Memories

Lately I have been compelled to get back on here and start writing again. Life and sickness have prevented it, but I've really been wanting to push myself into pulling something out of myself creatively, for me. I'm sadden to admit that when I sit down to think about what I want to say I find that it is nothing. Life right now is so so hard for us and I am falling victim to the despair of it all. I don't want to look back on this time and remember. I don't want to even acknowledge it now. And that is so so sad to me because I should be feeling so much joy. I'm not saying that nothing should be wrong for me, and that my life should be perfect, but rather I should be better about focusing on the joy that is in this life, not the hardship. I am pregnant with a much loved and fought for baby. My husband is alive and in good health. My son is healthy and growing and becoming an amazing little person. I got to eat dinner tonight until I was full and will get to lay my head down on a pillow in a warm and dry house. I am blessed. I just need to remember it.

Sweet sweet music

One of the best sounds I have ever heard is the conversation taking place between my husband and my son, right now, in our hall bathroom. It is so amazing to get to know my son through the words he choses to use. The thoughts he has to express to us. I am supremely blessed to have this life.

Please Hold...

Yeah, so I know, I'm a slacker. Life has been hectic, so you gotta cut me some slack. Don-e's heart has been acting up, and I will be done working at this job in less than four days and I just don't have to time, or mental space available to write right now. Will get back to it next week to give more details about what is going on.

For now I leave you with a picture of a sleeping baby from yesterday afternoon.

Secrets. But not about the Garden.

I have a confession.

See, almost all of the pictures that I post on here are taken with my iphone. Most of the pictures that you see are ones that I take with the specific purpose of posting them here, and doing so with my iphone is really convenient. From my phone I can email them to my computer for uploading as opposed to having to download my camera every day or so. Plus, the camera that we have is several years old, and not the greatest thing to begin with.

For right now this is a pretty good system.

But really, deep down, if I could have my way......
I really really want a good camera. Something that gives me more control over the speed and aperture and focus. Something that I can put different types of lenses on to achieve different types of effects.
Something like this...
Something that would allow me to create art, not just take a picture.
I know I have no where close to my husband's creative ability. Not even a fraction of a fraction. But sometimes I see something, and it creates a snapshot in my mind, something that I know could be beautifully capture and enjoyed for more than just the moment that it occurs. And it makes me want to create.
Someday, because this isn't something that just popped into my mind in the last month or two, I will be able to put aside the money to pursue this hobby. But for now we both have to be satisfied with shots like this.

But I guess it really isn't that much of a hardship, is it?

Dirt

On my birthday about the only thing that I could come up with that I wanted to do was plant a garden. And being the amazing man that he is my husband agreed, and helped me haul dirt and wood and dig and get sweaty.

We got it done relatively quickly and inexpensively. But I had a ton of fun. There is such excitement in putting something in the ground for the specific reason of having it grow and be productive. And it is substantially less expensive and nerve-racking than having kids that are supposed to grow and be productive.

Although the one we do have is pretty cute. And I suppose it is a little late to be changing my mind about having kids, right?

It is really late in the season to be planing here. (Isn't that funny? Reno hasn't even begun theit growing season!) Because of the lateness we didn't have very many options about what we could plant. We planted a few different types of peppers, some squash, herbs and onions. Oh, and strawberries! The things on the very end are the berries. They are what I am most excited about. Mainly because they are one of the only two things that we planted that I like to eat.

Elijah took this picture. Genius baby, no?

It was really funny though, when we got done. I had wanted to plant stuff that weekend specifically because a co-worked had given me some tomato plants and they needed to go in the ground quickly. So I had prepped the bed, gone to Lowe's to get the rest of the plants and supplies we need, and then come straight home and done the planting. Only to clean up and walk back inside and realize that my tomato plants were still sitting in my kitchen window. And I had not left any room in the only planting bed we have. Genius mother, no?

Beds

On Saturday we converted Elijah's crib to a 'regular' toddler bed. It was very exciting, but at the same time I was very sad to admit that he was ready for it. There isn't much left that ties him to babyhood. So far though, he has done remarkably well with this new freedom. Every time we have laid him down he has gone right to sleep and while most of the time we have to wake him up in the morning Don-e told me that this morning he was already awake and sitting up on his bed. He just didn't get out of it until Don-e went in to get him. I have a pretty spectacular kid if I do say so myself!
The one thing that I am finding most difficult with this whole thing is finding bedding. His new bed is actually just his crib, missing one side. There are a few other modifications that happen, supports for keeping the mattress in place and removal of the track for the drop down side of the crib, but it uses the same size of mattress. While babies are small you are not supposed to use blankets or sheets to cut down on the risk of smothering, which means no one makes them, at least that I have found, for crib sized toddler beds. My Mom made Elijah a blanket for Christmas that is really neat and comfy but as it gets hotter here it will be impossible to use. I think I am going to have to make stuff myself, because all he is really going to need in the summer months is a sheet and maybe a light blanket, depending on how high we have the air on. Plus we are really hoping that he will only use it for a few months until we have the need for a crib again. No, I am not pregnant we are just hoping it will happen. At that point we will buy Elijah a larger size bed of his own.
Any advice on making sheets and/or light blankets?

Endings just signify a new beginning....

Cycle Day 14- Should be ovulating....

Don-e and I have decided that if we do not get pregnant this month we are going to back-off from trying. We will not stop, but we will no longer track and time and plan and keep ourselves (myself) from doing things that might hurt a possible baby if I manage to actually get knocked up. I do not like who this whole process has made me become. I am not a worrier, I am not a stresser-outer. But trying to conceive has made me both of those things. I am not an overly emotional person but have become one. I still want a baby. I still want to give Elijah a sibling. But not at the expense of these precious months of my son's life. Not at the expense of my overall wellbeing. This month we have done everything we can to help the process along. We will again this weekend rival a pair of springtime rabbits. And then for two weeks more I will wait and hope and pray. And then in two more weeks if it has not worked I am picking up where I left off. I will start aggressively workout again, for me, without thinking about the 'what-ifs' and the 'could-bes'. If I want to have a beer with some friends I will, without convincing myself that I can't because it might stay in my system for the next week and kill my poor, unsuspecting egg. And I will whole-heartedly enjoy the son that I do have. Without the thought that he will be the only time I got to be pregnant, the only time to smell my own newborn but rather with the acknowledgment of the blessing that I have in every day of his life.

Birthday Boy

Two years and two minutes ago I gave birth to my Elijah James. It has been an amazing pair of years.

Happy Birthday little man.

Eggs

We colored Easter Eggs this past Sunday that we will put out for Elijah to hunt this weekend before Church. Thought I would share some pictures with you...










Work is crazy busy so I have no time to write. So this is the best I've got for you. Oh, and Elijah has gotten a hair cut since then!

Stupid Jerk

So this morning I asked Don-e to email me something that is on our lap top before he left for work, as I had forgotten to make a copy of it before I left for work myself. I requested this little act in a text message. He writes back "What happened to the lap top?". Immediately the worst starts flashing through my mind...every single picture ever taken of Elijah......my sister's wedding video......years worth of financial records.....our company's books......pretty much my entire life. So I shoot him a text asking what he means, but then decided that wasn't good enough and called him. He tells me that part of the computer where we plug-in the charger has been completely ripped out. He can't even open it. He mutters through a few more things, I stammer that maybe one of the dogs stepped on it and he all of a sudden tells me he has to call me back. I almost cried. On top of all the things I had already been thinking about I start thinking about the cost of replacing it and what that will mean to our three months plan, our taxes that haven't been finished yet, both business and personal, because of some info our CPA is waiting on that is on that computer, and on and on and on.
Ten minutes later I get an email. Subject line- April Fool's.
Stupid Stupid Jerk.

Stones and Rainbows

Oh my gosh ya'll. We got the most awesome storm here last night. I have never, never seen anything like it. It has been kinda rainy here the last several days but I had thought that by yesterday afternoon things were supposed to start clearing up and then it would be clear through this weekend. When I left work last night while walking out to the parking garage I overheard some people commenting that 'it' was on 'its' way. They were pointing toward the darkened sky. About half-way through my thirty minute commute I heard a severe thunderstorm warning for several counties about an hour northwest of us. The warning had moved to our county and added a tornado warning by the time I got home. I spent five minutes picking up the lawn tools and toys in the backyard. Don-e called only minutes after I got back inside to tell me to move our car, which we normally parked outside, down the street to his parents house under their carport because golf ball sized hail would be in our area in twenty minutes. I grabbed Elijah and we moved the car down the street but instead of waiting there for Don-e to pick us up like we had planned I made the choice to try to beat the storm and walk home. We made it, with Don-e not five minutes behind us. Within another five it hit. The hail started off relatively small, and to be honest it was more than I ever expected it to be. We have gotten several of these hail warnings since we moved here but have never seen it happen. Within the twenty minutes the storm stayed in our area the stones did indeed reached the size of golf balls. We watched it rip apart several lawn chairs that had been left out on the lawn. It pulled apart strands of lights that we had hanging on our patio and shattered the bulbs. Within minutes the ground was covered. They stacked up to several inched deep. When they hit the ground they would bounce more than a foot high. All of our newly green trees where shredded.

We were in one of the worst hit areas, but not the worst. A friend of a friend was driving on one of the toll roads when she was hit. Both her windshield and rear window were shattered, while she was still driving. She told my friend that she thought she was going to die between the glass shards and pelting ice.

Skylights were broken, cars mutilated, roof destroyed.

The town that was hit just prior to ours had stones that piled up one and a half feet deep in the streets.The fire department there had to do the plowing.

A lady that I work with will have to pay two deductibles on two different cars. One for a rental she was driving and one for her car that was parked at a car dealership.

My in-laws and nephew were stuck huddled under a tree in the parking lot of the store they were going to.

But with all of that, with the fear and the destruction, there was such energy, such power alive in the air. The impact of the stones was like bullets assaulting the earth, but the battle field was majestic.

But afterwards the sky cleared and made way for a rainbow.

This Month

Last month I was pretty proud of myself for how well I handled the entire cycle and the ensuing disappointment that came from one more month that did not work. I was calm during the two weeks of waiting between ovulation and getting my period. Once we knew I took action and made an appointment to see the acupuncturists. I thought that I was going to experience a renewed sense of enthusiasm because we are doing something to help things along, but the only thing that I feel is terror.
And I realized on my drive to work this morning that I am terrified of both outcomes. I am terrified that next Thursday I will find that one more month has been wasted, that once again we didn't get pregnant. We did everything that we could to help the process along. I took the suggested pills and medicines, we were timed perfectly, we 'did it' like rabbits. So if it doesn't work we will have used up all of the tricks in our bag. There will be no more actions steps that I can take to feel useful and productive. That we will never have another baby. I will never again be given the gift of carrying my husbands child in my womb. Elijah will never get to have the amazing bond there is between siblings, the ones that both Don-e and I have relied on so often in our lives.

Seeing baby commercials on the television makes my heart hurt and my eyes tear.

And yet, I know I am also afraid of finding out that in the middle of next week that it did work. That I am pregnant. Because the fear of having that, and then losing it again is almost unbearable. Last summer a very good friend of mine miscarried in the end of her first trimester. I wept with her and then went home and looked at Elijah and wondered how anyone could stand it. I sit here and write this and still wonder that.

We lost our second child in December.

A friend of mine is due any minute and yet I feel such fear for them because I know that there is still a chance that they will not get to come home with a baby. It is not the same friend. They are still trying to conceive again.
And I am so mad that I feel this way. That I have these thought. There is nothing more natural than a man and a woman coming together to make new life, so why is it so hard for so many people? Why is it that something that is supposed to be so joyful is causing me so much pain?

*Cycle Day 16*- Starting the long loooong time of waiting. There are 14 days until we will know if this month worked..

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Our plans for this weekend are to attack our yard with some very aggressive yard work. This past week we got the very large red-tip photena that line our backyard trimmed back, which now means we can started cleaning up the leaves and debris that have lived under them for years. These things took up more than 10 feet on both side of the yard, and when you take into consideration that our yard is almost exactly 100 ft long AND wide, it makes for a lot of clean up. I am excited about it though. We really want to focus on the yard this year, as it has been greatly neglected since we bought the house two years ago. (On a brief side note, I can not believe that it has been two years!)


We want to clean up under these shrub things, then install some edging to create a distinct lawn area/planting bed area. Our next step is to re-seed the lawn. Then some planting under the shrubs, some mulch and it will be beautiful! Don-e does also want to install a larger patio area off the back of the house, but because of our septic system it has to be done in pavers and that is pricey!! Might have to wait on that awhile.

Our goal for getting the yard at least part-way done is Easter weekend, which also happens to be Elijah's birthday weekend. We've (I've) decided that we should have an annual Easter party, in much the same way people have annual Christmas parties. If we can pull it off this year we will get off lucky because we can also make it Elijah's birthday party. (Again, can't believe it has been two years!)


Keep your fingers crossed for us, and I will try to show you pictures as things progress!

On getting stuck..

*Day 15*- Ovulating...

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On Sunday I went to an acupuncturist. A friend of mine that has diagnosed fertility problems starting seeing an acupuncturist on the recommendation of her ob/gyn and ended up getting pregnant the first month into her treatment. So, because I am getting close to the point of craziness over not being able to get pregnant we thought we would give it a try. We found a lady on the recommendation of another friend and she turned out to be the cutest, tiniest white soccer mom (totally unexpected) but was really friendly and she seemed to be very knowledgeable. She ran a few tests on me and found out that the only system that is out of wack is my urogenital system. Which is primarily my kidneys and ovaries. Perfect, no? She recommended a few supplements that should help boost my system and I did about 15 minutes of acupuncture. I can't really say that it was weird to have a bunch of needles sticking in various points of my body because you can't feel them. It was a bit odd to be able to see the one in my forehead though. I will go back for two more one hour sessions over the course of the next four weeks and take the recommended supplements. Kim, my acupuncturist, thinks that after that, more or less, I should be pretty good. She did recommend that we do not try to get pregnant during that time, but after talking about it Don-e and I are not willing to give up two more months of time. My regular doctor ran all kinds of test in January and she didn't find anything so we are not worried about anything being too seriously wrong. I really think that our hold up has been more effected by my stress level and not taking very good care of myself. So I am going to take my vitamins and try to relax! One other thing that Kim told me that I found interesting is that Chinese medicine associates a women's ovaries with her creativity. When she asked me what I do to express myself creatively right away Don-e blurted out writing so Kim said that I need to write, or express myself as creatively as possible to help stimulate my ovaries. Which has been hard because I haven't been compelled to write for awhile, which is probably because my ovaries are block! But here I am, trying to be creative. But if what you are reading sucks we are going to blame it on my ovaries.

Pee and Donuts

This weekend Don-e had to meet with one of the Pastors that we do work for so we attended his church instead of our normal home church. It was a ton of fun and very productive for Don-e. The church we attend now is huge, somewhere around 6,000 people, so it was nice to experience a small church again. This plant church is in a little town just north of us called Round Rock. (Trivia fact- Round Rock is also the town where my ob-gyn is and therefore the town Elijah was born in!) A few weeks ago we were watching the Travel Channel and they had a show on a couple of the restaurants in and around Austin. None of which we have been to by-the-way. But anyway, one of the places they featured was a donut shop in Round Rock called, surprisingly, Round Rock Donuts. Little bitty place, fabulous donuts but one of the things that they are known for is a enormous donut. Something ridiculous like 12 lbs. This is a horrible picture of Elijah, but if you look in the upper right-hand corner of the display case you can see part of one of these donut monsters.

We did not try one. Maybe if we ever become a family of twelve. Maybe then we could consume this thing.

But probably not.

In other exciting news, Elijah went pee in the potty for the first time yesterday. He was running around in the nude after his bath and peed on the carpet. So I was cleaning this up and telling him that no, we don't pee on the carpet we only pee in the potty or in our diapers. (I did refrain from rubbing his nose in it.) So not three minutes later he is bouncing around saying PEE! PEE!! I made the assumption that he had peed again, but after a few more seconds of this little potty dance the light dawns and I hurry him off to his little potty in his bathroom. He sits down and starts peeing like he knew what he was doing! He did try to stand up in the middle of peeing, like all he had to accomplish was starting the stream of urine, but it's a good start, right? Anyway, I squeal and cheer like only someone who has changed diaper for two years could and then I tell Elijah to go get Daddy to share in the exciting news. Elijah drags Don-e into the bathroom and the cheering and squealing begins again. Just for your information Don-e took pictures of the pee, in the potty. And while I flushed the pee. I will not subject you to those. Then Elijah says Pee! again, and sits right down and does it again. Such a stud that kid. Guess I need to start reading up on how to actually go about potty-training. Eek!

Hey, what do you think of the design? Don-e threw it together for me after much begging and pleading and bribing. Hopefully I can get him to finish the rest of it soon...

*Cycle Day 28*- Spotting this morning. Looks like it didn't happen this month. I don't want to talk about it. At all.

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While we were on our trip Elijah kept trying to drag around our luggage, all by himself. Full sized, stuffed full luggage. When my mother-in-law picked us up from the airport the child had to pull our rolling suitcase all by himself, and would scream if we even tried to help him. He and I finally reached a compromise and we made it to our car, but we decided that we needed to get him his own rolling bag to use on any future trips. This weekend when we were at Wal-Mart we found one that would work perfectly.




He loves this little bag. We gave it to him to walk around the store with, and he drug it around behind him very proudly. Anytime he wanted to stop and look at anything he would very precisely put the handle down and do what needed to be done before he went back to parading this bag around. It was the cutest, funniest thing until we got to the check-out line and realized that he had stuffed the thing full! I had been giving him little things to put in it as we shopped but apparently he didn't think it was enough!!

Now he walks around the house with it, proudly announcing to anyone that will listen, "bag!".

Home again, home again.

Day 22- Waiting... I ovulated on the 19th, which was day 15 of the cycle.

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Just got back from a week long trip to Reno. I am very very tired. Almost fell asleep on the way to work this morning even!
Jimmy was home on his mid-tour leave so Don-e and I decided to take a week and go home to spend time with my family. All of us getting together doesn't happen very often so we try to do what we can to make it happen when possible.
My brother looked pretty good, and I think coming home did him some good. The last time I saw him he had lost a bunch of weight but this time he had gained a lot of mass back and looked pretty good. The time went by too fast, as it always does but overall it was a great trip. Elijah did okay, but not great. I think he had a harder time adjusting to the different time zone this time around so there were lots of grumpy spells. This trip was the last time he will get to fly for free and I am very glad for that. It will make taking trips that much more costly for us, but he is WAY to big to be riding on our laps.

I leave you today with a picture of two of my three boys, because I have no more energy for you.

*Day 12- nothing exciting.

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This past weekend was the laziest we have had in a very long time. But it felt very good. I think we needed it. See, we were supposed to be flying out Saturday morning to Reno to visit the family and my brother who is coming home on his mid-tour leave. I am very excited about that, let me just say. But our plans were to leave early Saturday and be gone until the following Friday but Jimmy got held up in Baghdad until today. Which means he won't be home until the 18th which would have only given us a day and a half with him. So we are not leaving until Wednesday morning. We will probably only beat him home by a couple of hours. But because of the change in plans this weekend was ultimately a free weekend. There wasn't anything I needed to do, we had no plans so we didn't do anything. We didn't plan anything. Saturday I didn't even get out of my pajamas! Pure bliss.

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Elijah's newest vocabulary addition is "I did it!". Cutest thing ever! He sounds so much like a baby and he is always so excited with whatever he just did. I need to figure out how to put videos up here. Maybe that would push me to be better about filming more of our day to day life. He also wants to walk on his own, everywhere. So cute, but we are finding it hard to adjust to having a real live kid. There is no more baby in him. He tells us when he is hungry, when he wants to sleep or play or go bye-bye. He tries to close every door within sight and always wants to have his shoes on. And he gives fish kisses. Good ones.

Goose

* Cycle Update- Day 6 Will begin taking Robitussin tonight.

Saturday we took Elijah to a little park near our house with the intentions of feeding some ducks that hang out there regularly. I remember doing this as a kid, and it was so much fun. There is a park in Reno that has a fairly good size pond and I remember there were always millions of duck hanging out. After feeding the ducks we got to play at the playground, which that combined with ducks always makes for a pretty awesome Saturday. I thought it would be nice to start the same tradition with my family. So we head to this little pond, bread in tow. There are like five ducks and three geese. The pond level is so low that we could barely get down to the water because of a normally submerged bank creating a cliff. And apparently these quackers were hungry. Before we get within 30 feet of where they are standing they start honking and screeching and waddling our way. Now, I should clarify that they ducks were very well behaved. The geese were the culprits in our little adventure. We start throwing our hunks of bread, while Elijah happily yells quack quack over and over. But this one stupid geese keeps getting closer and closer. I move back. He comes closer. I move back.
You can see where this is going.
The stupid thing charges Elijah. Wings spread, beak wide, this damn thing attacks. I lunge in and snatch Elijah up, managing to scratch him in the process. Then the stupid thing goes after me. He won. I still have a nasty, beak shaped bruise. All the while Don-e is laughing. My only consolation was that mere minutes later the same one went after Don-e and he ran like a little girl, swinging the bag of bread.
I at least kicked the damn thing.

Whoops

I just realized that I published that without having called my mother first. Hi Mom! If you read this before I get a chance to call you and inform you of all of this, I'm sorry!

Always with the questions

I do not know if I am pregnant or not. This is a difficult place to be. By the time you are reading this post it will be several weeks old, but if I am pregnant we want to tell my family in person. Which we will be able to do next weekend, when we go home to see my brother on his mid-tour leave. So for that reason you will not be able to read this until I either know without a doubt that I am not pregnant, or I have had a chance to tell my family. But I guess for all of this to make sense I need to back up a little bit.

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I wrote that yesterday. You are reading this today. Guess what that means? I guess now I do need to tell you the whole story...

At the end of last March I wrote on this blog that Don-e and I were going to start trying to get pregnant. At that time it was more that we were no longer trying to not get pregnant. Or, we were playing soccer without a goalie as I heard it so eloquently put once. Then, the last day of July Don-e got sick. We never starting using birth control again, but our focus was turned to fixing our life and Don-e's health. But by about Halloween I had the itch again so I started paying closer attention to the calendar and making sure we were timing things right. In December we got pregnant but lost it barely two weeks into it. In January I went in and had some testing done. Everything came back normal. In the follow up appointment with my doctor after the testing she came to the conclusion that it is very likely that there was nothing wrong with our trying before Don-e got sick. Nothing happening in 4 months is considered normal, especially when coming off birth control. She does think that it is very likely that all of the medications that Don-e was given during his stay in the ICU could have caused him to have a tainted and poor sperm supply, thus causing our problem since then. Apparently the male reproductive system only regenerates every 72 days, so with that time frame Don-e would only now be regenerating a new supply since the last time he took the hard-core meds they had him on. She said we should try with ovulation testing for three months and then if nothing has happened we could discuss the possibility of more testing.

I got a positive pregnancy test on Monday. I have gotten two negatives and have started bleeding since then. It is clumpy and painful like the mis-carriage I had in December. I don't know what to think. I have always had very easy, painless cycles. Always started the same time of day, 28 days from the last time. Completely done in five days. Now, I do know that as they age some women have experienced a change in the normalcy of their cycles. Maybe mine are changing. Maybe that is what this month means. I know I was pregnant in December. This time I am not sure if I was, or we just got a faulty test. Right now I am waiting to hear back from our doctor. Hopefully she can shine some light on this mess.

Unsettled

I have come to realize, in these last few weeks of my 24th year, that I have always had a huge misconception of what life should be like. I have always thought that it should be normal, in the very sense of the word. But while whomever first started spreading this misconception was badly mistaken I am beginning to think that it could very well have been just some other person trying so hard, like me, to live a normal life. They, like me, just didn't realize that normal isn't possible. Now, I may be acting far more melodramatic than is necessary, but I am so ready for simple. Easy. Not boring, and never without good doses of love and passion of all kinds, but without chaos. Without drama and crisis. Without heartbreak and loss. But this does not seem to be a description that can be applied to our life. Please do not misconstrue my message here, we have had very happy times. I have never experienced joy like that which I have experienced since marrying Don-e, since becoming a mother, but it has never been normal.

Don-e is completely healed from the myocarditis. At this point there is no indication of any residual damage. His blood pressure is still slightly elevated and his cholesterol is on the high side but comparatively these are minor issues. He will be on blood pressure medication for awhile. He has to take more fish oil on a daily basis. More tests will be run to check the progression on his heart's reconstruction. But I am still not fully recovered from the emotional toll the episode took. We financially are not caught up. My over-all health was pushed to the bottom of the priority list and I am now having to deal with the repercussions of that.

We got pregnant in December. We lost the baby barely two weeks into it. They say it is called a chemical pregnancy. That is the classification of a pregnancy before it is visible on an ultrasound machine. After it is, it is referred to as a clinical pregnancy. After some testing it appears that I am completely healthy.

We have been trying since April. My doctor thinks that this is a result of some of the medications that they had Don-e on during his stint in the ICU. That at this point they should just about be out of his system and we should start aggressively trying. I guess we'll see, won't we.

My sister miscarried last week as well. It breaks my heart to even type that.

As I type all of this I am frustrated with myself. Frustrated that I am allowing any portion of these unsettling times to effect me. Because I know. I know that through Christ I can do all things. That He will never allow a burden I can not handle. But, oh, I am weak. My flesh is weak. I am finding comfort in that though. Because in my weakness HE is strong.