Basement Report

Yesterday the water restoration company came out and verified that indeed our carpets were soaking wet, and went ahead and sucked out what they could and then set up fans under the carpet. They plan to return on Monday to see if things are dry yet. Todd brought over two great big industrial size fans to help as well. By Monday things will be dry, (hopefully) and then they can clean the carpets and hopefully get out all the stains the furniture left.
We have an adjuster coming out today to tell us for sure whether or not our problem will be covered under the insurance policy. He pretty much already told us it doesn't sound like it, and tried to get us to just let him write it off without coming out, but Todd insisted he come out. So keep your fingers crossed.
Last night around 9:15 pm our power went out. No biggie right? Wrong. Since our sump pump is still pumping out water by the bucketfulls, we knew it would only be a matter of time before the basement started to fill up again with the power out. I lit the one candle I could find and sent Todd to Lowe's to get a battery for the sump pump and some flashlights. Meantime while he was gone, Tony woke up and started crying (thanks to Brewster barking), so I had to take care of him in the dark. He has been teething this week and has his first cold, so he hasn't been sleeping well and any little noise wakes him up and then he remembers that he doesn't feel well and wants to be held.
By the time Todd got home at 10:15 or so, we went to assess the basement situation, now that we had flashlights, only to discover that we again had about 3 inches of water in our sump pump room, and it was spreading into the other rooms with the carpet. Since he wasn't able to get a battery to back up the sump pump and the power was still out, he was going to go to the farm to get the farm's pump and pump it out that way, meanwhile Tony was still awake and showing no signs of going to sleep, so I took him over to Grandma's to spend the night so I could help Todd with the water mess.
Shortly after that, the power came back on and the pump started working again. But now I think I need to call the water restoration people to come back out and suck up the carpet again.
What a mess, could anything else go wrong??

Oh yeah it can, the cable went out last night. We saw the cable truck outside our house working on it, and Todd went out to talk to him, and told him the power had been out, causing our basement to flood for the second time this week, and now we finally got it all straightened out and he just wants to lay in bed and watch football, and he can't even do that! The cable guy assured him it would be on soon, but we woke up without cable. Fortunately it's on now so I am not stuck at home all day without cable or internet.

EverDry isn't all that dry after all!

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

If you have water damage in your basement, a wet basement, or flooding in your basement, DO NOT use EverDry of Mishawaka, they promise a dry basement for a lifetime to sell their product/service, claiming they are the best, have worked for NASA even, but when it comes down to it, and 18 months later when you have 6 inches of water in your basement they find some little loophole in the fine print of the contract to get out of their guarantee.

I hope everyone considering using EVERYDRY does a google search on them first and find this!

I'm not a big fan of our insurance company right now either. Apparently they wont be covering any of the damages or repairs. Last year they added a new optional rider to policies for a sump pump back-up or failure. The problem is our insurance agent didn't bother to tell us about it even though he knew our basement flooded 18 months ago. Isn't that just nice?

Dripping, soaking, floating etc.

Just a few words to describe our basement. Tonight when I got home from work I was putting the baby to bed and the water softener guy was here. He yelled something to me up the stairs about water in my basement and I was like "No, we don't have water in our basement!" He told me I better come take a look. I quickly put Tony to bed and down the stairs I ran to find this.

I quickly called Todd to come home and help me figure out what we were going to do at 8 O'clock at night with all this water. I got on the phone with our insurance company first, who was happy to help me file a claim over the phone and then would have an agent call me in 24 -48 business hours. So then I called the company that dried our basement 2 years ago which cost a small fortune and if I'm not mistaken gave a lifetime guarantee of their work (I'm fairly certain I'll soon find out that doesn't mean a whole lot). Yet when I called them, all I got was an answering service that asked me to leave one message and someone would get back to me in the next 24-48 business hours. They even stated that leaving multiple messages would not get my call answered any sooner and to please leave just one. I then called several companies that are 24 hour water damage removal companies, only to get similar messages. I'm sorry but what is the point of 24 hour service if all you get is someone who answers the phone and tell me it will be 24 - 48 hours before anyone can help you.

Todd checked the sump pump and it was full and over flowing and not working at the time. At some point it had shut off, maybe over heated, who knows, but Todd was able to get it working again but there was way too much water for that pump alone, so he brought another pump from the farm to help pump out the water.

The worst part is, we don't know when all this happened because neither of us has been in the basement since Saturday. Even though we had all this rain over the weekend I never once worried about the basement flooding because we spent so much money having it fixed 2 years ago that I thought we never had to worry about it.

All my furniture down there is new within the last 2 years and lets just say it was a bit of a splurge getting it. The water came up to the wood legs on all of it, and after wiping it off, I think it will be okay, maybe just need a little refinishing of the wood, but the fabric is damp and will need to be cleaned. I don't know if you noticed in the picture the TV sits on the floor and was 4-6 inches under water. Along with the Bose stereo system, the Wii, the Sony Playstation II, and all the remote controls and guitar Hero and many DVD's and video games. Also the mini fridge is probably ruined and probably the wall cabinets. When I went to start picking up the stuff and getting it out of water I noticed that the outlet strip with all the electronics plugged into was floating under water. I was standing in water up to my ankles at the time and it sort of freaked me out. I decided Todd should unplug it, and just to be safe, I got out of the water as fast as I could and put my feet on dry ground.

I called Kim and Francie and Jason over to help with the mess and we were able to haul most of the small stuff out of the basement and put the furniture up on cement blocks. Now Todd is down there with a wet vac vacuuming up the water. He will be there all night if he tries to get it all out. We have someone supposedly calling in the morning to set up a time to come suck out what is left of the water and start the drying process. He is how it looked when we finally called it a night.

The clean up process will be a mess. The insurance situation looks grim as well, there are so many loopholes in insurance policies I don't know why we even bother having it. This is going to be an expensive little misfortune we have encountered. I just have to keep telling myself, that there are worse things that could happen, it's only stuff.

Shopping high's and low's, but first...

He's gone from this...To this... To this.

Just a few days ago he started pulling himself up. Unfortunately he did this for the first time while at Grandma's house, so I didn't get to see it. I told him not to do anything significant for the first time for anyone but me, but apparently he does what he wants when he wants.
He was having a hay day in my junk drawer in the bathroom. I've since replaced the junk with toys.

Now on to the shopping.

This weekend I stocked up on some new Fall clothes for Tony. Old Navy was having a 40% off sale on their new fall stuff. I got a ton of clothes for a great price. Then today, I was shopping at the mall while my car was being serviced, and I wandered into Gymboree. I have always thought Gymboree had better girl stuff than boy stuff, but they had a sale sign, and I'm a sucker for a sale. (You have to be when you have to replace your child's complete wardrobe every season.) Surprisingly they had some pretty cute little boy stuff. They had up to 40% OFF tags everywhere, but I couldn't find much for 40% off, most things were more like 15 or 20. I still picked out a few things on sale, and one pair of pj's that weren't on sale. When I got to the register I discovered they were having a "not on sale, sale". If it wasn't marked down, it was on sale. If it cost less than $20 it was $10, and if it was more than $20 it was on sale for $20. So I had to take all my on sale stuff back and pick out stuff that wasn't on sale because it was a better deal. So confusing, but my little boy is stylin now. Here he is in his new jammies.

I got a tip from another blogger about buying baby clothes on EBAY, I had found a huge lot of new with tags baby boy clothes size 12-18mos, all good name brands for $60. I started to bid on it, and Todd got mad, apparently he thinks all that stuff is stolen and somehow it will be traced back to me and I will get in trouble. So now I am forbidden from shopping on EBAY. Bummer, cause they had some good deals. We watched a dateline episode not long ago about stolen credit cards and how people buy stuff with the stolen cards and then resell it. I'm pretty sure that's where he got the idea that the clothes on EBAY are stolen.

So if anybody has any other ideas as to how they can resell all these expensive clothes new for cheap, that is legal, please fill me in. Maybe I can convince Todd that it is legitimate.

Anthony, What are you doing??

Since before he was crawling he's been doing this. He gets up on his hands and feet and puts his butt in the air. He does this a lot, and then he will crawl and then do this again. It's so funny to see him do it. I think he is going to do a headstand or a somersault one of these times, or just stand up.

And in other news, he had his 9 month doctor appt. No shots this time, YEAH!!! But I hear the one year ones are rough. He weighs 18 pounds 14 ounces and is 28 1/2 inches long and falls near the 40% for his age. He also got his first tooth on his 9 month birthday. I'd take a picture and show you but he wont let me. The only way you can see it is if you get him laughing while your holding him. It was a rough night the night it broke through. He cried and cried and for the first time I could not console him. I felt so bad for him. Tylenol and baby oragel didn't seem to help much either. Finally around midnight he fell asleep. Hopefully they don't all hurt that bad.

Okay gotta cut this one short, he just woke up from his nap.

Baby Jail

Now that Anthony has perfected crawling, his speed has dramatically increased, as has his distance. When he first started crawling his radius of movement was about 5 or 6 feet. Now, he can go from room to room really fast, and I have to keep my eyes on him constantly. Apparently I'm not very good about the constantly part and we had a minor incident which resulted in a little bruise to his face the other day. I have been waiting for my baby gates to arrive via UPS, which I ordered the day he started crawling, but they didn't arrive until yesterday. So now we have baby jail* and I no longer have to worry about him hurting himself by falling down or crawling up the stairs. Now that the stairs are blocked off the main floor is pretty much baby safe.
*My sister Rachael used to use the term baby jail when her baby (who isn't a baby anymore, and just had his first day of school yesterday), was a baby. They didn't use gates though, just furniture moved around strategically so that Ben couldn't get out of the living room.

Off the hook

Okay so I am not running the Chicago half marathon this September after all. I swear I don't know what I was thinking when I decided this would be fun. But since it was sort of my idea, and then I roped several people into doing it with me, I knew there was no way out. It was all fun in the beginning, 3 miles today, 2 miles tomorrow then rest a day or two and run 5 on the weekend. As the mileage increased and the summer got hotter and hotter, I soon grew tired of the rigid schedule I was committed to and started to think of how I could get out of this race without looking like a quitter. I had the same feelings back in 2002 when I was training for my full marathon with my sister Rachael. We were following the same training schedule, so we were sort of training together, except that I was living in WA and she in MI. I remember thinking when the training got hard and I wanted to bail that a broken leg wouldn't be so bad or even a mild sprain would probably be enough to get me out of it. I even thought about just pretending I had a broken leg, since I was half way across the country and she'd never know. You know these are just the thoughts that would run through my mind during a 18 or 20 mile run. I never followed through with my plan, and I did run the marathon, but whew, it was tough. Anyhow, since we live in the same state now, faking a broken leg isn't exactly possible, and a real broken leg would be a much bigger hardship than running a half marathon, but I did end up getting pregnant and that is what got me off the hook this time.
There it's official, I put it in writing. Now you all know for sure. I thought my sneaky little header change would throw some people off, and actually I thought it would take quite a while before people even noticed the subtle little change of words, but I was wrong, you guys are quick. Some people may not think that a blog is a proper way to inform people, especially family, that you are having a baby, but since when do I do things the proper way. So I apologize to anyone that was offended by finding out via the blog. Honestly though, word travels really fast in my family, and secrets even faster, so I was sure everyone knew from my side of the family. I also discovered that as fast as news travels in my family, I think it might travel even faster in Todd's family.
I am 10 weeks pregnant and our official due date is March 27. March also happens to be the end of Todd's off season and the beginning of his working season, so it wasn't exactly good timing for that reason, but we will make it work. Being the educated people that we are, we can't honestly say it happened accidentally without looking stupid, but lets just say we definitely were not trying and we will for sure remember this and be more careful with planning should we decide to have or not have another baby.
Tony and the little baby will be just 16 months apart. Some people think that is crazy and a lot of work. My mom thinks it's genius, she intentionally had her kids close together so that they would have a play mate. I'm sure there are tons of pro's and con's to having babies close together, and I'm not sure which list is longer, or whether I agree with the people who think this is crazy or my mom who thinks it's a smart idea, but it doesn't really matter at this point, it's a done deal.
So there you have it, I have officially spilled the beans all over the floor. I have really enjoyed reading all your comments, some more blunt and inquisitive than others, but all fun to read. I just have one little request, if you leave an annonymous comment because you don't have a blogger account, please leave your name, otherwise I have to try to guess who you are and I may be guessing wrong. Don't make me start calling you out on it. ;)

PS In case your wondering, I didn't really get pregnant just to get out of the race, I am still running, just not as far. More like 3-5 miles a few times a week. I actually kept training for several weeks after I found out, but when I went to my first doctor appt they said NO, and who am I to argue with a doctor. They have a 5K in Chicago the same day as the half marathon which I am considering doing, but we will see.

PSS Yeah, we're happy about it.