Nifty Nine

I'm still having a hard time saying it out loud... I have a nine year old.  Garrett celebrated his ninth birthday with an eventful weekend.  Somewhere along the lines I came up with the bright idea to take five (yes 5!!!) kids to the Orioles game for Garrett's birthday.  Mike and I thought it would be easier to catch the light rail down to the stadium rather than driving two cars down but I'm not quite sure that was the best laid plan.  All in all it really wasn't a bad experience and I think the boys had a lot of fun.  We all survived but the Orioles stunk it up and it really was exhausting, especially at 32 weeks pregnant.  The light rail ride back was incredibly crowded, we were stuck standing and trying to keep track of everyone for a solid 40 minute ride. On the ride back Mike looked at me and said he was never doing this again.  I asked him to clarify "never taking the light rain to a game or never taking 5 kids to a baseball game?"  "Any part of it, I am never doing any part of this again."  Ha, can't say I can argue with that.

The boys were planning to all spend the night so when we got home we ate some pizza and then sent them outside to run around and burn off some steam until it was time to start the movie.  About an hour later I came outside to get everyone together and come inside when I heard Garrett let out a blood curling scream. Definitely not the sound you ever want to hear coming from your child, especially at his birthday party.  Turns out he had been running through an area in our yard that has yet to get cleaned out from the previous owners and there was a piece of wood with a nail sticking right out of it.  I scooped him up and got him to an urgent care center where they were able to get him cleaned up and x-rayed in about an hour.  After filling a prescription we got home around 10pm and did birthday cake and a second round of pizza before settling down for the movie.  It will definitely go down as a birthday he will never forget but hopefully 10 years down the road he remembers more than just the fact that he stepped on a nail at his birthday party.   I unfortunately was so busy running around that I don't have any pictures to show for the day except the one I snapped at the ball park.

It's hard to believe that Garrett is really nine but at the same time, I can hardly remember what my life was like without him in it.  There is something about getting ready to start all over in the parenting department that has made me realize just how quickly he is growing up.  As excited as I am to welcome this new baby into our family, it is so different this time around because I know I will blink my eyes and be celebrating another 9th birthday.  We are half way to 18........ half way to graduating high school and embarking on a huge new chapter and that idea takes my breath away.

So Happy Birthday Garrett, we are so excited to see what the next 9 years holds but you will always be my happy.  Our family started out as just the two of us and I wouldn't trade those years for anything in the world.  Our family grew by one when Mike came into the picture almost 5 years ago and this July we will see it grow by one more.  You are going to be an amazing big brother and I'm so excited to get to watch you grow into that role in the next few years.

1st Trimester

My first trimester when I was pregnant with Garrett was brutal.  I remember sleeping on the floor in the bathroom in my tiny apartment some nights because I was so sick.  The nausea was how I found out I was pregnant with him.  One minutes I was eating crabs with my mom for her birthday and the next I could hardly keep ginger ale and crackers down.  It went on for what seemed liked months but it had definitely cleared up by the time the first trimester was wrapping up.  I had a relatively uneventful second trimester and then spent most of my third trimester tired, sore and swollen.  I'll never forget in the hospital after Garrett was born and looking down at my ankles and thinking they looked like twigs.

It's amazing how different this pregnancy has been.  When I would hear women talk about how much they loved being pregnant I thought they were insane.  I was certain it had just been long enough that they had forgotten the misery and suffering.  This time around, I am not so cynical.  I won't go as far as to say that I love being pregnant but I can honestly say it has only been slightly inconvenient this time around.  I'm sure that it is mostly just because every pregnancy is different but I can't help but hope that the healthy eating and exercising has contributed to my easy second round of pregnancy.  I had no morning sickness in the first trimester although I was extremely tired in the beginning and EXTREMELY moody.  For a few weeks there I thought for sure Mike would end up divorcing me before we made it 3 months into the marriage.  I tried to curb the hormones and the mood swings but I'm fairly certain I didn't do a very good job and I spent a lot of time apologizing to Mike and Garrett.  But in the end we all survived the first trimester relatively unscathed.

November 12th

I really had great intentions of documenting this pregnancy here on the blog to help me remember all the little and big moments.  I don't remember a ton from my pregnancy with Garrett but I did have a pregnancy book where I could write a little about how I was feeling, what I was wearing, etc every few days.  But those intentions clearly never came to fruition because here I am with only 10 weeks to go and not a single blog post.  So I'm going to do what I can to go back and document some of the important moments between now and when Baby G makes his or her arrival.

I had joked during our entire engagement that I wanted a honeymoon baby but that Mike was not quite on board with the idea.  With Garrett during 9 this year, we knew we didn't want to wait long but I think Mike was hoping for a few months of rest after the wedding craziness was over.  We talked on the plane ride down to St Lucia for our honeymoon and decided we would wait until the Spring to start trying.  But the universe had other plans.

We got back from our honeymoon at the end of October and spent the first few weeks just catching back up on life after all the wedding hoopla.  One morning I was coming out of the laundry room with a basket of clothes and I didn't quite clear the door frame which jammed the basket into my abdomen.  My mind instantly went to "Oh, well that could be bad if I was pregnant".  I told Mike about this incident a few days later and told him how weird I thought it was that it was the first thought that flashed through my mind.  We joked for a few days about me being pregnant but I just kept thinking there might be something to it.  I woke up on a Sunday morning and decided to check my calendar to see when my last menstrual cycle had been.  Luckily I had been writing them down the last few months because I knew we would be trying within the next year.  I slowly counted on my calendar about 3 times before I turned to Mike and said "Umm, my period was supposed to start yesterday."  I've never been incredibly regular so Mike and I decided to wait a little while before we took a test.  Mike suggested a week and for some reason I thought I could wait that long.  I honestly think that I knew at that point but was still in  complete denial.

Tuesday night, November 12th, we had Garrett's end of soccer party with his team where another mom offered me a glass of the bottle of wine she bought.  I took a glass, reasoning that there was no way we had gotten pregnant that easily without even trying.  When I got home that night I told Mike I felt really guilty about the wine and that I just had to know NOW.  So I ran out and picked up a few tests and some dinner for Mike.  He ate his dinner while I went up to the bathroom to take the test.  My intention really was to not look at the test until Mike and I could look at it together but when I picked it up off of the counter to take it down to Mike, there were already two very distinct lines on the test.  I walked downstairs trying to conceal my big smile and sat the test down on the table in front of Mike.  He took one look at the test, picked up the instructions, looked back at me and said "well, I guess we're doing this huh?"  The look on his face is definitely one I will never forget.