Forget Me Not Friday

*Ahhh can you hear the sounds of summer vacation? I can, loud and clear.  Fighting, boredom already, and the kids are eating me out of house and home!  I can do this…I can do this…I can do this!

*Braden is into more mischief than I can keep up with.  I found a hole in our couch that he so kindly made by using a pair of scissors.  I had a big bucket of dry roasted almonds that I had put on the counter for the kids to snack on and a thought crossed my mind that I should go check on Braden and make sure he hadn’t taken it outside to put dirt in it.  He puts dirt in everything lately.  Nope, no dirt.  He just filled it with water instead.  Ruined a whole bucket of very expensive almonds.  If I can get through this summer, it will be a good thing!

*I have been working on Sydney’s baptism video.  How does time go by so quickly? I have laughed and I have cried over how much she has grown and changed.  I am so blessed to have her in my life.  She is always, always happy and smiling and she has the most beautiful eyes.

*I have to laugh when l think about how excited the girls were to be able to go to school on the last day.  Most of the teachers had asked parents not to send their kids because all that was happening was a whole lot of cleaning.  The girls still wanted to go and I wasn’t going to stop them….my last 4 hours before summer vacation…I was going to soak it up!  I’m not into buying yearbooks in elementary school, so the girls bought a cheap t-shirt and let their friends sign it.  They thought that was pretty cool!

*Jaycee is traveling all over the place and loving the freedom of being on two feet!!  I love it too.

It has been nice not having to carry her all the time.

*I love how Braden has divided his bed into separate areas.  One end is for snuggle time and the other end is for bedtime.  He cracks me up!  His new favorite phrase is..."It's a possibility!"  I said that one time to him when he ask me a question.  He wanted to know what it meant and I told him it means maybe yes, maybe no.
So now that his reply to everything!  "It's a possibility!"

*The past nine weeks have been very, very long and stressful.  We surprisingly learned we were expecting baby number five.  It was not exactly in the plans and I have been really stressed out about how I was going to handle five children.  Four has been about all I can do.  I started getting the usual pregnancy symptoms…extreme tiredness, swollen breasts and a quickly growing waistline.  I usually start getting sick around week six.  Well, week six came and went and still no sickness.  It was about that time that I knew something was not right.  (I had experienced a similar pregnancy after Sydney.  An egg and a sperm unite, but something goes wrong and an embryo never begins to grow.  I never got sick or even felt pregnant with that one.)  I called my doctor and got in to see him at eight weeks.  He did an ultra sound and found the amniotic sac, but could not find a heartbeat.  I was told that I was only measuring at about five weeks.  I knew that wasn’t right because I knew exactly when we would have conceived and the numbers were just not matching up.  I knew this was not going to end well.  We scheduled another ultrasound for a week out.  The LONGEST week of my life…not knowing if I was really pregnant or if something worse was going on inside.  When we went in for the second ultrasound, not only was there no baby, but the amniotic sac had filled with abnormal tissue.  It is what they call a molar pregnancy.  The scary part is that the tissue cells can be pre-cancerous.  My doctor recommended that we get in as soon as possible to have a D&C done.  With this type of pregnancy, there can be large amounts of bleeding.  My doctor wanted me in a controlled environment when the pregnancy came to an end.  We were scheduled for surgery for the following afternoon.  Part of me was relieved to not really be pregnant, but there is also that small part of me that maybe secretly hoped to hear a heartbeat.  I think the hardest part was to be put in the waiting room after just learning our fate and then having another couple come out with pictures of their ultrasound they had just had and all happy over their growing baby.  I will say that it is sad that my doctor whom I absolutely love has been in my uterus 3 times, none of which was to deliver any of our children.  I still love him and think he is very sensitive and has great bedside manners.  After waiting for four hours in the pre-op room, they took me back and did the surgery and we were on our way home in two hours.  I have had no pain, cramping and very little bleeding.  It has been a very easy recovery.  I am most grateful for amazing friends that dropped everything  to help our family in a time of need.  I took this picture the morning we learned we were pregnant and had planned to have a creative post to announce the newest member of our family who would be celebrating a Christmas birthday, but now it serves as a reminder of all the feelings I have had over the past nine weeks and a reminder that things don’t always seem as they appear.  I am most grateful for the children that I do have and I need focus on being the best mom I can be for them.  Some of the tissue that was removed from my uterus has been sent to the lab for testing and we will get the results at the end of the month.  I pray that they come back okay.