Hello friends! We’re still alive, just absent from the blog a bit. We’ve had a crazy couple of weeks! It all started with the A/C going out on Saturday, July 2nd. I didn’t even mention it in my 4th of July post because we got it fixed that afternoon. However, when the repair man came out to look in the attic, our lives would change forever! (ok, I’m being a little dramatic, but not too much. Read on.)
The evaporator coils on our A/C were black. They’re copper, so they’re supposed to be, well, copper-colored. As soon as Chris saw them he knew it was CDW – Chinese drywall. We had been getting letters from lawyers saying that we could have this toxic Chinese drywall and what to look for (namely a sulfur smell, health/respiratory problems, electronics going out, etc.). We figured since we had no smell and we were healthy that we must not have it. But one of the first signs that you have it is corroded copper coils on your A/C and the repair man said he’d only seen that happen with CDW, so we were pretty sure at this point that we had it. Chris called one of the lawyers who sent the letters and they had someone come out to the house on Wednesday. He and Chris found the markings on the drywall in the attic that confirmed we had THE name brand CDW that was found to be toxic. So we joined the class-action lawsuit against the drywall company who ordered all this drywall from China and stamped it saying it met the US standards when really it didn’t.
So what do we do now? We wait for a settlement. We felt like it was pretty much our only option since we can’t sell the house as it is (it’s worth almost nothing with CDW) and we can’t afford to just move somewhere else while they tear it up until we have money from the settlement (and who knows when that will be! Hopefully soon). But at the same time we can’t stay here indefinitely since there could be health problems later on! And no, we can’t go after the builder because they’re already out-of-business from all this CDW! And no, insurance doesn’t cover it! And we’ve already found out that some of our neighbors have it (which we kind of figured since they had the same builder and were built at the same time as ours), so we don’t know what’s going to happen to the neighborhood when everyone starts tearing up their houses to replace this bad drywall.
Anyhoo, life has to go on, especially when you have a toddler and a newborn! I can’t really think about moving right now, especially more than once, so I’m just trying not to think about it! It’s fun to look at houses for sale online, but who knows if they’ll even still be for sale when we need it, so I don’t want to get my hopes up! And we might even be in an apartment for a few months while they repair the house, so we’re looking into that too.
Caroline has adjusted really well to being a big sister and Luke is doing great too! He’s recently started to smile a lot more and coo and “talk.” It’s SO sweet! And he’s been sleeping almost through the night for a week or so now (until about 6 a.m.) but now he’s sleeping 8+ hours all the way through! I decided since he was so fussy at feedings to try to feed him less often and that has really seemed to help. I was waking him every 3 hours during the day to feed, but now it’s every 4-5 so he only gets 5 feedings a day. But if he’s sleeping all night, I guess he’s getting what he needs – and he’s getting bigger! I weighed him on our bathroom scale yesterday and he was 12 pounds! (which probably means he’s a little less than that without a diaper and clothes, and he had just nursed). My mom was here this week helping me with the kiddos – I even got to get out of the house by myself a few times, so that was great! And Chris and I went out to dinner on a date last night – fun times! So sad to see her go today, but I was really glad to have her here!
I’ve added some more pictures to the June folder, and a new July folder so check those out!
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