Wordless Wednesday: Go Pats!

Becoming Picky

If Harry could eat the same thing every day, I'm pretty sure this is what his menu would look like:

Breakfast: Yogurt, english muffin, fruit. A soy sausage every other day.

Lunch: Grilled cheese on wheat bread, fruit.

Dinner: Pasta with red sauce, peas, fruit.

I actually think he would gladly eat just yogurt and fruit (with no major preference regarding what fruit -- berries, pineapple, melon, banana, kiwi, peaches, pears, plums -- he loves them all, and more). I've started mixing veggie purees into his morning yogurt to try to get some more veggies into him. And he does eat other food (I try not to indulge the pickiness, which often results in very little dinner), but it's often a struggle.

For tomorrow's lunch at day care, I packed a veggie dog, some cheese cubes, some wax beans (which he won't eat for us, but maybe he will for her), some watermelon, and half a mini-bagel (which I may trade for an english muffin at the last minute, as he prefers the muffin, but it seems like a lot of food). Miss M provides lunch for the kids, but we pack Harry's -- they are all very picky toddlers, so they tend to do a lot of chicken nuggets and fries, pizza, grilled cheese, etc., and I'd rather avoid him eating that much fried food (and avoid him developing a taste for it).

He used to be such a great and adventurous eater (he tried parsnips and used to love beets). Are those days gone, or just on hiatus?

ETA: I spoke too soon. This morning, he rejected fruit too, only eating yogurt. The rest, as usual, was tossed to the floor, making Buddy very happy.

Neither Trying Nor Preventing

Apparently, such a strategy can have the following consequences:

(Apologies for the awful picture.) The first one strip was last Tuesday.

Since my period has been irregular since Harry was born because of the whole nursing thing, I have no idea when I ovulated, but if I had to guess I would have thought it was several (like 4-5) days after the last time we actually did the deed, so this is a huge surprise to say the least. That first strip is rather faint, which would be consistent with it being about 14dpo. If there's any validity to the Shettles Method, I'm guessing this will be a girl, if in fact we get that far.

Strangely, I'm not feeling as nervous or anxious as I would expect. Or, to the extent I'm feeling nervous/anxious, it's more over the idea of possibly having two under two or of having to manage a career and two small kids or of having to tell my dad, who I suspect will feel that the latter is impossible, or at least that my work will be less than thrilled, thereby derailing my career further.

For now, I will attempt to be excited. And for now, we will keep this a serious secret. And for now, I am going to save this post as a draft, to be published later.

Update on the Last Post

They retrieved 9 eggs on Tuesday, of which 4 fertilized. She is pretty upset, as they got 16 last time, of which 11 fertilized. (Of course, last time her transfer got cancelled due to OHSS.) Transfer is scheduled for Friday. My fingers remain crossed for them. Keep yours crossed too.

Fingers Crossed

Harry's godparents have been trying to conceive for three or so years now. The day I had the D&E back in 2007, she had an HSG that showed that her tubes were blocked. Completely. In the two years since then, we had Harry, who is now one. In that same two year period, they fought a series of battles with their insurance company. She had a bilateral salpingectomy. They began their first of two covered rounds of IVF, but she showed signs of OHSS post-retrieval, so the transfer was cancelled. They did two FETs, neither successful. They did a lot of thinking and a lot of waiting.

Last night at two a.m was her trigger shot for their second-and-final insurance-covered fresh cycle. Retrieval is tomorrow at two. Transfer will be Friday or Saturday, barring any recurrence of the OHSS signs.

Shit has not been going particularly well for them in general lately. She is finishing her dissertation and trying to enter the job market. This is tough at any time, but the economy sucks, and her research findings and her hypotheses aren't lining up completely, and she's a perfectionist (I say that in the best way, of course), so she's stressed. And, well, rather hormonal. Meanwhile, his company first cut salaries, then furloughed people, including him. So they can't afford a fresh cycle on their own dime. This may be it for them for now.

I'm guessing they don't need any advice per se, but if anyone has any prayers/positive thoughts to spare and/or has any words of any sort, whether they be of comfort or encouragement or other forms of wisdom, I'd be happy to pass them along.

One Year

My wonderful little boy,

It seems wholly impossible that it has been a year since you came into our lives. As cliched as it is, it feels like just yesterday that you were born, but I can't really remember our life without you. In that year you have gone from being a helpless newborn to being a fiercely determined, rambunctious little boy. I have loved every minute of being your mom, even the minutes where you bit hard enough to draw blood or screamed for no reason or threw all your food on the floor for the dog. Every. Minute. They have been the best 525,600 minutes of my life.

This month has been full of fun. You rediscovered books -- and remembered that they are not just for eating. You love to flip the pages and look at the pictures. You love your big picture books and Beep Beep Peekaboo and Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy. You also love Alligator Alphabet, requesting it be read MANY TIMES after almost every nap -- you see the painting on the wall and want to touch the animals (mainly the yak and the zebra), so we read the book instead. Unsurprisingly, your first word was book. And even less surprisingly, your second was dog. You continue to be slightly obsessed with the dog.

You are also really into your walking toys. You love walking, but you can't quite do it on your own yet, so you spend what seems like an inordinate amount of time pushing your truck across the room, walking around it to get to the other side, then pushing it back. It was a happy day in our house when you discovered that you could walk to the other side to push it back, ending the days of sitting down and crying. You also enjoy walking the truck to the airplane, and the airplane to the giraffe, or any of them to a piece of furniture that you can cruise along to get to the next thing, whether it be another walking toy, another piece of furniture, the exersaucer (you love being able to walk around it and check out the toys from the outside), your music table, or your workbench. I think you have too many toys.


This month you also took your first step, down at Grandma Ps beach house, where we spent Labor Day with Papa and Grandma P and your cousins and your uncles and aunt. I don't think the step was on purpose -- you let go, took one step, and fell down -- but you did do it. While there, you also took your first dip in the Atlantic. It was definitely more successful than the Pacific. You liked it so much that, when we were sitting on the beach, you took my hands and walked me back down to the water to go back in, wading in up to your chest and laughing away. I am so glad you have decided you like the water. Now that you bathe in the big boy bathtub and spent time in a pool both at our house and at daycare, maybe it seems more familiar. Or maybe you just knew that this was your ocean. I'm happy either way.

I'm sorry that you had to wake up in the morning on your first birthday in a pack n play in a hotel room, but daddy's cousin got married and we had to go. You did get to celebrate with a belgian waffle, followed by your first haircut (it was getting a bit shaggy around the ears), thanks to Grandma. We spent the evening at Fenway Park, where you got to see your name on the scoreboard, along with birthday wishes from your dad and me. You also got to see the Red Sox win for the sixth time this year -- this time from excellent seats on the first base line. You held up a sign telling everyone it was your birthday, which everyone in our section loved but no one on TV saw. You were on TV, though -- in the background for every left-handed batter but not with the sign. We'll save it -- you have a lot of birthdays ahead of you.

My sweetpea, my munchkin, my big guy, my baby boy. I love you with all my heart, on this, your first birthday, and for every day before and every day yet to come.

Mommy

Time for a Change?

Over the years, when recruiters have called, I have always just said I wasn't looking.

Today, I told one to call back in a few weeks. I need some time to gather my thoughts.