6w0d

Today's ultrasound had me measuring exactly where I expected to be at 6w0d. We couldn't see a heartbeat yet, but the OB said at this point it's a 50/50 chance. (And also he used their old machine because the new improved one was on the fritz, so it was hard to see much to begin with.) He thought everything looked just as it should. We'll do another scan next Wednesday to check for the heartbeat. I am excited to be measuring right on track. I was so worried about seeing an empty sac or measuring a week or more behind. Good news, and hopefully more to come!

My chest tenderness reappeared Friday, but so far that's really my only symptom. I have been waking up a lot at night which is part bladder part nerves, but I have such a hard time falling back to sleep. It's killing me. I hope I can calm down soon. Being mildly anxious 24/7 is kind of miserable. I think it's time to embrace this and trust that things will work out just the way they're supposed to.

IVF #2 Postponed Indefinitely

Throughout this journey, it has often felt as though things rarely go according to plan. Once again, that is where I find myself. I never had my IVF consult this month. I didn't make a day three appointment for bloodwork and ultrasound. Instead, after my period was 11-12 days late, I broke down and took a HPT Saturday and found one very dark test line and one light control line. On Monday I had a beta drawn with my OB. I'm guessing I was about 1-2 days past 5 weeks. The result was 1959, which is right in the normal range. Since that day, all "symptoms" have basically vanished. I had been having nauseated feelings for about a week before (but never ever suspected this could be the reason) which are now gone, and my chest started to get sore Saturday but has since faded to almost nothing unless I really squish around. It leaves me believing that this pregnancy is headed in the wrong direction, again, which terrifies me. I'm supposed to make an appointment for 8 weeks with my OB, but so far I haven't had the courage. I don't want to have to make the phone call canceling it again. I've written several different posts trying to get this out, but each time I've been too chicken to hit publish for fear of jinxing this whole thing. And now I probably just did.

Please, please hold on little baby. I've never wanted anything more.

Early Christmas

Brian's parents came into town this weekend to celebrate Christmas. Grandma Wendy and Grandpa Tom were so excited that they were able to attend Noah's preschool Christmas program!

Singing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"

Then, "Frosty the Snowman"

But the crowd favorite was "The Reindeer Pokey." This is Noah "putting your antlers in."

Saturday night we opened presents. Brian and Noah got remote control bumper cars. If you hit the other player's button, their driver pops out and make a yelling noise. Grandpa Tom and Brian may have enjoyed it more than Noah.

What's Christmas without some assembly?

Tonight we opened one more gift... Ice skates! Noah loved them so much, he had to bring one along in the car on our way to see the Trail of Lights at the Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield. This place was gorgeous and definitely got me even more into the holiday spirit!

Love the candy cane silo!

This tree was simply amazing.

Such a fun kick-off to our 3 weeks of family celebrations!

Sledding

I'm pretty sure most of the country has been in a snowy deep freeze this whole week, and Colorado is no different. But, it made for some good sledding! And the best part? Our driveway doubles as an awesome sledding hill!

The local sledding hill is pretty great, too!

Hope you're all staying warm!

Thanksgiving 2013

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving week spent in Minnesota. Sadly, my husband's grandmother was diagnosed with terminal cancer this summer. She made a request for the entire family to come to Minnesota for Thanksgiving this year, and everyone made it! Even though I don't know this side of the family very well, it was nice to be a part of a big family get-together. With all of my grandparents being deceased, none of my family ever gets together anymore. It's kind of sad. My mother-in-law Wendy wanted to get a big family picture done, and it turned out amazing! Not a single person blinked or made a funny face! 

I'm so lucky to be part of this family!

We also had a visit from Wendy's parents. Noah read Great Grandma Nancy "I Was So Mad" and she couldn't stop talking about how smart he was the rest of the night.

The big family dinner actually took place on Sunday, so we had a couple of days to relax before we had two more Thanksgiving meals with my parents. We did a quick dinner with my dad Wednesday night. He made a delicious duck and homemade cheesecake. Yum!

On the actual holiday, we spent the day at my parents' new cabin. My brother flew out from Denver and my sister and brother-in-law drove from Wisconsin. I think it's the first time the whole family has been together since Christmas 2010, so it was really nice having everyone together. 

We played Chutes and Ladders at the cabin. Noah was excited to be winning!

We frosted cookies while we waited for the turkey.

The boys chowing down on snacks.

The fam

The ice was thick enough to "skate" on, even though I was a nervous wreck the whole time!

We watched The Lorax about a million times at the cabin which has renewed Noah's love for his stuffed lorax.

Noah was so good on our flights. We had a miserable 3.5 hour delay on our way to Minneapolis due to mechanical issues, but Noah quickly made friends at our gate. They made friendship bracelets and played football with a stuffed animal. On our flight home, a cute 3 year old girl was sitting in the seat in front of him, and they chattered and passed treats back and forth the whole flight. We have such a sweet boy!

When we got home we decorated the house and prepared for the next holiday, Christmas! I love this time of year!

Here We Go Again

I went in for my regroup today and decisions have been made. Brian and I are moving forward with IVF #2. 

Dr. S talked me through the sad state of our embryos. All but one of our original ten frozen embryos were graded 4AA or 5AA. The other was a 4AB. It's a bit of a mystery as to why we have had such a dismal thaw rate since slow-frozen embryos should survive thaw about 85% of the time, not 50%. The embryo that we last transferred had about a 15% cell loss which also seems crappy for such a highly graded blast. He gave us about a 5% chance of success with our remaining two based on everything we've been through. That's so crazy to me because no one, not even our doctors and embryologists, thought we would end up here. We should have had success by now.

His recommendation is to do a fresh cycle with PGD. Since that doubles the cost, and because I'm (perhaps naively) not convinced that there's a major genetic problem preventing us from getting pregnant, we're going to move forward with a fresh IVF minus the PGD. (For those who don't know, PGD involves biopsying your embryos to look for chromosomal and genetic defects.) Next steps include a bunch of day three tests to check my egg health and an updated SA for Brian. When I was 28 and doing this the first time my AMH level was stellar at 6.3 and I had 29 resting follicles. My AMH was tested in January and somehow climbed to 7.5. Dr. S said that's pretty unusual, but hopefully indicates that I'll still have a good number next month. Our overall success last time with producing high quality blasts was considered extremely positive (his exact words were something like "we almost never see results like that"), so I hope 4.5 years of aging won't impact us too much. It's all so scary starting over. I really never thought it would come to this.

Now that there's some semblance of a plan started, I feel a little better. My goal is to enjoy the holidays while we take a forced break from actively trying. I really do love this time of year, and I fully realize how lucky I already am to have a son to celebrate it all with. I'm really looking forward to a full week off at Thanksgiving and two weeks at Christmas to spend lots of quality time with the fam. Gotta love the school calendar! 

Thank you to all of you who offered love and support on my previous post. This process sometimes really takes the life out of me, and this is the best place I have to vent. I'm sorry if anyone thought I was being too self-pitying and super annoying. I really have been a Debbie Downer lately. No fun. I'll be better, I promise.

Alone

That's exactly how I'm feeling right now. Along with a multitude of other equally shitty feelings such as angry, depressed, and hopeless.

There is nobody who I identify with at this point. No one who knows what I'm going through. I have no friends or family who are in my position. All of the bloggers I follow have passed me by or are trying to have their first (so who am I to complain to them?). I feel isolated from everyone in my life. Everyone around me tries to be supportive, but nothing anyone says can make me feel better. And often, what people intend to be helpful and supportive comes across as trite and clueless. You don't just know that "things are going to work out" unless of course you recently inherited a crystal ball or developed psychic powers. And in that case, please tell me when exactly they are going to work out because that would really help my sanity. The fact that I "already have Noah and he's so perfect" doesn't make me feel any better that we can't have another. Plus it makes me feel like you think I'm stupid for persisting through all of this garbage. I am positive that some people who read this and are still struggling to have their first think I am completely ungrateful. But I'm here to tell you, infertility feels just as awful the second time around. Actually for me this round has been far more difficult than the first because I was one of the lucky ones who succeeded right away. It set my hopes and expectations for another way too high. I feel like an idiot for ever being so confident in my ability to get pregnant. Humble pie tastes like shit.

I have been an absolute hot mess all week. I cried on Brian and I's date night on Thursday, so hard that I had to leave the restaurant while poor Brian flagged down the waitress to pay the bill. My 40 minute commute every day is pure hell. Nothing but time to just sit and feel sorry for myself and angry at everyone else. I also recently saw a pregnancy announcement that completely gutted me because the due date was my sweet girl's due date (a year later of course). So yeah, life kind of sucks right now. I'm hoping that maybe our consult on Wednesday will help me start to turn the corner here. I am truly miserable and totally sick of all of this. I wish I could handle it better or focus on the positive, but I'm just not in that place yet.

Beta

7.8

Obviously that's not good. I actually lost all hope by Monday and decided to test. I've never experienced such a lack of symptoms before. Unfortunately the test turned up positive from the HCG booster, but I knew that's all it was. I tested again on Wednesday to see if the line was fading and sure enough it was. I really wanted my level to be under 5 so they wouldn't make me repeat it Monday, but they gave me the option either way so I stopped my meds. 

At this point, I've pretty much lost all hope for FET. We have two frozen blasts remaining, but we've gone through 8 already and have nothing to show for it. There's no guarantee the last ones would even thaw. I'm ready to try one last shot at a fresh cycle, no matter what the financial situation turns out to be. My in-laws have been beyond generous funding all of our treatments thus far and I expect nothing more from them. We'll find a way. I would give up all kinds of "luxuries" for Noah, so I'm willing to do it for his future sibling, too.

Where's Your Head At?

Six days past transfer today. How am I feeling? In short, crazy. Which is typical. I'm going through all of the normal junk during the 2ww. I wake up in the morning feeling hot and sweaty and my chest aches and I think, "Maybe." Then I get the day started and within an hour I feel basically normal for the remainder of the day and I think, "Nope." After dinner when I'm exhausted from the day and this never ending cold, and my pants feel maybe a little tighter from dinner I think, "Maybe, but I doubt it." So about 5% of my day is maybe, 5% is maybe with doubt, and 90% is no way. Then I go to bed and wake up to do it all over again. Yippee.

Beta is still (you've got to be kidding me) 8 days away at 14dpt. Last time at the very same clinic I got my result at 9dpt. What's up with that? A nine day wait seems so much more reasonable, and much less crazy-inducing. My plan is to test Friday night so I have the weekend to either deal with bad news, or worry like an insane person about numbers. I hope I get to feel insane! No matter what, I expect the weekend to be difficult as it will be the one year anniversary of the shit ultrasound. Yuck.

Another Transfer In The Books

Per usual, Noah got sick just in time for my transfer this week. He was running a fever and coughing up a lung all last week, but when I brought him to the doctor on Thursday it was diagnosed as an upper respiratory infection and we were sent home with the advice to try allergy meds to dry out his sinuses. I've been popping vitamin C ever since he got sick back in September, but of course by Sunday I was starting to feel as though I was losing the fight. I woke up yesterday with a yucky feeling in my throat and a runny nose. Perfect timing for transfer day! 

We arrived right on time, but got called back after what seemed like a longer wait than normal. They appeared pretty busy, but I couldn't help but worry a little why it was taking a while. Finally the embryologist called us back. I so desperately wanted him to tell us that our last singly frozen embryo had thawed perfectly. And if not that, I was really hoping that both of the two frozen together were looking good. Instead I got the news I was least hoping for. They had to thaw three to get one that looked ok. The single guy arrested immediately, and one of the other two gave it a good fight but ultimately arrested as well. They had just thawed our embryo so the picture we got shows that it's still barely expanded. The embryologist pointed out something on there that he thought looked promising, and by the time we did the transfer he said it was continuing to expand. I want to be positive, but it makes me nervous that we didn't get to see the embryo fully expand. It just felt like they didn't want to waste our time so they took a shot in the dark. We have two remaining embryos frozen, but seeing how this thaw went, it leaves us with no guarantee for another chance. I want to be positive, but I feel like pretty much nothing about this has gone all that well. 

I think it looks like a frog, with the eye in the upper left corner and legs sticking out on all sides. Frogs are supposed to represent fertility and rebirth, so hopefully that's a good sign. I'll take whatever I can get.

Today I planned to send Noah to preschool so that I could rest. Even though my dad is in town, if I'm around Noah doesn't want help from other people. Well, this morning he woke up and immediately started complaining of a sore ear. Brian couldn't take the time to bring him to the doctor, so instead of resting I drove 40 minutes through fog to the clinic. My heart completely broke on the drive because poor Noah's ear was killing him on the transition down from 9000ft. The doctor ended up being quite late because her other patient was having seizures, so I did take the time to acknowledge how thankful I am that Noah is so healthy and perfect. The poor guy was diagnosed with an ear infection, got his flu shot, and we were sent home. Luckily he passed out on the drive back so he slept through any potential ear pain on the way back up.

I am feeling tired, run down, and very much sick. I can't believe this is the third transfer in a row where Noah got sick, and I'm so bummed I caught it this time. Totally unbelievable! 

Does anyone have success stories with a questionably expanding frozen embryo, a sick kid, and a miserable cold? No? I didn't think so.

Parent FAIL

About a month ago we got a little note from Noah's preschool that his show-and-tell was going to be on Thursday. He really wanted to bring a bell that we have hung in the kitchen, but at the last minute he changed his mind and brought some toy cars instead. Since that day, he has frequently asked if he could bring all sorts of things to show-and-tell. Each time I have told him the same thing, "You already had your show and tell." Then yesterday we got the following note:

Brian and I got a pretty good laugh over the idea that poor neglected Noah has been showing off his jacket every week. I'm sure the teachers and kids think we're the lamest family ever. Today I explained to the teacher that we had no idea this was a weekly thing, and laughed about showing his jacket every week. She made sure to tell me that each week he puts a lot of enthusiasm into it, regardless of how lame it is. Aww, he's such a great kid! Next week he'll have something awesome to share for sure! 

FET Stress

This FET has stressed me out more than the others. The biggest stressor has been moving our embryos again. It felt like the universe completely conspired against me to make this an easy process. Our old clinic sent me the consent form a month ago. We had it signed and notarized at the beginning of October, and mailed it to the lab shortly after. When I called to follow up, the nurse originally told me they didn’t have it. I then faxed a copy of the form to her and she said we could make all of the arrangements. I think that was a Friday. The following week I got a call from her explaining that they finally received my original copy of the form, but that apparently the lab that is holding our embryos changed their consent form and we would need to get a new one signed and notarized. Over the weekend we tried to get that done, but my mom was in town and we ended up being too distracted to remember. Yesterday we had two notaries turn us down explaining that they weren’t allowed to notarize our particular form. I was starting to feel stabby, but we finally found someone willing and capable. This morning I called the nurse from our old clinic to confirm that everything was a go for the transport today, and guess what? She’s sick and out of the office. The one person who can give us the go ahead. In the meantime I’ve got the transport company waiting in the wings to make the move calling me to check the status. I called the actual lab where our frosties were and they wouldn’t help me because it needed to go through my clinic. Rage and panic ensued. Frantic phone calls were made. The sick nurse called me from home with a raspy, awful sounding voice. I had to fax yet another form but their fax machine wasn’t working. Then, finally, clouds parted, sun beamed down, and everything was arranged. Now I’m just waiting for the phone call to tell me that my babies are back where they should be.

The good, non-stressful news? I had a beautiful 9.6mm triple stripe lining this morning and was given my trigger shot. PIO starts tomorrow. (Yuck.) We are 6 days from transfer. Wish us luck!

Fall Color

Having grown up in Minnesota with all of it's maple trees (I grew up in a town called Maple Grove for goodness sakes!), I have often felt a little robbed of the fall colors here in Colorado. But I have to admit, our new town puts on a pretty beautiful show!

Regret

Note to self: next time things go south, listen to your brain and not your heart.

I have so much regret about switching doctors. And I don't mean away from Dr. A. I mean for switching back to him. He messed up all the blood tests. Guess what? I don't have Rh antibodies, either. They just tested me too soon after my last Rhogam shot. His lab killed off half of our remaining embryos. Why did we waste our time and opportunities there? So alas, here we are with what seems like a far more competent crew, but just 2 or 3 more chances. And we are also facing conversations of transferring 2 because 4 of our 5 remaining are frozen in doubles. It's a place we don't want to be. (Although yes, I do totally realize how lucky we are to have anything left after 1 IVF and 3 subsequent FETs all from the same batch.)

In other news, I love this kid!

He was super excited about our first snow. Seriously, how gorgeous is it?

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

Wednesday was the day of my hysteroscopy, doppler ultrasound, and trial embryo transfer. The TET went well as usual, and then it was time for the doppler. As the sonographer turned on the sound, I was caught off guard at the sound of my own blood whoosh whooshing over the speaker. Tears welled up in my eyes as I realized that the last time I was in that room, there was no sound. Because there was no heartbeat. I started crying hard enough to shake, and when I asked for a tissue the poor sonographer couldn't quite reach the box and she had to ask me to hold the probe while she retrieved them. Awesome. It didn't help that it was exactly a year from the day that I got pregnant with that baby. This is the kind of thing that people don't understand about infertility. There are so many extremely painful moments in this process that no one should have to experience. It's not just the difficulty of getting pregnant, it's all of the sad anniversaries and reminders that constantly tear at your heart. So then I had the hysteroscopy which I was really nervous about. I just couldn't believe that things were okay in there. But they were, so that's a big sigh of relief.

Everything was going well. I was starting to feel positive and hopeful again. Dr. S called me in to discuss all of the tests and to review the records he got from Dr. A. That's when the appointment got interesting. Good news first. I don't actually have any clotting issues. My antithrombin level is indeed "abnormal," but it's high, not low. Which means I do not have antithrombin deficiency. If anything, it could mean that I have a "bleeding tendency," but most research says that a slightly elevated antithrombin level has no clinical significance. I don't understand how Dr. A read this incorrectly. There are two columns on the lab report, one for "deficient result" and one for "abnormal result" and my reading of 122(H) was under the "abnormal" column. Whatever. I will still take Heparin, but mostly only because it can't hurt and might help. But if I do get pregnant again, I can stop the Heparin by 12 weeks without worry. Phew.

Now the bad news. Despite 4 Rhogam shots in the past, I am producing antibodies against Rh+ blood. Dr. A made this sound like not that big of a deal, but I guess it really is. Like, a maybe-we-shouldn't-try-again big deal. Now, from what I understand, the level of antibodies in my system is pretty low which is good. However, high levels can cause serious complications. These antibodies will attack the red blood cells in a fetus causing anemia. If bad enough, they attempt a blood transfusion through the umbilical cord. But this would all be very high risk and I would need to be followed by a maternal fetal medicine specialist. So what does this all mean? I need to have my blood retested to check the level. From there, we decide whether or not to proceed, and if necessary get me in to see an MFM immediately. I have an appointment with an OB tomorrow to get a pap done, and I plan to discuss all of this with her and ask for them to order all of my blood tests. Since this is a medical problem and not a fertility problem, I am going to demand that they handle this. I am NOT paying out of pocket to my fertility clinic for these expensive blood tests! I know that my levels are low and that things still have a very good chance at working out. I just hate that there's something new to worry about. Why is it that things can never just be simple? Oh how I envy the fertile.

Fun With Friends

Over the weekend we met up with Val, Noah's former daycare provider. We grew pretty close to her over the two years that she watched Noah. I'm still sad he had to give her up with the move. Noah and her daughter Livey absolutely adore each other, so it's important to me that we keep in touch with them. We met up at a park in Golden this weekend, and I snapped a few cute pictures of the two of them. It's Brian's family "tradition" that the men marry older women, so perhaps Noah will follow suit. I know Livey talks about it already! :)

Livey wanted to hold hands.

When I asked if I could take her picture, she immediately struck this adorable pose. I'm not sure she's really only 3! Noah just looks like a goober with his dirty face, but he wouldn't let me wash off the 3 cookies he ate.

Another one of Livey's adorable poses! How cute are they?

And thanks to some peer pressure, Noah was brave enough to try and fall in love with the super tall corkscrew slide.

I Like Having A Plan

A little over a month ago, in this very space, I said that I was done blogging about my infertility. In that time, I have done some reflecting on that. What I walked away with is this. Over the last year my focus shifted from happy updates about Noah to the doom and gloom of miscarriages and failed FETs. That happened because that was my reality. However, I got way too sucked into reading about other people's trials and tribulations, and that continued to bring me down further. The break from all of that has been good, but by cutting off the support of all of my wonderful friends out there, I was starting to internalize too much of this part of my life. I still need this outlet, I just need to use it in a healthier way. My goal is to continue to share my IF story, but try to remain focused on all of the wonderful blessings that I already have and make time to share those, too. It's hard sometimes, so if I start to lose that balance, please set me straight!

So yes, with that, here's a quick update before I join my husband on the couch for some quality "us" time. We switched back to our old clinic (call me crazy, it's ok) and got ourselves a different doctor there. He did my hysteroscopy back in May 2012 and seemed like a very friendly and knowledgeable man. I should have trusted my instincts way back then and switched to him right then and there, but alas, I did not. It's a big regret of mine, but what can you do? Anyway, we had a consult with him near the end of August and made a plan for moving forward. The first step was clearing my mammogram. In early August I found a scary lump (I have fibrocystic breasts so there are always lumps, but I didn't recognize this one), but luckily both an ultrasound and mammogram showed only normal breast tissue. So with the start of my period this weekend, I was able to get my day 3 bloodwork done today and schedule a slew of appointments including an updated pap, trial transfer, doppler ultrasound, and hysteroscopy. The last one is very important to me. After my miscarriage in November I had such crazy bleeding and since then I haven't felt convinced that everything is as it should be in there. Dr. A, whom I still love dearly, never seemed to take this concern very seriously and I grew frustrated by that. I was also fed up with their slow turn over between cycles, and just general disorganization. I'll always hold a big spot for Dr. A in my heart, but I have to trust statistics and history, so new (old) clinic it is. My new doctor has a number of other things he wants to check into throughout this month, including my clotting disorder. According to him, if I really have it, it's a very serious one and the fact that Noah is here is a total miracle. That makes me a little nervous, but I feel like I'm in very competent hands. I will start the pill tomorrow in hopes that we can pull everything we need together for a late October transfer. If not, we'll wait til November or December. It feels so, so, SO good to have a plan again, and it feels good to share it. 

The Month My Little Boy Grew Up

Ok, maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but so many big things happened in August and suddenly Noah seems so much more grown up. The first big event was the purchase of a "big boy bed." Brian and I decided prior to our Minnesota trip that it was time. Noah had never tried to get out of his crib, but it was getting difficult to lift a 31 pound toddler into and out of his bed every night and morning. We looked around at a number of stores and realized that girls get a million cute bed options, and boys get super boring choices. Since we wanted to avoid buying a toddler bed which would need to be replaced eventually, we opted for a twin bed. And since this will probably be the bed he uses until he's a teenager, we allowed ourselves to spend a little more. So we gave up on the cheaper stores with the ugly beds and went to the expensive shop where we bought Noah's crib. Noah and Brian both fell in love with the Maxtrix bed system which allows you customize a loft-style bed. The first night we gave Noah a big safety talk about his bed since it's several feet off the ground. He has followed the rules extremely well. The first morning he got out of bed, he announced to us that he used the ladder to get down, then raced downstairs to watch TV. He came back shortly after once he realized he didn't know how to get everything working and on the right channel. Ha. With the transition to a bed, we have witnessed the death of naps in our house. That crib was good for something!

The next thing that happened was the end of the paci. Noah had bit a hole in his last remaining one, and I warned him that if he continued to chew on it, I would have to throw it away. Well, one day he spat it out as I was getting him out of the car and I noticed that he had bit a much larger hole so that the tip was hanging on by a small piece of plastic. Into the trash it went, and we haven't looked back. Amazingly, he didn't even mention his paci for an entire week until we were driving somewhere the next weekend. It came up again recently when he found a yucky, lost paci. We threw that one away too, and he hasn't mentioned it since. I never thought it would be so easy! And I really don't miss pictures of him with his paci hanging off his lip!

With the return to school looming, I knew Noah had to get potty trained for preschool. I spent my last week of summer vacation in potty-training boot camp with him. Ugh. It was so boring sitting around the house all day. The first few days I tried sitting him on the toilet at specific times throughout the day. I often made him sit until he succeeded, which sometimes meant sitting on the floor of the bathroom for 30 minutes at a time. With every victory, he got a small bowl full of peanut M&Ms. This method was making me crazy and didn't seem to be motivating him at all. I decided to spend Wednesday-Sunday keeping him naked from the waist down and spent as much time home as possible. I set potty seats on two toilets and kept his portable Sesame Street potty chair in whichever room we were in. Every 30 minutes or so I would ask if he needed to go potty which really started to bug him. He kept asking me, "Why do you keep saying that?!" The first day of this strategy he used his Sesame Street chair 5 times and had 2 accidents. The next day was the same. The third day he had no accidents, but I did allow him to wear a pull-up when we met a friend at a park (and he definitely took advantage of it!). The fourth day we went to a community BBQ so this was his first day clothed with underwear. He stayed dry the whole time we were at the BBQ, but he did have two accidents before and after. The fifth day was awesome. He was clothed most of the day and only had one accident. We even went to the mall where he willingly used a public bathroom (we brought along his potty seat to use because at the time he was afraid of falling in). We celebrated his success by giving him "treat pacis" (ring pops) and with the purchase of a few Octonauts and How To Train Your Dragon toys. At this point, he is doing awesome with peeing, but pooping is another story. I am confident we'll get there eventually. We're also still relying on diapers at bed time, though in the morning he will ask to pee in the potty if we haven't changed him yet. I'm pretty proud of how fast he caught on considering how resistant he was to the whole process. This kid loved his diapers! (And I didn't mind them, either.)

So excited for his "treat pacis!"

So yes, he had to be mostly potty-trained for preschool which he started on my first day back to work, August 20. He was so excited at the idea of preschool, and the first two days he was happy to go. Then reality sunk in. The third day of preschool he wailed on the couch, "But I already went two days!" Poor kid. Since then he has adjusted pretty well and his teacher says he is "flourishing." His potty-training success continues there, and I'm just relieved that he's not the only one with his name on the "accident board" every few days. (It's not a punishment, it just lets parents know to pick up their soiled clothes in the front.) It's really cute picking him up every day. He's so excited to see me, and tells me all about his day and all his new friends. We also have quite the growing collection of refrigerator artwork. 

First Day of Preschool

Sigh. I blinked and he grew up, just like everyone said he would. But he's still my baby.

Minnesota Vacation, Part 3

Ok, so this is actually the Wisconsin Vacation post, but let's not be technical. My best friend from high school lives in Madison, WI. Most years I only see her once in the summer when we all meet up in Minneapolis. However, this year she has a little baby so I figured traveling just to meet up with us might be hard on them. Instead we all met up in the Wisconsin Dells. If you're from the midwest area, you probably know of it. Basically, it's a resort town filled with waterparks. We dubbed it the Vegas of Wisconsin while we were there. We stayed at a complex called The Wilderness. It has multiple waterparks both indoor and outdoor, and most of them feature a children's area right next to the bigger waterslides. It was perfect for our two families!

Brian and I got there mid-afternoon on a Thursday and checked in. Noah was pretty excited to play in water, so we went to one of the little kid areas while we waited for our friends to arrive. They got in around dinner time so we went straight for food. We tried to eat at a place that boasts Pop Rocks cheesecake, but it was too busy so we got some to go instead. Noah had a lot of fun eating the left over pop rocks after we got back to the hotel. He also thought it was fun to hold on to baby Thurston, but didn't quite understand how unstable an almost 6 month old is. Let's just say Thurston almost fell on the floor.

On Friday morning we ate brunch and then hit the waterslides! My friend Danna and I have always enjoyed thrill rides and took a week long "roller coaster road trip" to celebrate graduating college back in 2003. We took turns with the husbands watching the kids so that we could hit some of the more adventurous slides. One of them involved stepping into a clear plastic booth with a floor that drops out from under you and shoots you straight down. Another favorite had Danna and I on a tube together getting dropped into a giant half pipe. So much fun! When it was our turn to watch the kids, I took a few photos. It was hard to take many though because it was so wet and I was worried about wrecking my camera.

Noah spent some time with me practicing his jumping skills on the side of a smaller shallow pool. He was getting pretty brave until my arms couldn't take it anymore!

At the end of the day we drove to Madison to spend a night with our friends at their house. On the way we stopped for some Dairy Queen and Noah made a pretty good mess of himself in his carseat. 

The next day we drove back to my in-law's house, but stopped at my sister's farm in eastern Wisconsin for a short visit. My sister cooked us dinner and Noah got to meet her newest calf T.J. and play in a cornfield. 

All in all it was another really fun trip home. We did a ton of driving which was a bit of a drag, but I wouldn't change one part of it. I'm already looking forward to next year's trip!