3 days later...

Thank you so much for all your support on my Not This Time post. Between here and FB (I double posted, I'm an attention whore like that) I received so much love and support. It's amazing the amount of closure I felt by that afternoon!

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On August 19 I closed a chapter of my life.

3 days later a whole new chapter revealed itself to me. On a whim I POAS.

I tried to get my doctor to order blood tests, but he wouldn't. Since I'm showing no signs of this being ectopic (I didn't show signs when I did have an ectopic pregnancy), he's not concerned. So I presented myself, peed in their cup, and should hear from them within three days regarding their test. Welcome to the military...a 3 minute test takes them up to 3 days to interpret (yes, I know it's their response time and not their test-reading time).

The idiot that I spoke with yesterday morning asked me, "How do you know you're pregnant? Did a doctor tell you?"
"No. I took a home pregnancy test."
"Yeah. Some people do that."

Really? This isn't an episode of I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant and I was trying to get pregnant. Once again...military.

So, for today I'm living in the here and now. I'm happy with what I have and trying to not think about what the future may or may not bring. I'm happy. :) And cautiously optimistic.

What gives, body?

CD14 and I've got a peak fertility reading on my monitor? This is not normal for me. I've been a true-blue CD17 ovulator since I started peeing on things a while back (before the boys). I wasn't peeing on sticks when we got pregnant last time, but the EWCM doesn't lie and it didn't show up anywhere near CD14. And I didn't even get "high fertility" on my monitor until yesterday, which is also odd. All the times I've used my monitor the latest "high fertility" showed was CD11.

So really, what gives, body?

SWAK

• Thank you soooo much for all your love and support on my last post!
• Tim thinks things will get better over the next few months. He's weaning himself off the meds they gave him to quit smoking (zyban). I told him if things weren't better than we'd need to see about counseling. He said OK.
• Tim and I kissed and made up. We still have a lot of issue to work through, but things are better at the moment. And I'm not joking about the kissing...he kept randomly kissing me all day. I think that helped our attitudes towards each other. You can't underestimate the power of physical affection.
• Against my better judgment, we chased the egg before he left. This could have many outcomes. If we don't get pregnant, nothing lost nothing gained and the decision to TTC can be put off for a couple of weeks. If we get pregnant and lose the baby (I'm a little bit of a pessimist on this at the moment) the depression and pain from that won't help us at all. If we get pregnant and end up with a THB, the stress of a newborn and toddlers could be enough to break us. Damn I really should have listened to my head instead of my uterus.
• On a completely happy note, I love the fact that Jack "sings" along with a certain TV show that I won't mention because I'm ashamed we let him watch it (nothing horrendous, but definitely not education or age appropriate). And if Trip gets to watch Elmo's World, he waves and says "HI!" and "Bye!" to Elmo. I love the way these boys laugh when I chase them around. I love that they have so much fun playing with each other and chasing each other around (sometimes). I love walking into their room in the morning and seeing them jump up and down in their cribs, then running from me and falling into the corner as they break into fits of giggles.
• Hopefully I get to hang out with Courtney from Connecting the Dots (sorry, she's private) early next week!
• Oh yeah. I suck. I never did blog about hanging with Courtney or Suzy a few months ago. Oops. For that matter I'm not sure I blogged about hanging out with Farah or Jen last year.
• For that matter, I haven't finished my blog-you-very-much (I started it before the boys were born) post or my sock-it-to-me post. Boy, I really do suck!
• Tim is in VA Beach until Saturday afternoon. I've enjoyed my little break from him, but do miss him. I have the hardest time getting to sleep when he's not in the house. The boys seem to have a rough time going to bed if he's not here to tuck them in, too. It would be sweet if it weren't so exhausting trying to calm them down.
• Oh yeah! Jack has his peds ophthalmologist appointment tomorrow morning. I probably won't update until tomorrow evening. They said to expect 2 hours, my optometrist said expect 3. My optometrist also said to expect the docs to push for surgery. That won't be the first route we take, though.
• And I guess that's all for now. I really must get back to cleaning my house.

A Change of Mind

Last night I told Tim I didn't think we should be trying for another baby right now.

We've been bickering (not really fighting, but constant bickering) a lot lately. It feels like he's angry at me all the time, and I don't know why. He makes constant comments about things I'm doing wrong or not doing, but won't come right out and tell me what it is he thinks I should be doing. On the other hand, his constant negativity is about to drive me up a wall. He is constantly working on one project or another then complaining because he doesn't think he spends enough time with the kids. Whenever he sits down long enough to do anything with the boys he ends up laying down and falling asleep on the couch. His tone and attitude are poisoning the house.

I expressed a lot of this to him last night and his response was that our sex life sucks. Why yes, yes it does! The combination of my low self esteem and his complete negativity kills any sex drive I could ever muster up. Who wants to get all romantic right after their husband has finished slamming a door because "nothing ever goes right!!!!"? Give me a break! And as far as my self esteem goes? Well...my weight isn't helping (or going down because I just don't want to diet right now). You know what else doesn't help? Having a husband that gets pissed off because I haven't gone to the grocery store (did I blog about that yet?) then turns around and grabs my ass like I'm a piece of meat? Kind of makes a girl think the only reason she's around is to cook and put out.

So we had a long talk last night and didn't seem to get anything resloved. He said he still wanted to try for another, but feels the only reason we have sex it to conceive (ummm...sure...because sex 6 days before earliest possible ovulation has a chance. yeah).  I told him that I didn't think adding another baby would help our stress levels. I'm concerned about our marriage and don't want to add anymore to our plates.

Then today I get this:

 Tim was supposed to be out of town for my peak fertile days this month, but it didn't happen. I don't know of another cycle that I ovulated before CD17.

My last miscarriage happened 6 months ago yesterday. I would have been 35 weeks tomorrow. I wonder what state our marriage and my mental health would be in if the baby had been healthy.

Um

I really don't know what to blog about right now. I could talk about W.W., but I don't feel like it. I am down a little bit more in weight (you can track me here).

The boys are growing like little boys will and learning new things every day. They figure out new ways to melt my heart and drive me up a wall all the time.

We're trying to get pregnancy, but I don't really want to focus on it too much. This is the first month we've tried to hit possible days and I've got sticks for my fertility monitor starting next cycle.

I've been crocheting a lot lately. Tim seems to have calmed down about it some (he felt it took up too much of my time for a while).  I guess since I really have nothing to say, I'll leave you with a picture of something I finished yesterday.

Updates Updates Updates

Honestly, there's not much to update on.

The boys are doing well. At their 15/18 month appointment the doc said so. Trip is holding on to the 3rd percentile for weight and up to the 50th percentile for height. Jack is sticking to his 33th percentile for both height and weight. From the way they've grown to date it looks like they're each picking a side of the family and sticking to it. Trip looks like my side of the family and is doing our traditional male thing of being average height and thin. Jack looks just like Tim and is built so much like him (short and stocky and muscled). Trip is just a little behind in his speech, but everyone keeps telling me it's OK. It seems babies/toddlers prefer to focus on either physical or mental and Trip is really focusing on climbing. He can almost pull himself onto the changing table/dresser in his bedroom. What?!?!

It's been 4 months since I lost my Nugget. While the pain is still there, it's not too bad. I'm having some trouble with depression, but I think it has as much to do with my weight and my lack of happy-pills as it does my loss. Out of those three things, there's only one I can change at the moment.

My weight. Oh boy, is that a touchy subject right now. When I got pregnant last year (boy does that sound weird to me) I started putting on weight. I wasn't too concerned about gaining a little; after all, I was pregnant. Then I lost the baby and used that as an excuse to eat. What's a little grief eating between friends, anyway? Then I just ate. Now I eat because I'm bored, hungry (not really, I'm rarely hungry because my stomach is rarely that empty), angry, depressed...etc. I'm one huge bag of emotions and the way to deal with that seems to be eating. This isn't a new story for me, but instead a different chapter of the same lame story. Binge eating, Anorexia, now just constant eating; food and I have a rough history.

So I'm on the verge of starting Weight Watchers again. I say "on the verge" instead of just doing it because I have to make a full grocery trip before I can do this. And making a full grocery trip is something this is dependent on Tim either taking care of the boys or Tim going with us. This means Tim would have to take time away from building his precious shed (if you know me on FB, you may have seen a picture of his latest project).

Tim's shed. Ugh. We've had so many fights over whatever it is that's taking the majority of my non-child related focus. Whether it's blogging, gaming, crocheting, reading...whatever it is, it gets on his nerves. It takes my focus away from whatever it is he thinks I should be doing. The majority of the time we fight about my hobbies, it's because I don't want to drop whatever it is I'm doing to come "mark a board" or "hold a board" or "eyeball something" for him. You see, my husband is a work-a-holic of sorts. He's not so into his for-money job that he's there all the time, but he's so into keeping busy that he ALWAYS has something going on at home. If it's not rebuilding an old car (sold that project THANK YOU GOD) it's remodeling something. If it's not remodeling something it's building something new. He never sits still. And everything he does is more important than anything else going on in our house except for the boys bedtime (he gets very upset if he misses bedtime). For example, he can't bring the trashcan back from the street after the can is emptied (even though he walks past it) because he's too busy; he can't take his dirty socks upstairs (even though he goes upstairs at least 3 times a day) because he's too busy. OK...I could go on and on about this, but it's just pissing me off even more so I'm going to drop it here.

On the baby front...well...I'm not pregnant. And of course I shouldn't be right now. BUT I am off my birth control pills. First off, I started some breakthrough bleeding on week 2 of my last pack. Then on week 3 I started a full fledged period. I don't feel like messing with pills if they're not going to stop a period, so there. Plus, we DO want to add one more kid to the lot, so , yeah. But this month, I avoided all encounters with Tim until it was either wayyyy too early or too late to get pregnant (I hope).

I know 5 4 women that are pregnant right now (one had her baby last week) totaling 4 girls and 1 boy so I've been super busy crocheting baby gifts. One of the blankets was originally started for my first ill-fated pregnancy. I finished it and gave it to Tim's boss & his wife. They're 41 and 42 and this is their second pregnancy...their first successful one. This was the hardest blanket to give away, but it seemed to be the perfect couple to give it to. No clue where I was going with this paragraph, but I'll share some pics:

Well, that really seems to be it for now. Oh yeah, teething sucks and the fact the boys' mouths are already crowded isn't making it any easier. The doc says they've more than likely inherited my omg-your-teeth-are-so-crowded-you-had-to-have-EIGHT-teeth-removed-to-have-enough-space issue. Yay. Hopefully the next time I post it will be to tell you how much I'm loving being back on WW (because I really do enjoy it once I get on it).