Apparently, it was our 3-year anniversary yesterday

It was our 3-year wedding anniversary yesterday, but we all forgot!
I just remembered right now as I was looking at the calendar.  So sad!!
This baby sleep training thing is consuming our lives.

Happy 3 years of marriage, Jeff.  =)  Here's to many more (unforgotten) anniversaries to come.

Wish we were doing this right now

Beach and Park

Summer is coming to an end!
Luckily, we got to squeeze in 2 small adventures before summer comes to a close.  These last 2 weekends, Jeff, Caitlin, and I crawled out of our hermit cave, shielded our eyes from the harsh natural light that we have not seen in what seems like years, and dragged our pasty selves about outdoors.

You see, we (or at least I) are not hermits by choice.  With Caitlin being short-tempered, and you don't know when she is just going to flip out and become hysterical, it makes going out in public very difficult.  And when we *do* go out, they are only brief trips, doing things we *have* to do like pick up a few groceries.  I actually get uncomfortable when people ask me if I "take Caitlin places, like the park or Mommy-and-me movies".  I find it difficult to explain that Caitlin doesn't exactly behave a lot of times, so going out is a huge chore.

Well, two weekends ago, cousin Connie invited us to join them at the Santa Monica Pier and I 'm glad she did.  We had a lot of fun and it was Caitlin's first time at the beach!  And the best part was, Caitlin patiently sat through lunch and made it to the beach and back without flipping out hysterically.  In fact, quite the opposite, as she was full of squeals and smiles the entire time.  Caitlin also didn't ask to eat, which was great since I don't really know how to breastfeed when it's not done in my bed. 

Last weekend, we took Caitlin to Clover Park in Santa Monica to soak up some grass and sun.  It was such a beautiful day.  Caitlin had a little fun, but maybe 30 minutes later, she started complaining so it was time for us to pack up and go.  Oh well, at least we all had fun during those 30 minutes!

Sadly, I don't foresee us venturing outdoors in the near future (bummer, since tomorrow is Jeff's birthday and Caitlin's 6 month birthday).  We are on lock-down in this house since we are now training Caitlin to be on sleep/eat schedule.  (I actually HATE the idea of putting a baby on a schedule, but since Caitlin just can't settle into her own routine naturally... unlike other babies... we have to do it for her).  If you look at her schedule, you will see that throughout the day, she gets put down for a nap every 1.5 hours.  It's difficult to feed Caitlin, leave the house, hang out, and return home, all within 1.5 hours.  And Caitlin's new bedtime is 8pm, with a nighttime routine starting 7pm, so there goes our night life!  =(  How in the world do people with babies go out?

Termites

~11 months ago, I wrote about our house having termites and it would cost about $1500 to fumigate.
Well, we never got around to it and I figured that, if I just didn't think about it, maybe they would go away!  (oh, the solution to all my problems...)

It appears that I cannot continue pushing the termites to the back of my head because this afternoon, when I stepped into my bathroom, what did I see in my bathtub?

TERMITES!

'

We are getting our house (the wood) treated for termites this Friday.  I am having the guy that sprayed our house for ants and spiders last week (and 3 years ago) to come take care of our termites too.  Fumigation would have costed $1500-$1800 with this guy, but he said he can simply come treat our wood, which is easier and takes less time, and only costs $550! 
I think how it works is, once the wood is treated, when termites eat it, they will die. 

Let's hope this is the last time I have to think about termites for the next few years.

Need to get 3 things -- where to begin!

We have 3 big things we need to buy, but doing the research to find what we need at a great price is a lot of work! 
Where to begin?!

We need to buy:
1. King sized mattress with king sized bed frame and bedding without breaking the bank.  The mattress must not jiggle when someone shifts in the bed.  The bed frame must not creak when moving in the bed. 

2. A good steam mop for under $100 that doesn't damage hardwood floors.  My Swiffer just pushes dirty gunk from point a to point b.

3. A guy to spray our house with poison (without killing Caitlin and the guinea pigs) since I'm sick and tired of ants, spiders, and mysterious creepy crawlies invading our home (see photo on the right).  The last time we got our house sprayed, we paid $30.  I would like something in that price range again.  =]


Please send suggestions my way.  =D

Dominican Republic!

It's been decided!
The plane tickets are already booked!

Jeff, Caitlin, and I will be vacationing in the Dominican Republic this Fall!

Visitors and Caitlin's first big adventure!

Wow!  What a week!
Last week, Bruce, Kathi, and Yao stayed over at our house and we all had so much fun and got so much done!

What did we (ok, I didn't really help much with the home improvement but I'm still going to say "we") do?


Installed a screen door over our front door!
Horray!  The screen door blocks out flies and mosquitoes and does not look crazy ghetto like those black security doors.

Threw a 4th of July BBQ that I didn't even know we were going to have!
So months ago, we threw around ideas of throwing a 4th of July BBQ for the left coast cousins.  However, everyone said that they couldn't make it, so we figured we weren't doing a bbq.  Two days before 4th of July, Jeff announces that we are having friends over for our bbq.
What?  What bbq?
We head over to Costco that day to pick up food for our bbq.
The follownig day, we have more guests invited to our bbq!  Hmm, I hope we have enoughf ood.
The day of the bbq, we learn that 2 more people were joining our bbq. -_-'  I head out to the grocery store to pick up more food.  Thank goodness grocery stores are open on 4th of July!


Cleaned out and organized the garage.
Looks much better now!
Is anyone interested in buying our chandeliers?  $100 or best offer =)

Cut our old front door and used it to level out the guinea's cage.
Guineas got an upgrade!


CAITLIN'S FIRST BIG ADVENTURE
With so many visitors, it made sense to all make a trip down to visit Connie and her family!  (afterall, her daughter is Caitlin's bff. hehe).
I was a bit nervous about this trip because Caitlin always cries during car rides (yes, even when the car is moving), and the trip down to Irvine is 1 hour one-way.
On top of that, Caitlin is already a grumpy baby.  When she is out is about, she rarely naps, and when she doesn't nap, she is even grumpier.

Overall, Caitlin did pretty well.  Much better than I expected!
On the drive down, Caitlin did not cry until we were almost there! Wow!  We kept all the windows down and that seemed to prevent her from crying.  in the middle of the afternoon, after I fed her, Caitlin took a 45 minute nap at Connie's house!  I was so impressed because usually she is a light sleeper, but she slept through everyone's talking. She must have been exhausted from the drive down. =)
We went out to Fashion Island for dinner and took pictures at the Koi pond, and Caitlin napped for maybe 15 minutes during dinner time (not bad not bad.. I'll take what I can get). 

This is a re-enactment of some photo these 3 took years ago. I have yet to see this photo.

Olivia + Caitlin = BFFs 4 ever

Family!

Then we went to 85C for dessert.  (I got 30 dollars worth of pastries.  Mmmmm.)
We headed back to Connie's house after 85C, and what did Caitlin do?  She did quiet-alert! Wow!  It was already past 9pm, and she had a big day, but instead of being grumpy, she laid around playing with Olivia's toys and she even laughed a bit too.  =)
Sadly, Caitlin cried the entire hour on the drive back home.  We skipped Caitlin's nightly bath and put her straight to bed at around 11:15.  Caitlin fell asleep quiet easily and slept for 8 hours before her first feeding.
I love it when Caitlin sleeps so well!  We need to go on adventures more often! hehe

The not-so-neighborly neighbor

I have been living in my house for 3 years and I have never met my next door neighbor!
Of course, this is no biggie. I am told that he works night shifts so he is never up and about during the daytime. Ok, that is understandable.

Earlier this week, I had Caitlin strapped to my torso and we were going for a walk around the neighborhood. On my way back home, I passed by my next door neighbor's driveway and saw that my neighbor was in the driveway!  It appeared that maybe he just got home and decided to stop and pull a few weeds from his driveway before heading indoors.

In my head, I thought "Oh good!  I finally have the opportunity to introduce myself and Caitlin to the neighbor".  I stopped on the sidewalk at the end of his driveway and said "Hi!!".
The neighbor stopped pulling weeds, stood up, looked at me, crouched back down, and resumed plucking at his weeds.
I spoke a little louder "Hello??".
No response.
I resumed walking and went home.

Wow.
I don't think anyone has ever been so rude to me.
It's one thing to ignore a person trying to strike up a conversation, but how in the world can a someone ignore a person wearing a tiny baby in a cute pink hat trying to strike up a conversation?  And if you are going to ignore a person, then just pretend that you didn't hear them!  Don't stand up, look the person in the eye, and then ignore them!!

I think now I know why I have never met my next door neighbor in the 3 years that I have lived here.  And it's NOT because he works night shifts.

Want to see how big I got during my pregnancy?

When I was pregnant, I donned the same gray dress every month, stood in the same pose every month, and had Jeff take a couple of pictures of me.
What for?
So I can see how much my belly grew every month!

I put all the pictures onto one sheet so you can compare side by side. hehe

I would have really preferred the lighting to be the same in all the shots but I'm not that talented.


I gained a total of 25 pounds during my pregnancy, which is actually the amount I was supposed to gain for someone my size (I didn't go under or over the recommended amount). 

Despite gaining the optimal amount of weight, Caitlin's birth weight was 6 pounds 1oz, which is considered very small compared to the average birth weight in America (which is 8 pounds).
I think that goes to show how big (*ahem* fat) the average American person is, and people are gaining WAY too much weight during their pregnancy.

Brand new heating, a/c, and ducts!

We finally did it! After 2 years of no heat and no a/c in this house, we finally got brand new heat and air conditioning units and ducts.  It made sense to change all 3 since the central heat and air were so old, it made no sense to repair them, and the ducts were so old and torn that they had to be changed as well.

I was reluctant to get our central heat/air fixed since it is just so expensive!
Shortly after the central heat broke, we had a HVAC guy come see if he could repair it. He had some guesses on why it was broken but nothing concrete.  And he said that if he were to replace the entire heating unit, it would be $9,000.  He did not provide an estimate for a new a/c and ducts.

Last summer, after the gawd awful back and forth with Sears Outlet regarding our broken refrigerator, they offered to send out an HVAC guy to our house for free heat/ac consultation and 20% off the purchase, as a consolation.  The quote that Sears Outlet gave us for just the central heat was also around $9,000.  And if we also wanted new a/c and ducts, the grand total would be $15,000 for all 3 and they would take 20% off the price if we booked that same day. 

That seemed way to expensive so we decided to stick with no central heat and air, and the poor guineas endured through another warm summer and poor Jeff endured through another cold winter (me? I think West LA weather is awesome year round!!).

Spring of this year, Jeff decided that we should fix the central heat and air anyways since it would make the house difficult to sell.  And if we have to fix the heat and air before we sell the house, might as well do it now so we can enjoy it too.  I reluctantly agreed, mentally preparing myself for a gaping $15K hole in our bank account.

Jeff pulled up 5 HVAC places on Yelp with glowing reviews, and booked free consultations with 3 of the 5 places (the other 2 charged for the consultations! ridiculous!). 

The first guy came and said that it would cost $8,600 for the heat, a/c, and ducts.
My jaw dropped.  That is way less than $15K!

The second guy came and seemed more professional than the first guy, and kept talking about how their company's focus is on quality.  The thought that crossed my mind was "Quality? hmm... sounds expensive...".  His quote for new heat, a/c, and ducts? $8,750!
Wow!  That's not much more than the first guy AND you get quality.

The third guy forgot he had an appointment with us so we had to reschedule.  Hmm.. not very professional already... He did not wear booties upon entering our house (while guy #1 and guy #2 did)... Hmm, not very considerate either.  However, this guy was running his own mom & pop business and seemed like a honest and friendly guy.  +1 there. 
After he did a quick look around our house, his quote for new heat, a/c, and ducts was $4,975!

Whoa!
For ~$3,600 cheaper than the other folks, I don't care how dirty he gets the place!  Hire some cleaners and there will still be extra money in our pocket!
We booked him the same day and scheduled for the install the next day.

It was estimated to take 2 days to get the work done but it ended up taking 3 because the workers were 2-3 hours late every.single.day.  Being punctual is apparently not their thing.  This also meant 3 days of loud noises and banging around the attic, which meant 3 days that Caitlin couldn't get any rest.  And at the end of the 3 days, the house was indeed, very filthy.

But we now have brand new ducts and working central heat and air for 1/3 the cost that we would have paid 1 year ago (the benefits of a crappy economy? good timing? who knows...)! 
We also have additional vents cuts into the ceiling of some rooms for more effective cooling.  How lovely!

Happy 3rd Year House Anniversary

Today is the 3rd year anniversary of the day we got the keys to our house!

Ok.  It seriously feels like just the day before yesterday, I was reluctantly house hunting.  And it feels like just yesterday that I was blogging that it was the 2nd year house anniversary, complaining that it felt like just yesterday I was blogging about our 1st year house anniversary.

When we bought our house in 2009 , we qualified for the First Time Home Buyer Tax Rebate (I think it was $7K), but the catch was that we had to live in the house to for 3 years.  Glad to know that as of today, that $7K is officially ours to keep.  =D

We haven't done much to the house this year since I spent about half of 2011 being pregnant.  But also, since we got a lot of major work done on the house the first 2 years, it's smooth sailing from here on out!

Family photo in front of our house!
(Caitlin was 7 weeks old here)

What kind of stuff have we done to the house within the last year?
Well..

1. Put up dry wall in the garage.
2. Leveled out the grassy area in the backyard.  Previously, if you were frolicking in the grass in our backyard, a sprained ankle was guaranteed.  (We didn't buy the house like this.  When we hired some guys to run the electrical wiring underground in our backyard, those idiots failed to put back all the soil that they dug up!  Then grass grew over the trenches...) .
3. Got a new front door.

What changes do I foresee for this upcoming year?

1. Get a screen door for our front door, so mosquitoes and flies don't get into the house!
2. Get brand new heating and air conditioning unit installed.  (We have HVAC guys coming over tomorrow for a consultation!).