Thanksgiving Weekend

This past Tuesday Cori turned 18 months, and as if on cue, we entered into one of the most dramatic development periods in early childhood (read more here). Things can really turn upside down. "Real" language takes off, they understand simple rules and family members' roles and they get the idea that they are expected to follow rules and respect those family roles. Most parents report this stage as the most intense emotional period in their child's life, fraught with buckets of neediness, moodiness, tantrums, meltdowns, and general crazed vulnerability. Oh, and established sleep routines can go out the window, and sure enough for us, it has. It's been a long sleepless week!

Cori had her pediatrician appointment which fortunately only involved 1 shot (her second H1N1 shot). Her weight was a little over 25lbs (which is the 76th percentile), 34 inches long (96th percentile) and a head circumference that put her in the 99th percentile (explains why none of the hats her size fit).

We had a great Thanksgiving with lots of family (probably 40 people!) and lots and lots of kids. Cori decided to crawl into the fireplace with her cousin Emma and wait for Santa.

On Saturday Cori went to her first Christmas parade!

No Christmas welcome is complete without a visit to Santa. Sad how we subject our kids to trama just for our entertainment. We did tell Santa Cori wanted a puppy though!

More New House Pictures

Today we went out to place the SOLD sign on the lot!! We're already meeting some of our new neighbors and everyone is so friendly. At least now they will know who the crazy lady is and why she keeps stopping by the big lot and walking around smiling! I think I've been out 4 times this past week! (Hey, work is close and I do get a lunch hour....)
Here's some pictures of interior details. We've also taken to stalking other people's homes that have features just like what we'll have. We'll bake them cookies or something to make it up to them.

Our hardwood stairs - I just love the curve at the end of the steps!

The upstairs hallway - we'll have the hardwood floors but the spindles will be natural brown stain / wooden, not the white wood as shown here.

2nd floor laundry behind the double doors - convenient!!

Kitchen (minus the appliances which will be included and the cabinet pulls & counter top.) The door shown leads right out to the garage. No more lugging groceries up stairs, etc.

We're trying to decide if we want to upgrade the kitchen with the more detailed trim on the cabinets, corner glass cabinet, and surround to make the fridge look built in. Like this:

Here's the breakfast area that will open to the future deck, and you can see the family room here too. It's all one big open view from the kitchen.

We're going to have an opening between the family room & living room like shown here. And we're thinking of putting the fireplace in the living room instead of the family room like they did here.But we're doing a different fireplace. This is the stone fireplace we're doing. It's a direct vent gas fireplace - flick the switch and the fire in on! We can get whatever color mantle we want.

Here's the master bathtub- trying to figure out if we should spend the extra money for the jetted tub. Even though I shower daily and not take baths, the option of having it seems soooo nice! And what's a few extra hundred when you're spending this much right? (you can see which way I am leaning! ha ha) We will NOT be doing the funky ferns flanking the tub.

Here's the other full bath upstairs.

Master bedroom with the "sitting room" (we're thinking of making this a reading area & computer desk for us) and walk in closet.

Front guest bedroom

The garage door we are kind of lusting after. Unfortunately not standard; we're checking into the cost.

The week in pictures

We've been busy - Cori was sick from Halloween and then the next 9 days. Just something viral; thankfully she checked out fine. But we've been swamped with work and kiddo illness and lots of home fixes prior to listing our home for sale. Once Cori was better we went to the Children's Museum and then played in a big pile of leaves!

playing is hard work!I just love the look of joy on her face below!

New Build

It's been an expensive week here in the Sprague house-hold...between the electrical repairs and the new furnace, we also decided to put a significant deposit down on a new home to be built next year! Here she is!
About 10 days ago Dave and I drove through a small development of new builds in Adams Township (which is in Butler County near Cranberry Township & Seven Fields). We pulled over on the street to admire the great fall view - farms and rolling hills with trees of changing colors. We wandered into the S&A builder's community model and really liked what we saw. The sales agent Monica was really wonderful to talk to and gave us all kinds of pricing and print outs to look over.

Views from our lot

Later in the day we just couldn't contain our excitement and wanted to get some concrete pricing. We met with Monica again and walked away thrilled! We went home over the next week or so and talked about options and came to an agreement on price with the builders.

We chose a delayed delivery option where we don't have to start building until Halloween next year; we can choose to build sooner too. It takes between 4-5 months to build the house and close on it. This is the perfect option for us since we're aiming to sell our current home in the late winter / early spring and we have no idea who soon it will sell. We'll be living with family while the new house is being built so we can save up money.

The house is about 2300 sq. ft and a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath two story home. It's on an unbacked lot that's 1.33 acres. We're lot number 23 below (my lucky number!!)
The community is probably about 75% full with only half a dozen lots left. There are lots of families and it's part of the Mars school district which is an excellent district. To say we are excited is an understatement! Now we just need to pick out paint and cabinets and hardwood flooring and carpet and countertops and doors and lighting fixtures- yikes!

Risky Business

It's proved to be an expensive week so far with visits from the electricians to complete some work and the HVAC people to clean our gas furnace. But it could have been much, much worse.

A regular cleaning by the furnace people showed that the heat exchanger in our furnace was majorly cracked. A crack that has proably been growing for months. (Could have been longer since we never had our furnace checked last fall.) When there is a crack in this component, carbon monoxide is produced from the air that is blown over the hot metal (to create your heat) and is pumped out along with the hot air.

As you know, carbon monoxide is a very dangerous gas. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), carbon monoxide is the number one cause of poisoning deaths in the U.S.A. Making sure furnaces and other potential carbon monoxide sources are properly vented and in good working condition, along with owning a carbon monoxide detector, could become a matter of life and death.

We'd been unknowingly living with a danger for some time. Sadly enough, we have a CO detector but just never got around to installing it. I really beat myself up on Monday upon realizing this. Things could have been so much worse; we certainly have the good Lord looking out for us! The price of the new furnace (ouch) is nothing compared to what could have been lost.

So please use my bad experience as a learning opportunity - go out and buy a CO detector. You can get models that just plug into the walls and have battery back-up for about $25. See here. You can also get units that mount to the ceiling like your smoke detector for about the same price, and that may be better for detection.

Proper placement of a carbon monoxide (CO) detector is important. If you are installing only one carbon monoxide detector, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recommends it be located near the sleeping area, where it can wake you if you are asleep. Additional detectors on every level and in every bedroom of a home provides extra protection against carbon monoxide poisoning.

Homeowners should remember not to install carbon monoxide detectors directly above or beside fuel-burning appliances, as appliances may emit a small amount of carbon monoxide upon start-up. A detector should not be placed within fifteen feet of heating or cooking appliances or in or near very humid areas such as bathrooms.

When considering where to place a carbon monoxide detector, keep in mind that although carbon monoxide is roughly the same weight as air (carbon monoxide's specific gravity is 0.9657, as stated by the EPA; the National Resource Council lists the specific gravity of air as one), it may be contained in warm air coming from combustion appliances such as home heating equipment. If this is the case, carbon monoxide will rise with the warmer air.

For this reason, the makers of First Alert®, a leading brand in carbon monoxide detector technology, suggests mounting the detector on the ceiling. This also puts the detector out of the way of potential interference, such as pets or curious children.

You can read more about this here.

If you already have a CO detector installed, please test it. This weekend we roll back the clocks and you should use this opportunity to test your smoke alarms and CO detectors. I know that we'll be installing ours immediately.

THUD

***THUD***

That's the sound of me falling off the exercise wagon the past 3 weeks. I'm ashamed and it's made a difference (for the worse) in how I feel. I'm hoping public shaming of myself will work for me.

I'm climbing back on and vowing to drink more water. Thank goodness I'm not traveling or with my boss this week - those company dinners are not waistline friendly. Who's with me??

17 months

Can't believe that Corinne is 17 months today! The time really does fly by. Her vocabulary is growing almost as fast as her height, and pizza seems to be her new favorite food. We think some more teeth are working their way in (she is only up to 6) and that is the cause of some mild crankiness lately (or it's a reaction to both the H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines).Last weekend we took Cori to get her pictures taken which turned out to be quite a day. There was little time spent on the nap front that day as well a strong desire to just run, run, run in the studio; this lead to not very many pictures of Cori looking at the camera. And even then, very few of them turned out decent. We laughed that the one "fall" shot we got was only because we put her butt in the bucket and she couldn't figure out how to get out. (Snort snort - evil parents!)
Cori has also discovered that she likes to lay all the way back in the tub. It's a little freaky seeing your child laying very still in water, eyes closed, hair spread out..... Though I will say it is a very effective way to rinse her hair! Here is a progression of shots from tonight's bath. Our little fish sure enjoys the water; I see a swimmer in our future!