Sunday, February 26, 2012

Appropriate Monsters

2 is the best. There is no way my girl can stay this age long enough. Everything is so fun, beautiful, new, and amazing through her eyes. She is just purely happy about the smallest things. At the same time she can be intensely angry over the smallest things too but that's not my point!! I wish I was better at blogging things. As in blog all the hilarious things E tells me. I don't know how many times I laugh a day because of the stories she comes up with or things she does. One story in particular though I just know I need to journal somewhere so here goes :
Last Sunday morning she was sitting at the table coloring before we left for church. She was drawing a "monster" (big squiggly mess) and said "Oh my monster needs more blue" I told her that she was such a good monster drawer. She said "Yeah,(short pause) is that appopiate? (how she says appropriate)" I told her that yes it was appropriate for her to be a good monster drawer. She then asked to watched Monsters Incorporated but called it Monsters Appopiate. I reminded her it was incorporated. She said "oh yeah, incopoated. Ok. "

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

reasons

Ok, while I am on the theme of how God works in my life here is a bigger picture example beyond traffic and music.

So many people think that I am or should be mad with God. I simply am not. I do not understand why Cole and I can not have another baby when there are many people who do not want or care for their children but I do not believe that God is punishing me. I trust there is a bigger plan and picture. When I had my first mc before Eislynn. I just asked why, why, and why. I was so angry that crack addicts (not the word i used then :)) and other such people had babies but I lost mine. I now see though, whether it truly is what God had planned or if it is just my humble interpretation of his plan, I see a very concise and real reasoning behind it. I actually kind of like this story so I thought I should type it out to remember years from now.

In 2008 when I lost my first pregnancy we had just moved to Peoria, IL. We lived in some not so awesome apartments and were starting to look at houses for when our lease was up. We got the news at my first OB appointment that even though I should have been 9 weeks I was really only measuring 5 and that we wouldn't be having a baby in April. I couldn't get a D & C because of a lady's error at CAT. She had messed up our insurance and we didn't have any at the moment and the procedure was very expensive so we decided to wait it out and hope I miscarried naturally. Life went on. One rainy day I got home from work and the apartment was flooding. So much so that management had to put us up in a hotel. After a week they deemed the apartment liveable and we had to move back in. It was NOT liveable. It had a moldy smell before but now it was just awful almost unbearable. But it was stay there or be homeless. Cole and I got sick. Very sick. We had to go  back to a hotel on our own dime this time though.

Throughout this process we had been searching for a house even faster. Cole's parents were coming to visit us and we had no where to live let alone for them to stay! We ended up making a very quick decision to buy a condo in Washington. It was a bit more than we wanted to spend and we hadn't been looking for condos we were looking for houses with a fenced in yard and at least 3 bedrooms. Here is a quick version of what went down: -houses we had been looking at were all in a bad part of town we didn't realize was THAT bad
                  -seriously lots of robberies or murders in those parts
                  -our apartment management company wouldn't let us out of our lease because they claim we                
                  could still live in our apartment, we had to pay 2,000 to get our of our lease
                  -in the mean time I had to go to the emergency room for excessive bleeding and we now had a
                    big hospital bill coming since we had no insurance.
Life in Illinois was not getting off to the best start! Things picked up though :) Once CAT got things straightened out they did give us some of the money back for the ER visit since it was their fault for the mix up. The Vicodin also helped :)  Anyways...we went on to have Eislynn and that was great. We did however start thinking maybe we had jumped the gun a bit on the condo because it wasn't really the best "investment". Don't worry I am getting to the good stuff....One day Eislynn and I were at the park near our condo and there appeared to be a moms group there. I thought to my self "I wish I knew of a moms group, that would be nice to have/be a part of" Not even two hours later there was a knock on my door and a lady named Chris who lived in another one of the condos was inviting me to join the new moms group at her church. Now if that's not a sign that I was supposed to go to that moms group then I don't know what is! So I went. This moms group has been good for both Eislynn and I. It has lead to many friendships and we now attend the church it's held at as well. Both MOPS and the church make me feel more like part of a community. Without them I think I would be unhappy living in Illinois so far away from friends and family. This would put stress on me, Cole, and Eislynn too. If we hadn't had that miscarriage and all those other bad things happen I don't think we would have jumped so fast into that condo. If we hadn't then I would have never met Chris and would never have found my moms group or my church. Is this really the "reason" maybe, maybe not. All I know is I ended up having a wonderful amazing little girl and ended up meeting wonderful amazing people that I would have never met if it wasn't for the baby before Eislynn. Having an angel up there to watch over you is really quite a blessing.

Given the green light.

LeeAnn and I think I may be slightly psychic. Maybe I don't really believe that but I am very intuitive. I have an uncanny intuition and it is to be followed.

I feel like God is constantly giving us little signs whether they are in obvious form, little "coincidences", or things that aren't as obviously until hindsight. I feel they are all around and many times if you are open to them you can see Him at work in your life. Now, I realize that God doesn't control traffic lights but just hear me out on this story I have to tell. On the way to my ultrasound last month I hit every red light, for real EVERY. I mean even the ones that are NEVER EVER red. The one by Tractor Supply, the first one after you cross the bridge to Peoria, just every single one. I even called Cole to tell him how frustrating this was because I thought I would be late for my appointment. Deep down though I knew what it meant. I knew that the appointment wouldn't go well. "Something" was just telling me this. Even though I had been sick for 1 1/2 months with morning sickness when I normally don't get it and even though I had no reason to believe there wouldn't be a heart beat on that monitor, I just felt it. That was WAY too many red lights stopping me from getting there. That was the same way it had been with my previous two appointments as well when I got the bad news.

I have been researching different things that may help with early recurrent pregnancy loss (rpl) one thing I found interesting and wanted to give a try was acupuncture. I wasn't really sure how I felt about it. If I do it I will end up having to go in sometimes even twice a week for it. This is hard since it takes about 30 minutes to drive there an hour for treatment and then another 30 to drive home. I didn't want to have to rely on friends to watch Eislynn that much each week. I thought however that I would give it a try. I know they would do it for me because I would do it for them. I brought Eislynn over to my cousins house and I went to my first appointment the other week. I kid you not almost EVERY light was green. Like seriously every light. I drove from my house in Washington all the way on 150 until Alan Rd so that's probably like 20 minutes and at least 15 lights. I didn't have to stop until once at Sheridan and then one more time until Alan. That's seriously crazy.  Again not that God spends his time thinking about my Pandora play list but also on this drive the best songs were on my Pandora station. It was just a great drive. Once I got to the office I found out that this place that I picked at "random" has free childcare during your appointments. It is a beautiful office and I fully trust my child would be taken care of well during my appointments.  Will acupuncture plus all this other stuff we are doing really be my answer? I don't know. But right now in this moment I feel as if I have been given the "green light" to go ahead and give it a try. I felt so at peace and happy about the decision. Added bonus the office also takes my insurance and they magically cover acupuncture even though they don't cover anything at my RE's office .

EDIT: Just a little added info. I am not pregnant again already. We are waiting until this spring or summer to try again. Just be healthy and take a little break from it all for a while. Acupuncture is thought to help the lining of your uterus and the quality of your eggs. It can take 2 or 3 months for that to fully take affect as eggs are produced 3 months in advance. Acupuncture can lower the average womans chances of a miscarriage from 21% to 4%. Now, that is for someone who doesn't have bigger problems at play as all women have about a 21% chance of miscarriage each time they get pregnant.