December 15th

Tomorrow is December 15th. For most people, its just going to be a Monday in the middle of December. A start to a new work week and the last full week before Christmas, but for me it has a different meaning. Everyone has "anniversaries" on their calenders that aren't reasons to celebrate, usually the day a loved one was lost. I have been very fortunate to not yet have lost anyone really close to me. I have never lost a parent, sibling, a grandparent or close friends, but I do have two sad days to remember each year, May 14th and December 15th. May 14th is the day I found out at a routine OB appointment that I lost my first baby. December 15th is the day that baby was due.

This time of year was really tough for me last year. I was about 20 weeks pregnant with Joseph and thrilled to have a strong, healthy baby boy growing inside of me but I was still sad and anxious. I felt like a lot of people assumed that because I was pregnant again and everything was going well (I was safely in the 2nd trimester and quickly approaching the 3rd), that all the hurt and pain of a miscarriage should be behind me. Certainly being pregnant again helped ease the pain some, but if I have 16 children, there will always be some sadness about my first pregnancy.

When I found out I was pregnant and calculated a mid-December due date, I spent weeks imagining what my next Christmas would be like. I imagined holding a newborn baby while I watched everyone open gifts. I imagined buying tiny little "Baby's First Christmas" outfits to cuddle my little one in (all that Baby's First Christmas paraphernalia really got to me last year). So when Christmas rolled around and I was still waiting to become a Mommy and my arms were still empty, my heart was heavy. I loved the son I was carrying...but I wanted him now.

It didn't particularly help that I knew 4 people (family, friends, co-workers) who were expecting babies the same week I had been due. I always found it a little ironic that the miscarriage rate is around 20% and I was the 1 of 5 I knew due in mid-December that had a miscarriage. It's not that I was wishing it on any of the other 4, it was just one of those bitter thoughts that runs through your head a lot after something like this happens. It's hard to watch people close to you experience different aspects of pregnancy at the exact time you should have been as well. I spent a lot of the summer and fall sticking my head in the sand and pretending it wasn't happening, but by December 9th, when the first of the little munchkins arrived, denial was no longer an option. I remember walking into work on the Monday of the week I was due and seeing the pictures of the first of the newborns plastered all over someone's office door (yeah, the office right in front of the entrance - I couldn't even avoid it) and almost losing it. Luckily it was a quiet week and I could close the door and let the tears stream down my face for the first hour or so of work. There were a lot of tears that week (you become really familiar with the "happy for them, sad for me" emotion after a miscarriage). I just sat and imagined all the excitement going on in those people's lives and wanted it to be me. Somewhere towards the end of the mid-December baby boom, it just became too much and one night I just laid my head in Richard's lap and cried for over an hour. He just sat there running his fingers through my hair, letting me cry and telling me everything was ok now.

By "everything is ok now", Richard meant that Joseph was on his way and of course, rationally, in my head, I knew that. I knew that the reason for my miscarriage, the hurt, the pain was so that the child I was pregnant with would be welcomed into this world. But my heart still hurt for the baby I loved and lost. I was anxious too. Anxious that something horrible could still happen, anxious that after getting so close, I would again be robbed of the joy of bringing a baby into this world. I felt guilty for crying for the baby I lost when I was pregnant with a child I loved, who never would have been otherwise. It was all these irrational and conflicting emotions that left me as emotionally drained as I had been in the weeks immediately following my miscarriage. That's where I was a year ago.

This year the day still brings a touch of sadness. I would be lying if I didn't admit that in some quiet moments (which are far and few between with a 7 month old), I have let myself think about the fact that I should be having a birthday party this weekend for a one-year old. I love Joseph more than anything in this world and I wouldn't trade him for any of the hurt or pain, but again the irrationality of my emotions, still makes me think sometimes "I want both my babies". I obviously know this is not possible.

I will be busy tomorrow. Monday is always a busy day for us - grocery shopping, laundry and a significant amount of housework gets done on Monday so I can relax a little later in the week and enjoy just rolling around on the floor with Joseph. Throw in a lunch date tomorrow and we have a hectic day. Without a doubt, I'll probably shed a few tears along the way...I definitely will tomorrow night when we hang the ornament on the tree that we bought last year to remember our sweet angel. But then I'll look at Joseph and he'll give me his big ear to ear grin or do something to make me laugh and I'll remember that everything truly does happen for a reason.

Tag - I'm it!

My friend Mandie "tagged" me in a game of photo tag on her blog. So I had to go back and find the 4th photo in the 4th file on my computer. Well, the 4th folder in my alphabetized "Pictures" file, is a very non-interesting folder titled "Baby Stuff" and this is the very non-interesting 4th picture.


A picture of some baby bedding I got from someplace online when I was gathering ideas for Joseph's nursery. Why I haven't deleted this file yet, I don't know.


So I feel like I still have to post something interesting. My 5th folder is titled "Belly Shots" and has pictures of slightly more interest. The 4th picture in this folder seemed appropriate. It's my 22 week belly shot taken the week of Christmas last year. I had just started to look pregnant and had just graduated from wearing bella bands with unzipped pants to actual maternity pants.


We were at my parents house in Vermont and my mom made me pose for the picture. I think this was the day after I had arrived when my mom came running up to me at the airport to touch my belly. This was caught by the news team there to do a story about people travelling for the holidays and we were then asked to do an interview.


It is sort of amazing how things change in a year. The week before Christmas was a time of mixed emotions for me last year. I was so happy to have a healthy baby on the way, but I was terribly sad for the baby I had lost (whose due date was just before Christmas). I was still super anxious for the baby I was carrying and hadn't yet let myself believe that I was going to actually be a Mommy in April. Well, it all turned out perfectly and now I have this lively, wild little man rolling all over our floors, making messes and lots of noise and filling our lives with joy.


So, I guess I need to tag someone now.....Erin and the Toddster, you're it!!!

Deck the Halls!

Between last weekend and this weekend we decorated our house for Christmas. This is no small task when you have a 7-month old who needs to be fed and entertained in the midst of decorating. Luckily, we did most of the decorating last weekend while my parents were town in for Thanksgiving. The extra hands kept Joseph busy and made decorating go faster.

Joseph has his own little tree in his nursery. Growing up I always had a tree in my bedroom. My mom was sort of a Christmas decoration freak and there were several years when we had a tree in every room of the house, including mini-trees in the bathroom. I guess I inherited those tendencies because I couldn't imagine Joseph NOT having a tree. A few months ago I had come across these really cute natural animal ornaments. I had the idea of doing an animal tree for Joseph and bought a giraffe. I really wanted to buy a bunch of these ornaments, but they were a little pricey. After we put his tree up and his giraffe was put on, I decided it was just too cute and I had to have more. Luckily, my mom found the ornaments online at almost 1/2 the cost I had seen them in-store for and got Joseph an early Christmas present. So here are pictures of Joseph's little animal tree.

In these pictures you can see his giraffe, hedgehog, squirrel, raccoon, kangaroo, mouse and elephant. He also has a moose, reindeer, lion, coyote, bear and a zebra.

Here are some pictures of the rest of our decorations, although not nearly as cute as Joseph's tree.

Our formal living room/dining room:

Our den:

On our tree, Joseph has a very special Baby's 1st Christmas ornament. I collect Christopher Radko ornaments, so of course, his first ornament is a Radko as well.

The outside of our house is also decked out but due to my fear of crazy internet stalkers, sadly, there will be no pictures of the outside of our house for the world to see.

Gag Reflex

This commercial for the "Four Christmases" movie cracks me up. It makes me laugh every time I see it because the scene where the baby pukes on Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn chokes, gags and says he is going to vomit reminds me of Rich.

Rich has a really weak stomach. In elementary school a kid threw up on the bus, Rich took one look at it and immediately vomited as well. Not terribly unusual for a 9 year old, but he is 30 now and he still has this issue. Several years ago I had a horrible migraine, threw up in the bathroom at work after lunch (I was convinced for months after this incident that there was a rumor going around that I was bulimic) and needed to go home. I could barely keep my eyes open from the pain and was horribly nauseous, so I had Rich walk over and get me (we were both working downtown) and drive me home. The whole ride home instead of "Are you ok?", I heard "If you are going to puke again, you need to tell me so I can stop the car because if you puke, so will I." Well, I made it home without throwing up but ran into our bathroom as soon as we hit the driveway. I finished vomiting again, cleaned myself up and went to look for Rich. He was in our driveway dry heaving. Apparently, just the sounds of me vomiting were enough to send him over the edge.

Its more of a mental thing with him because once he gets use to something, it stops making him sick. When I was first pregnant with Joseph and vomiting several times every night in the middle of the night, he really had no choice. It was either listen to me or get out of bed at 3 am and go into another room for 10 minutes. Sleep won. It has been the same way with Joseph's dirty diapers. The whole pregnancy Rich kept telling me he wouldn't be able to change diapers. I very bluntly told him that was not an option and he would just have to figure something out. The first few poopy diapers, he definitely gagged and coughed his way through them but now, with the exception of the really big and runny poopy diapers, he changes them without a problem.

But he still struggles with Joseph's spit ups. Even a minor little dribble and Rich is gagging. The few times Joseph has full out projectile vomited on him, I have usually had to take Joseph and clean him up while Rich gags his way through cleaning himself up and starts yelling about how he might vomit too. That is why the "Four Christmases" clips makes me laugh so hard...I think the writers of that movie must have witnessed Rich's reaction and told Vince Vaughn to imitate my husband.

Now I just wait for the day that Rich picks Joseph up from a birthday party and he is loaded up on junk food, candy and soda and says "Daddy, I don't feel very well" and then proceeds to vomit all over our car. I'll be cleaning up puke from two boys.

Gobble Gobble!

Joseph would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. He wanted me to tell everyone to:

This picture was taken while he was eating his oatmeal and peaches. We have to give him his own spoon when we feed him because he is obsessed with his spoons and tries to take the one we are feeding him with. Unfortunately, he has caught on to our trick and now just wants both spoons. This was him after getting a hold of both and double fisting his breakfast.

We have a lot to be thankful for this year...the biggest is our perfect son!

From our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving!

Where's Waldo

As some of you may have noticed, several weeks ago I added a "Visitor Locations" tracker to our blog. This is a nifty little tool developed by ClustrMaps that allows you to track how many visitors have come to your blog and from where. I find this highly entertaining mainly because it reminds my of "Where's Waldo".

Thus far, our "followers" have been of the ordinary sort: family and friends across the U.S. However, I am proud to announce that we went INTERNATIONAL today -a small dot has appeared in Kuala Lumpur.

Given the rapid expansion of our following base and our highly interesting life, I can only expect many more dots from around the world to appear very soon! Stay tuned and blog on my loyal followers.

He's got sitting skillz!

We have been working with Joseph on his sitting skills for quite awhile now. Around 5 months he started to tri-pod sit and I expected he would be sitting easily on his own by 6 months. He sort of just stalled out at tri-pod sitting for awhile. I think his impediments to sitting are a) his large head that takes a lot of work to balance and b) his love of rolling. He is impatient to sit for any length of time because rolling the length of a room is way more fun. He seems to be finally mastering his sitting skills.

This morning he sat on his own for 5 plus minutes while he chewed on a basket:

Then when we went to Target today, he sat in the cart, instead of his carseat, for the whole trip. By the end, he was tired and pretty much laid down in the seat, but we got a good 25 minutes out of him in the sitting position.

While at Target, we bought him a new toy to promote his sitting skills. A little ball that sings the alphabet and makes animal noises when you spin it. Joseph has quite enthralled this his new toy and it served its purpose - encouraged him to sit for an extended period of time.

Until he leaned back and fell over into his hamper of toys.

One note on his new toy - each letter has an animal associated with it. When the ball stops on the letter, its says the letter, the name of the animal and the sound the animal makes. I know "X" is a pretty hard letter but the animal for "X" is a X-ray fish. I mean, is this really an animal? "U" is an umbrella bird - which I really question the validity of that animal as well. I think a mythical character like unicorn would be more appropriate. And "N" is a newt. My first thought was "The best they could do for "N" was newt???" But then Rich and I started thinking about it and couldn't think of another animal that starts with "N". Who knew??? You should hear the noise that a newt makes - we can't figure out what in the world it is.