Recuperating

October 14, 2007 on 4:27 pm | In Uncategorized | No Comments

Hello family – Thanks for praying for us over here.  I can’t believe the boys are two weeks old today!  The time has gone by quickly.

Mom leaves tomorrow.  She has been a huge help.  My freezer is stocked with meals for at least 2-3 weeks.  She’s completed a bunch of little chores (ironing the new drapes, cleaning the bathrooms, laundry, sorting through maternity clothes, running errands, loading and unloading the dishwasher and more) that I had planned to do before the boys arrived.  I am so grateful she’s been around!  It would have been difficult for James to even take on the most essential of those tasks, especially after returning to work.  I can’t imagine how things would have been had the boys come home with us!  I get tired just trying to heal, pumping 8 times a day (for a total of about 4 waking hours, including cleanup), and visiting the hospital for 1-2 (sometimes 3) hours at a time.  So you can see, with 4 hours pumping, 3-4 hours at the hospital, and sleeping 9 or more hours in a 24-hour period, my day is about gone – or at least it feels that way.  That doesn’t start to count eating or getting ready (which takes twice as long now).  We’ve been late to more things in the past two weeks than James has in his lifetime!  And the babies aren’t even home yet!  Even though I don’t have the babies at home, I’m still getting up in the middle of the night to pump, so my sleep comes in short spurts, making me tired like new moms (almost), yet without the benefits of a cuddly baby to hold.  Well, I guess I’ll get to experience that later.  (I keep hoping they’ll be home in 5 or 6 weeks.  But we’ll see how their medical progress goes.  I’ve read and heard about several babies born at their age that have stayed for 7 weeks in the NICU.)
My C-section pain has taken a turn for the better.  The first few days in the hospital, it hurt just to sit up.  Then the first five days home, constipation bubbles (for lack of a better term) would pass behind the uterus and make me cringe!  Then the pain moved into my back, possibly due to tension, poor posture (hunching over so my abdomen didn’t hurt), or any number of things.  The pain has finally subsided as of Friday, although there is still minor pain in my back and where the incision was made.  Interesting experience when one has never had surgery or any major medical issues before!

James has become an all-time dad!  I was really shocked and excited to see the almost immediate love and attachment to his boys, as he stared at them in wonder in the NICU.  They have really captured their daddy’s heart.  He can stand for hours just staring into their isolettes, sometimes with his hand on their heads, other times just looking.  It’s so fun to see the change in him.  He says now, “I can’t believe I ever hesitated to have kids.”

I know I haven’t mentioned the boys in this post, but I figured you could go to our Caring Bridge website to find out about them.  I hope to post some photos and a video or two (either on Caring Bridge or on this website) in the next day or two.  Enjoy!

n8 & Bett’s House Update 3

October 5, 2007 on 3:56 pm | In Family Matters | No Comments

We have not moved in.

We were attempting to move in before September 30, since that was the last date we could have our things in storage else we would have to pay another entire month’s rent for it. Someone graciously offered to cover the cost of our storage unit for another month so we could “finish” fixing up the house a bit more before we move in. God keeps demonstrating His faithfulness to us over and over!

Here is the update. Where to start…

We started removing the wallpaper in our bedroom. We discovered that it was not merely one layer, but instead a layer for roughly every decade since the house was built, or at least since the 1940s or so. While it was a fascinating history lesson in “decorating through the decades,” it also taught us a few more things:

1. When removing a nail on the wall between our room and the kids’, the hammer punched a hole in the Sheetrock while the nail refused to leave.
2. All the other walls were made of plaster and were at various stages of warping and cracking.
3. 50-60-year-old wallpaper does not come off walls without taking Sheetrock and/or plaster with it.
4. It would take more work and more time to get the walls looking DECENT than it would to just tear them down and put up new Sheetrock (especially given how easy it was to create new holes in the 1940/1950s Sheetrock).

We opted to tear down the wall between our room and the kids’ room.

A week later we discovered there is no insulation in the entire house. I take that back. There are a few rolls (literally, the fiberglass is still in rolls, and it has aged a few years) in the attic. Some is laid in the attic/roof, a great deal is not. Because of this, we decided to tear down the rest of the walls in our room and the kids’ room since we are already this far into demolition in those rooms…

Plan A was to cut holes in the top of the plaster and shoot insulation into the opening. While there, though, the guys (PureLife Builders, a construction ministry team from our church) discovered that the wood around the windows was rotting, and our plastic windows were as well. From the looks of things, the windows were replaced 5-10 years ago with the absolute cheapest, worst windows money could buy. They are single-paned, few of them lock, and a soft blow could probably pop them open or out. So now here is what must happen before we can move into the bedrooms:

1. All of the bedroom walls must be demolished.
2. The 1920s wood which frames the windows must be removed and discarded.
3. All four windows need to go, and
4. Four new (non-plastic, double-paned, and LOCKING) windows need to be added.
5. Insulation and Sheetrock need to be installed (Another piece of God’s faithfulness here: an anonymous someone—or someones—will pay for the insulation and Sheetrock of our bedrooms.)
6. The walls need to be taped, textured, and painted.
7. The wood floors in the rooms need to be refinished (sand, varnish, varnish, varnish…)

Then we can move into our bedrooms.

But that is just the bedrooms. We removed the hideous pink carpet in the living room and stairway, and discovered one great positive: the stairs are structurally sound and solid! To make up for that, our “nice wood floors” in the living room are awful. Some boards are bowed, they are patchy and uneven, and there is a mysterious plywood-covered cut-out of about 2×3 feet. We are planning on carpeting the stairs and “refinishing” the floors for the time being. Rugs and furniture will help mask imperfections, and this is much cheaper than all-over carpeting.

We wanted to be able to build sweat equity. We like to fix things up. Our lives would be much too boring without these issues. We would have “too much” (or rather “enough”) money, and therefore have no reason to plead with God to provide for our needs and all of these unexpected expenses.

Then there is the bathroom. What started out as a “fix the leaky shower/tub faucet” project turned into a “replace the shower backboard” project. The copper piping was bad (hence the “leaky” part), and the on/off switch was too high so we removed the shower backboard. We were just going to replace it, except that after we removed the backboard, we discovered that there were 1-3 layers of Sheetrock/particle board behind it, and all of those layers were warped and molding. The walls were not plumb (naturally), so n8 had to shim them plumb, install plastic, then cement board, and now a friend is helping us put up the tiles so we can use the shower. While putting up the tile, though, we discovered that the ceiling and tub are not straight, but rather vary in height about an inch from one side of the shower to another. We are just leaving that project for the time being.

Aside from being hideous, the mirror/vanity/sink are in mostly good shape and work, though all of the drawers need fixing and cleaning because they do not properly slide in and out. Oh, and NONE of the sinks in the entire house are vented, much less properly so. The toilet is moldy, and it had no seal (meaning, it leaked around the bottom), but n8 took care of that. Thankfully, though, one of the few undamaged doors closes the bathroom. We praise God for little things like that.

The kitchen is in relatively good shape now that the first 6 layers of grease have been removed from the stove. We will have to replace all of the windows someday (again, they are plastic and flimsy), and most likely the stove in a few years (the two front burners no longer ignite on their own, though thankfully they do spew gas when on, after we chipped most of the grease from them), and I would not mind new cupboards that actually make sensible use of the space, but other than those few minor issues, the kitchen and dining room are great.

The upstairs rooms need ducts someday, and also new windows, or at the very least screens since they lack them right now. The good news is the walls and ceilings are patched, spackled, sanded and almost ready for paint. The previous owners had had to “modify” the walls and ceilings to better facilitate their pot-growing operation. After it closed and we took over the property, we decided we did not like the modifications. Thankfully, the bank, I think it was, threw Sheetrock up in those spaces before we moved in.  Taping, mudding, and sanding was not something they had done, though.
We also need to replace the furnace in the not-so-distant-future because winter is approaching rather quickly here, and it might be a good idea to have heat in the now-more-air-tight house. We found out the previous furnace, aside from being broken, was not designed to heat a house of roughly 2000 square feet (how surprising!) but rather much, much less than that, so doing a bit of ductwork now that our walls are gone in the main floor bedrooms would also be a good idea.

We are hoping that this is the end of the necessary fix-it surprises, at least until we decide to tackle the basement…

The baby is due October 28, but has lately been showing signs of coming much, much earlier (like today or tomorrow or so), so we are also praying that my body will slow down in this area, since I would much rather have my king-sized bed in my own new house than I would be squished five-to-a bedroom, especially since all of the baby things are still in storage (car seat, clothing, furniture, etc.).