I'm back! Christmas was, of course, merry, and I hope yours was too.
I did almost all of my shopping in one frenzied Christmas eve, but no one was missed. We had Rob's mom and my brother over for dinner, exchanged gifts, all that stuff. We made cookies, roasted another turkey, drank a gallon of hot cider. It was all very cozy. And Santa visited Noah, who still believes in him wholeheartedly at 10 years old. I think he willfully ignores evidence to the contrary, though...like the time that he found all the Santa presents in the trunk of the car two years ago, and I explained to him that Santa asked me to pick those things up for OTHER kids. (The things he asked for were in high demand that year, you see. Elves aren't very tech-savvy, and Santa's shopping time is limited.) I wasn't sure he'd buy it, but he swallowed it with barely a hint of skepticism. I think that's a good thing, too. Let him keep that innocence as long as possible.
(Warning - some of the following is probably TMI on health issues.)
In other news, it seems that everything's coming up baby in my family this year. Two of my cousins got married this summer, and their wives were both pregnant by November. My dad just announced that he and Erin are expecting a baby in July. It wasn't exactly planned, I guess, but Dad sounded happy about it. He says with everyone out of the house now, it'll be nice to have a little one around again. I figure that maybe this is just the push he needs to finally marry Erin, too, which would make me breathe a huge sigh of relief. She's the best thing that's happened to him in years, and I'm always afraid that one of them is going to have a change of heart at any moment. While marriage is no guarantee that they'll be together forever, it would make me feel safer about loving her.
I feel silly saying that, since I'm not a kid anymore and what do I care who my dad dates for how long? Except I was a kid when my mom died, and I always held a secret wish that he'd find someone to be a replacement mom. So every time he dated someone new, I'd hope, I'd get attached right away, and then the relationship would sour and she'd leave. Sometimes there was a brother that went with her, sometimes there wasn't. Sometimes we stayed in touch, sometimes we didn't.
So by the time Erin came along, I had pretty much given up on the whole mom thing. I was also doing the mom thing by then...Noah was a toddler when they started dating. I didn't know much about her really, except that she was a lot younger than Dad, and what could she possibly see in him? But she saw something good, I guess, and moved in with him after a year or so. I've never seen him as happy as he is with her, and she's completely transformed our family. Still, every time I call up there, I'm afraid that he's going to tell me she's gone. And at this point, that would absolutely break my heart.
So anyway, I'm really happy for them, and hoping for a sister this time. Though I'll be old enough to be her mother and I live 1000 miles away from them besides, six brothers is enough for me. Time to get some more estrogen into that household. :)
So, (probably) needless to say, all these pregnancies have put our own baby quest front and center. Besides just wanting to expand our family on its own merit, I'm insanely competitive too. It's really burning me up that my yahoo cousins who got married after us are pregnant before us. And Dad and Erin--ARE YOU F---ING KIDDING ME?! We're being outconceived by a 52-year-old man who wasn't even trying?! :) (Just jokes, family...just jokes. Love ya. Mean it.)
Like I say...insane.
While there is a chance I could be pregnant right this minute, the PCOS and OvCon fiasco of the past several months makes it pretty unlikely. I haven't had a TOM since I stopped taking OvCon, but considering my history and the fact that those 3 months on OvCon were pretty much a non-stop period anyway, I'm not sure that's anything to be hopeful about. I'm going to wait until after the 1st of the year to test, since that would be about a month since my last expected TOM. When I was pregnant with Noah, I tested at 3 weeks, but the result was light enough to be barely discernable. If I'm going to agonize over this anyway, I'd rather it be a clear result.
If it turns out like I think it will (not pregnant), Conception Quest 2005 will go into full swing in January. Doctor appointments, diet recommendations, ovulation charts, Cl0mid. And let's not forget the sex. :)
Which brings us to the hiatus part of the post. With the 2-year anniversary of this blog coming up the first week in January, I'm experiencing some burnout on the whole weight-losing thing. It's been a struggle for a long while, and I'm not sure how many more ways I can say "I fell off the wagon again, dammit". Or that I even want to say it anymore.
In the beginning, it was an obsession. In order for it to work, it had to be. All I thought about was how many calories I was eating and how much I was exercising and how much weight I was losing and what size I was/am/will be. Then, 30 lbs later, I got complacent. Nothing new appealed to me. I hated the thought of fretting over every morsel. I started "forgetting" to write things down. I started "recommitting" every few days. I started maintaining, then gaining, then yo-yoing through the same 5 lbs. Mostly, I just stopped caring.
It's not that the desire to lose the weight is gone...but the sense of urgency definitely is. And the interest is. Try as I might, I can't seem to get it back, so I've stopped chasing after it. Who knows...maybe it'll lap and catch up with me again.
At any rate, I'm taking a break from this place for a while. At least until I know whether CQ 2005 will be necessary, and I'll keep you posted on that. I'll also update the stats occasionally, and probably post a Year 2 roundup in the next week or so. But then it will get quiet around here for a while. I'm not giving up, but my heart's just not in it anymore. Call it a vacation.
If we do end up getting serious about the TTC thing, I'll probably move that whole obsession to its own space...maybe over to the journal. And when/if anything about weight loss becomes interesting to me again, I'll be back here to blather all about it. :)
Posted by Joy at December 28, 2004 12:54 PMGood luck with the baby quest in the new year. :)
Posted by: Jordana on December 31, 2004 08:24 PM