The One with The Catch Up on Life Lately

Holy Lord, it's been forever since I've blogged.  Gotta blame that baby Jesus and His birthday...it's been flippin' nonstop over here since the beginning of December.

I'm pulling out the bullet points for this post.  More to come on most of the subjects but here's a rundown...

• Little Mr. Man is growing like a weed.  Up to 22 pounds, 6 ounces at his flu shot appointment earlier this month.  9 month clothes are becoming a thing of the past and he is in constant motion.

• 48 hours before the aforementioned baby Jesus' birthday, the stomach bug descended upon this house.  The jury is still out as to whether this was a case of food poisoning or whether it was a virus going around, but at least a dozen of the people we were with the Saturday before Christmas at a party ended up very sick by late Sunday afternoon.  At this point, we think it may have somehow been passed to everyone through a sick employee at the restaurant who ruined everyone's food with his/her throw-up germs.  As a result of us being sick, many of the people who we were with on Christmas Eve then ended up sick.  It was one ugly germ-spreading holiday.

• Remember the puke and pee incident from last spring?  Well apparently that is not just something that happens to me when pregnant.  It's my new thing I guess because it happened again when I got sick last week.

• We thought Liam avoided the grossness until the overabundance of explosive diapers began on Christmas Eve.  Thankfully, we are down to only one or two a day now.  A drastic improvement from the dozen or so on Christmas Day.

• As a result of Christmas Puke-Fest 2013, our Christmas Day was pretty quiet.  Liam got a ton of presents, Hubs' parents visited for a while, and I somehow managed to get dinner on the table for Hubs and I in between changing diapers and doing a ridiculous amount of laundry.

 This wonderful little man stayed happy, despite not feeling great.

This was outfit #3 of the day.

• The crib transition began over a week ago.  It has been relatively painless thus far.  We had two real incidents of crying it out (CIO) Ferber-style.  I have kinda modified Ferber's methods to fit our needs (and the amount of time I can listen to my baby cry), but things have been going well for us.

• Baby-led weaning has been a lot of fun so far.  Liam has definitely become more interested in food and has tried a few more things.  Right now, he loves apples, pears, yogurt, and blueberries (although he hasn't had much food this week because of the stomach fiasco).

• Liam met Santa two weeks ago at our big family Christmas party.  My dad flew up from Florida for the weekend and dressed up as Santa as a surprise.  It was great to have L's first experience with Santa be with his Gramps.

He looks a little unsure here, but he was pretty unfazed by the whole thing.

• This vacation has been very quiet and not all that productive.  The sickness was a big part of the unproductive-ness, but it is certainly way harder to get anything done with an almost 8-month old rolling around and needing amusement (I know this is only going to get worse once he really starts moving!).

• I did the 24 books of Christmas with Liam this year.  Each night, I read him a new Christmas book before bed.  This is definitely a tradition I will continue with him.  In the future, I plan to wrap each book up for him to open before bed.  This year, they were just displayed on his bookshelves.

• I scaled it way down this year with the cookies.  Remember last year when I baked 28 dozen cookies at 20+ weeks pregnant and kinda hated my life a little?  Well, this year I only did like 16 dozen and it was still quite the challenge.  I had plans to make more, but then the vomit came and I decided that was a sign to quit while I was ahead.

• We also started a new Christmas pajama tradition this year.  We each got new Christmas jammies (have you seen the Christmas Jammies video?) and the plan was to wear them to bed on Christmas Eve and have our big Christmas morning breakfast wearing them.  No surprise things didn't go according to plan.  Hubs' jammies didn't arrive on time (thanks FedEx) and no one wanted a big breakfast after being sick.  So we celebrated with our jammies and breakfast last night and this morning.

I won't even tell you how many times we set the timer on the camera to get a half-way decent picture.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed time with family and friends.  We are looking forward to an exciting 2014 continuing to watch our little guy grow.

The One with Thing 1 and Thing 2

I am officially PUPO - Pregnant Until Proven Otherwise!

Hubs decided to take the day out of work and come for the transfer, so we headed out this morning.  I had to go in with a full bladder to allow them to get the best ultrasound picture of my uterus.  Man, was I uncomfortable!  We sat in the waiting room for a little while and I was having trouble sitting still because I had to pee so badly.  The nurse finally came out to get us and told me I could go and pee a little if it would make me feel better.  Uh, you don't have to tell me twice!

I got undressed from the waist down and got up on the comfy table.  Dr. Bow Tie was the one doing the retrievals and transfers today, so Hubs finally got to meet him.  Hubs had a bunch of questions for him, one of which being about mixing up embryos and making sure we were getting our babies and not someone else's!  Dr. Bow Tie talked to us about what would happen during the transfer and also talked about the decision to transfer one or two embryos.  He said one of the worst parts of his job is causing multiples because of the risks involved.  Twins are the "least" risky in the world of multiples, but still pose significantly more risks than a singleton birth.  That being said, he told us that we obviously have a greater chance of getting pregnant if we transfer two embryos.

Hubs and I had talked about whether to transfer one or two over the last couple of days.  He is worried about the risks, costs, and complications that can come with twins.  I have those same feelings, but was leaning toward transferring two embies because of the increased chance of pregnancy.  I think Dr. Bow Tie helped make the decision for us when he said that, of the embryos that we did not transfer, none of them may make it to freeze.  He wasn't speaking about our case specifically, but rather referring to the strict criteria for choosing which embryos to freeze.  They will only freeze embryos that are pretty close to perfect to increase the chance of them surviving the thaw later.  When Hubs and I heard this and thought about the reality of having to go through this whole process from the beginning again, we both knew we wanted to transfer two embies.

So, Thing 1 and Thing 2 (as they will be referred to from here on out) were officially transferred into my uterus this morning.

Here's to hoping our little ones don't end up with blue hair!

The embryologist picked the two best embies, each of which were 8-cells at this point (the perfect number according the Dr. Bow Tie).  Using the abdominal ultrasound picture as a guide (which jammed on my bladder perfectly!), Dr. Bow Tie inserted a small catheter that was loaded with Thing 1 and Thing 2 through my cervix and into my uterus.  He told us we may see a small "flash" on the screen when the embies were transferred.  I absolutely saw that flash and two little perfect dots on the screen.  It was one of the most amazing things to witness.

I had to rest for 15 minutes before they would let me go home (after having one of the most amazing peeing experiences of my life, of course!) and Hubs and I just sat in the room and marveled at the fact that I was now PUPO.  The embryologist gave us a little plastic disk that was the top of the dish our two embies were in before they were placed in the catheter.  Something else to add to our memory box!

There's me all freshly PUPO and holding the top of our embryos' former home.

I have to call the lab on Thursday to find out if any of our embryos made it to freeze.  Today, I am resting on the couch, enjoying spending some time with Hubs and hoping to make Thing 1 and Thing 2 comfortable enough that they will want to hang out for 9 months.

We greatly appreciate everyone's thoughts, prayers, cards, texts, emails, flowers, treats, meals, and good wishes.  We are so lucky to have amazing family and friends and could not be more grateful for the support during this time.

I will be posting during the 2ww (two week wait) about thoughts/feelings/random things.  I already have a date for my beta blood test that will determine if I am pregnant or not.  We will be keeping the news, good or bad, to ourselves for a while after we get it.  I'm sure we will need time to process everything.

For now, I leave you with yet another "Friends" clip.  My best friend offered to sing this to Thing 1 and Thing 2.  They are already quite loved.