Okay, breathing. Still breathing. I'm unexpectedly pregnant, yes, but I'm breathing, and the shock is beginning to wear off, and I'm starting to feel a little - dare I say it? - excited. A new baby. Well, it may not have been in our plans, but I guess it was in our cards, so to speak.

All the congratulations, even though I said I wasn't quite ready for them, helped a lot. I swear, I was in denial for days. I kept staring at that positive test, wondering if an evaporation line was possible, though it had showed up as quickly as the first line. A part of my mind had been so convinced that I was only testing to reassure myself that my period was on its way that it seemed unimaginable that I would get any other kind of results.

Of course, almost as soon as I tested, other pregnancy symptoms, nearly forgotten from three years ago, began to reemerge. Pregnancy-induced narcolepsy, for one, began to rear its head that very evening. Nausea followed soon after. Now, with Sam, I never did throw up, not even once. I had a few waves of fleeting nausea, but with the help of Sea Bands and small snacks, I was just fine. This time around, the queasiness is less ignorable. Beta, as I've taken to calling this second child, obviously has more "presence" than Sam did at this point. I'm wearing my Sea Bands again, but even for as brief a time as the period I remove them to shower, I feel awful. With them on, I can manage about seventy-five percent of the day during which I don't feel two heaves away from losing my lunch. That remaining twenty-five percent finds me curled up on the sofa, moaning and trying not to move. No puking yet, but it's only a matter of time, I think.

So what did I do, while trying to manage all this with a toddler running amok and with Eric on another continent? I caved in to parental pressure (they didn't know about Beta) and dragged Sam and myself on a road trip to Maryland. We're here in my parents' house now, and I'm reveling in having two extra sets of hands to deal with Sam every night. Heck, they barely let me tend to him at all, and that suits both him and me just fine right now; I need the rest, and he loves his grandparents madly.

My original thought had been to not tell my parents about Beta just yet. I mean, the situation didn't feel real to me yet; I didn't know that I wanted to tell anyone else until that changed. Also, with Eric still in Europe, I didn't feel comfortable celebrating with anybody else. I wanted to wait at least until we'd had a chance to enjoy the secret together for a bit first.

Eric thought different. "Tell them," he told me on the phone the morning before I left. "Tell them!" I sighed, and I decided that I could at lest do it in a way that was more fun than just blurting it out. "Hey, Mom; I'm pregnant again! Wait; stand back up..." I found a marker, laid Sam on the floor, and scribbled, "I'm the Big Brother!" on his belly while he giggled in a ticklish fit. He didn't really want to cover it up with a shirt, but I convinced him that it was too cold to go without.

It was a long car trip here; my brother gave me "scenic" directions that took me on and off and back on the Pennsylvania turnpike, and we hit rain, and all the while, Sam whined and complained about being "stuck" and about how he wanted to see Papou and go riding in a golf cart, as my dad had promised. We finally got here late in the evening, and there was much rejoicing as my mom swept Sam out of the car and into the house. There, they all played together until Sam's eyelids began to droop. I sat with camera in hand, waiting, until Dad finally decided that Sam should change into PJ's. He took off Sam's shirt...and then, without even looking at his belly, went on to his pants and socks. Then he started to play tickle games! With the "big brother" message inches away from his face!

After a few minutes, I couldn't stand it anymore. "Dad, will you please send your grandson over to his much more observant grandmother?" I said. Dad blinked at me, and then he stared at Sam for a moment before noticing the message. I watched as comprehension slid over his face. "It looks like somebody..." he said, and then turned Sam to face Mom, who was very curious by this point. She read his shirt, and then grinned hugely, jumped up, and ran to give me a big hug. I'd say they were both happy.

The especially funny part was Dad's reaction to the thought that Beta's will be an unexpected arrival. "Well, if you keep running that play, eventually somebody will get through!"

Of course, this pregnancy has put an added layer of urgency on the house situation. I want to get there and get settled more quickly. Now we need to find a house to accommodate four instead of three; our options will be more limited, and I'm impatient to dive in and start searching through them as soon as possible.

The buyers for our house came back with the results of their inspection, and they weren't good. They wanted some chimney repair, which was no big deal. We had been planning on doing that, anyway, and our estimates had shown that it would cost about six hundred. The buyers, however, also wanted a new roof.

Now, we knew the roof was aged when we bought the house. We also knew that it was a fairly complicated roof, and that it would cost more than usual to replace it. Our early estimate, from our inspector, had said it would be perhaps an eight thousand dollar job. We weren't planning on simply rolling over and giving the buyers that kind of money.

To make matters worse, the companies we had come in to give us more estimates on the roof came back with even higher numbers, by another couple thousand dollars. We didn't know what to do, but we knew we couldn't just eat that kind of money. The big fear wasn't that this guy would walk away from the table, but that subsequent buyers would all do the same thing. In the end, we countered back with an offer to fix the chimney and give a thousand dollars credit toward the roof.

He came back asking for a thousand more, saying that his own estimates on the roof said it would be six thousand to fix. I don't know where he got that number, but our realtor felt it was a blessing; if he'd had our numbers, he would certainly have asked for more. Taking that into consideration, and also realizing that he's letting other issues go that future buyers might not (for one, the house has changed hands several times in the past ten years, and now we can't obtain the proof that it's been treated for pests), we decided to go with it.

Negative equity: what a horrid term. At least it should only be by a couple thousand dollars, and we'll be able to move forward now. We'll call it a lesson learned, though the only one that comes to mind is that you can't count on plans to stay solid. That seems to be the theme for this year so far.

I got a haircut. You like? I wanted something a little easier to care for, and I was able to get an appointment with my hometown stylist. She gave me my very first haircut when I was a baby. I love being able to go to her still. I don't think she's ever steered me wrong, though she's not a "chic, high-class" stylist. She's just Debbie, and she's excellent at what she does.