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Orders, we think

So Hubs has orders, so to speak. I don't take much at face value unless they are hard copies in front of us and he is heading out the door. But it looks like he will be going to school for 9 months and then will hopefully be assigned to a ship back here in HR when he gets done with school. Now if this trip to school is anything like his last trip to school, it will be a long long time for him at school (last time ended up being almost 2 years for him but there was a ton of other crap that had gone on, like anything in our lives is easy). My concern is that he wont start school for awhile and will be gone longer than 9 months. He is already going to be missing a lot of things in Baby A's life as it is, which isn't uncommon in this lifestyle. We had planned on having our 2nd child while he was getting ready to transition to shore duty, but that is not the luck that we have (as if it would be any other way).

We will deal with it the best we know how. But hopefully if he will be at school longer than 9 months, we can rent our house out and go with him so that he doesn't miss too much of the kids lives. He is already going to be missing D's bday this year which sucks, but it is what it is. We make due with what we have and enjoy and cherish the times we have him around. As soon as we have more solid news, I'll let you know :). Also Hubs took his advancement exam this past cycle and of course missed advancing by ONE POINT!!! Go figure, that's just our luck. But it's awesome for him since it was just one point, but then it sucks because it was one point. But one of  his awards wasn't on his sheet so they are working to try and fix it and hopefully things will work out in his favor. We'll see.

Cloth diapers? who would have thought.

Yes I am jumping on the wagon of cloth diapers. I had thought about it with D, but honestly I didn't like the idea of dunking diapers in the toilet and having to use pins to close them, but I've learned that it's not like that at all. Cloth diapers are soo cool and they have so many fun prints. The prices are high for some, but you can find some that are decently priced. Hubs decided two weeks before Baby A was born that cloth would be a great idea. We were at Target and he saw this box of Charlie Banana diapers and wanted to get them. I called my pal G and she said heck no, there are diapers that are wayyyyy cheaper. So she set me up with some groups on FB that I found diapers on. I have been put into a whole new world of things like co-ops to buy diapers and swap groups and just way too many things. I have started building a stash from used ones that I thought were good deals, which some were and then others were crappy diapers that would be great if they get fixed and they fit Baby A, and I've purchased some new ones. I'm hoping to find some ones that fit well with Baby A. And since D is still in diapers since our epic failure of potty training (which I will make a post about when I can), I have a few gender netural ones that I could put him in as well (when he is at home). I will prolly make some posts about our journey through cloth and hopefully  have a positive experience with it.

Still waiting

Yep, that's right, we are still waiting to figure out if we can move back into our house. The first company, Paul Davis Restoration, let us know on Thursday of last week that we had passed the second air quality test and that they would be removing the containment area that they had set up on Friday and that they would be done with us. Our insurance had contacted another company to come out and finish the work that PDR was supposed to finish. I met with the guy from that company and he was going to be working on the estimate to send to our insurance company. He came to get some measurements and meet with me last Monday, and when we went into the house, the containment area was unzipped, which it shouldn't have been. Great, just what I needed to hear. So he went in and looked around and took some measurements. He told me that he thought the containment area was poorly done, that they should have covered the vent that was in our kitchen as well. Lovely. So he came back out on Saturday when Hubs and I were there doing some cleaning (since PDR said we could move back in). He took some more measurements without the containment area up and then told us what would could happen and some other concerns he had. He thought that we should go ahead and have another air quality test done to make sure that everything had in fact passed. He expressed concerns about the vent in our ceiling that had been left uncovered and said that the dishes in our sink that had been left and a few other things should have been taken care of and not left that way. We asked him about our carpet since it got wet in the initial leak and PDR said they would clean it and not replace it. Hubs and the new guy looked under the carpet and low and behold there was mold. Great. New guy said that the carpet should have been pulled up when the rest of the work had been first done since the water from the leak had been exposed to mold.

 There were also staples and tape left up from the containment area that PDR didn't remove and they had damaged our wall when they removed the area. This was just turning into more and more bad stuff to me, but not as bad as it could have been. The new guy said that he would submit the estimate to our insurance to have the carpet replaced and to have the walls painted since they were damaged now. It may be Wednesday of this week that we will hear back if the insurance company accepts it and then 2 weeks to complete the work. Holy cow. He said that we could move back in, but with the mold being under the carpet he thought that we should get the second air quality test. Lovely. Luckily we have a friend (who we've been staying with) that had a contact that does restoration and mold work. He said that he would come out, take a look around, and if he felt that we needed the test he would have it done for us. So hopefully that wont be the case, and we can just have the work started and move back in. We still have a lot of cleaning to do. I thew out all the boxed goods and things in our fridge, I'll clean up the can goods that we had. I want to have the couches cleaned as well and wash down the walls. But hopefully by the end of June this will all be a bad nightmare and we can move on from it.

We have been informed that we should obtain legal representation to deal with this matter. Not something that I am going to look forward to, especially since Hubs schedule coming up sucks and he will be really REALLY busy. So we'll see how that all works on.

Welcome to the world and to your crazy family

In spite of all the crazy crap that has been going on in our lives, we welcome Baby A to the world on April 21. I went in to Labor and delivery because she wasn't moving a lot and I was worried, since it seemed like at every NST (non-stress test) I went to the nurse said that if I felt a decrease in movement to come in, so Hubs and I did. She was fine and I was fine, but since I was already 39 weeks and was going to be induced in a few days anyway because of gestational diabetes, I was admitted and they started the induction process. I was given pitocin to start my contractions and they got to have an epidural. Things were going fine until my epidural came out and things went down hill for me pain wise. Needless to say there was lots of screaming and yelling, but I got my epidural fixed and then not before too much longer and after 9 pushes, Miss Amelia Arabelle arrived at 0650. She weighed a whopping 8 lbs 9 oz (D was 7lbs 7oz born at 0646) and 20 inches (so was D). She had a full head of dark hair, just like me when I was born, and had a lot of similar features to D. Hubs was concerned that she didn't look like him, but she looks like Big Bro so yea she's ours. She is wonderful and great and we love her so much. We wish we could have taken her home to her own room, but we are making due for the time being. Hopefully she'll have a home to go to at some point.

water leak and mold oh my

Well the two of you that may or may not read my blog are probably wondering where I've been and if I've had the baby yet. Well I can tell you where I've NOT been, and that is in my own home. In early April we had a water leak. We had a plumber finally come out on April 15th and they told us that the leak was under the slab that our house was built on and that they would have to tear up the floor to fix the problem. We called our insurance company and they said to get a 2nd opinion, which we did, and turned out that the leak was in the wall between our bathroom and kitchen so it wasn't going to be too horrible to fix and not cost $3000 like the first company said it would. We also found out that we had Quest pipes also known as polybutylene pipe in our home, which there was a lawsuit years ago because of the failure rate of these pipes, and they should have been replaced. When we had our home inspection 2 1/2 years ago, the inspector only saw PVC pipes and didn't find the Quest pipes, which from what the plumber explained was that they were replaced in parts that were visible and could only been seen if cut into the wall. Well the leak was fixed, and the company (Paul Davis Restoration or PDR for this post) that our insurance had sent out to do the restoration found out that we had mold.  They set up a containment area, and cleaned and took out the drywall and took up the floor and proceeded to dry the walls so that we could have an air quality test done so that we could move back into our home. Well it seemed to take a very long time for the walls to dry, and then there was another leak that was found, which Hubs fixed, (along with trying to fix another leak that was found but we called a plumber for that) so we had to wait even longer for them to even come in and test. The air quality test was finally done on May 3. We were told by the company that they would have the results in 48 hours. On Monday when hubs called the results were still not available, but the PDR said they would start some work so that we could get back in our house as soon as possible. They kept saying this each day that week but nothing was done. Finally on Friday May 10 we learned that the house did not pass the air quality test and the company would have to do some more cleaning and there would be a retest. At this point we had been out of our home for 3 weeks. We had been told by PDR that we could keep our cat in the house, which should not have been allowed, but we had no idea this was our first experience with anything like this.

Well we felt that we were not getting taken care of appropriately by PDR, it didn't seem that they were keeping us informed and that they were telling us things that were false and not happening (like the cleaning and repairs while waiting for the test results), so we contacted the BBB. Hubs command even got involved at this point and emailed the company. On Friday May 17, we received an email from the company saying they were upset that we had filed complaints on them and that once the mold part of their job was done, they would be finished and would not complete the work to restore our house, even though they had been paid by us already to do the work. We had paid them for the mold work and also for the part of our deductible that we owed for our insurance, but PDR said they would have to reevaluate what we owed since the cost would be more, but that they would give us a refund of whatever they didn't charge us.

There are so many things that went wrong with this whole process. I wasn't able to be an active part of it because I gave birth in the midst of all of this. But it seems like if you don't want to have some negative comments about you then you would want to make your customers happy and finish the work, not just say we are going to finish because you "told" on us. There are many things that we have learned from this, and will know for the next time we have any issues. But needless to say, 33 days later we are still not in our home, our floors are still torn up, the walls are open from where the dry wall was removed and we are awaiting the second set of air quality results. We have been trying to get help during the whole ordeal but seemed like we weren't able to get help. We were able to contact the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society and they gave us loans to pay for the work to be done (and we also had to repipe our house since we had the faulty pipes and it would have had to be done anyway), but now we have a large loan payment that is going to wreck our already tight budget. I just want to go home and be in my own house. I want to take my daughter, who will be 4 weeks old tomorrow, to her room and have her in her own bed. But this horrible ordeal is still going on and who knows how much longer it will continue.