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I was thinking today about the state of my life, trying to figure out whether I’m happier or less happy than I used to be. There are a lot of things in our world right now that are extremely frustrating and cause me not a little bit of stress. I try to manage it as best I can, but I’ve found myself lately reverting to my “old faithful” coping strategy - namely, ignore it and hope it goes away. That would be great, except I’m actually all grown up now and do in fact know that problems ignored do not tend to fade away painlessly.

All that aside, though, I realized that overall, I’m actually very happy. And it’s easy to see why - Abby. Every single day, she makes me smile and laugh like no one else can. When I’m sad, she looks at me with her little face all screwed up with concern and comes to sit on my lap and give me kisses and say “all better?” (It sounds more like “Ah Bettah” though.) She is such an earnest and serious child, all contemplation and examination - but she’s also an incredibly happy and funny person who loves nothing more than to do something silly just because she knows it will make me laugh.

She reminds me that no matter what problems I may think I have, I am actually fortunate and wealthy beyond what I could ever deserve. I could lose every material thing I have and I would still be one of the luckiest people around. She is perspective, personified.

Ugh, what a day. I haven’t talked about it much (at all?) here, but we are (have been) actively trying to make our baby

Abby a big sister. I was hoping that maybe actually having Abby would be some kind of miracle potion that fixed everything that’s wrong with me, but…apparently not.

When Abby was about twenty months old and had been fully weaned for almost six months and I still had seen no signs of fertility, we knew that we needed to get with the program and resume our contributions to our fertility practice’s swanky new digs. (I kid. Mostly. Not bitter at all. Much. But the new offices are really very nice. They seem expensive.)

So, blah blah stuff happens blah, we come to today when I am scheduled for a frozen embryo transfer (FET) of the one embryo left from the IVF that gave us Abby. They were supposed to call on Tuesday or yesterday to let me know what time I needed to be there (over an hour away) for the procedure. No one ever called, and - surprise! - now that I actually HAVE a kid, I am much less flexible. (There are babysitters to schedule and arrangements to make! Not so much with the spontaneous over here, people!) I called them and determined that our transfer was scheduled for today at 2:30pm.

All was going according to plan, babysitter (aka Grandma) had arrived, and we were almost ready to leave - early, to have a grownup lunch on the way - when one of the nurses called. Not my usual nurse, who was on vacation this week, but one of the other nurses. (Relevant? Who knows. She’s very nice, and I don’t blame her at all for anything that happened. Moving on.) She was calling to catch us before we left, to let us know that our embryo had not survived the thawing process so the transfer was cancelled.

Sad. Disappointed. No more shot at having “not twins” conceived together but born 2+ years apart. Money down the drain (infertility treatments make you somewhat immune to that pain, it turns out), more procedures needed. No amazing positive pregnancy test as the best Christmas present I could ask for this year. But…all things considered, my expectations had been pretty low, so it was okay.

Plus - hey! We have a babysitter, we already took the day off, let’s go to lunch. We were sitting at lunch when my cell phone rang:

So. Apparently they rescheduled my transfer? Without telling me? And…um. They had the right person, earlier, when the called to tell me the embryo didn’t survive…right? Because that would sort of suck if we had to rush all the way up there. Except it wouldn’t suck because yay! Undead embryo! Maybe I should call the nurse? To be sure?

I did, and they did have the right person (yes, that’s me with the shriveled useless embryo, thanks) and were rightfully pretty horrified about what happened. Thankfully (for me) they handled it was well as possible - the nurse took it seriously and talked to my doctor, who also took it seriously and called me directly to apologize and talk about what they could do to avoid problems like this in the future and to make it up to me in some way. Other than the part where I’m obviously not pregnant RIGHT NOW I’m as okay with the resolution as I can be.

And I get to spend the holiday season doing a fresh IVF cycle, which sounds SO FUN I can hardly describe it here. Those of you who have been there know exactly what I mean, and those of you who haven’t should just be glad of that.

This has not been the best day ever.

My baby is not a baby anymore. I know that, and one of these days I will actually accept it. Possibly she will have children of her own at that point, but I’m sure that one day I will be willing to admit that she is really, truly not a baby anymore.

Eh, who am I kidding? She will always be my baby. Even though she is TWO YEARS OLD NOW. Seriously, wasn’t I still pregnant - like, yesterday?

She had her two-year checkup this morning, and she is growing fabulously (finally!). She has made it all the way to the 49th percentile in weight at just over 26 pounds; she’s on the tall side at just over 35 inches, and she still has a big old melon for a head (the better to hold her stupendous brain). She’s smart, she’s happy, she’s adorable (everyone says so! it’s not just me being a doting mama!) and she is far and away the best thing that ever happened to me.

I always said the one thing I really wanted was to be a mother. Now all I really want is to find a way to become the mother that my daughter deserves.

The word “uninspired” does not even begin to cover my mental state today. My desk is a disaster looking for a cause, my daughter FINALLY napped today after two solid days of refusing to even consider it, and I am fresh out of ideas.

Here, have a picture instead:

Cousins

I think that the Monday after Thanksgiving is the worst Monday of the year. When January 2nd is a Monday, that might be worse, but it would be a close battle. Almost everyone has a four-day weekend for Thanksgiving (whether officially or just because the day after Thanksgiving is a wasted day even for those who are in the office). Once you clean up the big meal, you turn around and realize that the holiday season is rushing at you like a freight train. Unless your shopping is done, your presents wrapped, and your cards already sent (in which case I probably hate you) you feel behind right out of the gate, no matter how unrealistic that is.

For me, now that I’m a (never manages to) stay at home Mom, the end of a long weekend has the added bonus of a day full of “where DADDY?!” “MORE DADDY!” all. day. long. We usually have swimming lessons on Monday mornings, but stayed home today because of Abby’s congested cough. I’m trying to get her back on her regular routine; she is fighting me with everything she has. I want her to nap so that I can get some peace and quiet and actually get some work done; she wants to play and PARTAY instead of napping and “HEY MA! WHERE DADDY?!” boy, she wishes her Daddy were home to play with her.

Me too, baby, me too. Is it Friday yet?

My little brother and his family drive me absolutely insane. I love them, I really do, but…insane. My brother is the only sibling I have, and so he “gets” me in a way that no one else possibly can. Some of the things that I do that drive other people (see: my husband) insane seem totally normal to my brother. There are things that I just don’t have to explain - he just knows where I’m coming from.

The truth is that he is now and always will be my little brother, and I really want to protect him and take care of him and make sure that he has what he needs. Unfortunately, he’s also in his thirties and married with kids of his own, and he’s free to make his own mistakes and ignore my advice just like he always has. And he does, and it drives me up a wall. I’m glad he still listens to what I say, even if he’s going to ignore it later, but it’s hard to watch him make mistakes that I see coming miles away.

We had dinner with him and the kids tonight to celebrate his two older kids’ birthdays (both on the 27th - the oldest will be six and my niece will be five) and catch up with him before he heads back to Georgia. Things have been really tough for him lately. Not my story to tell, by a long shot, but when a story starts with “The good news is that you won’t be deploying with your unit to Iraq; the bad news is that you might have MS or a brain tumor…” and pretty much goes downhill from there, you can see that life isn’t easy for them right now.

We’re as supportive as we can be - a lot of their troubles are of their own making, but they have plenty of troubles that aren’t. I think at some point you just give up; you feel as if nothing you do makes things better anyway, so why bother? Unfortunately it’s hard to argue with that perspective, and we’re pretty limited in what we could do to help them anyway. All I can do is hope that being here for them is enough and that their luck takes a hard turn for the better really soon.

In spite of my strong desire to avoid the crazy shopping crowds this weekend, we found ourselves drawn to the mall this afternoon to buy one major item. We finally decided to break down and buy a “real” camera - a DSLR - so that we can hopefully take pictures of our daughter that look more like her and less like a blur of light as she darts through the viewfinder’s range.

We ended up getting the Nikon D40 kit that comes with a zoom lens, camera case and some training DVDs that will come in very handy since I’ve managed to forget most of what I ever knew about operating a real camera that required more than “turn on, point, shoot, repeat” action. We also sprang for a speedlight so that I can finally take indoor pictures with bounce flash instead of washing out everything I shoot.

I am sort of ridiculously excited about this camera, and hopefully I’ll figure it out soon. The excuse of “it’s not me, it’s the best the camera could do” isn’t going to fly much longer, I think!

I go out of my way not to shop on Black Friday. Not because I don’t love a deal, and not through any philosophical aversion to the retail industry, and not because I’m not willing to do my part to grease the wheels of the economy.

No, I stay home because I can’t think of much worse than going out to a crowded place with people who have been up and shopping in full guerrilla fighter mode since the crack of dawn.

We were supposed to have eleven people here for Thanksgiving dinner. We ended up with six.

At one point this afternoon I more or less uninvited my brother and his family, which made me very sad but not entirely surprised. Some people have a really hard time understanding that the things they do impact other people, and I’ve reached a point of just not taking it any more. I can only hope that at some level he understands why I said what I did, and that we’ll get to see them at some point this weekend to catch up before he heads back to Georgia.

We have a crazy amount of leftovers now, though.

Tomorrow we’re hosting Thanksgiving dinner at our house. I’m actually looking forward to it; not so much because I love cooking big meals and entertaining a crowd (both true) but mostly because I’m a control freak.

I have very specific ideas about what should be served at Thanksgiving dinner. You can add whatever you want to my list, but Thanksgiving dinner without cranberry jelly (Ocean Spray, from a can, with the ridges intact thankyouverymuch), mashed yams with marshmallows, and homemade pumpkin pie? Is not Thanksgiving dinner.