House stuff is going to do me in!

I phoned the second contractor on Monday for an update. Got an email back late that night saying that he'd gone to the house last Thurs and no one had answered the door. My biggest fear realized. Had I only kept my fingers off my email for another few hours, we might have been ok. He said he'd try again this Thursday, but really, time's slipping away from me and I want to get this booked.
I contacted my realtor to see if she can help facilitate the visit to make sure it happens this week. Still no sign of the plans/drawings/permits/surveys. I'll have to call her again today to see what's going on. I hope things all work out.
I guess worst case scenario is that we book the contractor we have the quote from, who's redone our real estate agent's house and multiple other places for people I know, who works a lot with our designer, and who I've been assured usually has a good price and does great work. At least with him I feel like we have some pull - if he screws anything up, he's going to be motivated to fix it to our satisfaction in order to continue being recommended by our agent and designer. This other guy? Not so much. I just really really want to have another number in hand to just be sure we're in the right ballpark. It's too bad DH hadn't wanted me to find a third contractor to give us a quote, or they'd have already been through with us and we'd have a means for comparison.
Oh well. It's probably worth a couple thousand dollars extra (possibly) to get the work done in the exact time frame we want it done in, so that I'm not dealing with hammering and a screaming newborn at the same time. I want to have it all decided by the end of this week - we'll see what happens. Just pray it's the right decision!
On a more positive note, my mother's visit is going well so far. And she's planning to buy us our car seat and a crib. And will do the legwork on the crib for us - we're supposed to give her a good idea of the style and colour we're looking for, and she'll make sure it arrives. Sounds fantastic to me! She gave me a great diaper bag from LeS.portS.ac for my birthday along with some other cute things. Blankie, onesies, night light. And she brought along an album she'd made up of my childhood photos, and has written up my baby and childhood history too, which I might just have to read this afternoon. Interestingly, she'd always gone on in the past about how my brother was 2 weeks less premature than me (I'm a 34 weeker), but he'd been the sickly one. And she felt so bad that she had to give up breastfeeding him for some reason at 3-4 months. Well, looking back through her notes on me, I supposedly had tons of ear infections and was constantly sick, and she gave up feeding my at 3-4 months because she got pg with him. Hm. All those years of favouring him a little because he was the "delicate one" - apparently not necessary!