My attempt at a Wordless Wednesday

Looking back 8 years

Please don't take this post as if I'm complaining. I'm more or less typing it out to compare.

Last night as I was trying to fall asleep after having an exhausting day from miscarrying, I was thinking to myself. "Good grief, Ben and I have been through a lot since we got married 8 years ago!" So I thought I'd type it all out to get a good look at the last 8 years. By the way, to give you a clue on how exhausted I was, I drank 16oz. of Mountain Dew between 7pm-8:30pm and still fell asleep at 10:30pm. =)

Married October 21, 2000
-Return from honeymoon and come down with mononucleosis
-was so sick could not set up our first house together (military housing)
-bedridden for at least 2 weeks

January 31st, 2001
-miscarry our first baby at 11 weeks and 5 days

End of June, 2001
-contracted E. Coli from a fast food restaurant causing us to turn around and head home on a 3 hour drive to an amusement park
-VERY sick for a length of time

July 7, 2001
-Miscarry our 2nd baby at 5 weeks 6 days

May 15, 2002
-Austin is born with Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome (although unknown at the time)
-attempted nursing for 6 weeks to no avail
-several agonizing months of painful constipation

January 2003
-Ben leaves for South Korea for one year (Army)

July 2003
-told Ben over the phone that we are now raising a handicapped baby
-go to all the initial medical visits without him (thankfully I lived with my parents at the time)

January 2004
-Ben returns home from Korea to find out he's leaving for Iraq in 5 months

June 2004
-Ben leaves for Iraq the DAY we signed for our first home
-I unpack boxes, deal with Austin, and Ben's departure

June 2005
-Ben returns! Yeah!

September 2005
-Ben leaves the Army and looks for a job
-goes through 4 jobs in a short amount of time for various reasons (no he wasn't fired!)

July 18, 2006
-Andrew is born healthy

Don't recall all the dates but throw in 3 funerals in a short amount of time-
-Uncle Jack Shattuck
-Cousin Dana Ames
-Grammie Winifred Shattuck

January 26, 2009
-miscarry at 6 weeks 6 days


Despite all that, we have a great God who is in control although I have no clue why we go through certain things. One of my favorite bible verses sums it up well:

Matthew 6:34 "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (NIV)

Miscarriage

I miscarried yesterday.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Phillipians 4:13

pregnancy update

Thank you all for your prayers and words of encouragement. I do appreciate them. This morning I went to the lab to have bloodwork done to see if my HCG levels are increasing (which indicates pregnancy) or if they're dropping (miscarriage). This is Ground Hog Day for me yet still rough to go through. I have no idea when I'll hear back from the clinic about my first blood draw but I may call them this afternoon and ask. I have to redo the blood draw again in 48 hours. The pregnancy "feeling" is pretty much gone, unfortunately. =(

Prayer needed

Going to make this short and sweet. I have a history of miscarrying and now I'm dealing with it yet again. I have put myself on bedrest but I have a feeling I'm still going to lose the baby. Keep me in your prayers. It's never an easy thing to go through whether the baby was planned or not.

Ouch!

Well Austin and I had a interesting morning. I was attempting to get his ankle braces and his shoes on for school and he just would NOT sit still! I held him down in my lap and firmly asked him to sit still. Well, he didn't like being told to sit so what did he do? He bit me. Sigh. At first I thought he was just pushing his mouth on my sleeve (a sensory thing he sometimes does) but no. He bit down hard. Of course, his teeth broke a blood vessel making it hurt all that much more. So after disciplining him, I'm crying (from pain and shock that he bit me!) and he's crying cause he got in trouble. Great start to a morning (thankfully, it got much better!). After I had quit sniffling, I firmly told Austin biting was unacceptable and that he had hurt Mommy. He signed "sorry" (with prompting) and hugs were given. All is forgiven.

I hesistated even posted this cause it's not something a mom wants to admit. I mean, who wants to be purposely hurt by their own child?!? Austin has never bitten before (except as an infant when he was teething) so I was hoping we'd never go down this road. Once I thought about it, I realized that someday another mom is going to go through this very same thing and it's always nice to know you aren't alone. We RTS parents have to stick together and realize that we're doing the best we can and sometimes our kids will act out. It's one of their ways of communicating. Doesn't make it right or less painful but I understand.

One Step Forward...

After picking up Ben from work, we decided to head to Target to see if we could find anything on sale that interested us. If you have a Target nearby check it out!!! There are huge discounts on toys, clothes, organization bins, etc. I did make my way down the baby aisle! It was very strange. I never thought I'd have to shop in those aisles again! Nothing worth buying though. Plenty I wanted to buy, just nothing on sale that I wanted. =(

I did make my first 'pregnancy' purchase though! I bought a maternity shirt and get this...I paid $3.24! Get to Target people!

Well, we're hoping to make one purchase a week so spread out the cost of replenishing our baby supplies but thankfully, three dollars wasn't a big dent! Yeah!

Announcing Baby #3...

Ever since the day Andrew was born, I have said I was done having children. I don't particularly enjoy being pregnant (not that I hate it though!) and I enjoy the ages 2 and up most. Needless to say, I was set. If we were ever going to have more children, we would adopt. My husband would love to badger me to have more but nope, done. We both agreed we should make things "permanent" as to avoid any oops babies. With the appointment on the calendar, we were set. That is until April came around and I realized the appointment was scheduled right in the middle of our last minute trip to Hawaii. So we had to cancel. About 3 weeks ago, we began talking about rescheduling that all important procedure. I loved our family of 4. An even number, we can fit into a booth at restaurants, our car is perfect sized, each of us has our own room, you name it. I had plenty of reasons for being done. And yes, we were using methods of preventing another pregnancy...

But God has a sense of humor. He was probably holding his sides and laughing at my expression when at 5 days late I had a positive pregnancy test. Um, yeah. No mistaking that big plus sign. I laughed, I cried, and I'm still in shock. Still can't bring myself to journey down the baby aisle at Walmart just yet. Of course, Ben is thrilled. LOL He's hoping for a girl this time around. I, myself, wouldn't mind another boy but we'll see.

There will be many more posts to come regarding my surprise pregnancy and the dilemmas that come with it. Until then, for those of you that know me in real life, you can laugh at my expense. And no, I won't mind, cause I'm laughing too.

Snow update!

Our lovely blizzard (being the result of lake-effect snowfall-you were right Cindy!) has left at total of 21 inches of fresh snow! Our snow mounds on either sides of our sidewalks are at least 3 feet tall! LOL

more pictures from the blizzard

I'm still unsure but we may have hit the 2 ft mark in snowfall. We have A LOT of snow! Here are some pictures I took from inside while Ben was outside snowblowing.

Here is the BEFORE Ben snowblowed the neighbor's sidewalk (it's on the left next to the tad bit of green-which is a fence post belive it or not!)

Here is the AFTER picture. You can see just how deep the snow is and it's all fallen this morning and overnight.


Click on the pictures so you can get a better view!

Snowed In!

Okay, so this morning's weather was a complete shock to me. It's not that I didn't pay attention to the weather forecast. I did! They called for 3-5 inches of snow overnight. Not a big deal, living in northern NY. Well. I woke up to a complete blizzard and we have about 12-18 inches of fresh snow! HOLY COW! The one or two cars that have gone down the street are pushing the snow with their front bumpers! The plows haven't even made it to our side of town! Here are some pictures I took from my windows. You can barely see our fence that goes around our yard!

video of Andrew

Ben was playing around with his camera on his laptop and Andrew joined in. Together they took probably 10 movies but here is one of them! For some reason, every time Andrew talks to himself on the video, he jumbles all his words together and you can barely understand him. This one you can at least hear him say "I love you mommy".

To comment or not to comment?

We've had lovely weather here in northern NY these past few days. Monday: Austin had a 2 hour delay. Tuesday: attended all day (much needed break from the humming!) Wednesday: Snow day (freezing rain/snow) Thursday: 2 hour delay. With all the fun stuff coming out of the sky, I now have someone in a 3 house radius from me that insists on snowblowing their driveway/sidewalks at 6am!!! Are you kidding me people?!? The first time they woke me up, it was 5:50am. I am not a morning person and was not happy about it. Today it was 6am on the dot. This time it woke Andrew up as well (who usually sleeps till 8ish). Now, I understand the need to get rid of the snow before you leave your house but that early?!? Have some compassion on those still getting their shut eye! I am soo tempted to look outside next time they wake me up and see which neighbor it is and ask them to at least wait till 7am!