Sunday, June 29, 2008

In Love

A parent's love for their child(ren) is a strange and interesting thing. We go through 8-9 months of pregnancy, where we get sick, irritable, fat, and it ends in some of the most extreme pain possible. We get this tiny little wrinkled creature that squeaks and grunts and does horrible things to nipples and diapers. Then they grow up. They talk back and demand things and cost us more money than we even thought possible. Yet, we love them and continue to have more.



Every time I watch my 8 year old daughter on the monkey bars, or reading a book, or playing cars with her brother, I feel love. Every time my 3 year old son gives me a big hug and kiss, or lectures me on which car is which, or cheers me on as I transform one of his Transformers, I feel love. And every time my 6 day old daughter looks around in total wonder, or snuggles up peacefully for a nap, or opens wide and chomps down on my nipple, I feel love. Maybe it's the hormones, but when I see the 3 of my children together it brings a tear to my eye.





I love the way Samantha says she's magic because she can make the baby stop crying. I love the way Tevin has to know at every moment in time where the baby is. I love that this morning when I told Tevin that Samantha was coming home today from her weekend at Grandma & Grandpa's house, he was most happy because "now I can say sorry that I hit her in Wal-Mart yesterday." (he hit her while we were in the store Thursday and he feels really bad about it now.)



When I got pregnant, I never knew how much love a mother could feel. Then I had Samantha and knew that my life would never be the same. When I got pregnant with Tevin, I didn't know how I could possibly make more room in my heart for him. But he was a boy, and has a personality totally different from Samantha. It was so easy to have separate but equal love for them. And then Cadence. I already had my headstrong girl and my sweet, sensitive boy. I already felt like I didn't have quite enough time for both of them. How would a third baby fit in? And then I saw her for the first time and I was hooked.






She's just so sweet, and in a few short days I have learned so much about her. I love it when she looks around wide-eyed. When she flings herself into feeding position and starts sucking on everything she can get her mouth on. Even the way she goes from perfectly happy (or asleep) to screaming like the world is ending in just a few seconds. Babies are such amazing little miracles.

I was a bit worried about how she would change our lives. After nearly 4 years of being a family of 4, adding another just seemed like it would disrupt our balance. But it hasn't. She has enhanced our family and made us closer in so many ways. I love my family and my new baby girl.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

A very traditional anniversary

Yesterday (the 24th) was our 9th anniversary. We celebrated in a very traditional way.

We had a romantic dinner for two:



Sexy lingere: (for those who might not know, those are lovely mesh panties)


He brought me chocolate:


We had flowers:


And then, of course the gifts. I still don't know who did better with their gift. He got his promotion, which he's been working very hard for the last 7 years to get. It's a huge raise and means that we're moving to Muskegon, MI!

My contribution to the anniversary arrived a day early. I worked hard for 8 months and then went through 13 1/2 hours of labor.



Miss Cadence Leia Anderson was born at 9:51am on June 23. She weighed 7 pounds, 1 1/2 ounces and was 19 inches long. She made her arrival 2 weeks early, but is perfectly healthy and gorgeous!

I can't say that I've ever spent an anniversary in the hospital, nor have I ever really wanted to. Still, it's going to be difficult to ever top the excitement and joy from this anniversary.

Monday, November 5, 2007

I'm a blogger!

I've always told myself that no one would ever want to read my musings, so I haven't created a blog. The truth of the matter is, I was kind of afraid I'd forget to write in the darn thing. I've always been a diary girl. I had diaries growing up. When I got pregnant with Samantha, I started a journal for her. I filled it up right before I got pregnant with Tevin 5 years later. I started one for him. I think I wrote in 10 pages of it. I misplaced it a few times, then I felt like it had been too long to just pick it up again (isn't that a silly reason not to write in it?) I suppose that somewhere along the line I became less of a diary girl and more of a chatterbox. I'm what you might call a "talker." I love to talk. I fear that I'm one of those people that no one wants to chat with on the phone because they will be stuck on the phone for hours. I'm thankful for my friends that will put up with this. Especially my online friends.

And not just because the people who will most likely be reading this are those very friends, I will add in here that I LOVE my online friends. If you'd told me 5 years ago that I would be a very active part of an online community, I would have laughed and called you crazy. In 2003, though, when we had been trying to conceieve Tevin for nearly 2 years, I went to parents.com for some help and support. When we succeeded that December, I jumped wholeheartedly into the tri boards to share the experience. I was pulled to the stay-at-home-parents board by a few of the people I really liked from the tri boards. A discussion about aquarium fish got me "hooked up" with a bunch of people who chatted on MSN instant messenger. I was lead around to various boards and have now found my homes with FTC and GAP. My family knows that "my friends" usually means "those people I talk to on the internet." Matt understands. He gets jealous occasionally that I share everything there and don't necessarily tell him all of it. But he understands that I'm a very social person. I need to have people that I can count on to be there through my ups and downs.

Today has been one of my all-time highs. After very nearly 2 years of trying to conceive our third child, I finally got a positive test this morning! I never imagined getting pregnant would be this difficult. When I got pregnant with Samantha, I was 18. I was in college and Matt and I had been dating for 3 months. We were certainly not thinking of having a child. Carelessness gave us one of our greatest gifts. We got married when I was 6 months pregnant. I had her c-section on October 7, 1999. I went on birth control when Samantha was 2 months old. We didn't want a repeat performance. When she was about 6 months old, a horrible doctor talked me in to doing the Depo Provera shot. Over 9 months, I had 3 shots. Life has never been the same since. I never got a regular cycle back and have gone through HELL since. We wanted our children 2-3 years apart, so in early 2001, we started trying. Okay, *I* started trying in early 2001. Matt got on board a bit later. When we didn't succeed the first few months, it got difficult. I went to an OB/GYN to try to figure out why I wasn't having regular cycles. He did a lot of tests that didn't tell us much. I ended up having a d&c in July of 2003. Just when I'd given up trying for the winter (I didn't want another fall baby) I got a huge surprise! 2 lines! August 20, 2004, Tevin was born VBAC. Birth stories are definitely a topic for a time when I'm not so tired.

Anyway, this pregnancy (I'm still very hesitant to say that since it doesn't feel real yet and I haven't had any confirmation) has been a long time coming. I never went back on birth control after having Tevin. We wanted to get pregnant as soon as we could. In late 2005, I started doing some more "timing" things and bought myself a saliva ovulation predictor thing. It didn't seem to work. In spring of 2006, Matt started getting anxious. The kids were getting excited, too. They were asking when we could have another baby. I wanted to tell them the answer, but I didn't know it. I had to go through my sister-in-law having a Emily in September of 2005 (I remember thinking I wanted to be pregnant before she gave birth. Failed.) Then my cousin Jacki had her second son in December of 2006. Then my cousin Annie had my Goddaughter Elita in February, my cousin Gina had Riley in May, my sister-in-law had Ryan in June, and my cousin Rachel had Alex in July. Talk about a rough summer. I was hospitalized in July with a severly low iron count. I needed another d&c and a blood transfusion. A round of Clomid resulting in two large cysts on my right ovary followed. I was just waiting for a period to start so I could go back on the Clomid. I took a test on October 20th, which should have been late enough. When that was negative, I called my OB and got a round of progesterone withdrawal prescribed. 10 days of taking that, and I still didn't get a period. So, yesterday I bought a couple pregnancy tests. I took one this morning and was FLOORED when it was positive!! I could hardly believe it! I burst into tears and brought it to Matt. I had all these cute ways of telling him all planned. They all went out the window when I looked at him with tears in my eyes and just handed over the test. I know Matt wants to tell everyone, and so do I. I'm going to try to have some restraint, though, and wait at least until I get a confirmation from the doctor. That doesn't mean I'm not going to call the doctor immediately tomorrow morning. ;)

If I'm going to be awake for the morning tomorrow, I do have to force myself to go get some Tums and go to bed. And if this is half as boring as I suspect it is, any readers need to wake themselves up and wipe the drool off their chin.