*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.