Joy

The holiday bonanza we dubbed Chrismukkolstice came right in time. H and I were in a bit of a rough patch. Of course we had some good days, and lots of great moments, but overall, I was struggling. This one and a half years old business was proving to be quite a challenge. The whining, the fighting, the night waking, the pickiness with food, the crappy naps, the teething, the fact that our whole family had a terrible cold for a month… I was tired and my patience was waning.

And then, Chrismukkostlice arrived! And with it, joy.

H has been so much fun this holiday season. Seeing him tear into gifts with light up with surprise. Watching the mutual lovefest between him and our families. Sharing traditions with him in a way that gives them new meaning. Rocking out to holiday tunes with him. There has just been so much good.

When we did our Xmas morning with him (a week early because we were out of town for the actual day), my heart was so full, it could have burst. I knew he would “get it” more this year, but I did not anticipate how fun it would be to watch him gleefully rip open his gifts and start using and enjoying them immediately.

Joy, joy, joy.

We needed that.

Summer

I think he likes it.

Um, what Blog Challenge?

So…in spite of my good intentions, I seem to have fallen off the Blog Challenge wagon.  Oops.

Things have been a bit busy ’round these parts, with my wife working a ton, nap issues, and H becoming a bona fide toddler.

More soon.

Happy summer.  Happy marriage equality NY!

Just kidding!

Um, scratch that about this blog moving… Oops.  Seems there is no way to import old posts, or even manually back-date posts on the new site I was going to use.  So that is out.

AND I discovered that I can post via email on this platform, so I’m going to try that out, and hopefully get back to blogging.  I hate to think that my little guy’s life is passing by, and I will forget the little things if I don’t document them.

Some big changes will be happening here, though they will come slowly, as I chip away at my Blog To-Do List (oh, you know me and my To-Do lists!) in my stolen moments while H sleeps.

Speaking of…  First order of business: I’m B.  My wife is C. Our son is H. Nice to (re-)meet you.

Happy Holidays

From our family to yours.

First Halloween

I suppose you can guess what his name is…

We even handed out Oh Henry bars to the trick-or-treaters (which were plentiful in our new neighborhood!).

I was so happy with how the costume came out!  Here’s the real thing:

$6 worth of felt, and um…let’s just say a lot of time, and H’s first Halloween costume was a success!

Even though he had not a clue what was going on, we still had a really fun night, showing him off to the neighbors and handing out candy.  It felt like the first real holiday we’ve had with him (we were still in a postpartum haze for Mothers’ Day, and we don’t really do anything for the 4th of July), and made me even more excited to celebrate the upcoming winter holidays as a family.

Tuesday night at the barre

Growing up, I was a dancer.  I absolutely adored it.  As a teen, I more or less gave it up, not because I lost interest, but because I wasn’t happy with the studio I was attending (in retrospect, stupid teenage stuff).  Then I never found a new studio, and started participating in high school extracurriculars that kept me more than sufficiently busy, so the dancing fell by the wayside.  I always missed dancing, especially ballet.  I kept dancing – at parties, in the kitchen – but it wasn’t the same.

Eventually, while living in Pittsburgh, I gave in to the itch and signed up for what I was told by the instructor was a “soccer mom class.”  It sounded perfect – a bunch of adult women who had all been away from dancing for a while, and would be rusty just like me.  It turned out that “soccer mom class” was the definition of a misnomer; the class was entirely in French, and the instructor refused to demonstrate or explain anything.  It was over an hour of intense muscle work at the barre.  I couldn’t keep up.  The class left me dizzied and, the next day, astronomically sore.  I tried for one more class, and then asked for a refund.

Since then, I’ve either pushed dancing out of my mind, or just been unable to find a class in a convenient location that fit my skill level and schedule.  Until now.

Tonight was my first night at a pay as you go, beginner adult class.  The class is challenging, but not at all insurmountable; the instructor is stern but helpful, and the French instructions are paired with English explanations.  It felt so wonderful to move my body in that way again.  To stretch and reach and push.

Of course, looking in the mirror, I found my sillouette to be quite different than it once was, and my kicks don’t reach the heights they once did, but I worked up a sweat and left feeling great.  This Housewife’s back in ballet slippers again!

One

We have entered the first month that I am tracking my cycle! So now it’s all about this stuff:

Lesbian babymaking books, fancy digital OPKs (ovulation predictor kits), and cheapie generic OPKs. I’ve had the books for quite some time, but now I’m pouring over all the details that pertain to this part of the journey – how to track, when to track, what you need to use to track, etc, etc, etc.

I’m trying to be laid back about this cycle, knowing that since I just stopped the bcp, anything could happen, but I haven’t been able to help stressing a little about the whole OPK situation – What time to test? What test to use? I drink a ton of water – is that going to effect my results? What I’m reading says a lot of of water can dilute the hormones in your urine and mess with your results, but I always drink a lot of water…so if it’s normal for me, is it still bad? And since I drink a lot of water, I’m constantly peeing – how am I supposed to hold it for 4 hours to test?- etc, etc, etc. I think I’ve got it figured out now – I’m pairing the digital tests with cheapies, and I think I can take a longer break from the bathroom breaks after lunch at work – so I’ve just got to relax. I’ve got three whole months to get the hang of everything before we actually start trying.

I’ve also decided to track my basal body temperature (BBT), just for a month or two. All the books say that this is the only way to know for sure that you are ovulating, and I like that reassurance. So every morning at 5:30…beep beep! It’s pretty annoying, and I am so the type that would get obsessive over it, so I’m only going to do it for a month or two. Feel free to remind me that I said this at the end of June/beginning of July when I’m like, But how can I be sure without temping????, and tell me to chill out, stop obsessing and trust the OPKs.

So this is it. It’s cycle day 1.

 

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Acronyms & Definitions
Okay, so I know many of you who are familiar with the whole lesbian TTC (trying to conceive) world, and thus are down with the lingo.  But I know some others are not and may be wondering, WTF is up with the acronyms and what’s this temping business?  Hence, an explanatory footnote:

bcp: birth control pills
OPKs: ovulation predictor kit - You pee on these and get a positive when your LH (luteinizing hormone) surges.  Once you have surged, you will ovulate in 12-24 hours, so a positive test means it’s time to inseminate.  You’re supposed to hold your pee for four hours before testing.
BBT: basal body temperature – This is your body temperature at its lowest, which occurs when you awake from a full night sleep, before you get up and move around.  Your BBT will rise on the day you ovulate.  In order to track this effectively, you need to test it at the same time every day (5:30 am for me, since that’s when I get up for work).  The thermometer I have beeps.
CD1: cycle day 1 – the first day of your period, the cycle count starts here.

 

***Edited 11/1/09:***
This post was password-protected from the time it was published until 11/1/09.

Taking time to smell the sea salt

As of last Friday, I was under the impression that the weekend’s weather was to be crappy.  So imagine my surprise when The Accountant and I stepped outside on Saturday to find a gorgeous 70 degree day!  We swept the back porch and laid out our new rugs (pictures coming soon), made a quick grocery run, and then I made my usual nice-weather-weekend demand, Take me to the water!

New England winters are long, and when they finally break, all I want it is to be by the ocean.  Growing up in New England, I didn’t know how good I had it.  I didn’t realize how much the ocean meant to me until I spent a few years living in Pennsylvania.  I remember one hot summer day in Pittsburgh when I asked The Accountant, “How far away is the closest beach?”  She thought about it and offered, “New Jersey?”  I almost cried.

This past Saturday afternoon, The Accountant and I got into the car, and 30 minutes later we were here:

Does it get much better?  I think not.

We sat on the boardwalk in the late afternoon sun, dined on what might have been a large amount of fresh seafood, and make googly eyes at passing cute dogs and adorable babies, all with a backdrop of the Boston skyline.

I am fully aware now of how good I have it.

One step forward

As you may have guessed, the password-protected posts are going to be about The Baby.  I know, you’re so shocked.  The Baby?? That Feminist Housewife never talks about The Baby!

The reason for the sudden password protection is that things are finally starting to get moving in The Baby department, but many of the real-life people in our real-life life aren’t going to know about it for some time.  When the day comes that all of our real-life people are in the know, I plan to go back and un-password-protect all of these (forthcoming) posts.

Now, onto the news.

This week I will complete my last pack of birth control pills (bcp for short).  A lesbian on birth control? Indeed, a lesbian on birth control.  I’ve been on them for a number of years now to keep from getting horribly, awfully deathly ill with my periods.  I’ll spare you the details – suffice it to say, that shit ain’t fun.  The bcp makes all of that horrible-ness go away, and I can live a normal life and not miss work/life one or two days a month.

Now, it’s time to stop taking these magical pills because The Accountant and I are planning to start trying to get me pregnant in August, and my midwife advised that I stop talking the bcp three months prior to get it out of my system and enable me to start tracking my ovulation.

This morning I told The Accountant definitively that I would stop taking the bcp after this week (we  hadn’t been solid on exactly when I would stop), and let me tell you, I wish I’d had the camera ready.  I can’t really describe the look on her face – the realization that thisisreallyhappening, the fear of how sick I might get each month, and the excitement.  I recognized all of those things in her face because I was feeling them too.

It seems like we’ve been talking about The Baby and planning for The Baby for a very very long time, and now we are taking a tangible step.  In a couple of weeks, I’ll be tracking my ovulation.  And so it begins…

***Edited 11/1/09:***
This post was password-protected from the time it was published until 11/1/09.