Girls

Can we say girl crazy? Just a tad bit. C had a sitter tonight, a 14 year old from around the corner. Real sweet, cute girl. So when we get home she tells me he told her how pretty she was and told her she was very cute and asked her to spend the night. Asked her if he was going to get to see her tomorrow. He is such a flirt and so girl crazy at 5, wonder what it will be like at 10, 15? Very scary just to think about. He had been asking for us to have her babysit ever since we got her number a few weeks ago. Pretty sad when your kid is so enthralled with the babysitter he couldn't even say goodbye or give us a hug and kiss.
This week he also got all googly eyed over the cover of the Swimsuit Edition of Sports Illustrated while we were checking out at Barnes and Noble. Just plain girl crazy.

Crafting Away...

I decided to get crafty today. I made a tutu from a tutorial here. I will give it to Gabby, Elysia’s little cutie pie. After making the tutu, I decided to make something for C. I had this cool red shiny costume fabric from an old uncompleted project and decided to make capes. I made one for C and one for Gabby’s brother Derrick. I made the necks too big and that fabric was really hard to sew, but they will be alright.
Here is the tutu and C modeling the cape.

C funny of the day (well not that funny, but he was trying to be funny): He decided that he wanted to make-up a joke. So he said, “Why did the boy sleep with his legos?” I said I don’t know. He said, “So he could play with them when he woke up silly.”
Here he is with Eamon showing off the ships they built.

On the Savannah

C went to the doctor this week for his 5 year physical. Yes, we are late since he is almost 5 ½. He was late on the last one, too. He had his 4 year old one last May so he could get his shots to go to summer camp and then school. We hadn’t really seen the need to follow-up in October with another well visit. He did great at the docs, but was very worried that he was going to get a shot and he didn’t, so that made him super happy. He did get a finger stick which totally stressed him out, but that ended up not hurting at all.
His eye exam went well, they said he has 20/25 vision and his hearing is good. He has grown a bit from the last measurements. I think he was 45 inches and 38 pounds. He is now 46 ½ inches tall and broke the 40 pound mark at 40.6 pounds. So he is 50th percentile for weight and 80th percentile for height and staying on his growth curve which is awesome. The doctor was really funny and loved him and gave him lots of high fives and talked with him a lot to check his development. She LOVED it when she asked where do lions live and he said without a moment of hesitation, “on the Savannah”. She said she normally gets zoo, jungle, forest. So she was pretty impressed. She asked him what do lions, bears, giraffes, tigers and elephants have in common that we don’t have. (She stumped me on that one; I was going to say fur until she got to elephant). He said without hesitation “Tails”. Love it!

Been a while....

I am guessing that my thoughts of keeping the blog updated are really not working very well this year. Hopefully these posts about catching up will become something of the past, but looking at my track record, I rather doubt it.
Here are the latest updates:
We put the house on the market. It took a few months of procrastination on my part and packing on Hubby’s part, but we have it on the market. There have been quite a few showing so far, but no bites yet. We hope to move just one or two towns away, easing my commute a bit to/from work. It will also hopefully put us closer to C’s school. We have been busy trying to do some projects/painting the last two weeks it has been on the market and slowly looking at new houses.
We are ONE step away from being licensed to foster parent. We are pretty excited about this and wonder what this journey will bring us. We are hoping to eventually adopt a foster child and hope this will happen in the next year or two. I wonder if/when we will get a call. I joked today that we might get a call while hubby is home alone and C and I are out in California, I can totally see him playing Mr. Mom for the week.
Hubby got laid off and started a new job. It was very stressful and the layoff was a complete surprise. But, he/we were very lucky and he found a new position right away. He is now testing electronic data capture software for clinical trials. So we both work in clinical trials. He is lucky and gets to work from home, which I secretly (well, now not so secretly) am hating on him for. At least he does laundry while working ;-)
C is doing really well in school. He is starting to read a lot more. He wowed me last night by reading the word “together” without any prompting. His teacher works really hard with the kids on reading and I think our nightly readings help, too. He is counting past 100 now. Still skipping a number here and there sometimes, but doing well. He got his first report card and got all 3’s except in fine motor skills where he got a 2. I think that is very, very good. He has still kept his green streak for behavior. (They get a stamp report on how they are doing every day on their folder, green (good), yellow (a few warnings), red (disruptive behavior), and blue (principal office)). C has only ever gotten green.

All the ways....

All the ways….that I can say I love you! C is such a loving dude and he loves to tell us how much he loves us and comes up with totally creative ways to say it.
One of my faves now is “Mom, I love you as many numbers as there is in the number line.”
Here are some other cool ones:
I love you to the moon and back.
I love you all the way to the sun.
I love you to California, Hawaii and back to North Carolina.
I love you to Hilton Head.
I love you four hundred billion miles. (This is a lot!)
I love you as hot as the sun.
I love you the most in the whole wide world.
I love you all over the United States of America.
Occasionally I will get an “I love you more than”…usually followed by…my toys….my legos…my Nintendo DS (Big one!)

He asked me the other day why I loved him. He just wants a short answer and I tell him how cool and loving and sweet he is or something like that. He is all that and more. I love that he is oh so loving and is always ready with a kiss or a hug or some sweet words.

Infertility and Feelings

I saw this post on another board and wanted to share, I edited it to more relate to my feelings. It summed up so much for me.

I want to share my feelings about infertility with you, because I want you to understand my struggle. I know that understanding infertility is difficult; there are times when it seems even I don’t understand.

This struggle has provoked intense and unfamiliar feelings in me and I fear that my reactions to these feelings might be misunderstood. I hope my ability to cope and your ability to understand will improve as I share my feelings with you. I want you to understand.
You may describe me this way: obsessed, moody, depressed, envious, obnoxious, aggressive, antagonistic, bitter, and cynical. These aren't very admirable traits; no wonder your understanding of my infertility is difficult. I prefer to describe me this way: confused, rushed and impatient, afraid, isolated and alone, guilty and ashamed, angry, sad and hopeless, and unsettled.

My Infertility makes me feel confused. I feel confused as to why this is happening. I feel confused when I get diagnoses such as unexplained infertility, unexplained habitual miscarrier. All titles I do not want. Surely if I try harder, try longer, try better and smarter, I will have another baby.
 
My infertility makes me feel rushed and impatient. I learned of my unexplained secondary infertility only after we’d been trying to become pregnant for some time. My life-plan suddenly is behind schedule. I waited to have another baby and now I must wait again. I wait for medical appointments, wait for tests, wait for treatments, wait for other treatments, wait for my period not to come, wait for pregnancy. At best, I have only twelve opportunities each year. How old will I be when I finish having my family?
My infertility makes me feel afraid. Infertility is full of unknowns, and I’m frightened because I need some definite answers. How long will this last? What humiliation must I endure? What pain must I suffer? Why do drugs I take to help me, make me feel worse? Why can’t my body do the things that my mind wants it to do? Why do I hurt so much? I’m afraid of my feelings, afraid of my undependable body.
My infertility makes me feel isolated and alone. Reminders of babies are everywhere. I must be the only one enduring this invisible curse. Sometimes I have to stay away from others, because everything makes me hurt. No one knows how horrible my pain is. Even though I’m usually a clear thinker, I find myself being lured by superstitions and promises; I think I’m losing perspective. I feel so alone and I wonder if I’ll survive this.

My infertility makes me feel guilty and ashamed. Frequently I forget that infertility is a medical problem and should be treated as one. Infertility destroys my self esteem and I feel like a failure. Why am I being punished? What did I do to deserve this? Am I not worthy? Am I not a good enough mom? It is easy to lose self-confidence and feel ashamed.
My infertility makes me feel angry. Everything makes me angry, and I know much of my anger is misdirected. I’m angry at my body because it has betrayed me. I’m angry at my partner because we can’t seem to feel the same about infertility at the same time. I want and need an advocate to help me. My younger brother and older brother are having kids soon and I am angry at how I feel about that. I’m angry at my medical caregivers, because it seems that they control my future. They humiliate me, inflict pain on me, pry into my privacy, patronize me, and sometimes forget who I am. How can I impress on them how important parenting is to me? I’m angry at my expenses; infertility treatment is extremely expensive. Finally, I’m angry at everyone else. Everyone has opinions about my inability to become a to get/stay pregnant. Everyone has easy solutions. Everyone seems to know too little and say too much.

My Infertility makes me feel sad and hopeless. Infertility feels like I’ve lost my future, and no one knows of my sadness. I feel hopeless; infertility robs me of my energy. I’ve never cried so much or so easily. I’m sad that my infertility places my marriage under so much strain. I’m sad that my infertility requires me to be so self-centered. I’m sad that I've ignored any friendships because this struggle hurts so much and demands so much energy. I’m surrounded by babies, pregnant women, playgrounds, baby showers, birth stories, kids’ movies, birthday parties and much more. I feel so sad and hopeless. My infertility makes me feel unsettled. My life is on hold. Two years spent doing treatments put so much on hold. The more I struggle with my infertility, the less control I have. This struggle has no timetable; the treatments have no guarantees. The only sure things are that I need to be near my partner at fertile times and near my doctor at treatment times. Should I pursue adoption? Should I take expensive drugs? Should I pursue more specialized and costly medical intervention? It feels unsettling to have no clear, easy answers or guarantees. Occasionally I feel my panic subside. I’m learning some helpful ways to cope; I’m now convinced I’m not crazy, and I believe I’ll survive. I’m learning to listen to my body and be assertive, not aggressive, about my needs. I’m realizing that good medical care and good emotional care are not necessarily found in the same place. I’m trying to be more than an infertile person.

Made up songs

C loves to make up songs and sing around the house. After we had two snow days he made up a song asbout snow snow come again another day, we loved you so. It was incredibly cute. This morning he was singing about how he always gets greens, never a red or blue or yellow (the class behavior colors). Green is a good color. So I grabbed the camera and asked him to sing it again and he couldn't remember so he made up a new song. It was cute. He asked me to keep it forever.