He has learned a lot of new things from his Miss Pam. Here’s the shortened list:

1. He can count from 1 to 5 and show me the correct amount of fingers that correspond to said numbers!

2. He knows what colors red, blue and green are!  Yay! He isn’t color blind!

3. He comes up with some of the craziest stuff and loves to tell me his “stories.” 

4. He doesn’t like to show me affection in public but when we’re alone, he tells me “love yours.” awwww

5. He’s such a good kid. He is caring and gentle to his sisters. He is loving and kind. He’s my baby boy and I cannot believe he will be 5 this year. Wow.

We had our sonogram and it’s a GIRL!!  She looked perfect.  Rather shy, but perfect all the same.  School is going well.  Crazy hectic, but that’s pretty normal.  Midterms are next week so I can almost guarantee that I won’t be around much.

 Tanner is doing good, but still not sleeping in his own bed. I am about ready to give up.  I know, I shouldn’t.  But what else can I do?

 Makena is starting to talk a LOT more.  She says all kinda of neat words. But she bites.  She’s learned to bite and it isn’t pretty.  Those teeth are friggin sharp! 

 My BIG u/s is this Friday at 8 AM CST.  Yeah, I didn’t want to wait all damn day so I scheduled myself as the first of the day.

 Project Bed is about non existent at this point.  I gave up since school is so hectic.  (I know, that’s no excuse)

Makena has had the flu for two days. Today she seems to be a tad better though!

 Class is going well for the most part. I can’t seem to motivate myself to do A&P which is rediculous since this is the second time I’ve taken it. (long story, but no, I didn’t fail the last one) Hematology is rather hard, but I actually seem to do great in that class. I managed to pull off a 100 on my very first test.  I was shocked too!

 Other than that, things are going as good as can be expected.

 School was pretty awesome Thursday.  We did our first manual RBC counts. (Red Blood Cell)  Next week we finish up RBC’s and move to WBC’s.  It will be interesting.

Project Bed is still underway.  We will see how tonight goes.  He says he wants to sleep in his bed, but it scares him.  I still haven’t found a small plastic lamp.

Makena is my talker. She loves to take my cell phone and babble away.  She’ll want her own phone before she’s three.

First off, Project Bed is starting to turn into “project not happening.”  Tanner still refuses to sleep in his bed all night.  I am about 2 seconds from giving up, however, I know that will solve nothing.  The early mornings are starting to take their toll on me and the kids.  We are all tired and cranky by lunch and it only gets worse as none of us nap.  I would give my left tit for 2 hours of sleep.

School is going as good as can be expected.  We are now to find a Journal Article and prepare an Abstract, both written and on Powerpoint for an Oral Presentation in class.  Because it has to be something in a lab setting, I have chosen to do either IVF or IVM.  I hadn’t actually considered doing IVM until I found an interesting article on the subject.  Now I feel compelled.

Makena has learned how to throw some hideous fits complete with pinching and kicking.  How did I get so lucky to have such a drama queen?  Everyone says she’s just like me.  It doesn’t surprise me. I have my moments.

Today we devoted an entire class hour at the Library learning how to research.  After some nifty hand-outs and a lecture from the two oldest women in the world, we were allowed to go home.  What a relief.  I was about to fall asleep on the second rendition of “this is how you log-in, this is how you log-out.”  Hell, I was just going to hit the actual LOGIN and LOGOUT buttons, but who am I to upset the flow?

Tomorrow is a new day, a new sense of exhaustion.  Peace out.

 I’d love to come on here and say that he slept there all night, without a hitch, and we are all well rested.  But that isn’t the case.  He came into our bed around 3 AM as usual and we were too exhausted to even think about moving him and putting up a fight.

Today I asked him why he got in bed with mommy and daddy and his simple reply was “it scared me, it was dark.”  We’ve known for awhile now that T is somewhat scared of the dark. It bothers him to walk into the driveway in the wee morning hours before the sun is up, and we know how much he dislikes playing in his room without light… in broad daylight.  So we tried to fix this problem before it got too bad.  We bought a Nemo nightlite that he adores, we bought a stoplight that blinks for extra light, and we leave his TV on all night for company and light.  But apparently, that isn’t enough.

So now I am on the search for a small bedside lamp that we can add to his room.  It would have to be plastic as he would probably break it on the first day. However, I am unaware of any plastic lamps.  Once we tried the touch-light mechanism and within 5 minutes the batteries were out of it and shoved into the crevice between the dresser and the wall.  (he said he was saving it for later.. whatever that means)

So now I have to find a plastic lamp and a low watt bulb that won’t light up the backyard while he sleeps.  Hey, I’ll do anything to get him in his own bed!

I guess there really is no easy way to answer that question.  For the parents who’ve never struggled to get pregnant, to the one’s that haven’t yet conquered that quest, my problem probably will sound trivial at best.

Getting pregnant wasn’t an easy task.  It was met with years of heartache and distress.  Very little answers strewn among the plethora of tests and treatment plans.  It so happens that I got lucky and found a wonderful group of people to share my sorrows and joys with, whom were going through almost the exact same thing.  Problems ranging from PCOS and unexplained infertility, to treatments as “minor” as Clomid to ones’ as meticulous as IVF.  Regardless of our childbearing status, we all had one thing in common.. we were labeled infertile and had the “blessing” of watching everyone around us get pregnant.

It took me three long agonizing years of hell before I got pregnant with my son.  I wasn’t online at that time and I was very naive.  Though the word “clomid” had been thrown around, I didn’t even know what it was.  I found a doctor whom I thought was a fantastic answer to my prayers, very adamant that we jump straight into diagnosing MY problem.  I should have known something wasn’t right when he never did bloodwork.  He jumped straight into getting an HSG done on me.  It was 6 months after the HSG (which we got an all-clear on) before I was finally pregnant.  We started TTC as soon as Tanner was 8 months old because I had this nagging fear that it would take another three years, or longer.  I found an online charting software website to help me understand my cycles and after 17 cycles and 2 miscarriages, I got pregnant with my daughter.  That pregnancy was met with a very rough first trimester that included awful cramping and enormous amounts of bleeding.  Finally, after 38 long weeks, my perfectly healthy daughter was born.

We had decided C would probably get a vasectomy as having more kids just wasn’t really in our future.  We had started to read up on the procedure, searched out the best doctor in that field and discussed when to have it done. Then the unexpected happened. I got pregnant.  How is that possible?  How.. after so many years of unexplained infertility, after tests and failure, timed sex and utter despair.  We are pregnant on accident?  Is this real or a joke gone bad? 

I know that having three kids probably throws me out of the infertility subgroup, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have feelings, or that what I went through wasn’t a real part of who I am today.    It just means that I have a past that makes me sympathetic and understanding to anyone who is going down the rough road of infertility.

Something in my life finally happened that I’ve always wanted.  A surprise pregnancy where I didn’t plan my entire day around whether or not I was going to pop an egg that day, or whether his sperm would be smart enough to find their way to my tube.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t still think of how it felt to be the only infertile among my friends and family and it doesn’t make the pain of my miscarriages any less.

So here I am, my third baby on the way, only this time it was unexpected.  I sometimes wonder if all of those friends will be discounted once they have their second or third, or even fourth.  I wonder if they will still feel as though their feelings and past struggles really do matter anymore.