder. Meeting with sales staff now is very, very different from our first experience buying a home in 2002 when people lined up overnight at sales centers to sign a contract! The builder is offering a number of incentives like free upgrades and options, but the base price of the house cannot be lowered. In the next few days we will meet with realtors to discuss the sale of our house, because in the end, whether we move depends on whether we can sell our house for the right price. If it looks like the numbers work, we'll be on our way. Tonight Rob went out after Ally went to bed to take pictures of the lot we like best, which is on a cul de sac. We love it.

To help make our decision, we opened fortune cookies tonight, which gave us these decisive bits of advice:

Rob's fortune: An exciting opportunity lies ahead of you.

Beth's fortune: The pleasure of what we enjoy is lost by wanting more.

Huh.

Meanwhile, Ally is tearing around the house like a tornado on red kool-aid. She has discovered that she can slide part of her body under our newly installed baby gate (!!!!), has chased the cats, made an effort to climb the stairs, and gets very annoyed when we pick her up or hold her for too long. It feels like her personality has changed overnight.

would you?

We're facing a minor dilemma this week. On Tuesday we were surprised to learn that our community, which we (ok, I) have criticized for only building ridiculously large single family homes, will now build a new section of smaller homes with more interesting elevations and open floor plans. The prices, though still high, are within a range that is faintly feasible and the least expensive home offers a floor plan that seems ideal. Now we had no plan of moving this year-- we planned to at least wait until our schooling ended before house hunting, and probably longer until we no longer had the significant financial obligation of daycare. But we are tempted and, to be honest, practically lustful over this house: we dream of four bedrooms, a dining room and breakfast nook, a garage, a yard for Ally to enjoy, and that sense that we have settled into a home for many years. So the question is: how important is your dream house? Is it worth giving up vacations? Reducing Ally's college fund and possibly reducing our retirement savings? A few years of generic pasta rather than Barilla Plus?

Right now we are leaning very heavily towards not buying the house, not just for financial reasons but because neither of us can imagine trying to sell our house and moving during the next 8-9 months. But what if the opportunity never rises again? Will we regret not taking the plunge? What would you do?

UPDATE... Today (3/23/07) we learned that two home lots are available with trees in the back. Our resolve to not buy weakens again.

crawling, table foods, and splashing, oh my.

I'm not quite sure what happened to Ally in North Carolina, but she has changed rather suddenly the past few days. First, she has managed to crawl a nice distance for the first time! So far, she has managed to reach the cables under Rob's desk and has overturned a bowl of cat food. Next, she seems less and less interested in her baby food; tonight she ate a dinner of tortellini with a tomato cream sauce and a large cauliflower floret. Finally, when we put her into her bath she immediately began splashing frantically. Considering these big changes, it's no surprise that she seems so hungry, and she also is taking long naps. We hope to install baby gates this weekend.

Ally earns her wings

This past weekend, Ally, my Mom and I flew to North Carolina to visit my sister and her family in their new home. It was an interesting first flight for Ally, considering we had almost a 90-minute delay due to snow and ice (in March!!). Nevertheless the flight went quite well and she even fell asleep after awhile.

My sister's new home is lovely and it was wonderful to see my brother-in-law, nieces, and nephew. Ally experienced many new things: her first toy phone (a big hit), a teething biscuit, a rocking chair, and her first restaurant meal (macaroni and cheese pilfered from her cousins, and corn chowder from Mom). She did her best to eat her body weight in ravioli and yogurt and enjoyed a princess party with her cousins.

mobility

Every day seems to bring Ally closer to crawling. For the past few weeks she has been rolling good distances to reach toys, and lately she has been getting on her hands and knees and rocking, then moving backwards. She does a sort of army-crawl to move sideways, but when she attempts to move forwards she tends to land on her stomach and halt.

A new trick she discovered a few days ago is to move from all fours to a seated position; she crawls backwards and sort of folds herself so that she is sitting. She has unfortunately performed this maneuver in the middle of the night, which resulted in a crying spell last night around 4 AM when Rob discovered her sitting in her crib, holding tightly to the bars with a missing pacifier. Though unable to crawl forward, she can travel some distance and has started to explore her environment in rather charming ways.

a day off

This semester has been really tough. We both are taking challenging classes that involve lots of reading and projects, and Rob has weekly homework assignments that keep him up late into the night a few days each week. This week in particular stretched us thin as I was working on a project and Rob had his first exam, so after I submitted my project this morning we decided to take some time off today to live life as a normal family. Like half the residents of our county we went to Costco to buy large boxes of just about anything (36 sponges! 5 pounds of tortellini! 500 ziplock bags! Yippee!). We went for a walk to the playground in the 65-degree, partly sunny weather and watched Ally laugh on the swings. We played and laughed and talked about how much we will enjoy our weekends when school is over. The countdown: 5.5 months for Rob, 8.5 months for me.

In other news, Ally is trying and enjoying more and more table food. She particularly likes Italian food, like ravioli and lasagne, and toast with jam or apple butter. Our friends generously made us a wonderful dinner of spinach lasagne this week that she enjoyed quite a bit. It amazes me how much she will eat! By contrast she seems to become tired of her baby food. Here's a picture of her after enjoying toast with blueberry jam today. She ate a whole piece of bread!

Ally plays peek-a-boo

Ally plays peek-a-boo.

UPS man = Santa Claus

Over the years the UPS delivery truck has brought many wonderful things to our house. Since Allison's birth, it has also brought necessities, like diapers, wipes, books, and even shoes. Last week the UPS truck brought a large box Rob was excited to see. Its contents? A PLAY MAT he ordered. I was pretty horrified by it and insisted that Rob return it immediately, thinking that Ally would immediately roll/crawl/scoot off of it and imagining with dismay the space it would occupy in our living room. His reply? Spread it out once and see what we think. He unfolded the mat and sat Ally on it. She squealed with delight and rolled, scooted, and slid across it with a huge grin. So much for our living room color scheme.

allison, omnivore

We waited until Allison reached 10 months old to introduce meat, a decision that, depending upon who you ask, is either too early or too late. Though I planned to just give her some little pieces of chicken from our own food, Rob picked up some jars of Earth's Best "My First Soups" that, to our surprise, include chicken, so their Sweet Potato Cinnamon Bisque seemed like a good introductory medium for the daughter of a once-vegetarian. Ally didn't seem to mind, though to be honest the soup didn't taste like chicken at all. BUT. The next day, when it was time to change her poopy morning diaper, I learned why ALL CHILDREN SHOULD BE VEGETARIAN until they are out of diapers. And that we may need to purchase a more encapsulating diaper disposal system.

because we're all blog addicts anyway...

March 2 - 9 is the "Ultimate Blog Party" hosted by 5 minutes for Mom. Check out the link on the sidebar for the next week and jump into the blogosphere. I'll admit I sometimes spend too much time reading all the parenting blogs out there, but it is comforting to know that even though we may be isolated at home caring for a baby, we are far from alone.

Meanwhile, a funny comic for our tech buddies.