The cat is now offically out of the bag. As of this week, I am 12 weeks pregnant with our second child. We go this Saturday to hopefully hear this little one’s heartbeat. I’ve been worried and anxious, (no big surprise condsidering both my personality and the unfortunate circumstance of our last pregnancy) but I’m sick as a dog so I hope that’s good proof hat the baby is growing and thriving. We dub it “The Parasite” at this stage is leaches water and minerals out of my body for its own use. We really do think more highly of this little one than that, but that Eric and I (and our sense of humor) for you.

Admittedly, the pregnancy seemed to have not come at a worse time logistically. Let’s run through the time line.

Chrismas 2005-Concieve Baby (yes, a Christmas baby in its own way minus the annoying holiday birthdate)

January 1 2006-My self imposed “I promise I’ll move quickly if you just give me unil this date to enjoy the holidays)

January 7th- S-u-s-p-e-c-t somehing is going on with my reproducive system. Mention to Eric that we may need to Buy a Test. He agrees and asks that I don’t use it until Monday. I suggest Sunday because I want to take the test with him there. He suggests a bottle of wine. I suggest that I can’t drink until we know the result of the test. He agrees to the test on Saturday.

+

January 9th-Call my OB as my early pregnancy needs careful monitering to rule out another ectopic. Make an appt. for Jan 11th.

Jan 11th-Space out and miss my firsts OB appt.

Jan 13th-Have OB appt, including a plevic, a beta blood draw and the World’s Most Uncomfortable Transvaginal Ultrasound. Seriously folks. I nearly cried. Nothing conclusive, but at not quite five weeks, that’s not uncommon

Jan 15th-Go to the E.R. on a playoff Sunday to have another beta HCG draw done.

Jan 17th-Go back to the hospial for another Transvaginal Ultrasound (this one more comfortable with a kinder tech and the squeezy hand of my hubby) and another blood draw. This time the gestational sac is visabile. Dr. M. says my numbers are going up well.

Jan 20th-Dr. M. is pleased and says I am now considered a normal pregnancy. Baby looks good for its age and my numbers are apporpriate.

Jan 21st-Move to IL.

February 6th-First OB appt. in IL. Have ANOTHER Transvaginal ultrasound. Baby is measuring a little small, but its heart is beating strong.

Over the last few weeks we’ve had plenty of sickness and soreness and this Saturday we roll back o the dr. for our 12 week appt to hopefully hear this litle one’s heartbeat. If all goes well on Saturday, we’ll tell Emily that she’s going to be a big sister. We think it’s time. It will be a long wait. My previous therapist suggested waiting some time, but I’m not sure. I think we need to spend time involving Emily and I’m afraid she’ll be resentful of a secret kept from her too long.

She’s like me.

So MUCH like me.

It’s going to talk a lot o make sure our sensitive, spirited girl knows that se’ll always be a princess in this household, no matter what happens in life and I want to make sure we have ample time to reassure her.

Plus, she’s probably wondering why the hell I’m throwing up six times a day. ;o)

That’s my confession. The secret I’ve been keeping. :o)

Does anyone else’s fly by like….I don’t know…something really fast? It seems like we pine away all week waiting for Friday night and before we know it, it’s Monday morning again and we start all over again.

I’m day dreaming about home improvements today. Due to financial stuff, we’ll be catching up over the next couple of months, but once that’s done, we’re improving the house. Hard core. ;o)

There is so much to do here. SO much to make this place into our home. Something we missed the opportunity to do the last time. My mind is full of paint colors and furniture. Plants and lights fixtures. Curtains and throw rugs. Pictures and knick knacks. We know that in a few years time we’re going to move on from here. That space will become an issue and we’ll be ready to stretch our legs again, but the foundation is starting here, now and we can’t wait to put our mark on this place.

Several months ago, I stumbled across a blog that I quickly added to my blog roll list for daily reading. I loved Moreena’s writing styles and stories about her girls; Frankie, 2, and Annika, 4. I love reading the works of real people who get it. Moreena gets it.

Annika, Moreena and Jorg’s oldest daughter, was born very ill and has since had two kidney transplants. Prior to Chrismas, Annika got very sick again and had to spend monhs upon months at Children’s Hospital in Chicago. She teetered. Had infections and bleeds. Missed Christmas (as many of you know, a huge tragedy to me) and ran the medical gammet.

Moreena and Jorg have good health insurance and the majority of Annika’s lare bills occurred in 2005, but because of a billing SNAFU (the items weren’t billed into Jan.) they have already run through Annika’s ONE MILLION DOLLAR COVERAGE LIMIT FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR!

I don’t have to spell that out for anyone. To top it off, Annika is in need of a third liver transplant. Thankfully, Annika is home right now and doing okay, but Moreena and Jorg are going to need some help paying for the private, special insurance Annika is going to need to supplement the fact that her health insurance is gone for he year.

To the tune of three THOUSAND dollars a month. The family estimates that they are going to need EIGHTY FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS to get by, medically, with Annika this year.

So, this is where I ask anyone who reads here to consider making a donation to Annika’s COTA Fund to help her family fund his private insurance and other medical necessitities during this time. We’ll be sending what we can, when we can. If you can’t send money, consider visiting Andrea’s page and joining the raffle or donating a good or service. Anything will help.

The good news about COTA is that any funds Anni and her family can’t use will be donated to others in similar need. It’s a win-win situation. Tax deductable and, you get the warm fuzzies from helping someone who needs it. I’ll be putting up buttons and links here and in my signatures around the Internet. Do what you can. You won’t be sorry.

Soon, right?

Bitter cold here this past weekend as I think it was across a good portion of the midwest. Not much snow to speak of. On Saturday the temperature barely made it onto the positive side. We can deal with that, though. We’re snug and warm in our little house. And it was sunny, which is always a plus on a cold day.

But, really, I’m ready for spring. Ready to throw open the windows and blow out the dust. Ready for flowers and walks and trips to the park and picnics and cook outs. Mostly, ready for this season of quiet and stillness to pass and the season of rebirth to begin.

It was a bit springy here the past week.

Inside.

I have bottles of Prima flowers here. They’re tiny paper flowers used in scrapbooking. I have five or six bottles of them. They hold, oh, at least a hundred flowers a pop. So, last week, Emily must have been feeling Hansel and Gretelish because she spread these tiny paper flowers ALL over the upstrais.

Of course, she’s disinclined to pick up the tiny paper flowers, so I’m crawling aroudn on my hands and knees trying to salvage the undamaged ones. So, it’s sort of springy. Inside. At least.

Emily had a half day today.

Well, she always has half days, but today she attended in the morning because of parent teacher conferences, so we’re snuggled in at home before she normally gets off the bus. That’s kind of cool. She also has two days off, which is nice as well. I miss her when she’s not around.

I’m not going to be talking about the panic around here for a while. What I will be doing instead is trying to list, every time I blog, five positive things that have happened, either that day or since my last post.

So, yesterday I…..
1) Went to the grocery store
2) Drove myself to my doctor’s appointment
3) Made dinner and got it in the table at a “normal” time
4) Managed to do some normal housework
5) Fell asleep at a normal time.

The theme of yesterday seemed to be normal, which, trust me, ain’t so bad. ;o)

I’ve also been working on a digital scrapbook page. For two days. It hink today might make three. I’m not sure if I love the result or not. It took no less time than my paper scrapping does. Probably more. But my desk is a mess and things aren’t organized yet and this was sort of fun.

…that when I clicked into my account today to check the blogs I keep up with there was actually no entry on my page meaning, I guess, that I haven’t blogged in some time. Nearly two weeks.

Prior to this week, my depression has been pretty bad. My agoraphobia has been pretty bad. My OCD stuff has been pretty bad. Stuff just wasn’t going well. Because of that, I really haven’t been doing much. Not knitting. Not scrapping. Not sewing. Not reading and not maintaining our websites

But, as of Tuesday, I’m on Zoloft and seeing some improvements (though I am panickey tonight, I had to travel today which is difficult becaue of the my agoraphobia, but it’s better than it probably would be otherwise). Part of these improvements, are ones I’m making myself, which means blogging and being crafty and doing things I used to really like to do. Even if I have to force it a little bit right now.

Eric says I’ve smiled and laughed more in the last couple of days than I have in months. Talked more too. I guess what I’m trying to say is, I’m going to be forcing myself to blog. I’m probably going to have some boring days. It’s okay with me if you don’t read. I probably won’t want to read it other, but I’m trying to get back to where I was.

Haven’t been doing that great as of late. Lots of really bad panic. Having trouble feeling upbeat and chatty because the worse my panic gets, the worse my depression gets. Eric is home for the next week and a half and i’m hoping to be able to settle into some sort of safe routine. I will be talking about this with my doctor on Monday–explaining that while I understand I suffer from severe panic, that I need some reassurance that I’m not dying from some horrible disease (or having a stroke mostly). Maybe some testing or something. Just to ease my mind. I’m not sure what tests would be available to me, but I’m going to ask. To try and get some peace.

I did cast on for the first of several baby gifts and am about four inches into the back of it. Pretty boring knitting this far. I’ll share as soon as it’s more than a rectanble of stockingette.