And on the 22nd day...

Yes, you read that right. After 22 days on the market, our house is now under contract! Almost unheard of these days, right? Well how about the fact that we actually had two offers on the house on the same 22nd day. Unbelievable.

Nate and I went to Las Vegas to celebrate my 30th birthday (gulp). The Kentucky Derby was about to start, we had money on the race, and were in the sports booking area of Caesar's Palace, surrounded by thousands of our closest friends. The horses were being walked to the gate, post time was seconds away... the gates opened, the horses were off... then Nate's phone rang.

It was the realtor - you have an offer! She sent it to our email addresses. We missed the race with our excitement over the offer, in addition to not really being able to hear the realtor over the roar of the crowd.

We paid to check our email, we paid to print out the offer. We reviewed the offer, and had some questions for the realtor. Called her back with our confusion, at which time she told us not to worry about it, because she had another offer coming in! We paid to check our email, we paid to print out the second offer. We spent a lot of time finding the casinos' business offices and paying to print things.

After a little bit of back and forth, we accepted one of the offers! We signed the documents, and paid to fax them back. We close at the end of May, barring something happening (cross your fingers!). I am really not trying to jinx us, but I so wanted to share...

Happy Mama's Day

Who needs flowers when your beautiful boy has almost learned how to say "Mama"?!?!?!



This is a remarkable step for Will, who prior to this point has been able to simply cry or frown when he's upset or click his tongue when he likes something. His speech therapist is really excited about his ability to make the "ma" sound - apparently now that he knows how to make a specific sound and knows that it makes the people around him really excited, he's more likely to experiment with other sounds.

It is not uncommon for children with cerebral palsy to be unable to speak, as it requires serious muscle control to be able to make verbal speech. We have heard a couple of amazing stories recently, though, about other children with cerebral palsy who didn't speak until the age of 4, when they remarkably opened their mouths and had a vocabulary of about 20 words.

So happy Mother's Day to everyone out there! Hope you had a great one! I was the lucky recipient of an extra 3 hours of sleep this morning, followed by a pancake breakfast and two beautiful watercolors from Luke and Will. I received my "real" present yesterday... a brand new toilet seat for the master bath... complete with little kid seat so that we can start working with Luke on potty training!

If you receive the email version of this blog post, please check out the actual blog at www.ncslaviks.blogspot.com for Will's short video!