will power

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

currently

let's try a currently post and see how we like it. if it's not too boring maybe we'll keep it.

reading: the "picture of dorian grey," i'm about halfway through it. it's an easier read than i thought it would be. it's also not very much like i imagined it would be all these years that i've spent thinking about reading it. i probably i thought it would be more "doctor jekyll and mister hyde"-ish. maybe it'll get more like that towards the end. i really like it but it also makes me really upset. poor dorian had some awful friends. i seriously can't even guess how it's going to end. probably just badly, for everyone.

i also started "bossypants" by tina fey. i bought it on my kindle last night because i needed something that would make me laugh. and man, i was like, choke-laughing. couldn't breathe, trying to suppress snorts that would surely wake the baby kind of laughing. the beginning is really funny to me. i'm in a little bit of a lull now where what's happening is probably funny but it's also slightly coming-of-age inappropriate, so it makes me uncomfortable for her more than making me want to laugh at her. dude, life can be so awkward.

watching: oh man. mostly i'm just missing "the office" and "parks and rec." craig and i have been watching "star trek: the next generation" and i'm going to force him to start "doctor who" with me when he gets back from ohio. we just have to figure out which season we are going to start with. it's and agonizing decision. i want to be faithful to my personal laws of continuity but what if i can't get through the oldest seasons and i give up and never get to the great stuff? anyone else experience a serious "doctor who" dilemma? how did you solve it?

as for movies we've recently watched and loved both tron movies and star trek: into darkness. i love watching movies pregnant. star trek had me sobbing, and sobbing, and sobbing. which always makes me feel like i i had a great movie experience. you should've seen me when kahree was brewing in my belly and craig and i watched every harry potter all at once and then went to the theaters to see the very last one. i was a MESS. i thought my heart was literally breaking. i didn't think i was leaving that theater alive. it was the most emotional thing i had ever been through. and it was awesome.

eating: tuna sammiches. i know. i know. i'll stop. i only want my child to get a little bit of mercury poisoning. but it's all i want to eat! pregnancy is so weird sometimes. it's a good thing i'm not also craving roller coasters and hot tubs. then we would really be in trouble.

listening to: macklemore and ryan lewis super-clean version on "the heist" on repeat. kahree adores it, she dances oh so madly. in the car she dances so hard to "thrift shop" that her car seat shakes. but i'm getting a little tired of it. when i can get away with it i listen to mewithoutYou, also on repeat. and then it's back to macklemore.

working on: embarrassingly...my most current project is a video game. a very addictive, rune factory video game that i can only play when kahree is asleep because she thinks my blue nintendo ds looks like a lot of fun to open and close repeatably. when she's around i work on yet another little granny square blanket. i have to finish it soon, but not soon enough to effectively tear me away from that darn video game. i'm never borrowing anything from my little sister again.

loving: kahree not being sick anymore! i completely forgot how sweet she was in real life. when she isn't feeling crummy all the time she is a dream, and so so fun to be around. i'm also loving our bedtime routine where she picks out a dozen books or more, backs up into my lap, and lets me read and read to her. she has a couple favorites she picks every night. sometimes she picks "how to catch a star" twice a night.

looking forward to: craig coming home. he's been in ohio since sunday and i miss, miss, miss him. he gets back late tomorrow night and i'll be able to spend time with him again for reals friday evening after work. i know that's not even a full week and that may seem silly compared to some wives and moms who go weeks or months without their husbands. those ladies are awesome and superhuman. i am just not cut from the same cloth. i am a much better housewife and saner mom when i know that at the end of the day i get my husband back and he can rescue me if i explode into a million pieces. that's never happened before but i like knowing he'll be around just in case it ever does. also, i just really really like being with him. so there's that. we've been doing pretty good keeping it together around here while he's away but i'm glad it's almost over.

making me happy: craig is all done with school and it is SUMMER! it's making me SO happy. i can't wait to go swimming and running together, go to the farmer's market, make summer food, and go on tiny little day trips together. summer 2012 was the best time of my entire life. i would love if this summer was half as good. this year needs to be trying harder, it's not my favorite so far. getting a baby at the end of it will probably help, though. i can see that.

[she needed to be in charge of the bubbles. which means we now need more bubbles.]

[how she felt about life when she woke up in my bed and her daddy STILL wasn't there.]

Thursday, May 23, 2013

a tiny bit of good news

can i tell you something awesome?

i've been keeping a little secret.

a teeny, tiny little secret.

an adorable little secret. with a heartbeat, and arms, and legs, and fingers, and toes, a big ol' tummy, and a much bigger nose than i ever remember kahree having.

the hardest secret to keep. a secret i wanted to share every minute, every day. every day that my middle got rounder, every time my brain failed me yet again at an embarrassing moment, every day i wanted to apologize to everyone for my nausea and lack of energy, every day that i just wanted to tell all the people that i love "i may have good news!"

but i didn't have good news yet. we had a lot of fears and worries and no for-sures. so we waited until we could share our secret with some amount of surety.

well. yesterday, we got good news. such lovely news. and now i can tell you all about my little secret.

this new little baby is probably a miracle. a confusing, heart-wrenching, mysterious little miracle. i am currently over 12 weeks into this new pregnancy, almost done with the first trimester. i'll help you with the math a little bit: my emergency surgery for my ruptured, ectopic pregnancy in february was 14 weeks ago yesterday.

shocked? surprised? us too.

but happy? of course!

we were going to wait for a long, long time before trying again. in our hearts we felt like we were to wait at least a year before trying to have another baby, to give my body time to heal and give myself time to regain some courage. so let me just say right now that we weren't trying. we were actively NOT trying. i'm still a little bewildered that this tiny child managed to sneak in like this. the doctors told me to wait for at least two normal cycles before trying again. i didn't even get one. i went back in to see the doctor two months after my surgery because i was afraid that there was too much wrong with my once-exploding insides and i wasn't even ovulating anymore.

not quite. i just had a 6 week, 3 day old baby in there. wiggling around looking like a little jelly bean, heartbeat flashing like a mini lighthouse. in my uterus right where it belongs. strong and steady. and i didn't even know. craig suspected, especially the night before when i demanded a burger from wendy's and wolfed it down savagely. but i said there was no way. it was impossible.

if i've learned anything from this whole experience it is that i am definitely not in charge here, my own plan for my life does not take precedent over God's plan for me and my family. and He wants me to be happy after all.

are you surprised i kept so tight-lipped? i feel at least a little terrible because of how many lies i had to tell to keep this a secret until we knew for sure everything was most likely going to be okay. i had to look some dear friends in the face and lie through my teeth! some friends i told i wasn't pregnant before i knew i was but for most part i just had to respond to loving inquiries with some well worded half truths or no truths at all. i was actually surprised by how many people asked and how hard it was to keep everything a secret, i'm surrounded by some very loving people. so just in case i lied to any of you and you happen to be reading now i want you to know i really did want to tell you and i promise i'm mostly sorry. but i'm also very comfortable exercising my right to a little privacy, especially in the face of so much uncertainty. i just didn't know yet if everything was going to be okay.

there were more than just a few concerns, none of them matter much now. i really feel like we're out of the woods for the most part. i caused some concern from being pregnant so immediately after my surgery [the pregnancy technically "started" two weeks after my surgery but there wasn't a baby growing in there until almost a month after, pregnancy is funny that way]. i had a special chemotherapy shot after my surgery and my estimated conception date [because i have no clue how or when it could have happened so the doctor had to guess for me, goodness gracious] wasn't even a whole month later. so there were worries that there could be some potential deformities caused by that. of course chances were so, so slim but i wasn't feeling super confident with my odds at the time. the chance of having a ruptured ectopic pregnancy is also very slim, but i experienced that. and becoming pregnant immediately afterwards? i don't even have a clue what those odds are. so you see what i'm saying, i was worried enough for myself and all of you and everyone else i love. you didn't need to worry too.

but now we have good news! my baby still had a heartbeat and was growing right on schedule yesterday afternoon when we got to see him [according to craig] or her [according to me]. my baby has only the correct amount of limbs and no obvious abnormalities. in four weeks we'll know if spinal bifida is going to be something we need to deal with. i'm a little concerned about that because i had to stop taking all forms of vitamins and folic acid after receiving my chemotherapy shot and i didn't start taking prenatals again until halfway through week 6 because i didn't know i was pregnant. so lets keep our fingers crossed for that. and four weeks after that i will go to a special clinic and get an extra long, detailed 20 week ultrasound where they will look at everything from head to toe. as long as nothing is wrong i plan on enjoying that to the fullest. i just love ultrasounds.

these are obviously ultrasound pictures, and they are so great. but i wish you could see the detail craig and i got to see yesterday, everything is so much clearer on the screen. i wish you could see how big that nose really is. and how much those legs move. and how i'm so sure those hands were being stuffed into that mouth. and how that lighthouse of a heart goes flash, flash, flash. at one point the ultrasound technician needed to take a measurement that wasn't visible at the moment and she tried to get little baby to move by roughly pushing down on my stomach a couple times. that baby flailed, and kicked, and punched at me with such a fury, i have never seen anything so funny in all my life.

are you excited? i'm trying to be. it's hard when i spend so much time worrying instead. i don't want to give this one up. but i'm not in charge, as we can clearly see. but it'll get more and more real between now and December 3rd. can you believe i may be having a baby this year after all?

i think that's a miracle.

p.s. remember how i ran a half marathon the other day? and how it turns out i was almost 12 weeks pregnant at the time? yep, that happened. running is a lot harder when you're hungry and tired and nauseous! thankfully i was only feeling sick for about 3 weeks, mid week 6 to around week 9. this was my very first time with any sort of morning sickness and let me just say...that stuff stinks. i didn't throw up but man, did i want to. now i'm feeling less tired and mostly normal again, thanks to YOU, second trimester, you good looking thing. now i can finally stop trying to hide my chubby tummy and lying to everyone in sight and start enjoying this.

2013 is starting to get awesome.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

halfie

on saturday i ran my first half marathon with my dear friend alys. it was the "queen of the high road" race, an all ladies half full of positive energy and encouragement and awesomeness. at the end we got crowns instead of medals and if that isn't the coolest then nothing is the coolest. we've been training since late january and it was such an lovely experience to be able to bravely make a challenging goal, work hard to achieve it, and then accomplish it.

it was a hard thing and a good thing and i'm so glad i did it. i'm also so glad it's over. i said over and over again how i was just going to do it and then never run again. and then this morning i'm already looking for at least one 5k to do with craig this summer and i even glanced at some july half marathons. i was so sad i never got addicted to running, it never became enjoyable or easy for me, but i think i may be addicted to finishing races. especially since this one had such delicious food at the end and free massages for runners. a girl can get used to that.

throughout the whole thing craig was so wonderful and encouraging. before he started his externship he watched kahree during the week so i could do my short runs and every saturday since february he's taking care of everything in the morning by himself so i could do my long runs, sometimes for hours. he took care of a sick and tired kahree two nights before my race so i could get recovery sleep. he met me at the finish line with love and smiles and then bought me a tuna subway sammich to devour afterwards, even though he hates the smell of tuna. and he took care of kahree AGAIN that night because my legs were too sore to get me out of bed. i did this because he told me he knew i could do it and because he encouraged and believed in me the whole way. and the best part, just like after my 5k in november, was getting over than finish line and having craig hand kahree to me, so happy so see her mommy, and the wonderful congratulation snuggles she gave me.

i'm also so happy i had my friend alys to train with every week and who ran the whole race with me, so patiently. i'm sure i slowed her down a ridiculous amount but i'm so glad i got to do it with her instead of trudging through on my own. i really wanted to finish by 2 hours 30 minutes and we crossed the finish line at 2 hours and 29 minutes. yay! that may sound way slow to any elite runners out there but i'm super proud of it, we aren't fast but we had fun. and it's over. halleluiah.

let's do another! maybe...