It sounds to me like everything is going just fine.
Choosing plants can be a bit of a gamble since even some "easy" plants can fail. At least that has been my experience.
Nevertheless, here is how I have gone about it: I make a list of plants that I like the look of for the tank. You can look at the plant profiles on this site or look at the drawings on the Tropica site
http://www.tropica.com/en/plants/plant-list-a-z.aspx
Narrow the list down by eliminating those that get too big, are considered "difficult", or require CO2 (if you are not adding it), etc. Remember that a good scape will have some foreground, midground and background plantings. Now here is the hard part: try not to have too many different species. I would try only five or six at most for a 29g tank. Catch the planted tank bug and you will see what I mean about limiting yourself being the hard part. Anyway, take your short list and go shopping. By all means support your LFS, use this site's RAOK or trade offers, or visit aquariumplants.com
Have fun!