The End of Two

I am going to miss two so much. I know, that is not immediately obvious but that’s because if I talked about how magnificent RR was all the time you’d call social services to discuss my crack habit.

She still can’t pronounce her L sounds. She went to a birthday party and rode on a fire engine, coming home with a red balloon and incredible tales of fighting fires.

I HAVE A BEYOON, MAMA! IMA FIREMAN! I YIKE IT SO MUCH!

She adorably assesses everyone’s personality positively.

He’s a nice man, mama. And you’re a nice yady. Mama’s a nice yady, too. 

She remembers that we’ve been places and that, even though I was out of town at the beginning of last month, I came back as promised. She never misses the opportunity to remind me. The joy in her voice makes me feel like I’m constantly winning at life. Transportation, in particular, is something she’s particularly invested in. There are several train tracks in town and we regularly celebrate their use:

(Upon seeing any airplane and remembering our trip to Chicago) We went to Acado, mama! Member, mama?
(When I open her door after a nap) You came back, mama! I’m so gyad!
(Passing under an unoccupied train track, mournfully) No train taday, mama. No train taday.

Bedtimes follow a strict routine: one story (of late, a modified “Olivia Goes to Venice” – modified because that Olivia has too much sass), one rendition of some small made-up story (of late, Louis the Kangaroo who, unfortunately, loves to bounce so much he hits his head on the moon – despite his mama’s good advice), and one lullaby repeated until she shouts, goat-like, for D to put her in the crib (of late, Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree). At the conclusion she leans up to whisper in my ear:

I yove you SO much, mama.

Her toys have elaborate conversations. She builds complex block towers and alternates between fearlessly sprinting everywhere she goes and dragging her feet endlessly while she picks dandelions and blows the seeds up into the sky. She climbs the railings lining our concrete steps while D winces and she picks increasingly higher heights to climb onto and jump off off, all while announcing, “I don’t want to fawl, mama, I will never fawl.” She can’t decide.

She is able to walk a half mile to the park, play for two hours and walk home again, uphill all the way. She takes several small breaks: to greet a pen of chickens, to peer at the endless construction between home and the park, and to read stop signs. Every so often she asks to ride on our shoulders. Every so often, she takes a moment to fling herself down and enjoy the sunshine.

No, two is not so bad at all.

Come Back in a Week

Whoa now. Was this progesterone test a thing when D carried RR? There I was, like the Venus de Milo in repose and discussing the Hindenburg* with my wife when the nurse suggested we come back in a week for a progesterone test to see if we had a shot at a viable pregnancy. Or something like that. Essentially, it appears that while such a blood test won’t predict pregnancy, it can certainly tell us if the odds are against us.

Unfortunately, for the Venus de Milo, she had to stand while waiting for something magnificent to be created. You and I are creative and can thus imagine what she really would have done once she got tired of holding up that damn sheet. 

Finding out that it “probably didn’t work”? Exactly what I wanted to do with my Thursday. But, might as well get the crushing disappointment out of the way, right? Given that we’ll have house guests throughout the second week of waiting, it’s probably a good thing to keep me from being too high strung.

Also – why did none of you tell me that my uterus would behave like an asshole after an IUI? Cramping and general discomfort ala HSG (only for an extended period of time). Apparently, my cervix doesn’t really dig being toyed with. Regardless, I forgive you in an attempt to send a subliminal message to my rouge egg and sperm that I am a nurturing mother earth who is a fertile field, complaining cervix aside. Shh. Don’t tell them any different.

* During my wife’s second IUI, we found ourselves discussing, at length, the Lockerbie bombing. I don’t know what sparked the conversation, only that I explained what little I knew of it while my wife (probably) sent out a little prayer. This time, remembering our oddly timed Lockerbie discussion, we invoked the Hindenburg. Not as a talisman, just something I happen to be doing at work right now. Go figure.

“He Likes Pizza and Plays the Guitar”

Sometimes I feel, just a little bit, like a novelty. I reassure myself that people like me, couples like ours, are a dime a dozen. Probably. Right? At least at a fertility clinic. But there’s still that sense.

D and I handle this by being happy, friendly, and funny. For the most part, it’s just who we are. Yesterday, we joked with the lab workers about our donor  He likes pizza, I said. He says he plays the guitar. I smiled into the silence and they burst into laughter. Those tiny anonymous vials don’t play guitar and like pizza. And they don’t look like RR, a picture of whom D was dangling over my shoulder. All three technicians grinned and laughed with us.

In the clinic, I popped my head up to remind the doctor that the less I saw of him the better. He paused and half chuckled. The nurse sputtered into a smile (being a surly sort) and we shot that sperm past my cervix with a smile on our faces. Our regular receptionist emphatically wished us well.

Let’s hope all that laughter and good karma results in something. Something good. Egg, ahoy.

Want to know about what exactly happens at an IUI appointment?

Ovulation Success!

As a librarian, perhaps I should preserve the public record but I’m not THAT sort of librarian.

Count yourself lucky if you didn’t have to read through this morning’s post and join me in hoping that everything does what it’s supposed to do. Happily (for me), the same doctor we’ve seen throughout (of the three in the practice) and the one who knocked up my lovely wife, will be joining us.

Well, Now That’s Out of the Way

RR has been sleeping less well at night. We’ve become accustomed to plenty of peaceful nights. Nights that began early in the evening and extended well into the 7 o’clock hour. Oh, we were so refreshed. We woke up feeling like new souls every day. Life was shiny in the way that it can only be when you are not peering through the veil of sleep deprivation.

Lest you think it has always been this way, let me assure you that in child-time, two weeks is practically forever. Hell, in sleep-time, three nights is enough to make me forget that I was ever tired to begin with. But we’ve had our share of sleep trials. Apparently, now is also one of those times.

Suddenly a nighttime wake-up has morphed into a bedtime reset complete with requests for rocking, singing, and story time. RR is dissatisfied with any attempt to wrap it up and howls if you try to put her back in the crib. Repeat. At least twice. By now you know me well enough to know that my tolerance lasted one night before I morphed into stumbling, bleary, antihero who approached nighttime wake-ups with an attitude that would shame the most cantankerous of honey badgers. That, I assure you, soothed RR back to sleep immediately.

And then my wife and I reached that point. The one we’ve never reached in three years of parenting. It’s possible the words have never been uttered in the many years we’ve known each other. Implied, probably. I’m no saint. But there it is.

“This is all your fault.”

I don’t suppose those were the exact words. I was half asleep at the time. But sure enough. In my daze, I informed my wife that the reason we were going to sit here and listen to RR scream was because she had indulged our daughter in an increasingly long series of demands to be rocked and held and cuddled in the middle of the night. Whenever she felt like it. And while that child was accustomed to me refusing to pick her up (I am, after all, the bottom tier mother in a series of layers that also includes dracula ants and Norman Bates’ mother), her reluctance to simmer down had swiftly snuck me down the path of rocking and cuddling.

When I realized I had been duped by a two-year-old (not the first time, I assure you) I resolved to stick to in-the-crib soothing. On the spectrum of cry-it-out and god-no-anything-but-that we are closer to the latter. As she has gotten older, we’ve been able successfully substitute verbal soothing for physical consolation. Surely, she would understand.

“It’s okay baby. What’s wrong? Here are your things, let me tuck you in.”
“Rock me, mama.”
“It’s nighttime, it’s time to sleep not rock.”

And that left me and my wife in the bedroom with blame drifting down around us. Maybe it’s because my long-suffering wife is used to my my inability to be rational at night. Or maybe it’s because she has the patience of a saint. Whatever it is, she let it pass with only a mention the next day. Thanks, she said, for getting that out of the way. You guys, we are not divorced. Which is the best possible outcome. Also, RR is mostly sleeping through the night again.

Rest assured, I am under no delusion that this is the result of some success on our parts so much as it is the result of her having wrapped up whatever developmental stage she was in. That said, the stage was not potty training. More on that catastrophe another time.

 

This Looked Easy From The Other Side

You guys. Pot’o'pee? Smuggling? It’s not Wednesday until I’ve seen some boob? I love you so much.

It DID look easy from the other side, as one of you so astutely pointed out. I even looked back three years to see what I’d had to say about D doing this very same thing. Although we used the kits through two months, I only really had one thing to say about it and that was angst over whether or not we’d get a smiley face on a weekend. I remember her diligently reporting each morning (and she never, not once, had an error) but I was significantly more detached from the actual results. Now, I’m wildly peeing everywhere wondering if I’m suddenly in menopause. I know. I am the most fun person ever. Imagine living with me.

The wondrous Cats and Cradles shared her Baby Jar Sneak technique which we have pondered and will undertake. There’s a certain elegance to using a baby-intended receptacle, isn’t there? The inventive Pepibebe is so smooth she nonchalantly takes her specimen jars everywhere (ok, well not everywhere, but she is far more bold than I) and Jill shared a welcome story about how this doesn’t stop with a pee stick in a pocket, oh no, humiliation has the potential to go so much further.

Thanks to you all, I’ve survived to moan about this another day. And aren’t you happy you’ve contributed to THAT?

 

 

There Just Aren’t That Many Hiding Places

I began the day by hiding a cup of pee in a public restroom.

If you haven’t tracked your ovulation lately, it’s fun. There are test strips and, if you’re willing to spring for it, a digital test that gives you a smily face if you’re ovulating. I get so. excited. to see that smiley face.

It’s far better than the alternative, a goose egg, which makes me worry that I’m never going to ovulate and that sometime in the last month my organs have decided to give me the finger and run off into the woods to hide. Go ahead and picture your ovaries snickering behind a tree.

Thank you, Google, for providing this picture when you search “ovaries behind a tree”

Adding to the delight are apps that track your cycle. The one I use sends messages before the egg-springing date. This time I saw “The flowers are about to bloom” followed by “It’s time to get out the candles and turn on the smooth jazz.” That’s right, my phone just suggested I slip into bed with Barry White. In addition, the calendar days are slowly turning green as my predicted ovulation date approaches (Wednesday) although that’s just old smooth jazz guessing. Nevertheless, the green days (since Friday) mean I get to pee on the sticks and that’s ten minutes of fun I get to have every morning. 10 minutes alone in the bathroom checking twitter? Practically nirvana.

I am not inexperienced with aiming. I did this last month for six days without flubbing it once. Sure, you could splash the stick too generously but come on, I can see what’s happening there, I have self control. After two errors on Friday, we bought a new kit. Another error on Saturday and I decided to try the cup-dip method as opposed to direct application management™. Sunday, I managed it successfully the second time after an unexplained error the first time. I SWEAR TO YOU I AM DOING IT RIGHT. I am so close to the predicted ovulation day, I can’t just waste time fooling around with Barry White.

Today, I brought three sticks and used all three. Since I’m now working the cup method, I had to smuggle the cup past my coworkers and down to the bathroom. I ensconced myself in a large end stall in order to check my twitter feed in peace. I hit the cup, dipped the stick and waited. Error. You’re kidding. So I am left with a predicament. Run upstairs for the second stick or dump the cup and the chance. I’m too close, as I said, so I tucked the cup into a small paper bag and perched it in the corner. And then I left it there and went to get the second stick.

That’s right. From 10:00 – 10:15 this morning there was an unsupervised cup of urine in the corner. I’m pretty sure that’s the definition of Monday. For everyone.

I won’t even tell you about the shenanigans that ensued after that stick also had an error. IT’S NOT ME, YOU GUYS. Suffice to say, I had to let me wife do the dipping, apparently correctly, while I watched. Today is still not the day.