Monday, August 13, 2007

Back in the game

Weird: Being in the 'feminine products' aisle at the store, comparing prices on ovulation test kits.

Weirder: Having your 2-year-old carry said kit around the grocery store instead of letting you put it in the cart where it belongs.

Weirdest: Peeing on a stick and having said 2-year-old come into the bathroom saying "Whatcha doin', Mommy?!"

Negative OPK. Not surprised. I'm on CD12. Couple more days at least.

Good grief, it's so strange to be back in this world again.

May have to have S reschedule his portion of our fertility testing, though, since he is supposed to abstain for 48 hours before providing his, um, sample to the lab.

I know, you really wanted to know about my sex life.

Whose sari now?

We are going to India for a cousin's wedding. This will be only my second Indian wedding besides my own (very simple, at a relative's house).

I know, of course, what is expected of me in the dress department. I will be required to wear a sari. I own all of 2 saris (one simple, one more elaborate) and have worn each of them a grand total of: once. The simple one I wore for my own wedding in India, and the more elaborate one for a cousin-in-law's.

The only other time I have needed a sari, for my bangle ceremony during my pregnancy, I borrowed one from S's cousin.

Saris are not cheap, and I don't have occasion to wear one very often. Not to mention that I have absolutely no clue how to do all the folding and wrapping required to actually do the wearing.

So, it has been decided that I will borrow a sari from one of the female relatives when I am in India. That is not a huge issue; I'm sure they have stacks and stacks of saris among them.

But I have only a handful of blouses to wear underneath the actual sari. Most of them are quite plain and won't go well with an elaborate sari with all the gold stitching. I have 2 blouses with gold stitching, each a different shade of pink. I tried them on this morning to see if they still fit (I last wore them in 2000).

Oops.

So I have 13 days to lose a bit of bustline (I don't think the girls went back to their pre-KB size after pregnancy & nursing) and to tone up my arms a little.

I guess I should have tried on my blouses a few weeks ago!

Always

Whenever we go on a trip, we always manage to load up our calendar just before we leave. Always. Then I get stressed out and vow NEVER AGAIN to do this to myself.

And yet.

We leave on Saturday night. This weekend we cleaned on Saturday, hosted relatives and a couple of friends on Sunday, then spent Sunday evening after KB went to sleep cleaning up the kitchen. 2 loads in the dishwasher and there are still a bunch of dishes in the sink to wash by hand.

At least there were quite a few leftovers yesterday and people left most of them at our place, so maybe we won't have to cook much this week. Although I must say, I get tired of South Indian food pretty fast, especially when I know I'm going to have to eat it 3 meals a day for 2 solid weeks pretty soon.

Anyway, on to my current stress. Wednesday night a realtor is coming over to talk to us about listing our house (she wanted to start showing it while we were gone. Gulp! No way we can do that).

Thursday afternoon is a birthday party for the little neighbor boy that KB loves. Yes, Thursday. Afternoon. Birthday boy's mom said the party venue was completely booked on weekends in August so she chose a Thursday afternoon. Never mind that Thursday is one of my work days. Or that the party time, 1:45 pm, is in the middle of KB's nap. But I will feel horribly guilty if we don't go, since the neighbors came to KB's birthday party in July.

Friday is normally a day I stay home with KB, but I think I'm going to have to make up Thursday's work and put KB in day care that day. Friday evening S's company is having their 2nd annual "get together" at the San Mateo County Fair. And possibly Friday night, we'll go to pick up S's cousin from Oakland, bring her down here to stay the night with us, and shuttle her to the airport on Saturday afternoon.

Our flight is Saturday night -- technically Sunday morning -- around 1 am as per usual with these Asian flights.

Oh, and of course, I haven't done ANY packing yet.

Why do I do this?

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Whoopie

Happy Birthday to me. Well, in about 1.5 hours, at least.

What don't I want for my birthday? How about a dozen of S's relatives coming over for a lunch that we rescheduled from a couple of weeks ago because of KB getting sick. Oops, too late.

Yes, thanks dear, for rescheduling YOUR family lunch on my birthday.

Not that I enjoyed spending my Birthday Eve cleaning, but at least the downstairs looks presentable. Of course, that's at the expense of the 2 downstairs closets and various nooks and crannies upstairs.

Anyway. Should get some sleep. If tonight is anything like last night, there will be wake-up calls at midnight and again at 6 am.

Why did I get my hopes up about KB starting to sleep through the night once he turned 2?

My loving boy

So I don't forget this sweet moment...

Every night, part of our bedtime ritual is walking KB around his room, saying goodnight to his books, toys, piggy bank, etc. One of the objects that we tell 'goodnight' is a framed photo of his cousin Aadi. KB and Aadi are best buddies. Our houses are only 10 minutes apart and so the boys usually get to see each other at least once or twice a week.

Last night, KB picked up the photo of Aadi, as he does every night. I said "Goodnight, buddy!" and completely unprompted, KB said:

"I love you, Aadi. See ya at the swimming lessons!"

It was so. unbelievably. sweet.

Friday, August 10, 2007

How do you blog?

It's funny that PithyDithy wrote today about whether her friends/family (aside from those she already knows about) read her blog.

You will notice that I call my son "KB" instead of his real name. Part of this is an attempt to hide from the weird stalker who found my pregnancy blog. But most of it is an attempt not to be Google-able.

I have lots of things I want to write about, and many of them involve family. I've been hesitant to blog about anything too personal because I don't want S's family or mine to read about themselves here. I can just imagine the shitstorm it would cause.

I've thought about using aliases for everyone's name, but that would get complicated, trying to keep everyone straight. Hmmm, maybe I could just write people's names backwards. :-)

Ugh, it's hard to keep my concentration when "Finding Nemo" is on in the background. Hope I can return to this subject in a bit.

In the meantime, how do you blog? Do you just write whatever and hope that no one you know IRL finds your blog?

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Shop til you drop

I confess: I love to shop.

Not for myself, really. I like shopping for baby/kid stuff.

And I like online shopping -- comparing prices, looking for the best deals, trying to get the lowest possible price through a combination of sales, coupons, free shipping, and money back from Ebates.

So when my SIL in Bangkok asked me to pick up some things and bring them when we visit in a few weeks, I was pretty happy to oblige.

Now after a few days of trying to chase deals, I'm tired, and I'm positive I'm not going to like it when my credit card bill comes this month.

It's strange -- you would think that prices on just about anything, including baby gear, would be much cheaper in Asia. But as we found out in February when we tried to buy KB a Pack-n-Play there -- au contraire! The Pack-n-Play was ridiculously expensive, and apparently so are most baby things that we get quite easily and reasonably-priced here.

So here's my shopping list:

- breast pump
- nursing pads
- baby monitor
- breastfeeding book
- baby care books

I got her an extra set of flanges/collection bottles as well. I remember those days of frantically washing pump equipment to get it ready for the next use. An extra set of collection tools really came in handy.

I also got her the Avent conversion kit, for collecting milk directly into the Avent bottles that I hope she is still using. I wish I had had this when I was pumping for KB.

Initially, SIL just wanted me to loan her my breast pump. But as I did some research, I realized that even the pump I own (the Ameda Purely Yours) is meant to be only a single-user system. Especially with the twins being a wee bit early (36.5 weeks), I don't want to take a chance with sharing my used breast pump.

Aside: What *does* one do with a used breast pump, anyway, if they're not meant to be shared? Of course, I hope we will use ours again in the next year or so, but what then? Can they be sterilized for re-use? Surely they don't all end up in the landfill.

Anyway, I think I am done shopping except for one more book. I need to pick up one of the week-by-week milestone books, but I think I'll snag that at the bookstore sometime this week.

Oh, and maybe some DHA supplements. Or not. I just read what kellymom had to say about that, and it seems supplementing is not recommended.

Hmm. Did you take any DHA supplements while breastfeeding/pumping? I took them the whole time. Whoops.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Where does he get this stuff?

Saturday at "Day Out with Thomas", KB was running too fast (as usual) and tripped over his own feet. He didn't cry, just got up and brushed it off. I didn't notice until later that he had scabs on both knees and on one arm. He is one rough-and-tumble kid.

Since then, every time we change his diaper, he tells us "I fell down, hurt my boo-boos".

Today I told him "We call that 'skinning your knees'. You skinned your knees."

He tried to repeat: "I crin'd my knees."

This led to, "I cracked my knees like a peanut."

Pause.

"I cracked my knees like the elephant's peanut."

It's so fun to watch his little mind make connections.

Naptime. Time for a shower and 'maintenance' since it's swimming lessons with Mommy in the pool tonight...

Saturday, August 4, 2007

CD3 bloodwork and upcoming travels

Ah.

KB woke up from his nap after 1 hour, 20 minutes and S 'volunteered' to go put him back to sleep. Now I can hear his snores coming from KB's room.

So I finished packing our diaper bag/backpack, unloaded the dishwasher and put the breakfast dishes in it, transferred the jeans & shorts to the dryer and now here I am. Gosh, I hardly know what to do with myself. (Biiiiig rolling of the eyes there)

This morning I had the pleasure of going to the lab downstairs from the fertility clinic to get my CD3 (that's Cycle Day 3) bloodwork done. They took 4 vials of blood. No big deal -- I'm not squeamish, I've got great big veins, and I bleed quickly, so I was in and out in no time at all.

I didn't really look at the lab slip to see what they're checking me for. FSH, I know. That's the biggie. That will give us an idea of my ovarian reserve, which is important since I am so old now. (Aside: I remember when I was young, and I thought I would have 2 kids by age 30 and CERTAINLY I would be all done with my childbearing by age 35. Bwahahahaha!)

The lab will send the results directly to the clinic and then we'll go from there. I looked more closely at my instruction sheet and it clearly stated that the patient is NOT to start injectibles before all bloodwork and labwork is done, by both partners. So we couldn't have done this cycle anyway. Whew. I was starting to feel guilty over my ambivalence.

Maybe I will be more excited about everything after we get back from India. I'm just not looking forward to the trip. Some of it is the madness that is traveling with a toddler. Some of it is the sheer boredom of sitting around my IL's house in India with absolutely nothing to do. KB is doing to be bored out of his mind. When he went at 6 months old, he wasn't even crawling yet. He lay on a blanket and was happy to play with rattles and small toys and to have people go 'cootchie cootchie coo'.

When we go to India, we don't travel anywhere within the country. We go to my IL's house and we stay there. We will take a day trip to their temple town, but that's it. Never been to Goa, never been to see the Taj Mahal, etc. I want to *see* something besides the inside of my IL's apartment.

Ugh. I'd much rather be heading to some beach instead. Give me Hawaii any day!!

The one saving grace is getting to see the baby twins in Bangkok on the way to India. Now if I could just stop myself from buying them all sorts of cute little girl clothes. I'm going to need a suitcase just for their things!

Why is it...

that during KB's nap,

I am running to Babies R Us to look at breast pumps & baby monitors for SIL, coming home to throw a load of KB's jeans and shorts in the washer, then folding the socks & underwear & t-shirts that have been sitting in the dryer since Thursday...

And S is downstairs watching Formula 1 racing, reading Time magazine, and dozing on the couch?

Gotta go get KB's backpack ready for Day Out with Thomas. Leaving when he wakes up from his nap.

I cannot even imagine life with a helpful spouse. Sigh.

Friday, August 3, 2007

Blah

A bit of progress (?) this morning.

At 2 am, KB woke up and was really distraught. This wasn't the usual fussing in his crib. I was pretty out of it, so I just went into his room, patted his back and shh'd him, and crashed on the comforter next to his bed.

5:45 he woke up. Somehow I was able to get him to lie back down by telling him the sun was still sleeping and he needed to sleep more too.

6:40 he was up for good. I can handle 6:40 a hell of a lot better than 5:40.

Thought I might get to hand him off to S and catch a few more winks, since I slept on the hard floor, but no dice. He said he had a terrible headache and wanted to sleep it off.

Took KB downstairs, read books, fed him breakfast, etc. Took him upstairs around 8:30 to wake S up, since I figured otherwise he'd be pissy about being late for work. He wanted to sleep more.

He slept til 10:45.

Now even when I have felt the crappiest, with sinus infections and hellacious sinus headaches, the whole 9 yards, the latest I have been "allowed" to sleep in is 9:00.

Can you tell I am highly annoyed?

KB is napping right now (that is another story, how S just came in and woke him up as he was drifting off to sleep to ask a question that IN NO WAY needed to be answered right that minute. Grrrr.) so I'd better grab some winks while I can.

Maybe later I can blog about my lack of enthu for all the bloodwork and stuff I need to get done, probably tomorrow. My period started after I got home from work Wednesday, so I guess technically that is Cycle Day 1 and this is Cycle Day 3, but it's supposed to be a fasting test blah blah blah and so I think I'll just go in the morning.

Can you believe there are people in this world who just HAVE SEX and get pregnant?!? I know!!

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Next steps...

I've got Clomid
I've got Gonal-F
I've got Ovidrel
Who could ask for anything more?

Well, the courage to go ahead and try this again, I suppose.

I do think I'm going to wait until next cycle. While a trip during the 2ww would take my mind off obsessing, I find it doesn't really feel like a vacation when you're visiting the in-laws.

Speculum detestum

'Nuff said.

Yawn

This kid is going to kill me.

Up at 4:40 this morning (S got him back down). Up for good at 5:30.

I want to try an earlier bedtime but I'm terrified that he's going to be up for good at 4:00 if I try that.

And what the hell happened to my husband, who was a morning person (as in getting up at 5 or 5:30 every day) our entire marriage before KB came along? I thought we were going to be such a great team, with me taking the late night shift, S taking the early morning shift, and KB sleeping in the middle.

Yeah, I was that naive.

S is sleeping in. I am yawning. KB needs breakfast. He just came over and asked me "Mommy, you done?"

Back later with an update on my physical. I think I'm going to ask if I can do Clomid this cycle and try on our own, without the IUI.