Merry Christmas

Christmas with a three year old has been pretty fun this year! This is the first year that Anna's really been interested in specific things and has talked about Santa coming. All season she's been very cautious about seeing Santa and him coming into our house. She decided she wanted to visit him at his house in our down town area. She was all excited until her turn was next... she was very shy, quickly ran to get his candy cane and ran back to Tim and I. She refused to sit on his lap and made me hold her to get a picture next to him. But... it was improvement from two years ago - no tears. :)

Our family has been very lucky to celebrate Christmas several times over the last couple of weeks, with lots of family and friends. Anna was gifted with lots of fun toys from family and Santa. Daddy and I got her a new twin bed, rug and shelving unit for her "big girl room". With all the focus on Brother lately it was nice to spoil her a bit over the last few weeks.

Christmas looks a lot different this year than I expected it to at the beginning of the year. I thought we'd be celebrating the twins' first Christmas with two little wiggly six month olds, but instead, we hung their stockings to remember them. Although there's still sadness of them not joining us, we are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Brother in less than two months! We have lots to be thankful for this year, despite the challenges we've been faced with.


From our family to yours, we hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

12 & 13 Weeks

Friday, August 4 - 12w, 1d
One more day!! Tomorrow everyone will be finding out about you and your cousin during Anna's birthday party.

Saturday, August 5 - 12w, 2d
This is it, folks! Anna's third birthday party day is here and people will be finding out about two more babies entering our family this winter, very soon! I didn't sleep the best and I'm tired already (it's only 11:30am), but I know we're going to have a fun afternoon. Anna is very excited that it's "party day" and what she thinks is her birthday. I put her down for a nap a bit ago hoping that she'll get a little sleep before the exciting afternoon, but I can hear her playing in her bed, so we'll see how that works out. Hopefully she'll crash. Well, I'll update more this evening!! :-)

Thursday, August 10 - 13 weeks
Things have been so busy that I haven't written in a while. We celebrated Anna's birthday on Saturday, announced this pregnancy that evening, then recovered from the party basically the rest of the weekend. Everyone was so surprised (mostly surprised about Elise!!) at the party about your announcement. Grandma and Shirley were a little suspicious because Anna's been talking about "the baby" at Grandma's lately, so they were waiting. Grandma is also very excited to have two little babies again later this winter. I am so excited for these two cousins to grow up together as Anna and Liam have. :)

OHH, how could I forget, we found out if you're a boy or girl on Monday!! I can't wait to share! I was planning on sharing on Anna's birthday, but decided to hold it in just a little bit longer. Maybe on the first day of school next week. :)

It's been nice having people know about this pregnancy. It's nice to have the support of other people and to not have to hide my growing belly. I've been feeling really good lately and my stress level has been manageable over the last week or so, which has been really nice.

Tuesday, August 15 - 13w, 5d
We're starting to get back into the school grind.  Yesterday was my first day back and Anna's Open House. Daddy was able to take her to drop off her supplies and meet her teacher. She loved it! I've got a very large class this  year, 27, double what I had last year. It's going to be tough, but I know we'll make it work.

Sunday night into Monday I had a dream, again (this is my second one), that you were born too early. When I have dreams like that, it takes me a long time to fall back asleep because I just keep thinking about all of the "what-ifs". I had myself convinced at 2:30 that morning that later in the day I was going to call MFM and schedule an extra appointment to check on you for my own sanity, but by the time I got up for the day and was distracted by work, I felt a lot better and never called MFM. I really don't think these feelings of anxiety will ever go away, although I'm glad they are few and far between, for now. I'm guessing as we approach 19-20 weeks, when I lost the twins, I'll be having a few more worries, but for now I'm going to just keep going day by day.
I've been feeling pretty good, although I think you've grown a bit this last week because I'm feeling some stretching and I feel a little bigger. I feel a little pop or flick every now and then, and I'm sure it's gas, but I let myself think it's you, just to reassure me that you're moving and grooving in there. :)

Back to School

Happy first day of school from Daddy, Mommy, Anna and little brother! :-)

We survived the first day of school!!! Anna had her first day of preschool and I began my sixth year of teaching. I'm so glad Tim was able to take the day off and bring Anna on her first day...even though I was sad it wasn't me. Tim said she walked right up to her teacher in the lobby when she called her name and walked down the hall with all of the other kids without looking back. What a big girl!!

As soon as I was out of school, I rushed home so I could go with Tim to pick her up. We pulled around and she was trying so hard not to smile huge when she saw us ready to get her - it was so cute! Her assistant got her into the car, buckled her, told us how sweaty she got today and that she had a good day. :) It took her a minute when she got in the car, but once I got Anna talking, she talked for a long time! She was SO excited! She told me about school, she told me about her imaginary friend, and absolutely anything she could think of, she was just so happy.
We decided to celebrate this big day with some ice cream from Krekel's after. :) Anna enjoyed a strawberry cone with sprinkles, and Tim & I split a chocolate. She played outside for a little while this evening, ate dinner, took a bath, read some stories and was in bed by 8:00pm. She's been so tired this week because she's been getting up early, that I'm curious to see how late she sleeps in this weekend!

Highlights from Anna's day:

• Wearing her new school shoes (even without socks, oops!)
• Cold water - she was "so, so sweaty"
• She found a Bubble Guppies book in her classroom and read it
• The teacher read a "school book" and "pirate book" 
• There were "ten kids in my classroom" 
• Our neighbor asked Anna how her day went and she replied, "Great!" 
• She told me all about how they got cold water in cups without lids. She drank it "carefully and slowly". Then she threw the cup in the garbage and washed her hands, but the soap wouldn't work at first. 
• She sat on the carpet that had a pattern on it

Overall, I think she had a wonderful first day. She's excited to go back tomorrow! I am so happy that she had such a positive experience today. 

On my end, I had a pretty good day, too. 23 of my 27 students showed up today, so that was kind of nice. The students were all very excited to see each other and were a bit chatty, but they seem to be a good group. I'm excited to see how this school year unfolds - my partner and I have some cool ideas for this year. :) 

Anna and I are both completely exhausted, but I'm sure we'll both have a great next two days. I am looking forward to sleeping in this weekend and relaxing. Every year I forget how stressful and exhausting the beginning of the year is, but it's also so exciting and fun to start over with a brand new class. 

3 Years Old!!!

Anna, today (Aug 8) you are THREE years old!

• You've gone from calling me Mommy, to Momma, and now Mom. It's weird, but cute. You've also started called Daddy, "Dad" the last couple weeks. Sometimes it varies, but it's fun to hear what comes out of your mouth.

• You are so sassy! It started a few weeks ago and man, is it exhausting! Bedtime is the worst of it, but sometimes you just love to pick a fight. You're developing a little attitude when you talk sometimes & we are surprised, again, to hear the things that come out of your mouth...

• You talk A LOT! It's fun listening to you tell stories about your "friend" who is always named something silly & is a boy, and all of the cool things they've done. Your imagination is huge and I love that about you. You are really good at holding a conversation, too. 

• You love to be outside. You don't care if its 100 degrees or 70 degrees. You don't care if it's raining, or buggy, or windy. If you're outside, you're happy. You love to dig in the dirt, get dirty, do whatever Daddy is doing, ride your bike and your scooter, climb on anything/everything, play at the park, and follow Berkley around everywhere. Probably about 99% of the time, you're "walking barefooting" as you call it. The bottoms of your feet have often been black all summer long and you typically have at least 10 mosquito bites all over your body. (You obviously get these qualities from your Daddy, not me!)

• You are currently obsessed with the movie, Trolls. When we first started watching it, we'd have dance parties because we all loved the music so much. Then you got to the point when you wanted to watch it every single time I did my treatments. It's getting a bit old, but you got the soundtrack for your birthday, so I'm sure we'll be jamming to that in the car for a while. 

• You know most of your letters, can count to twelve (then you say 18, 19, 20, 21). We haven't been working on it as intensely lately because I know that you just pick up on it as it's introduced to you. You can also write your first name as AnnA. 

• You still love to read and insist on reading a book before nap and bedtime every day. We just got a bunch of new Usborne books from Aunt Katrina's parties, so I'm excited to read all of those with you! You also love going to the library and picking random books off the shelf for us to bring home - we've found some really good ones...and really bad ones :) 

• You're starting preschool in exactly eight days! I am SO excited for you because I really think you're going to love it! Now that you're finally three, you know that you're going to preschool soon and are getting excited, too. 

• You're going to be a big sister, again! I cannot wait to see you interact with Rainbow Bean when it's born! You are going to be an amazing big sister! 

• You are 36.5" tall and weigh in at 26 lbs, which means you've grown 3.5 inches and have gained almost 5lbs since turning two! The doctor is very pleased with your growth and I am, too!

You have developed such a personality over this last year. You love your friends and family, and get crazy/silly around those you're comfortable with. Your sass comes out when you're tired and typically put up some kind of fight (or a million excuses) at bedtime. You're an outdoor girl, which Daddy loves, but you're also a little bookworm and love to read & color, which I love. I really think you're the perfect mix of Daddy and I's personalities. I'm so excited to see you flourish in preschool this year. I hope you make friends, are nice to others, listen to the teacher, have lots of fun, and of course, learn so much! I love, and always will (even when you're a difficult teenager), your independence. It makes me happy to see that you have confidence to do things on your own. Even today, you insisted on taking your own shower, so I walked you through step-by-step on how to wash your hair & body. You are little growing up right in front of our eyes, little peanut, and you make us SO proud! We love you so much!! :-) 

August 5th

Today's been a big day for our family!

• Celebrating Anna's upcoming third birthday

Anna turns three on August 8th, so today we celebrated with our friends and family. I can't believe our little girl is three years old and will be starting preschool in just under two weeks! It was an excellent party and everyone had so much fun!! I love how close Anna is with her cousins and how much fun everyone has together.

• Today marks six months since I delivered the twins

Six months ago, today, our twin baby boys were born. It hard to wrap my mind around the fact that this much time has gone by already. Sometimes I try to imagine what our life would be like now if they were born full term, but that makes me sad and it's impossible to know how things would have been different. But....we've had some exciting news to focus on the last couple months....

• Today, we announced at Anna's party that I'm pregnant again with our rainbow baby!! 

Anna will be having a new little brother or sister arrive in February 2018. She will also be having a new baby cousin! Baby cousin is due on the twins' birthday, February 5th, and our rainbow bean is due just ten days later!
This baby is already loved by so many and its arrival is very anxiously awaited by many as well. It's been a different start to pregnancy for me this time around because it's been stressful but exciting to be pregnant again. This time we went through IVF, which was different from Anna and the twins, but we wanted to ensure that we only got pregnant with one baby. There's a lot more detail in my "fertility journey" posts, but I'll just share a little of what is was like this time around with some pictures of the process:

Meds arrived - top box is CF med, bottom box is IVF meds

Everything that was in the box -- a little intimidating at first

Coaching my way through my first couple injections - it took almost 30 just to get pregnant

Here's our little rainbow baby as a 5-day embryo! This is RIGHT before they inserted it into my uterus. 

A HUGE shout-out to Tim for giving me a nightly progesterone shot for 10 weeks! Every single night, from retrieval (May 25th) until yesterday, at 8:30pm, he would give me my dose of progesterone.....right in the booty cheek! He never once complained and was always so good about it!
So if you're keeping count, that's just about 100 injections over the last 12 weeks to conceive and maintain a healthy environment for this little bean. I have a lot more posts to share that I've been writing over the last 12 weeks, but we're very excited (and I'm a little nervous/anxious) to have this shot at being parents again!!

• Last but not least, one month of compliance with my treatments since my birthday

In honor of our beautiful children, I've been working really hard over the last month to remain complain with my treatments. It was especially hard to hook myself up and shake tonight after such a long, draining (but super fun) day, but it's all for Tim & our kids! :) I plan to keep this streak up for a long time!!