To Offer or Not to Offer; Lila's Eating.

Yesterday at noon we met at the house we were thinking about putting an offer on (8639 Hathaway).  We spent an hour there, looking around and talking with Rich about the house.  Jake was a little hesitant at first because it has a Home Owner's Association.  But he worked through that by reading through the by-laws and calling up some neighbors and asking questions.  When we went to the open house, we only spent maybe 10-15 minutes there, but we immediately recognized that it has everything we wanted.  We were both impressed too because it looks a lot better in person than in the pictures.  The current owners have owned the house for 8 years and have barely done any decorating, it's pretty awful.  But that means all neutral colors on the walls and no wallpaper or anything to deal with.  All of the trim and doorways and cupboards and walls are pretty nasty dirty.  The kitchen appliances are really dirty.  But, nothing a good cleaning can't fix.

For a while we were thinking that we'd make an offer on it tomorrow.  The tricky thing is that it will be through a relocation company; the company has the final say on whether the sellers can/will accept our offer.  It's priced at $179,000 and Rich thinks it will go for $172,500.  He recommended yesterday that we offer $170,500 but Jake wants to start lower.  He looked at the statistics for houses in the area and thinks we should offer somewhere between $165-170k. We're going to take a few days, or a week, or however long we need to think about it.  I'm starting to get the feeling that it's not the house for us.  I'm still thinking about Greenbriar.  And I think we really need to make sure we want to buy a house that expensive.

Anyway, Lila had fun there chasing the kitties around.  She fell asleep on the way home and slept for an hour.  When Jake got home we had dinner and kind of talked about the house, but I was pretty tired.  The most exciting thing happened though: Lila started walking FOR REAL!  Instead of us helping her get going, she just started walking from Jake to me on her own and took real, balanced, careful steps... instead of kind of walking/running towards me and then falling and me catching her.  It was amazing.  She took 10 steps 3-4 different times to me.  I unexpectedly burst into tears and started crying, to see her little face walking towards me was unreal.  I can't believe she'll be a year old two weeks from today.  Wow, what an emotional thing to be a mom.  I can't believe how fast she's growing up.

I've noticed a change in her the past week or so.  She's definitely maturing.  Her eating has improved a LOT!  Not that she's eating anywhere near enough to sustain her, but she's trying more things.  For instance, today she "ate" a graham cracker, a piece of bread, a banana toddler cookie, half a piece of chocolate, some tomato soup, a Pop Tarts mini-crisp, and a french fry.  That's HUGE.  When I say that she "ate" all those things, mostly I mean she took 3-4 teeny tiny bites.  She doesn't quite get how to bite and chew things.  She won't eat food if it's cut up into small pieces... it has to be a big piece that she slowly gums her way through.  So, when she ate some bread, I gave her an entire piece of bread and she nibbled on the corners of it.  I'm definitely seeing an improvement and I hope she keeps getting better.  Oh, and last night, she was even gumming on a piece of pizza.

This morning she took a nap from 10:40-noon.  It was her only nap of the day.  We had lunch with Jake at his office.  Talked about making an offer on the house and it looked like we were going to, but at dinner is when we decided to slow down and think about this some more.  After that Lila and I went to Meijer to pick up some groceries.  I got a lot of things that I think she might like: banana Toddler cookies, Cheez-its, Some Pop Tarts mini crisps (someone at church gave her a Chocolate one on Sunday and she ate the entire thing, so I definitely wanted to try those, and she ate one today).  I got her some dried apples too, thinking that they'd be like chips, but they're sticky and not completely dried, so she didn't like them.  Now Jake will have to eat the whole thing.

We had grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner and chatted with Mike on the phone while we ate.  Lila enjoyed sitting in Daddy's lap and eating with him.  She's not a huge fan of her high chair, though she'll sit there for 10-15 minutes before whining.  She likes high chairs in restaurants, though.  She really likes sitting in Jake's lap and eating.  After he left, I got Lila ready for bed and we had a nice story time.  She sat so quietly and let me read her a whole book straight through (usually she ends up turning pages over and over).  And she fell asleep within minutes before 8:00.