Fun Snowy Weekend

Thursday night and Friday mother nature dropped about 18" of snow at our house.  Luckily Friday was a snow day from both M and my work as well as K's daycare.  We played inside and even made it outside to build little snowmen in the afternoon.  I took a nice long nap during her nap time, which was lovely.  A good day off to say the least.  Saturday we had another lazy day around the house letting the roads improve. By mid day Saturday they were pretty darn good and the sun had come out so we went out to dinner with my parents for Mexican food (love!).  Today we had to buckle down and do the grocery shopping, laundry, clean stalls (we have 2 horses) and work out.  Anyway I thought I'd share some pictures of playing out in the snow =)

The little snow person M made K and K doing her favorite snow activity - eating snow!

Our dog Paco's mini snowman

Kylie watching the horses poke around in the snow

After our trip out to the snow we went in the hot tub...does this girl know how to wear a suit or what?!

20 Months

I'm going to break from the "stat" type update I've been doing.  It got a little old...but who knows I might pick it up again next month.  Let me start by saying that every age has been really great but she is SO much fun right now =)  Her level of overall busyness is increasing beyond explanation and her language is exploding.  Seriously she says probably 10 new words a day.  Her play is changing to be interactive and she's getting more empathetic.  Fine motor, gross motor, verbal...everything is just changing before our very eyes and she's continuing to grow, sleep and eat great.  Twenty months, I just can't believe it!  

Today (Sunday) we went to the butterfly pavilion (indoor area with lots of plants, a little pond and TONS of butterflies but we haven't uploaded the pictures yet so here are a few from Friday and Saturday.

Here is her new tractor shirt, she's recently become a big fan of tractors =)

She has been putting her play food in bowls and sipping tea from her tea cups.  It's precious!

  

RE Appointment

The appointment went great =)  The new RE is really nice and was totally open to talking about doing a natural FET and single embryo transfer...even after I confessed that I was still nursing.  They took blood today for thyroid levels, chicken pox immunity and rubella immunity.  Next Tuesday I'll have a SHG (to check my ute) and doppler (to check blood flow to my ute). For the next two cycles she'll do a mid cycle ultrasound on LH surge day to check lining and an E2 blood test.  She'll also do a 7DPO ultrasound to check lining conversion and P4 blood test.  After two cycles of monitoring all this on my natural cycles we'll get back together in April and discuss the results.  Assuming all looks good with the initial tests and monitoring cycles we'll go forward with a natural FET (but with luteal phase progesterone and maybe a hCG trigger) in June.  I'm really excited about this plan and can't wait to see what the monitoring appointments show!

Baby fever

We had a wonderful visit with our friends this weekend.  I have a lot of work to do today so I'll let the pictures tell the story.

As if I didn't have baby fever with our FET planning starting...holding my friends four week old little girl gave me an extra dose =)  Amazing that you forget so quickly just how little they are!

The four "older" kids playing =)  M in plaid is 3.5, J in white is 2.5, K in dots is 1.5 and J2 in orange is 9 months.  It was a busy morning!

We met at my friend A's house and this is her son J telling Kylie that his chair isn't really up for being adopted =)

K loved J's little rocking horse

Fun was had by all =)  And we decided to get a visit for February on the books before our calendars filled up.  So excited!!!

Catching Up With Friends

Life moves so fast sometimes.  I feel like we only see our good friends 3-4 times a year which makes me sad because we used to see them almost every weekend.  It's mostly because they live about 45 minutes drive and we haven't made tons of friends where we live now.  I know, I know, 45 minutes isn't states away or anything.  Honestly sometimes it feels like it.  Last weekend we were able to get together with two groups of friends and their kids for brunch.  Our kids played nicely together and we got to visit.  One of the couples is expecting twins this month so my friend L is anything but comfortable and she has over 10 lbs of baby in there so who can blame her.  Her husband ended up taking their son to the mall so she could just relax during our visit.  She's so ready to get this show on the road...at 36 weeks it won't be much longer.  The other couple also went through IVF to have their daughter (16 months old, 3 months younger than K but the same size) and are thinking about #2 next year.  Here are our IVF babes together, adorbs!

Saturday we're going to get together with two more groups of friends and their kids for yet another brunch (when did brunch become the new going out for drinks anyway?!).  One couple has two IVF babies and the other couple is super fertile (don't hate, they are very understanding fertiles).  There will be five kids between 1 month and 3.5 years old and it will be deliriously cool.  As I start my journey to have a sibling for K I can't help but think back and remember that deep down I thought I was never going to get to be a Mom.  How wrong I was...and I've never been happier to be wrong.  We are so lucky to share this parenting journey with such great peeps...even if we see them less often than I see my hairdresser.

Totally off topic but here's a little video we took this morning with the iPad we got for Christmas.  K LOVES to watch herself on it...cracks us up!

The Non RE Appt

In November I learned that we would have infertility coverage on our 2012 insurance *YIPPY*  So I promptly called and made an appointment with a new RE at the practice we went to for our IUI and IVF cycles in 2008/2009.  Our beloved RE has left to start his own practice and we aren't up for the hour+ drive each way for every single blood draw, ultrasound, etc.  Anyway, yesterday was the appointment I'd been looking forward to for two months.  We show up and they can't find us on the schedule...apparently they had a computer system conversion and some of the appointments didn't get moved over *GRR*  The front office people hoped the doctor would fit us in after the people who were already in the doctors office for our time slot.  No go.  We sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes only to be told that the doctor didn't have time to work us in and our appointment got pushed two weeks, to the 26th.  It really shouldn't be a big deal since we weren't going to do a FET until June...but I was looking forward to getting answers to my questions and now I have to wait.  Have I ever mentioned I'm not super patient?

Hopes for 2012

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!  It seems that 2012 is really underway so I thought I'd try to put down some of my goals/hopes for this year =)  In no particular order....

1. The number of illnesses that run through our house drastically reduces and absolutely no major health crisis's occur.
2. We manage to get pregnant - our first RE appt is next Thursday =)
3. Somehow nursing stops in a way that is mutually acceptable to K and me.
4. K continues her social and physical development right on schedule.
5. I improve my posture...ever since I had K I've become a sloucher and it needs to stop.  My back isn't going to take much more.
6. M and my jobs continue to be stable and enjoyable.

I guess that's the top 6.  Anything on your list for this year?  

I'll close with a couple pictures of the little miss since I know that's way more fun.

Her new play kitchen...can you tell what she likes best?  Yep, spreading the toy food all over the kitchen floor *lol*

Her first can of playdoh...love at first squish!