Auld Lang Syne

We are stuffed, tired, and boring tonight - and this may be one of the best New Year's Eves of my life. Natalie went to bed at an almost normal hour, we had way too much yummy Ethiopian food with J&E in an attempt to coax their little one into being born, and we're lounging on the couch drowsily contemplating bed. And we got a very nice beta hCG result this afternoon: 506 at 16 d.p.o. (i.e. undeniably pregnant, at least at this moment).

2007 was very good to us; I hope that 2008 will equal or surpass it. May it also bring peace, health and happiness to you and yours.

A VERY Merry Christmas

Hallmark could not make a pretty card out of this holiday.

Our trip here was mostly uneventful but fraught with worry, as flights before and after ours were cancelled, and car seat installations in our ground transportation were anything but kosher.

Cait and I gave each other the washer and dryer for Christmas, and agreed not to get any other gifts. We did break down at the last minute and buy a few Hershey kisses for the stockings, but that was it.

We spent Boxing Day at an urgent care clinic with Natalie, who has a nasty cough and a touch of bronchitis. She now has a four drug regimen (Tylenol, Triaminic, amoxicillin, and albuterol in decreasing order of tolerance) and is almost herself again, as evidenced by the strength with which she fights the inhaler (it takes us both to administer it, and we could use another mom!).

While we have seen many family members and had a wonderful time with all of them, we've also spent hours in the car shuttling back and forth around the metro area to do so. As a result, Natalie, who as a sick kid needs her sleep more than ever, has not had a normal nap or bedtime since we left home.

But none of it really matters, because this morning we got the best Christmas present of all:
Two lines. It's easier to see in person, but it's definitely there.



Merry Christmas indeed!

(9:25 PM I reduced the highlights in the photo to get rid of the flash glare and reposted it.)

We made it! Hallelujah!

On the plane. FX.

At the airport. Totally foggy. Flight prior to ours cancelled. Not looking good. Aaaaaaagh.

Merry Christmas, Cali

Merry Christmas, Cali, originally uploaded by jrustdc.

Ask and ye shall receive. At least electronically. I wish I were in control of things uterine and could ensure that you will indeed receive what you REALLY want. Here's hoping!

OMG. How can we still have a President who doesn't know how to pronounce 'nuclear'?! So embarrassing.

Really?

We can chalk up another (mild) intervention this cycle. I'm now on the coochie bullet train, too, although if you believe the dispensing instructions, apparently we are ALL supposed to take them.

"Take 1 capsule per mouth twice a day per vagina."

I can't really see how boosting Cait & Natalie's progesterone will help, though.

Eggs and Toast!

A *clink* of the hopefully-last-alcoholic-champagne-for-least-9-months glass to Cali, as we trigger in near unison tonight, and lots and lots of eggy thoughts headed directly towards your ovaries.

However, NOT like this:


Or this:















And this, while good for the rest of you, is not exactly what we have in mind either.


















Just lots and lots of THESE:














And so. much. LOVE!

Buried!

We did get snow, although only enough to net me a two-hour delay on Thursday (for which I am grateful, if still hoping for a real snow day in the next two weeks!). But I am buried not in snow but in bits and bytes. The firewall and router for our community's Internet connection died Thursday night and it took a couple of days for service to be restored. In that time, I amassed a pile of email and a COLOSSAL load in Bloglines. I am working my way through both the email and the blog posts, but I am way behind in replying and commenting. So if anything exciting happened to you since Thursday, I'm sure I will find out and respond appropriately, by NEXT Thursday if not a tiny bit sooner.

The timing of the outage was pretty good, as we were very busy prepping for and throwing a baby shower for Jenny and Ezra, with a little bit of potty training madness around the edges*. Unfortunately, I didn't get to make the party music mix based on your fantastic suggestions, but if I host another shower someday I'll have the baddest baby music playlist in town! Pictures and more about the baby shower are forthcoming, I hope.

We're also headed full speed towards Christmas (with a Hanukkah party to attend tonight for good measure). Only 6 days until our first family celebration (gifts purchased: 0), with another a week later, and two more the 24th and 25th (gifts purchased for the other three celebrations: 5, 80% of which are for recipients too young to know the difference, and the other 20% for someone who says she no longer wants the non-returnable item). And cards, and gifts for friends, and and and!

Tis the season for insanity, fa la la la la la la la la!

*We're not pushing the potty training but Natalie has learned to remove her diapers and spends a lot of time yelling "No diaper! No diaper!" so we are going with the flow, so to speak.

Photo Printing & Holiday Ideas

We do an annual calendar using pictures of Natalie as a gift for grandparents and other relatives. I start with the CD case calendar creator tool at FD's Flickr Toys and hack it from there. I'll put the whole hack and directions up later, but right now I need some input.

Has anyone ever used the photo printing site whoblinked.com ? They only charge $0.30 per 5x7, and I may be able to get a discount from there so it's even less. That would make the cost per calendar $3.60 or less! But I want to be sure they are good quality as I can get them for $0.39 each on snapfish. I also want to know how quickly you got the photos as we are cutting it close with some of our holiday celebrations.

Input and suggestions of other photo printing sites welcome!

Cait and I are hosting a baby shower for some of our favorite blogfriends on Sat. Help us: songs with the word 'baby' for our soundtrack? Thanks!

Washing the Blues Away

Failed cycles should always be followed by major appliance delivery. I'm still sad, I'm still worried about whether this is ever going to work, still searching for answers all over the internet. But I'm doing laundry, people. Laundry. In beautiful new machines that arrived just hours ago. Machines with, to quote Natalie, "lossa buttons." Machines whose drums light up when their doors are opened. I put diapers in, pushed a few buttons, and now I can ignore them until it's time to put them in the dryer. Two cycles worth of effort all rolled into one!

Now when I go up there, those diapers had better be stink-free, or I'm going right back to yesterday's pit.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

...IVF.

I was stunned to visit the bathroom between classes to find major spotting. The jury is still out, but it seems very likely that Attempt 2.4 was another failure. It's early -- only CD12 -- so I have a call in to verify that my progesterone was ok when they took it on Wednesday. This is the second time in less than a month that I have been caught completely off guard. The first was the poor FSH results, and now this. It's not that I was expecting to be pregnant this cycle (signs and symptoms were ambiguous as always) but I thought I had a couple more days and a couple more HPTs to ease me into this.

Cait and I haven't even had much time to process the consult with Dr. Smiley last week, in which he recommended that we could stay the course, or jump to IVF. Cait did call and find out that IVF is covered on my insurance, and does not seem to require that I be married. I have no idea what we will decide, but the fact that IVF is even on the table is blowing my mind right now.

Aack.

Fashion Advice from Natalie

No, I don't think Natalie will be going into fashion design anytime soon (and if she were to, she wouldn't be getting the genes from me!). However, she does have very pronounced opinions about my wardrobe.

Whenever I put on a jacket, or she realizes that I am wearing a sweatshirt, sweater or some other garment that puts a second layer (well, third, counting the bra) between her and my boobs, she commands me to take it off. "Off. Mommy. Jacket." Mind you, she ONLY nurses before bed and first thing in the morning anymore, so it's completely irrelevant. "Sweater. Off." We have long conversations about when nursing time is - she even freely admits that it is nowhere near a nursing time, but she is undeterred. I don't give in, but it's highly entertaining.

Unfortunately for me, she's learning to zip and unzip pretty well....