Not Cool, Daddy. Not Cool.

Hubs and I knew that there would be an adjustment period when Baby Bean starting going to her new daycare, but I thought she would transition a bit better than she has this past week.

Tuesday evening when I went to pick up Baby Bean the gal who helped us get BB enrolled was standing right inside the door as I walked in. We smiled and said hello, and then she asked if I had talked to my husband yet. When I told her I had not, she told me about how when he had walked in holding BB to drop her off that morning the floor was wet, and my husband slipped and fell. When Hubs got home that night, he also told me about it.

Wednesday evening when I went to pick up Baby Bean, the gal asked me again if I had talked to my husband yet that day. I told her I had not, and she then told me that he had shut his finger in his truck door that morning. When Hubs got home he told me the whole story.

The past couple days BB has been really melancholy on the way to daycare. Hubs asked her what was wrong, and both days he asked she replied, "I miss mama." Then once they got to the school, BB started to throw screaming and crying fits because she didn't want to be left in this new school where she doesn't know anyone or anything. I don't blame her. I have a hard enough time transitioning in new jobs, and I'm not 2 years old.

So Wednesday morning, BB started crying the second Hubs turned off the truck. To keep from having to deal with the fit for long, he tried to hurry and get her out of the truck. In his rush, he did not get his finger clear of the door before it closed. He then jerked it free and tore off a giant chunk of skin. Needless to say, he was no longer in the mood to coddle BB. He took her into her class, sat her on a chair, and walked right out, telling her goodbye as he walked away to get ice for his poor finger.

Last night Hubs told me that it was my turn to drop BB off at daycare, and that I should be the one to do it for the rest of the week because: 1) the way his luck has been going he is afraid he will die next time he drops her off; 2) she is all sad in the morning because she misses me; and 3) he wanted to see if she handled it better when I dropped her off. I told him I would drop her off Thursday morning, but couldn't Friday morning because I have acupuncture in the exact opposite direction.

This morning as I drove BB to school, I made sure to keep talking to her to make sure she wasn't going to get upset. She did great until we turned down the street to her daycare, and then she started whining and saying she didn't want to go to school. I kept talking to her and telling her she would get used to it, and it was okay to not like it at first. Again, she did great until I opened the door to her classroom, and then all crying, screaming hell broke loose.

Every time I tried to tell her goodbye, she would cry louder and harder. She would grab onto me and try to jump up into my arms. I felt HORRIBLE! I wanted to cry with her. I felt so bad that she was so upset. Her teacher told me that she had been doing this all week, and that she expects BB would do it for another week or so before she gets comfortable enough there. She said usually when Hubs leaves, BB goes over to a couch in the corner and sits there for a few minutes until she calms down, and then when she is ready, she will come over and play with the other kids.

I finally managed to get out of the classroom, and stopped to watch my daughter on the monitors in the lobby. Sure enough, BB was sitting on the couch, quiet and sad. It broke my heart.

I got to work half an hour late and texted my husband to tell him not to ask me to do that again, and that dropping her off was HIS job. I just couldn't handle feeling so bad about taking my daughter to daycare.

Not cool, daddy. Not cool!

These Are the Days

Who amongst us bloggers doesn't do the occasional bulleted list post in an attempt to update our readers on many goings-on in our lives, as well as to document them for posterity? I am certainly not immune. And so, I present you with a bulleted update!

• Rainbows on My Lawn - Apparently my dog Sadie needs a better past time, or something fun and creative to do besides create rainbow colored "leavings" on my back lawn. How, you may ask, does she do this? She eats ALL of my daughter's crayons. Every. Single. Last. One. I bought my daughter a box of 64 crayons to replace the ones Sadie ate. Sades wasted no time eating a full quarter of the new box of crayons. When scooping poop over the last two weekends, I could tell exactly which dog "went" where. I thought I would be safe buying Baby Bean colored pencils instead of crayons, but then Mags decided she wanted in on the chewing fun. I just can't win this battle!
  
• Blog to Book - As some of you may be aware, I have all but shut down my secondary blog. I haven't posted on it since January. I started looking into turning the blog into a book this week. I think I have found a great site to do the job called B.lurb. Any of you heard of it? I haven't messed around with it yet, but it looks like I can upload my blog and then play with the layout so that it all looks exactly how I want, and then they will print it in a hard bound book for me. I am pretty excited to explore all of the possibilities, but even more, to have my blog printed to a hard bound book for posterity (after all, isn't that why we really blog these days?).
• Bad Dogs and Bunnies - No, the bunnies are not bad, but the dogs are. Earlier this year my husband and I found that a bunny rabbit had made her home under our shed. Conveniently enough, after I had been begging him to let me get a pet bunny. Shortly after she dug her burrow, we started to see baby bunnies hopping around our backyard. A few weeks later, we realized there were multiple litters of baby bunnies, due to size differences. Well, one day last week one of my dogs (I'm guessing Mags because she is the fastest) caught one of the baby bunnies and did him in. I'm not sure which dog finished the job (I'm guessing Sades), but one of them tore the baby bunny's head clean off. We caught Sadie with the headless bunny, which she promptly brought to our back door and dropped at my feet. I couldn't look at my dogs for the next 24 hours. Bunny killers. I'm still mad. Luckily, the bunnies did not move on, but they are definitely more cautious about being seen.
• Baby Showers - I have officially signed up to host two baby showers in the coming months. One is for my BF who went to Turkey to do IVF and is now about 22 weeks along in her pregnancy with twin boys. I have enlisted the help of Marla, from The Chronicles of Marla, to make shower decorations for me, and I am super excited to see what she comes up with! I will also be hosting a baby shower for a new friend and coworker who recently discovered she was very pleasantly pregnant. It just goes to show that I really am okay with putting this baby thing behind me for a bit.
• Sticking to My Guns - For the first time in over a year I have no idea where I am in my cycle because I just don't care. My OvaC.ue is in the drawer and hasn't been touched in over a month. There is not even one OPK in this house. And guess what? I really, really like it this way. Why couldn't I give up on this a long time ago? It's nice to be able to breathe without stressing for a change.
• Puppies? - Just because I'm not keep track of my cycle, however, doesn't mean I'm not keeping track of someone else's. Mags has an appointment with the vet tomorrow evening to see if she is cleared for breeding. If so, I will be breeding her next time she goes into heat. This will be her one and only litter of pups because I am breeding for pleasure and nothing else. The pups will be sold at near cost to good homes. Hopefully both Mags and I are up for the task.

Well, that's it for me. Time to go to sleep. Soooo tired.... Night!

All of Her Latest Firsts

Even though my daughter has already been on this planet outside of "the package" for over two years, she has experienced a lot of firsts these past few weeks. It is so much fun to look and her and think about how she has never done these things before. I remember when she was first born, I was so excited about the fact that everything was new to her. That I would get to teach her about everything and watch her experience it all for the first time.

Baby Bean has been on planes many times already, but our trip to Cancun a couple of weeks ago was her first vacation. It was also her first time going outside of the U.S. Her first time on a beach. Her first time seeing the ocean and playing in it. Her first time building a sand castle, or even playing in the sand. I loved that vacation even more because so much of it was brand spanking new to her.

Then last weekend I got the bug to go buy her a tricycle. Her first bike. She loves the thing, and I love watching her figure out how to push the pedals. Even more, I loved watching my husband, her daddy, teach her how to ride it.

As if that wasn't enough firsts, I decided one night over the weekend that it was time to paint her toe nails. Within minutes she had pretty toe nails the same color as mama's. Every day since then whenever I change her diaper or get her dressed for the day, she asks if her pretty toe nails are still there. Yes, baby, they are, and they are so pretty.

Monday was also her first day in her new Montessori school. For those of you who don't know what that is, Montessori is a different method of teaching children. Everything they learn is hands on instead of out of a book. Instead of seeing 1+1=2 in a book, they have something like blocks, and they can see and feel that one block + one block = two blocks. The children learn quicker and easier and test higher than when taught through traditional means.

Every day her daycare sends home a sheet that tells us what she learned that day, as well as what she ate, what time her diaper was changed, etc. My favorite part of reading through what she learned yesterday was, "I learned Mandarin Chinese." That's right, my daughter is being taught Chinese! Not only that, she is being taught Spanish as well. She also has time devoted to music classes where she learns from a teacher who was trained at Juliard. She will leave that school being tri-lingual.

I know this all sounds hoity-toity, but anyone who knew me when I was pregnant and ever asked, "What do you want most for your baby?" knows that my answer was always, "I want her to be smarter than me." And I'm no dummy. After leaving this school, my daughter will be smarter than me. I can't tell you how much I love this daycare and how it will help her all throughout her life.

The best comment I have had so far was when I went to pick her up after her first day. Her teacher asked if my daughter had transferred from another Montessori school. When I replied that she had been going to traditional daycare, the teacher was surprised. She said my daughter was so well-behaved and learned new things very quickly. She went on to give me examples. I was beaming on the inside. I told the teacher that was why we changed schools, because we wanted to give our daughter every advantage when it came to learning. Her dad and I are so happy and excited about her potential in the new school. In fact, when I picked her up today, her teacher told me Baby Bean was using the potty regularly, and she wants to start full on potty training her in a few weeks, once Baby Bean is settled in the new environment a little more.

As I have said before, I am so happy with my life right now and the way everything is going. I know I am so blessed, and I don't take any of it for granted.

My most favorite moment this week: tonight when I was snuggled up next to Baby Bean in her toddler bed she looked at me and said, "Mom, you're my best friend." Oh.My.Gosh! I melted. Puddle of mom on the bed, melted. I could not possibly love my child more.

The Last for a While

This is going to be my last TTC post for a while, and no, sadly it is not because I am pregnant, but rather because I am taking a break from the game. This year has been kind of brutal for me on that front and I am burned out on all of it.

In my last post I told you all that I had decided to do a medicated cycle at the last minute to get AF to show before going on vacation. She was actually due the day we left, based on my OvaCue readings. She didn't show that day, or the next, or even at all that whole week. I kept my feet on the ground and kept telling myself it didn't mean I was pregnant. But then I started experiencing all kinds of symptoms, severe dizziness, frequent urination (we're talking every half hour), sore gazoongas, extreme fatigue, etc. So when we checked out of our hotel on Friday afternoon to head back home, I was actually starting to think I was probably pregnant. I told Hubs as much at the airport.

Saturday morning as we were headed to brunch, I told my husband I was pretty dang sure I was pregnant. I told him I would be really, really surprised if I wasn't, based on all of my symptoms. Then things got kind of upsetting because he was worried about the baby being a boy if I was pregnant because I was on estrogen patches. All through brunch it was weighing very heavily on his mind, and he let me know it. So on the way back home, we stopped at Tar.get and I bought a box for FRERs. As you can guess, it was negative. My husband breathed a sigh of relief, and I gave up. No bitterness, no hurt, nothing but 100% pure apathy. I was over a week late and there was no sign of AF. Who cares?

Tuesday morning I went to see my RE. He did his usual check. No cysts on the ovaries, no bun in the oven, so he tested my estrogen levels. Guess what? They were through the roof. Shocker. Apparently really high estrogen levels causes dizziness (I'm still dizzy to this day). He prescribed Pr.overa and AF was forced to show up the next day.

I told him this was the third time this year AF was long overdue, and the third time that I had a cycle greater than 40 days in length, completely NOT typical for me. He told me that sometimes doing medicated cycles can throw a woman's body off, so when she does medicated cycles and then takes a month off (as I did last month), it confuses the body and takes it a while to figure out how to do things on its own again.

But you know what? I just don't care. I really don't. I'm taking a break. I don't have any idea what cycle day I'm on. My Ovacue hasn't seen the light of day since CD15 of my last cycle, and it won't see the light of day for at least this month, if not next as well.

The panic to get pregnant RIGHT NOW has gone. For the first time in years, I just don't care. And honestly, I love it. Big, puffy heart, love it. I feel so free, so light hearted, so happy. All I want to think about right now is going on vacation again in September (more on that in an upcoming post), and again in January. I don't care about getting a bigger vehicle anymore (even though we went and looked and priced them out yesterday). I would rather save my money for plane tickets to Aruba or St. Kitts and Cancun.

I feel like I have fought my way up to the top of the wheel just by changing my attitude about what is important and what isn't. Realizing I can't control when things happen and shouldn't even try. I am so content again. I am completely content with being a family of three. It is so easy, so simple. I am starting to wonder if I really do want anymore because life is so uncomplicated right now.

I don't know when I'll care about TTC again, or if I ever will. If we have more kids, cool, we're totally open to it. But if we don't, cool, we have loads of travel plans, home improvement projects, and other places we don't mind putting the money. But before you say, "Now it will happen. You'll get pregnant because you don't care," think twice. That isn't why I'm doing this. And no, I don't think it will happen because I don't care. (Please read above where my body is messed up from doing medicated cycles; it is going to take a while to reset.)

I just want to go to the beach again. And live there. Forever. With my perfect little family of three.

Gallivanting

Hello friends! I am happy to say I am back! And believe you me, I have much to tell. However, I won't do it all in one post (or even two). I will tell you soon why I had to take a break away from the blog for a bit for reasons other than that I have been gallivanting the American continent. First on business, then on pleasure.

Remember how last month I said I was going to take the month off cycling, and then decided to cycle at the last minute? Well I couldn't tell you this then, but now that the vacation is behind us I can tell you the reason for doing a medicated cycle was not for a shot at conception, but rather my feeble attempt at getting AF out of the way before my little family of three went on our first ever family vacation to wonderful Cancun Mexico. (I kind of won and lost on the cycle battle. AF didn't show, but more on that later.)

I realized as I was putting the slide show below together that I am a modern version of the annoying person who invites all of their friends over to watch slides of their vacations, but the difference is, if you don't want to see adorable pictures of my daughter swimming with Ramon the Dolphin or sweetly posing on ancient Mayan ruins, you don't have to. (It will only suck away 4 minutes of your life if you choose to watch.) I knew the grandparents, my siblings, and some of my IRL friends wanted to see these pictures though, so here they are. Enjoy, and I'll write again very soon. Promise!