Some Very Exciting News... :)

Yep! Curtis is going to be a big brother!! Our new Little Bug will hopefully join our family mid May, not follow in their brother's footsteps and come early April :)

We are super excited to be adding to our little family and looking forward to where this adventure takes our family. The past few weeks have been rough with dealing with normal pregnancy symptoms that I pray go away with the start of my 2nd trimester, although I am not counting on that as they lasted completely through the 2nd with Curtis. Isaac has been super dad and super husband these last several weeks, taking care of me, doing dishes, taking care of Curtis, washing poop diapers since they usually make me want to throw up, helping with dinner, getting up with Curtis at night and letting me nap during the day. I tell him all the time, he wins the Husband of the Year award because I just don't know what I'd do without his support. I am so incredibly thankful for it.

How far along: 11weeks

Total weight gain/loss: Since I'm nursing and pregnant and constantly nauseous, I've actually lost weight. It seems almost impossible to keep up my needed calorie intake, so right now, I'm eating whatever I can, although a lot of time, it's just a few bites...unless it's bread or cheese.

Maternity clothes: I started wearing maternity pants around 6 or 7 weeks, and it was the best decision ever. So much more comfy :)

Stretch marks: None so far.

Best moment this week: It's only Tue, but probably going to be going to look for a new dog today....that story will come later

Miss anything: Coffee, I'm back to not being able to drink it, be around it, wash coffee dishes, roast the beans, I can't do anything with coffee. I can't wait till that changes.

Movement: None so far, but I'm hoping since this is my 2nd, it won't be too long.

Food cravings: Steak and pizza. I could eat steak all the time if we could afford it.

Anything making you queasy or sick: Everything makes me queasy. Luckily I have an amazing doctor who hooked me up :)

Have you started to show yet: I feel like I've been showing for a while, but it could have just still been Curtis, but I do definitely have a little bump.

Gender: Hopefully we find out in December

Labor Signs: None 

Symptoms: I have every typical symtpom.

Belly button in or out: In for now.

Wedding rings on or off: I'on

Happy or Moody most of the time: Isaac will say I'm a little more moody, but I think I'm still pretty happy, just exhausted all the time.

Looking forward to: The CPC banquest, kind of a date night, wonderful food, and getting encouraged for another year of volunteering :)

Curtis' First Birthday Party

This past weekend we went to NC to celebrate Curtis' first birthday with our family. It was a busy weekend, as always, but it was such a perfect weekend. The whole day was filled with family and friends. We had a little party around lunch time, complete with cake. He was so cute and gentle with the cake, unlike so many other 1yr olds I've seen. He didn't smash it or dig his face in to it like I thought he would. But he did enjoy the icing while my brave husband held him. It was pretty cute. Later in the day, my Aunt Bec Bec and Uncle Chuck came to visit. It was there first time meeting Curtis. It was so great to see them. And so fun watching Curtis interact with them. I love watching Curtis with my family. Sometimes it takes him a little while to warm up, but once he does, he is so funny to watch. To top off the day, Juan, Brenna and Prudence came by. Curtis was already down for the night and I was waking up from my nightly nap, but it was so great to see them. It was the perfect end to such a wonderful day.

I know we probably won't be able to celebrate every birthday with our families, but it was wonderful to celebrate Curtis' first with mine. To be able to share it with my Grandma, parent's, brother and sister-in-law and nieces, it just made the day so special.

In about 2 weeks, we get to celebrate his actual birthday, which I am looking forward to!

11 Months

So I'm a little late with this post. This past week has been crazy. Curtis had his first little virus this week. Thur, in the wee hours of the morning, he ran a super high temp and then all Thur, he was just pitiful. He refused to take a nap most of the morning. I would nurse him, he'd fall asleep, I'd unlatch him and he'd start screaming and we'd start the process all over again. I was so incredibly thankful when Isaac came home from duty and put him to sleep so I could take a nap. We took him to the dr and she said it was just a virus, so for that, we're thankful. And he seems to be feeling better, although he's still fussy and taking very long naps, the latter I am thankful for.

Other than that, We've been pretty good around here. I can't believe it's less than a month now till my little man turns 1. This year has completely flown by. Everyone told me it would, but it's crazy how right they were. Curtis is growing up so much. He's babbling like he's trying to talk and will have a whole conversation with you. It seems like he has so much to say, I can't wait till all those little babbles turn in to words. We're working on weaning, which has been pretty hard because, so far, he's started refusing most foods that I try and feed him. And until he eats food, I still have to nurse. But Hopefully in the next few weeks he'll start to get it and enjoy food.

Next month will be his birthday post!!

Dear Prudence Turns 1

This past Sunday, we celebrated Prudence's 1st birthday. It was an absolutely wonderful day! Last year, about this time, Prudence was clinging to life in an incubator at Forsyth Hospital and this past week, we got to enjoy seeing her crawl, stand, play with Peaches, get in a pool, scream at the ocean waves, eat her birthday cupcake, sweetly fall asleep on her daddy in the pool and play with Curtis. We went down Sunday to spend the day with the Perez/Lamb family in Rodanthe on the Outer Banks. We were so excited to be invited to celebrate Prudence. And it was such a fun afternoon. Curtis got to be in a pool for the first time, which he was not too sure about, but eventually warmed up to. Lucy loved swimming around with her Papa Ash on her "boat" and going fishing. At one point, all 3 children napped and we got to have a quiet afternoon in the house resting :) We walked down to the beach where Lucy loved the waves splashing around her, although Curtis and Prudence both did not care for them at all. And then came the birthday party. I love one year old's parties. I love watching them with their cake. It's the funniest thing to see their excited faces as they taste the icing and get it all over their faces. Pru was no exception! It was a wonderful, perfect birthday party!

On Tuesday this week, I went back down for the night since Isaac was duty. This was a fun adventure. My birthday was Wed and the plan was to leave after breakfast Wed morning so I could get back and celebrate my birthday with Isaac. Well, Wed morning, we woke up to flooding and major storming. So I waited a little, and had a birthday breakfast of pork chops and gravy, eggs, toast, and sweet potato butter made by David and Tara, such an amazing breakfast! The rain was not letting up at all, so I thought I'd try and leave before it got any worse. I packed and began to load the car but got soaked so I gave up on that. At that point it was looking like I was going to be flooded in for the day. We ended up driving in to Manteo and it took forever, the flooding was so bad, but luckily by the afternoon it dried well enough that I was able to get my car out and beat the next storm system coming through. I finally made it back home, although I'd missed our date for the night, thankfully we were able to reschedule with our babysitters. It was a huge adventure and a fun one. If I couldn't spend the day with Isaac, spending it with Brenna and her family was an awesome substitute!

Ultrasound Training Part 2

When I began volunteering with the Keim Center 2 and 1/2 years ago, I was told there would be opposition from the enemy. I experienced it some, but not much. It wasn't until I began ultrasound training that the opposition became real. Satan has some pretty awesome tactics, not just attacking me, but the other nurses, our babysitters and even their families. I explained some of it in my last blog and how God completely worked everything out in His timing. We experienced much the same thing with the ultrasound class in Fredericksburg this past week. The plan (funny, we should never makes plans) was that my director, Shannon's, mom was going to drive up from Richmond to watch Curtis at the hotel both days during the class. Shannon texted me on Monday saying that her mom couldn't get out of a commitment on Friday and wouldn't be able to come to Richmond. So I tried not to panic and we worked on an idea. On Tuesday, we decided I would stay in Richmond Thur night and leave Curtis on Friday and we'd pick Curtis up there on our way home. That was the plan we were banking on as we left on Wed. Everything went well with the drive, Curtis did pretty good. He did great at dinner and went to sleep pretty easily Wed night. Well, he decided it was party time at 4AM so we were up for the morning which was gonna make for a long day of class, but it was ok, nothing I couldn't handle without never ending coffee. Curtis did great with Shannon's mom, he even ate some liverwurst :) which cracked me up. She got him to sleep, which was amazing. And I was able to feel comfortable, not worry and pay attention to class. The first day was all about the legal implications to what we do and a lot of the history of the pro life movement. I really enjoyed all we learned and all the info was incredibly helpful. I was on information overload, but that's to be expected after 8 hours of class. Around 4:15, I got a text from Shannon. He dad was going to the ER with blood clots in his leg. Needless to say, Shannon's mom needed to leave and so I left class just a little early and got Curtis. Thankfully, her dad was ok and did not have to be admitted, but we needed a new babysitter...at the last minute...in a city we weren't familiar with. We had everyone on the job looking for someone. Shannon had enlisted some of the staff at the Keim Center to find someone. One of our instructor's had a call in to one of her friends to maybe watch him. And my friend Tori had called a friend of her's who lived there to see if they knew anyone. God perfectly worked it out that a girl in campus ministry was home raising funds and had the whole day completely free. And even more, He worked out that we could have our room until 2 and our sonographer from the Keim Center was going to stay, so Curtis could stay in her room after that. Curtis loved his babysitter, and I, again, could easily pay attention learning ultrasound basics while Curtis was being taken care of.

It was so amazing to see how God worked everything out. I admit, I panicked and just assumed the worse, so easily not trusting in Him to work things out. But he did, in His perfect timing, not mine. And because of Him, I was able to learn more of the skill that will help me show women the LIFE that is inside of them. I am so thankful for all the things he worked out, so thankful for letting me get through the class, so thankful for the growing friendships that He's giving me through the Keim Center, and so thankful that, one day soon, I'll be certified and will get to perform ultrasounds on the women of this city showing them their sweet babies.

In a week and a half I have part 3 of the training, 2 days of testing. I have some studying to do between now and then, but I am looking forward to this final step.

10 months

Curtis is 10 months today. Like every other month, so many things are new, so many things have changed. It has been quite a busy month for us all with doing my ultrasound training and figuring out how to juggle all of that. With that, we did have some firsts for both Curtis and myself. Curtis took whole bottles from a few of his baby sitters, which was awesome since he had not done that since he was 4 months old. It was also the first time we had been away from each other for that amount of time. I didn't like being away from him for so long. I didn't like only getting to spend an hour or so a day with him. But am thankful for the reason that it was like that. The training went well, and we begin the 2nd leg of it tomorrow with a drive to Fredericksburg (more on that later). 

A few more new things and some things that just crack us up: He's begun eating more solid foods and chunky purees and seems to like them. He actually tried roast tonight. That's been the only thing he voluntarily puts in his mouth, I think mostly because he can't pick up the other stuff easily, but he will eat it if I feed it to him. He's begun babbling much more, so we're trying to work on "mama" and we're working much more on sign language, hoping he'll pick it up soon. We've let him play in the kitchen some and he absolutely loves the kitchen spoons and ladles with the pots. It's a great way to keep him entertained while I'm trying to wash dishes. And probably one of my favorite things is that he thinks he has to go everywhere head first. Anytime he's sitting on our laps, he goes for the floor head first, so we hold his feet (of course) and he walks on his hands till he's far enough away from the furniture to get down. It's pretty entertaining to watch.

Doctor's appts this month have been fun. He was almost 21lbs and 29 1/4 inches. And the best news, he is murmur free! We had an echo confirmation a few weeks ago to confirm he no longer has his VSD heart murmur, which makes this mama incredibly happy!

This next few months will be pretty exciting as we have Prudence's first birthday to celebrate and Curtis'. At the end of this month, we'll head to the Outer Banks to celebrate Prudence's life. We are looking so forward to that day, and know that it truly is a gift from God. Then, just 3 weeks later, we'll have an early birthday party for Curtis. So lots of exciting things ahead :)

Ultrasound Training Week is Finished

Last Wed, I began limited ultrasound training for the Keim Center where I've been volunteering at for a little over 2 years. It has been one crazy, wonderful, stressful, educational, awesome 8 days. I've learned several things about myself and about what it really means to be apart of a ministry. 

A little bit of the saga of the past week just at the clinics alone: The first 2 days, that I can remember went really well. The 3rd day was when we really started feeling the attacks from Satan, knowing he wanted to discourage us as much as possible from finishing the training. It started off with Curtis screaming every time I tried to put him down or hand him to his wonderful 3rd Grandma, Grandma Charlotte. Then, Tori's shoe broke. That makes a job wear you have to stand all day very difficult. And then, while our fearless leader was taking a much needed day off to work on her house that she's suppose to move in to next week, the printer on the ultrasound machine broke. It's not a huge deal at the time because the actual machine still worked, we just couldn't give our ultrasound models or patients any pictures, and could not print off our images for our doctor to review. Pictures for models are not such a huge deal, but for pts, when they are seeking an abortion after the ultrasound, for the clinic to use our ultrasound measurements, we have to provide the pictures, so this made that kind of impossible. So we got a trainee repair guy to come out and look at it while we rescheduled all ultrasound patients to our Va Beach clinic. The repair guy was shady, did not tell us from the get go how much we would be paying him, then gave us a way more than necessary quote for doing absolutely nothing and possibly making the machine worse. Saturday, we saw just ultrasound models, but still could not give them pictures. Isaac tried to look at the computer part and fix it, but it didn't happen. Monday morning, with our first model on the table at 9AM, the machine just quit working. We fiddled with it some, tried figuring out something to do to make it work, but it didn't happen. So, we moved everything out to the beach location, which was still open as a clinic as well. So now, we're doing our training and also trying to figure out how to see pts. That was interesting...but good practice for when Tori and I will be solo nurses at the clinic. Tuesday, we started our blessings (eucharistao) list because we needed to keep our perspective on Jesus and off of everything Satan was trying to do. I think it was that day that we were clearly told our ultrasound machine was dead and it would not be usable any longer. Wed was an encouraging day, but somewhat stressful as Tori and I covered the clinic as well as did our training. It started out with scanning one of my favorite people here in Virginia and finding a heartbeat and seeing that everything looked like we wanted it to with the baby. I wanted to do a little happy dance at seeing that little heart beat :) but I contained my self :) Then, our fearless leader was told there was an ultrasound machine in Chesterville, but they had to go look at it then, so she left and it was Tori, Heather and I. I then, had my first patient who, once leaving, told the advocate that she was leaning more towards carrying to term after talking to me and the advocate. That made my heart happy. Today was a wonderful last day. We had a pretty easy morning so we did our book work and reviewed, saw 3 patients and really didn't have much craziness going on. That is the type of day we like. And we were praising God that he provided us an ultrasound machine in Norfolk and can't wait to try it :) All in all, we did 57 scans in 8 days. I feel like I've run a marathon but am so thankful for the past week.

On the family side of things, Curtis stayed with 7 different babysitters, traveled from close to Portsmouth, to Va Beach, to Chesapeake, to Suffolk and has been a trooper the whole time. The first few days were pretty difficult and it just broke my heart to leave him, but he got to where he would take his bottle and eat food and most of the time nap for the baby sitters. We are so incredibly blessed to have so many friends to help us do life and make it through the harder times. 

Some of the things God has taught me this week:

1.When working for a ministry (or really anywhere) you have to be flexible. You never know what's gonna happen. I've always felt like I was pretty good at that, but God really stretched it this week and showed me that it wasn't me who was gonna make it happen. I had to rely on Him for the flexibility to not have my plans happen.

2.God has solidified in my heart that He wants me as a stay-at-home mom right now and it was the right decision to leave the hospital. It has been incredibly hard to leave Curtis every day and I hate only spending an hour or so with him a day before he goes to bed. And he has struggled as well. He would cling to me in the morning before I left, which is abnormal and nurse forEVER, which is not normal since he typically gets distracted very easily. I am thankful for this opportunity and look forward to hopefully working part time for the ministry in the future and love my days where I volunteer, but I am exactly where God wants me for now.

3. He has also taught me that this type of nursing is where he wants me. It's hard, mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically. It challenges my brain, stretches my comfort level and sometimes breaks my heart. But it is right where He wants me that's exactly where I want to be. I love this ministry. I love it's purpose. I love having the privilege of being apart of saving lives and am so thankful for the opportunity to get to do that.

4. I have the best husband ever! I've told him several times this past week that he wins husband of the year and I've meant it every time. He has driven all over our wonderful city to pick Curtis up, and pick me up. He tried his hardest to fix our ultrasound machine. He took care of our crying, fussy, sometimes screaming child. He babysit for our god daughter while taking care of Curtis. He has helped with dishes, laundry, cooking, and cleaning. I am so incredibly thankful for him and know that if it weren't for him helping me, I would not have made it through. God knew what he was doing when He gave me Isaac :)

All in all, it was a wonderful week. We still have our classroom part in Fredericksburg,and then competency, but I think compared to this, that will be a breeze :) I'm looking forward to seeing what God will do.