Laughing with Sarah

We went on a family vacation last week. There were many parts to it: driving to Des Moines, where Matt had a conference to attend. Sam and Ellie and I spent a day and half exploring the city. We went to the zoo and to the science center, swam in the hotel pool, and stuffed ourselves silly with good food. From there, we flew to New Jersey to visit Matt's family. The flight to NJ was uneventful and wonderful. Our kids really are great travelers. In New Jersey, we took an overnight trip up to Massachusetts to visit Matt's brother and family, and we took a day trip into New York City. Also great trips. Seriously. Our kids are great travelers. The night before we flew back to Iowa, we gave the kids a bath and changed them in to pajamas before Matt's grandmother ("GG," to the kids) came over for quick goodbye visit and playtime with Sam and Ellie. Earlier in the week, Ellie had received the gift of a superhero cape and crown, which she wore around ...

Eleanor Ann - 1 Year Old - December 27, 2017 Life with two kids is rich and full and wonderful and tiring...and some of the little luxuries, like blogging regularly and taking monthly pictures, have fallen by the wayside. The Type A part of me minds a little bit, because now Ellie won't have twelve matching monthly pictures in her baby book, and sometimes I feel guilty, because I managed to do all this for Sam...except that it was only Sam, and even then, it was a hard enough struggle to try to do all the things I wanted to as far as marking and celebrating his milestones. Ellie, we have been enjoying you (and trying to catch up to you!) so much that we haven't stopped to mark all of your milestones. We take lots of pictures and videos of you, but we are hardly organized, especially with some computer issues that have meant re-importing all of our photos, and so these days, we have doubles and triples of photos, stored in many and various places, and nothing is lost, but...

The change of seasons from summer into fall and winter has always been a time that stirs up nostalgia in me. This is the season of preparing for holiday celebrations, and I feel nostalgic for a whole series of small, one-off memories of otherwise long-forgotten or even insignificant moments from childhood Thanksgiving and Christmas preparations. This is the season of college Christmasfest rehearsals, and I feel nostalgic for choir memories, for college moments, and for the days when there was the perfect mix of of alone time time, quiet space, and coming-of-age introspection. In recent years, this is the season of saying the long goodbye to my father, which evokes a different sense of nostalgia, laden with a lot of "what ifs" and "if we had only knowns." And so this is also a season where I feel nostalgic for all memories of my dad and all the things that I associate with him - food (especially holiday meals and treats), music (especially holiday music), and f...

It hasn't been the best day. So I baked brownies. This morning, Sam and I waged epic battle over what shirt to wear. He insisted short sleeves, I insisted long sleeves. This led to an out and out refusal to wear a shirt at all. After about an hour of pleading, yelling, whispering, drawer slamming, bribery, guilt trips, reverse psychology, love & logic, and every other parenting maneuver (good, bad, and ugly)...he still was wearing no shirt. So I did what any reasonable parent would do. I picked him up, carried my shoeless and shirtless child to the car, and strapped him into the car seat, throwing a pair of shoes and a long-sleeved shirt into the front seat of the car. I put Ellie in her car seat and away we went. I naively believed that Sam would calm down during the drive and feel compelled to put on shoes and shirt when we got to school. Ha. He spent the whole drive demanding that I turn around, go home, and find him a short-sleeved shirt. We got to school and he r...

It is 9:53 p.m. Both kiddos are asleep. The baby monitor is quiet. The dryer is tumbling with the last of the laundry. The living room lights are dim and cozy. I am stretched out on the couch with a cat at my feed, my knitting bag sitting next to me, ready for action. The remote control is also sitting next to me, in case I want a little background noise, but for now, the quiet is nice. I should be enjoying the moment and looking forward to an hour or so of unwind time before heading up to bed. But instead, my heart just won't quiet down and my brain can't settle, and I keep neurotically looking to the baby monitor, to catch any sound before it happens. And why? Because Sam said his tummy hurt. We watched the end of Finding Nemo tonight, and ate some popcorn. He was happy and sweet and wonderful. He was full of energy tonight, and was in great spirits. He played nicely with Ellie. He was helpful. He was funny. He was a good listener as Matt read him bedtime stories, and e...

Five months...and twenty-four days...(June 20, 2017) Six months...and twenty-one days...(July 18, 2017) For those of you keeping tally at home, here we are at the halfway-to-Ellie's-first-birthday mark, which blows my mind. I cannot believe how quickly this last half-year has gone, Eleanor! You continue to shine as our our giggly, squirmy, happy, bouncy Ellie-belly. Big brother Sam can't get enough of you these days. He wants to shove his face as close to yours as possible, and grab your arms, and help feed you. He wants to hold you in his lap. He will pile your toys on top of you when he thinks you want to play. He calls you "Ellie-belly" like I do, and likes talking to you in the same sort of high-pitched voice that grown-ups use when they are talking to kids. I'm a little late in writing up this two-month update, so the timeline is a little out-of-whack, but this past weekend, at six months and three days or so, we decided to transition you out of...

Otherwise you'd cry. 7:30 a.m.: While snuggling with Ellie in bed and feeling grateful that it is Friday (my day off), I realize that Sam is still quiet, and wonder if I should wake him up or let him keep sleeping. It was a late bedtime last night, and very frustrating, and the boy needs his sleep. Except that Matt is about to leave for work, and if I am going to start the morning routine, it might be better to get Sam up now while there are two of us grown-ups. 7:50 a.m.: Wake Sam up. (This was my first mistake). He wakes up happy, and sleepily jumps out of bed to put on clothes because he is excited to go to Magpie for breakfast, like we do every Friday. He tells me that he is going to order a yogurt parfait. Before getting dressed, Sam asks me to read him a book. So I do. Then he asks me to read another book. So I do. 8:00 a.m.: Realize that I really really have to use the bathroom. Sam asks me to read him a third book, and I tell him that I will do it as soon as I am done...

This is the original of the picture that I posted to Instagram and Facebook yesterday, on Mother's Day. I posted it with the following caption: Never imagined I'd ever take a picture like this. My miracles number one and number two. #picaday #motheroftwo #babyeleanorann #bigbrothersam #mothersday #proudmama #ivf #infertilityjourney For anyone who has ever struggled with infertility, loss, or childlessness (by choice or not), or anyone who grieves the loss of a mother or a relationship with her mother, Mother's Day is a complicated holiday. For me as a daughter, I am one of the lucky ones. I have a fantastic mom, and we have a fantastic relationship. I have a wonderful mother-in-law, and we, too, have a wonderful relationship. But for me as a mother, my emotions on Mother's Day are still plenty complicated. My life these days is busy. Pleasantly so. My days are full of church and family, work projects and home projects, cooking, not enough cleaning, not nearly e...

I've had two doctor appointments since I last showed up 'round these parts! One yesterday, one two weeks ago. Both incredibly uneventful. A nice, normal weight gain two weeks ago, a negligible weight gain between then and yesterday. Blood pressure still low. Belly measuring like it should. Owlet's heartbeat easy to find and normal. My next appointment is in another two weeks, and part of that day will be sitting with Dr. Davis, my surgeon, for a c-section consultation. Also, my next appointment is my last every-two-week appointment. After that, we go every week until Owlet gets here. We are officially on the schedule for a December 27 c-section (provided I make it that long). That is six weeks from yesterday. Yikes! Over this past weekend, I feel like a whole new batch of pregnancy hormones must have kicked in. Despite not really gaining any weight in the last two weeks, I spent the weekend feeling (and looking) like I had gained, like, ten pounds. My belly started to f...

This is what we posted yesterday on various social media outlets to share our exciting news with the world: Sam gets a promotion! Effective late December. When asked to comment, Sam says, "First will be my birthday [in November]. Then Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. Then the baby comes!"

Welcome, back, family members who have been shut out of this blog for a few weeks! We finally shared the news with both sides of our family this past week, so I can now come out of hiding (not that I managed to write a whole lot during the weeks I kept the blog private or anything). First of all, I realized that I never followed up on my last anxious post! Oops. I went back to the doctor a week later for a quick, off-the-books heartbeat check. I went into the office with high hopes but few expectations, and even fewer emotional back-up plans in the event that we still couldn't hear anything. Dr. Locke asked me how I was feeling, and whether my belly had started feeling any bigger to me yet or not. And then out came the doppler. It took about six seconds before we heard the glorious sound of that teeny heartbeat, galloping away inside my belly. I had scrunched my eyes closed from the moment I got onto the table, and once I heard that sound, I got a little teary, and a huge smil...

Today is Monday. I am currently four days past embryo transfer, and feeling curious about whether I am pregnant, though not anxious. How far we've come in all of this, that I could have such a deep and yet such a loose hold on the outcome of this cycle. More on that in a moment. Probably our best pre-transfer selfie ever! First of all - what? You didn't know that we had started another cycle? Oh right. Because I never mentioned it. Maybe all of this has become routine enough that I haven't felt the need to chronicle it all? Maybe frozen cycles are more of an obnoxious and tedious process rather than the excitement of a fresh cycle? Maybe we've just been busy? Anyway, we started a cycle mid-March. Protocol was birth control pills for a month, then pills and Lupron injections for five days, and then Lupron injections and estrogen pills for a couple weeks, transitioning to just estrogen pills and progesterone up until transfer, and continuing through my pregnancy te...

This morning, Sam asked to lie down on the floor for his diaper change instead of being up on the changing table. He held a truck in each hand and talked to me about them (orange bulldozer! yellow wheels!) while he calmly let me change his diaper, put jeans and a t-shirt on him, socks, and his favorite shoes with rockets on them. This placid episode took place after he had awoken at 5:00 a.m., upset for some reason unknown to me (perhaps he was cold?), and I pulled him into bed with us, where he slept straight from 5:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. Both Matt and I were awake before Sam was - this never happens! Sam played with his trucks while I bathed and got dressed. He brushed his teeth (and in doing so, gave up the nook that he sleeps with at night), walked down the stairs with me, agreed to sit in his chair for breakfast (and actually tried to help get his legs into the leg holes!), ate his cereal bar and a whole banana without complaining, let me clean him up and put on him a sweatshirt...

If you were sitting across the aisle from me at Magpie Coffee right now, you would see a toddler with crazy hair who is sitting quietly next to his mama in a booster seat, eating a piece of toast and playing with a toy train, pausing periodically to flash his mama a smile or give her arm a hug. This is exactly what is happening right now. But that's not what I see. I see a toddler who will only eat his toast, and not any of his sausage. I see a mama who is fretting because he won't drink any of his milk on demand. I see a mama who is trying to figure out how to make sure that her blue-eyed 22-month old eats anything, and I mean anything, other than just carbohydrates. He ate carrots two nights ago, and maybe I can get some applesauce into him at lunch. Right now, I'd be pleased with a few bites or gulps of protein. I know that he likes sausage. I know that he likes milk. I know that he is a good eater. But as long as he has only eaten toast thus far, I will keep...