L's Birthday

Today is my daughter's birthday. It is also the day that the decision was made to allow millions of unborn children to be killed in the womb.

My husband and I (at that time A was just my boyfriend) found out I was pregnant a few weeks after we graduated from college. I was actually pregnant when we graduated, I just didn't know it yet. We had both just moved to DC. I was a swim teacher and was starting an internship with plans to return to my home state of California for an excellent job I had secured for the beginning of the school year. A was also interning for the summer, while working at a coffee shop. He was ready to begin a masters program in DC in the Fall.

We were planning on getting married, but our breach of our own morals in the chastity department proved quite confusing in fully committing to each other. Finding out I was pregnant we put these plans on hold. Now the most important thing was figuring out what we needed to do for this baby. That summer was one of the most stressful, and also beautiful of my life. We had some very difficult conversations in the first weeks of finding out. We quickly realized that in order to figure out how to best care for our child, we needed to figure out if we wanted to be together or not. Although we both thought we wanted to be married, the pregnancy had shaken both of us. So we made a deal. If we weren't going to stay together, we would give our little baby up for adoption. We were both adamant that we wanted to make sure this baby had a responsible mother and father who loved the child and each other. At that point we weren't completely positive we could be that. After making that decision, we felt we had adequate time to discern our own relationship, and see if we could be those parents we wanted for our baby.

After those first few weeks, and dealing with the discouraging reactions from our family, the summer became a stressful and romantic time for us. We had no money, but we knew that despite everything we were still in love, still wanted to be together, and wanted to raise our child together. We learned to rely on each other completely being in a new city thousands of miles away from our families. We had our first ultrasound at 14 weeks and both cried seeing our little babe for the first time. Slowly things began to fall into place. God seemed to be watching over us as jobs came through in the nick of time. Slowly our panicked talks of adoption faded away, and we started instead planning how to take care of our little family. In September when I was almost five months pregnant, A proposed to me. We squealed and celebrated, and started planning our wedding.

L was born 8 days before her due date, on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, January 22nd. The irony was not lost on us, since in many ways we were great candidates for abortion. We weren't in the most dire of situations, but we were both fresh graduates, with lots of potential and job possibilities now burdened with the responsibility of raising a child together. We were extremely poor. But seeing our little newborn daughter together made those objections to her birth seem completely silly. We were going to figure it out!

Today L turns two, and she is a joyful, spirited little elf-girl. She is constantly amazing us with her quick mind, and nimble feet. She is constantly helping us working out our purgatory time with her tantrums and sometimes crazy sleep :) We cannot imagine our lives without her. Have our lives been harder because we had a baby long before we planned or the world says is acceptable? Probably. But our lives have also been full of learning and joy and happy tears thanks to this tiny, improbable blessing.

-November

Happy New Year! (lots of baby talk just fyi)

I've been a bit absent lately, but I wanted to post a quick happy new year along with some of my hopes for 2012. A had last week off and he is quite distracting explaining my lack of posts :) We've also been getting as much as possible together for this new baby. I'm due January 10th (next week! AAAAAHHHHHH), but L was 8 days early shocking both of us who had been hearing the entire world tell us that first babies are always late. We are a bit more prepared for a possible early baby this time, although I really hope he waits to come at least until my sister gets here (she'll be here Wednesday). She just graduated with her Bachelors in December and will be coming to help out with the new one, then living with us for a few months while she gets on her feet post-college. I am so excited to have her with us, and for her to get to be around for baby J's coming. When L was born she was living in Europe and didn't get to meet the little girl until she was four months old. Tragedy.

The week off was fantastic. We did lots of very lazy things, naps in the afternoon, PJs until noon, snuggling with L and watching Shaun the Sheep (which she is now obsessed with, oops). I did have to do a bit of work from home too which took up a lot of my time not hanging with the family. We also did several house cleaning, and baby preparation projects and feel much more prepared.

We are very excited for 2012, and hoping for good things. Of course the new baby makes it a pretty exciting time. But A is also finishing his masters in May, I am doing well in my new job and I'm hopeful it will help make ends meet and not be too tough on me with the little ones. A has some job possibilities that I hope come to some good. I was a bit wary to make full-on resolutions this year since I don't know what this kid will be like and what I'll have time to actually accomplish. But here are my hopes/goals.

1. Run a race in the summer. I ran cross country through high school and college, but have been a bit of a couch potato the last few years. I'm hoping signing up for something gives me a good goal. I'm planning on a six to ten mile run.

2. Work on taking things in stride more. I stress way too much about everything. I really want to work on trusting more, and just being more peaceful.

3. Knit more. I love knitting, but the last few years I just have not dedicated much time to it. It's important to me because I love the results and it really helps me relax and get some creativity out.

4. Pray with A. This is something we'll do really well on for a few weeks, then slack off for a few, then try again. So we'll keep trying this year.

That's my list! I'm not going to make it longer since I know that a two year old and a new born will probably take a bit of effort this year :)

-November

Hope continues

And suddenly, hope is flying at me from all directions! Granted, it has something to do with the time of year. But now that I've decided to put my energy into hoping, and into acting based on that hope, I'm hearing so many hopeful things. If you will allow me, gentle reader, just a few examples from the past two days:

1) Husband has a good friend who tutored a priest in English. This priest has now been sent to serve in the Middle East, and he sent this good friend a draft of his planned Christmas homily. It said Christmas was about three things, and the very first one is hope. (The second was family, by the way, and I'm *hoping* that this is something I can read into).

2) I've been watching Cr.anford, a delightful period British mini-series, and it makes me feel all cozy inside. In the last episode (I think), one of the characters said something to the effect of, "It's not the despair that hurts the most; it's the hope." Basically this has been my thinking for a while, and it highlighted to me that this is a universal problem, but I need to snap out of it!

3) Then there are the innumerable Christmas hope-themed commercials, songs, made-for-tv movies, etc., that keep popping up. We're all suceptible to advertising in some way, and it turns out that they're advertising hope, and I'm buying.

4) The support of friends, both IRL and on here. I'm so glad that November and I decided to jump in and start blogging, because I feel so much more connected and supported than I think I ever would have. Also, I've told a few more IRL friends about the TTC situation, and that's gone pretty well. My best friend from college is someone I had hesitated sharing this with. She's getting married in the spring, and seems to be in quite the delirium of joy. I didn't really want to be gloomy bridesmaid for her; this is a time where I want her to know that she has all my support. But after I told her, she said "With Murphy's Law, now that you've ordered your (nonrefundable, nonexchangeable) bridesmaid dress for my wedding, you have to get pregnant, just so that the dress doesn't fit!" For some reason, that made me smile when nothing else did. Yay for friends.

It might sound silly that I'm going on like this, but I don't think I had realized how hopeless I've been feeling until the hope returned to my spirit!

-January

How the last few months have really put us through the ringer

The month of December has been a rough one. Particularly these last couple of weeks. Really it was set off by me losing my job in October, but really came to a head in December. This entire month it has felt like we are hemorrhaging money. I have been a huge Grinch about Christmas I am sure, since I'm always calculating what we can spend. Lots of other things have been getting to me as well. So since I know you are interested, here are my complaints.

1. Finances/Jobs: Why are finances so dang hard? On the up side I just started a new job which I think will make things a bit more stable. But then I worry how I will handle working with a two year old and a newborn? So now I have two jobs, and two kids, and I don't know how I will do it all. I'm hoping this baby is pretty easy like L, since if we had something like colic come up it would get...interesting. A has been looking at new jobs and even had an interview a few days ago mainly because it would be so helpful if he could just make more. I know it kills him that we can't make it on his paychecks alone.

2. Kids: L has come into a new kind of phase that A keeps calling the terrible twos. I'm afraid he is correct. Mainly she is throwing lots of tantrums and has taken to demanding, well, everything. If her demands are not met then tantrum. It was still manageable until she started having sleeping issues. She has been going to bed at 7pm every night since she was 8 months old, and as often as people told me we were really lucky, I guess I forgot that it is the most awesome schedule ever. Suddenly she is resisting bed time and each night has become a struggle. I keep thinking she needs a later bed time, but she seems so grouchy and tired from 5pm on, that I have kept trying to get her to sleep earlier.

So this is where it gets interesting. Last night L completely lost it, and A put her to bed right about 7 since we agreed she must be tired from a busy day and needed to have some alone time to just go to sleep (gentle bedtimes have been rare lately). We put her to bed and could hear her yelling, "NO NO NO!!" from her bedroom, but knew she would soon tire out. I was just letting my heart rate from the day go down, when L suddenly emerges from her room, walks into the living room and begins bellowing her displeasure at being put to bed. Holy crap, she can now climb out of her crib. And open her door. And apparently she learned to do these things on the same night.

She finally went to sleep in her crib an hour later, but I felt completely defeated. She has been a pretty good sleeper for a long time, and it just felt unjust that she would suddenly start having issues right before we are having a whole new baby!! AAaHHHHHhh

3. Marriage: It's not that marriage has been that hard, it's more that everything else has been so stressful it makes us both testy, and consequently testy with each other. I know part of it is how hormonal since I'm so late in the pregnancy game, which has lead to lots of crying, and what guy isn't stressed out by his lady crying? We've had lots of purely logistical talking, and not much just chill out time talking. In the last few weeks we've watched like three of those crass comedy movies just to try and chill out together for a while (it actually works pretty well...we even finally watched The Hangover). I'm hoping that having this next week off after Christmas gives us some time to be more calm with each other.

This is my official whiney post since January told me I should whine more :) Fortunately I am writing all this right before we get our week off between Christmas and New Years, and it is going to rock!! We are going to stay up late together watching movies and eating junk food, get the baby stuff ready to go, play in the backyard, and reconnect as much as possible. We are even planning a fancy date night in the city.

-November