4 years ago yesterday, I married this man:
And even though the last 4 years have had a lot of ups and downs, we are still going strong and are excited to be expecting Edward any day now. Time sure does fly.
So here is to many more years as a disgustingly happy couple. 😛
We found a place fairly quickly here in Seattle, but if wasn’t available for us to move in until April 15. We crashed at Lorna’s friends summer house and then with my Uncle Kenny while we waited for move-in. When we finally had everything set up, we ended up signing the lease in the morning and the truck and some movers arrived that afternoon. So by that evening, we had a bed set up so we could sleep and had started to unpack the kitchen. Our goal was to get a decent amount of the unpacking done before we drove back to Sandpoint to pick up the cats.
On the left is of our house and on the right is of a playground that we can see from our window. The pictures were taken from the same spot, just facing different directions:
After the truck was unloaded and we were beginning our unpacking:
We finally got the crib set up in Edward’s room. That was a big deal for us as we never got one for Pixel. Then while I was unpacking things in the bedroom, I was just tossing the empty boxes down the stairs forgetting I couldn’t bend down to pick them back up. So I had to text Darrell to come move them so I could get down the stairs. 🙂
We got a decent amount done, so on Saturday after our birthing class, we headed out to Sandpoint to pick up the cats.
This is a view over a lake about halfway between Seattle and Sandpoint.
When we got to Sandpoint, the cats were happy to see us and spent a lot of time near us wanting attention:
We also found out what they did most of the time while we were gone:
Everyone there commented on how big my belly has gotten since they saw me 3 weeks ago. So we took this set of photos: On the left is other people’s view of my belly. On the right is my view of my belly. It doesn’t look quite as big to me as it looks to others.
Then we said goodbye to Lorna and Grandma Natalie and headed back on the road.
The cats were a little bit more interested in what was going on, so they sat at the front of the carrier and tried to get out. They were fine for most of the ride, but we didn’t give them any food since they didn’t eat any during the move up from Texas, but we found out that Zedd was hungry and he started yowling. We gave him some treats (since that was all I could reach) and he was pretty happy after that.
They did really well once we got them home. They only yowled a little bit after we let them out of their carrier. They are slowly exploring the new house. Poleeko is a lot more interested than Zedd right now it seems. Poleeko wanders all around but keeps coming back to check to see where we are. Zedd, on the other hand, would much rather hang out under the bed until it gets dark and then he comes down and sits on his tree while Darrell and I watch a movie. Today is the first day where he has spent most of it out from under the bed and on a chair next to the window. They are adjusting just fine. 🙂
So that is about it for now. We are happy in our new house and we have a lot of the unpacking done. I will try to get more photos up once we are done unpacking. This is definitely the longest it has taken me to unpack since I moved to college. Usually I am done and pretty set within 5 days. Not being able to lift stuff is really slowing me down. 🙂
….I just realized that I haven’t really posted much of what we have been up to since late October, except for baby stuff. It isn’t that we aren’t busy, we are just really busy with lots of little things and I do the update on baby so that I remember later. So this post is all about what we have been up to in the last two months. 🙂
We spent Halloween at home. We put up some lights in the garage and just kind of hung out and passed out candy. There weren’t nearly as many trick-or-treaters as there was last year, but still, most of the candy we bought was passed out (We still have a small paper cup full of leftovers).
In early November, we went to the Zoo with Kelly & Liam and walked around having a blast. It was nice seeing all of the new exhibits they have put in lately since we don’t head over there all that often.
We also went with a fellow bagpiper and headed out to Big Spring for the St. Andrews Celebration. We mainly went to hear the pipe band that was playing since they were number 2 in their division in the world. It was pretty cool and we enjoyed listening to the music.
We also spent some time of November working on getting our cats accustomed to the cat door. The directions said it would probably take about a month or so, but we kind of forced them into it by closing them in the garage where the only way back into the house was through the door. Tough love. 🙂 It took about a week and then Poleeko was fine with it, and then a few days later, Zedd got use to it. We played with them through the door each day and gave them treats when they went through it. It was definitely a chore, but so worth it in the end. Now we have the litterbox by the garage door and we can just open the big garage door to air it out. The cats don’t seem to mind it and they seem to enjoy the fact that they have a whole new room to play in whenever they want to.
Thanksgiving was a small event since it was just the two of us at home. We just made a meal and hung around in our pajamas all day. Nothing too exciting.
Our Christmas holidays started off fast and they just haven’t slowed down. I can’t believe that December is already almost over and I still have a super long list of things to do. *sigh*
We headed out to downtown Abilene with some friends and their kids and watched the Christmas parade (which is the longest parade this town has).
We had a dinner party at a friends house on my birthday, then we had a midwife appointment, had someone come level out our backyard, had a doctors appointment, my dad and uncle came into town for a few nights, we had Darrell’s company Christmas party, and we went to Ceder Hill State Park to go camping for the weekend for a Winter Solstice Celebration with the Metroplex Atheists. This was all the first half of the month. 🙂
As you can tell, the camping was full of mud and added a couple inches to our shoes everywhere we walked. It was a little rough that first night and the first morning.
The week after camping, Darrell’s mom came into town, another midwife appointment, an Apocalypse/fugly sweater party with our friends (the most people we have had in our house at one time), Poleeko goes missing for about 12 hours (actively looked for him for 4), started to organize and pack up the house, Christmas day, heater stops working on day after Christmas (18-25 degrees outside), and our house is a mess while we are packing and staging and I am beginning to think we might have to wait a week or so into the new year before it goes up on the market since we haven’t even gotten the last three items fixed in the house that we need to.
Apocalypse Party/Fugly Sweater Party:
Christmas:
We even had Pixel with us. I bought this little ornament since my family custom is to buy an ornament every year for Christmas. I was hoping to start it with Pixel, but since he passed away, I felt that having a “Baby’s first” ornament wasn’t right. I went to Kohls and found this ornament and it just seemed like the best thing for me to get at the time. We put it up near the top of the tree and hopefully it will be a little memento for us every year when we bring out our ornaments.
And of course, there are the pictures of what our cats have been up to. 🙂
There are still 4 more days of this year, so who knows what will happen in those 4 days. I am hoping to finish cleaning and staging the house and we might get close as Darrell has a 4 day weekend. We are going to be going over to a friends house for New Years Eve and we are taking our liquor so that hopefully a decent chunk of it will get drunk and we won’t have to take it with us. 🙂 Then Lorna leaves early on the 1st and our Ultrasound is on the 2nd. So we still have a very busy week ahead of us. I have my fingers crossed we finish doing everything on time. Once I finish staging the house, I will post pictures.
So for the few of you who aren’t on facebook, we are moving early next year!
Darrell is being allowed to work remotely and will be attending the PMP program at UW. We are excited since this means we get to move to Seattle. It is a big change from Texas, but we will handle it and we are really excited.
We will be able to visit family members that right now, we only see every few years. We will be close enough to see them a few times a year instead. We don’t know how long we will be in Seattle, but it is our first big step to moving back to where we want to be.
Our house will be going up on the market in January so that we can sell it before we move. We are hoping to have it sold and move before the end of March so I will still be in my second trimester and it will be easier to find a doctor to take me. We are pretty sure it will sell in that amount of time since houses in our neighborhood are on the market for an average of 60 days. (A house that is exactly like ours sold in 75 days just a few months ago, so we definitely have our fingers crossed.) We just have to fix up the little things we have put off like the carpet in the closet where Poleeko dug to get out, the baseboards in the laundry room that we forgot to have the builder come back and fix, and we have to level the backyard since we just dumped the dirt from the front yard project into it. It is only a couple of fix-ups but with the holidays, we wanted to give ourselves a full month to prep and then market it. We also have to pack up a chunk of the house so it doesn’t look so cluttered. That should be fun. 🙂
So that is our other big news right now. We are completely jazzed because that means we will be able to go visit friends and family with more reasonable timeframes. Darrell is ready to just pack and go, so as soon as our house is closed on, we are outta here!! 🙂
It has been 22 days since we said goodbye to Pixel. There have been good moments and there have been sad moments. Whenever I see someone who is about as far along as I would be, I get sad and think about the things that could have been. For the most part we are ok though. There will be the few days where we remember and we will have to take a moment to grieve that thought and then continue on. Nothing seems to be easy for this journey of ours.
I have spent a lot of the last week thinking about labels and what communities that those labels put you in. Labels are either given to you or you chose that label. Some don’t have a good label, but the community is definitely there whether you know about it before or after you are slapped with the label.
Take me for example:
Since my birth, I was labeled as a female, daughter, sister, school child, band geek, friend and many others before I even finished High School. The only ones I really *chose* are the labels of band geek and friend.
In College, I chose almost all of the labels I was given. Bus driver, student, girlfriend, roommate, and employee. These are all normal labels that people give and many of them have small communities that go with them. You don’t always stay in the same community with the same label though. Not everything is pure black and white.
After college, I chose to be labeled Wife, graduate, cat owner, homeowner, and School bus driver. Then we had chosen to attempt to add the label of mother to the list. As many of you know, it has been a rough journey and we have been added to a lot of communities with a lot of labels since then.
The first is the label of Infertile. There is a huge community and it has been a rough road, but we have fully embraced this label. We are willing to talk about it with people and help others learn about it if that is what they want. I wouldn’t say that we are exactly spokespeople for infertility, but for our friends who have no idea about it, I feel we fill that role.
Then we got pregnant and we finally joined the community of Expecting parents. This is one label and community we were thrilled to join.
On December 22, 2011, we found out we joined another community – Parents of Multiples. What a shocker!
Then January 3, 2012, we joined another community – Miscarriage. It was rough, but we still had one to be hopeful for.
Our community list and labels grew immensely on May 31, 2012. We became new members to the communities of Stillbirth, Encephalocele, Amniotic Band Syndrome, CLIMB and LAMBS. Some of these are fairly large communities, while some are small communities.
The one label that I am proud to have is the label of Mother that Pixel gave me on that fateful day. It is a label that I will wear with pride even though I do not have him here with me. I might never change his diaper, hear him cry, or get to know him the way other mothers do, but I am his mother all the same.
I haven’t been given the label yet, but we know that with the next pregnancy, we will be given the label of “high-risk” no matter how many babies we conceive. It will be rough as we won’t feel completely ok with the pregnancy until we hear baby cry. I don’t want to add any more labels to our conception journey, but we have to keep trying otherwise we will never know.
The world is a rough place. I am glad that I have someone strong to help me walk through it and face the next steps together.
