ohmigosh ohmigosh ohmigosh!!!!

i just got really good news in an email. REALLY good news. i can't share much more than that so please don't call and ask me. just be really excited with me AND continue to pray! EEEEEK!!!! pray, be excited, then pray, then be excited, then pray AND be really excited.

on another note-paul is getting really irritated with me (rightfully so) that i don't get excited for pregnant women that didn't have to try for 2+ years. i'm trying to get over it. i'm at least able to love babies again. (i used to not make eye contact with them because i was angry that they were cute and somebody elses.) but i've at least gotten over that part. *sigh* so now i gotta get over pregnant ladies too! give me a break. one thing per decade. is that not fast enough?! i'm trying. i truly, promise you that i am trying. but i'm not there yet.

oh-and in funny this-is-really-my-life?-news: tonight i had acupuncture and i just love molly. now we can laugh that every other appointment will be my pms week and that i will probably come and just cry and cry and cry. ha! poor molly. i think my freckles conceal the part where i'm italian and make people think i'm irish (one of the FEW nationalities that ironically, i am not) so she doesn't know what a huge cryer i really am. well now that i have hormones flowing through my body i cry alot. and when i get pms AND hormones HA! i'm a MESS! so poor molly has to put up with me crying through every other acu appointment. anyway, tonight i said "paul's coming down and we're going to go to dinner" and she said "OH! he's coming here? with the baby?" and i said "oh...no actually, we're just meeting at the restaurant." and she deflated and said "oh." i said "you should come! we're just going right up the street.....seriously!" and she said "oh, no....would he mind?" heehee. she's so cute! and i said "oh no! he won't mind at all!" so she said "well i have some herbs to mix up and i'll be right there." so i got to have dinner with paul, sweet pea and molly. how fun is that? i love my crazy mixed up life. seriously. even though the infertility sucks. i do love my crazy life.

hopeish kinda

tonight i had acupuncture again and she sat and talked to me about how i'm feeling and i told her how i've been so depressed this last week and how everyone and their brother (ok-not literally) have announced pregnancies and she got determined. my last cycle was only 30 days. that's HUGE progress. aside from a fluke 18 day cycle i had when i first started acupuncture that's the closest i've ever in my life come to a 28 day cycle. brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. and i told her how insecure i've been getting with pms. like - literraly-i had more self confidence in the 6th grade than i do when i have pms. and she said "oh ya, that's just pms." i sat up and said "does every woman go through that every month? because it's happened to me twice in a row now!" and she giggled and said "yes." then thought about it and said "so you've NEVER had that before?" and i said "oh no, seriously, the last time i was this emotional was when i was in college." and she said my cycles should have peaked at 21 or 22 and then stayed normal or fertile. but when i was in college my life was such a rocky roller coaster of a mess it's hard telling now, looking back, if it was just during weeks that would have been pms or if that was just my life then. i honestly think that was just my life then but even with the benefit of a doubt that would mean my last real cycle was 12 years ago. not good odds when you're trying to make a baby. she thinks i've not been ovulating but when i test i get positive ovulation tests if i take them long enough. sometimes it's on day 17 (it's supposed to be more like day 14) but still i ovulate.
i'm rambling now.
all this to say i feel hopeful again. and i don't think molly even realized how little hope i had and how much hope i needed but i think i've found my mojo again and can make it through another month.

warning: this is a pissy attitude post

ok. i'm having a bad day. actually i'm having a bad two days in a row. the duggars have announced #19 is coming. and she said on their show last night "by god's grace i will carry this baby and by god's grace i will give birth to it." and i just thought-where's my stupid grace? where's my baby? where's my giving birth? what did i ever do to not deserve some grace? it just makes me mad. and we paid the bills last night and again have no money to put into savings and i feel like i'm throwing money away to acupuncture. i'm still not pregnant, i'm just more money in the hole. paul says not to worry about it and it's not that i worry about it. it's that i'm tired of wasting money on something that comes naturally to what seems like everyone else. and i'm pissed. and hurt that i don't get any stupid grace.
i went to bed questioning paul if he really believes that we'll ever have our own baby because i don't believe anymore. he says he does.

big strides. ok, not BIG strides, but strides nonetheless

this week i took sweet pea for a weigh in. 15 pounds 11 ounces. YAY!!!! ok-so she's still not on the charts for gaining BUT she's gaining AND she's starting to walk AND she's teething. so when you add in those factors it makes my measley 8 ounce gain look like i'm raising godzilla. she's actually chubbing out of her 3-6 month pants. i'm so ecxited. i would LOVE if one week someone said "ooh look at that! a whole pound" or something ridiculous. or even if they didn't have to go back to their office to "check the charts." she's just so small that she doesn't fit any of them.

this week was a little bit rough for me. i got news about how things are going and it made me shake in my boots a little bit. i know she's not mine until the judge says so. and i know we are so so freaking far away from that that i can't even see the light at the end of the tunnel yet. but i still read into every little move and over analyze every report that comes back to me. and i know the case workers can't tell me so much stuff because of privacy and they can't mislead me in any way and i understand and even appreciate that. but if i could just get my hands on a genie bottle or a crystal ball. *sigh* i got to acupuncture friday night and molly said "so how are you doing?" and i just broke down into a pool of sobs. it was right after the shaking in my boots phone call. i feel so ridiculous. i KNOW what to expect. i can tell people exactly what has to happen between here and then. but my heart just refuses to follow suit.

which brings me to another update. acupuncture is coming along fine. but the sugar part of the diet is getting hard. it's still not hard to avoid sugar, but it is getting hard to avoid things like white flour, and potatoes that turn into sugar once they hit my metabolism. that part is getting frustrating. it cuts out pizza crust, french frieds, mashed potatoes, bread, crackers, sweet breads and treats that every office has sitting around. it's just getting hard. and i'm not doing good avoiding dairy. DAIRY. i gave up dairy YEARS ago because it made me sick. but now knowing that someone else says that i can't have it has me feeling like i need yogurt or american cheese. all these great little treats we have laying around to fatten up a certain sweet pea. (see above if you've already forgotten our fattening up mission.) i don't know. i hate to bitch and moan through this whole post of a pity party. and there's all these pregnancy announcements around me and i think "how'd SHE get pregnant?" i have to remember my problems are not everyone else's problems. and my journey is not hers. and i have to keep trying the path i've chosen because i don't know what else to do but give up. oh forget it. i guess i'm going to bitch and moan through this entire post. whoa is me. go on, give it to me. let me have all your pity.

my chi has arrived

last night at acupuncture my needles were in, i was just about to dose off when my shoulder started itching. but i was afraid to scratch it because i didn't want my needles to fall out. then my eyebrow started to itch. then my nose! it kept going! when molly came back in i told her about 5 minutes ago everything started itching! she gasped a little and said "oh your chi has arrived!" i said "what's that mean?" she said "well the chi moves with the blood. so that's good." i said "so it's like healing?" she nodded and said "ya." yeah! i hope it means all this no sugar is doing something. although i need to be better at giving up flours and breads etc. i'll work on it. sloooowly though.

it's been a WEEK!

sorry for my lack of posts. life keeps happening. tuesday we were supposed to run some stuff down to the girls and on my way home paul called and said their mom had called us to see if we could come over for dinner! OK! she made delicious stuffed shells and keep in mind-it was vegan and it was delicious. i told her "now i understand why the girls would cry through dinners!" ha! i took some fresh strawberries and white cake cupcakes for a strawberry shortcake of sorts and of course their mom knew how to whip up sugar-free-vegan whipped cream. we spent 3 hours just talking and eating and covering all the bases. their dad even thanked us and told us that we are welcome in their home anytime and we don't have to worry that we're calling too much because they appreciate everything we've done for them. it made me cry. we left feeling like our life is even more weird than we thought.

then friday night i went to my acupuncture appointment and we were talking about my diet and how i'm doing and molly was shocked that i was able to drop sugar so quickly. i kinda felt like "you mean i didn't HAVE to?" she also said she really wants me to try and go gluten free. at first i thought THAT is gonna be too hard. but then i got to thinking about what i would have to give up on top of what i'm eating and it would be....my whole wheat toast in the morning. we make pizza once a week with whole wheat flour AND mozzarella, i'd have to give that up. all dairy-ALL dairy-even my crack yogurt. my crack yogurt is: greek yogurt (that Brenda introduced me to just last week), organic dairy yogurt, a good squirt of agave and then some fruit-raspberries, strawberries, peaches, bananas-anything-you can't go wrong. BUUUUUUT, i'll have to give that up. but that's pretty much it-we're there already. the kids mom let me borrow a cookbook (again with the irony of my life) and it is all sugar free, wheat free, dairy free recipes. so that has been a wealth of information on other flours i can use. so today i'm going to make my grocery list and head down to whole foods and see what i can't figure out.

even though i have no kids of my own, i'm forming relationships with people i wouldn't have picked out of a crowd of thousands to befriend, i'm in a place in life i never in a million years, let alone 3 months ago, would have believed i would be, i'm using acupuncture to open my "chanels" in order to do what most people do on accident a million times around the world a day, i feel what i think others call "blessed".

healing

years ago i used to be known as the artistic one. missy was the smart one. dan was the tough one. brock was the funny one. so that left artistic for me. and i was always drawing and creating and wearing off the wall clothes because they had more color on them than my private school uniform. ugh! nothing like GREY polyester to scream "I have style!" well anyway, then i met and married paul and he was the artistic one. i haven't really done much with my painting because he can paint something and it looks like it's really sitting on the canvas. but lately i got inspired. maybe it's all the herbs the acupuncturist has me one. i'm making a set of paintings that i hope will follow my healing. the first one is a set of rotten putrid eggs. the next one is the same eggs with acupuncture needles and a band-aid. the third is a set of two healthy eggs sitting in a nest. and the fourth and final painting is a fluffy baby chick. here's the first two. they are a work in progress.


the first one is smaller, 2"x3", the next one is a touch bigger, 3"x4" and then the next one is 4"x5", then the baby chick goes back to the little canvas. don't know what i'll ever do with them. hang them in a little spot or something.