Will We Ever Sell this House?

We have been trying to sell our house since we found out we were having twins. We put it on the market in February/March 2007 in an attempt to move before the twins were born. In June, when the traffic started to really pick up, I was admitted to the hospital for pre-term contractions. This was our first indication that the boys might be a little impatient and surprise us by coming earlier than we expected. We had ordered furniture for the nursery but were waiting to have it delivered hoping that we would be in a new house. So we had to make the difficult decision to take the house off the market and have the nursery furniture delivered. This was a good decision as the boys arrived about 2 weeks after the furniture was delived. Of course, they spent 6 weeks in the hospital but it was still a relief to know that we were ready for them to come home. Here are a couple of pictures of them shortly after they came home. It is hard to believe they were that small barely a year ago!

We put the house back on the market around Thanksgiving and have been waiting...and waiting...and waiting for an offer. After at least a hundred showings and a dozen or so open houses, we finally got our first offer last Saturday. It was ridiculous. Andy wanted to tell them "Thanks, but no thanks." But our wonderful realtor Janet urged us to counter. So we did. And then they countered our counter and we countered again. On Wednesday, it looked like we were finally going to have a contract on our house. I had looked at a couple of houses on Saturday and found the perfect house for us to buy. So Janet typed up an offer, which Andy and I signed. Just before Janet sent our offer to the seller's realtor, the potential buyer for our house called and said that her husband had just lost his job and they were withdrawing their offer. Seriously? After over a year of trying to sell our house, we get this close and it falls apart? Is this a cruel joke? So now we are back to playing the waiting game. This sucks. I'm so tired of having strangers come look at my house. It's not an open exhibit people! Don't bother me during dinner or my babies' nap time unless you are seriously considering buying my house. If it is out of your price range, don't bother coming to see it. If you want 2 or more bathrooms, go somewhere else.

So now that I have vented about the whole house situation, it's time to talk about everyone's favorite subject - Ben and Henry, aka the Little Escape Artists! Since we haven't baby-proofed the whole house (I keep thinking that we will sell the house and move so it doesn't make sense to spend $$ and time baby-proofing this one), we keep the boys confined to the living room. We have a baby-gate between the living room and dining room and keep the door to the front bedroom closed. The boys are always trying to escape. If you open the door to the bedroom they make a beeline for it to try to get through before it closes. So Thursday night, Andy and I were in the kitchen making dinner. I heard the familiar sound of two little boys crawling along the hardwood floor, but it sounded like they were getting closer. I looked up to see them both crawling down the hallway. How did they get out of the living room? Andy and I went to get them and take them back in there. We found the door to the front bedroom open and their little fire truck at the door. Our best guess is that Ben, our little climber, pushed the fire truck up to the door and used it to climb up and reach the doorknob. He has figured out that he can climb on the fire truck to reach the window and t.v., so why not the doorknob, too? One more thing for us to have to watch for!

Now for our big news - Ben took his first steps yesterday. Henry has been walking for a few weeks now, but Ben has been content with crawling and cruising. A few times I have seen him thinking about walking a couple of steps but then he decides against it. Yesterday afternoon I came home and Rosalina was in the living room with the boys. Ben looked up at me and then walked a couple of steps to Rosalina. Then he looked back at me and just grinned. He was so proud of himself. So I'm sure it won't be long before he is running circles around Henry.