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About a month ago I found myself standing in the feminine product aisle at Target staring at the pregnancy tests, a place I really thought I’d never be again. A week before this moment I was standing in my bathroom getting ready one morning feeling…off, and it suddenly hit me that my period was at least a week late, maybe more. I had only had a few cycles since starting to wean Anna a few months prior and I wasn’t paying that close of attention to the timing. I chalked it up to things not being regular yet and figured I’d ignore that off feeling and waiting a few more days to give my body a chance to prove my intuition wrong. Fast forward a few days and I was hit with crazy nausea and was moody as all get out. No doubt about it, I knew before I even took the test, I was pregnant.
Life is full of little surprises, or big surprises as the case may be. I thought I was done with 2. I thought my family was complete with my 2 beautiful girls. Apparently, life has other plans for us.
Since we just moved to Seattle and I didn’t have an OB/GYN lined up yet so I had to scramble to find a new doctor. Since I was a new patient they wouldn’t see me until I was between 8-10 weeks. The first appointment they had available that fit my schedule was Friday, which put me at almost exactly 10 weeks. I hate waiting for that first doctor’s appointment to get confirmation that everything is okay. It was even worse having to wait almost a month for it. I’ve had crazy morning sickness all day, every day and have been so exhausted I feel like I’m barely functioning, so I figured everything was fine but it is always nice to get medical confirmation.
I got my confirmation Friday when I saw The Surprise for the first time on that ultrasound screen moving all around and waving its little arms at me.
Everything looks great. The Surprise is measuring a few days ahead and looks perfect.
I’ve had a month to let this sink in and yet I still can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m going to be the parent to 3 kids! It feels crazy and scary and exciting and so many things I can’t even begin to name them all.
Today I am 10 weeks 3 days and counting down the days until this wretched first trimester is over and I can hopefully bid farewell to my constant nausea and gagging and pretty much daily trips to the bathroom to throw up. For the record I hate morning sickness.
Turns out life with two kids, especially when one of those kiddos is a 4 year old in all sorts of activities, is pretty busy. Between school, trips to the library, dance class, t-ball and swimming lessons I feel like we are hardly ever home. We always either on our way to or on our home from one activity or another. Maya is loving all her little classes so it makes the business worth it.
Unfortunately, all this craziness has meant I haven’t found a lot of time in my day to update this little old blog. I’m going to return to writing posts at night after the kids go to bed so I can get back into a better, more frequent post, groove.
Anna has been busy too, growing and trying with all her might to figure out this crawling thing 
She can get up on all fours and rock but hasn’t figured out moving her hands and knees once she is up on them. Today she even got herself up on her hands and feet!! Perhaps she’ll just go straight from pushing herself backwards and rolling to get where she wants to go to walking. I really can’t believe how big my little baby is getting.
She enjoys our busy schedule, well at least the opportunity it presents to watch a bunch of 4 year olds running around. I’m guessing she could probably do without the constant nap interruptions, but she handles it well. She watches her sister partaking in all her little activities in style
This past week has been tough. Saying goodbye to Laura was hard and has left us all with heavy hearts and there have been lots of tears. However, living with two adorable little girls who can make me smile even at my worst has meant there have been lots of smiles in the sadness.
Maya was on spring break all last week. Which meant lots of extra trips to the park, leisurely walks to the grocery store, trips to the library and a very special Mommy/Maya date night to see Disney On Ice Dare to Dream. I asked Maya this morning if she enjoyed her break from school, she responded that she can’t wait to go back to school but she had fun staying home too especially seeing the princesses skating
This has been a big week for Anna as well. She started out last week toothless and now has two little teeth. Her first tooth poked through last Tuesday and the other one made it’s appearance yesterday. The teeth were a big surprise because she wasn’t obviously teething. On Tuesday when her first tooth poked through I had felt in her mouth that morning as we were playing and she was biting on my hand. Later in the day we were out running errands, as I was putting her in the car she was giggling and squealing at Maya, I happened to notice a little tooth poking through her gums! Yesterday’s tooth came through just as easily and I didn’t know it was there until she bit down on my finger and I felt two little tooth buds instead of one. Hopefully all her teeth make their appearance this easily. Anna achieved another big milestone this past week as well, she has begun to be mobile. She hasn’t figured out how to crawl yet but has started pushing herself backwards, army crawl style. The funniest part is that she’ll often push herself backwards when she is trying to get something in front of her Here is a picture from her first ever adventure off the blanket. She started out right in front of Laura, she then pushed herself backwards, turned around and then rolled over in order to get that large pink piece of paper. It won’t be long now and she’ll be all over the place!
We ended our week off by attending the wedding of our friends, Michael and Serena. It was a beautiful day, as was the ceremony. We had a wonderful time watching them exchange their vows outside in the beautiful spring weather and then helping them celebrate afterwards. Maya loves weddings so she was just thrilled to get to go. Anna was her perfect little self, even when we kept her up way passed her bedtime!
Even though last week was filled with a lot of sadness and tears we still find time to smile.
Laura
10/1999 – March 20, 2012
We said goodbye to our dear, sweet Laura yesterday. She blessed us with her cuddles, snuggles and sweet personality for 12 wonderful years. We love our sweet girl and will miss her more than words can describe.
I have known this day was coming as Laura has been sick, really sick, for a while. I’m actually surprised it didn’t come sooner. But knowing this day was coming did not make it any easier. It is hard to get over that selfish desire to keep my sweet, cuddly furbaby here with me and admit that all the signs were there that it was time to say goodbye. When she was first diagnosed with chronic renal failure she was really sick and the vet hadn’t expected her to last long, but then the fluid treatments and medications we were giving her helped her bounce back a bit. I let myself dream that her bounce back would last for a while, and it did, but not long enough. Is it ever long enough?
One fall day, 12 years ago, I found myself at the humane society with my boss. We had a cat in our office and her and I were there to pick out a little friend for him. As I stood there looking at a kitten with her I felt a gentle touch on my arm. I turned around to find this adorable kitty reaching out of her cage at me. That kitty eventually came home with me and became my Laura. I’ve always thought I was meant to be her momma, that I was meant to be there that day so I could find her and bring her home with me.
Laura’s early life, her year of life before she came home with me, was hard on her. A visit to our vet found a kitty suffering from a laundry list of issues including a shattered hip, likely from being hit by a car, that required surgery, ringworm, an upper respiratory infection and she was suffering from diabetes (likely as a result of the trauma from her hip injury). Many months and lots of procedures and medication later she was healthy and had completely solidified her spot in my heart.
Laura was the cuddliest cat I’ve ever met. She was happiest when curled up next to one of us with her face pressed against us purring/snoring away. Her fur was so, so soft, like bunny fur. Petting her was so relaxing. She wasn’t an overly playful kitty, sleep was her favorite past time, but it was so adorable when she all of sudden got a big burst of energy and attacked a toy. From the moment we brought Maya home from the hospital Laura was in love. With Maya as a baby, and now with Anna, Laura would curl up close by and snuggle with the warm babies as they played on the floor. She would even tolerate all the fur and ear pulling because she just loved them and cuddling close to them. When I picture Laura I will always see her curled up on the back of the couch behind me, her warm, wet nose pressed firming into my shoulder, the sound of her purrs and snores drowning out everything else. You know a cat is truly at home, truly loved and truly relaxed in her own life when she can sleep like this.
I have always felt the need to make up for Laura’s hard start to life. I hope that the last 12 years she has felt the immense love I have for her, that we all have for her. I’ve cared for the best I could. I’ve done what I needed to do to keep her healthy. It breaks my heart that in end there just wasn’t enough I could do, there wasn’t a magic cure.
Laura, we love you and we will miss you immensely. You hold a special little spot in my heart and that spot will always belong to you. There isn’t another quite like you in this world, you were very special. I hope kitty heaven is filled with warm, sunny spots to sleep. Rest in peace sweet baby girl.
Arguably, we are in the midst of a once in a lifetime experience. We knew going into this that the things we would do, the places we would see, the experiences we would have, would likely be things we’d only get to do once. Traveling to Australia is a big deal. It takes enough time and money that it isn’t something a person is likely to do over and over again (although I’ll be hankering to come back after this experience). When this opportunity came up we knew we couldn’t pass it up even though it meant I’d be spending part of my pregnancy here in Australia and would have to figure out prenatal care while I was here. Even though it meant I would have to travel back home alone, with a 3 year old and while 32 weeks pregnant. Even though it meant that Lorne wouldn’t be coming home until a mere 4 weeks before my due date. We couldn’t let these things get in our way, we knew we had to do it.
When we were planning our trip our goal was to do and see as much as we could given that Lorne would still have to work all week long (and we haven’t found a money tree yet!). Australia is a huge country, we’re talking indescribably huge, and seeing everything, or even a small part of it, is difficult if not impossible. We didn’t let that stop us. From the moment we arrived we have been doing our best to soak it all in, to see as much as we can. We can’t travel to all the places we would love to go, time and money just won’t allow it, but we’ve made the best of the time we do have and we’ve explored our little corner of Queensland to the fullest. I’m proud of how much we have made our time stretch, of how much we’ve been able to do and see.
Time is winding down for Maya and I. In just 3 short weeks we’ll be heading back home. This weekend we are heading out on a little adventure within an adventure to help us feel like we made the most of our time here. We are heading to Sydney. I figured we couldn’t come to Australia and not see the one place everyone knows, see the sites most famous around the world. So, in the wee hours of tomorrow morning we will head out to Sydney. We’ll spend 3 days exploring a different city. Seeing sites most will only ever see in pictures and on television. We’ll soak it all in, create even more fantastic memories to take home with us.
We were determined to leave here feeling like we had done all we could given our time and money constraints. When I board that plane for the long journey home I know I will feel like I’ve made this adventure all it could be. We’ll have memories to last us a lifetime.
Look out Sydney, here we come!