Vacation begins

We left for vacation at about 8:30 this morning. I had hoped to leave the house by 8, since we had to drop the dog off at the kennel, but that didn't happen. Oh well, half an hour off schedule isn't that big a deal, right? We would still get to where we were going by around 6:30. We were on our way to Frederick, Maryland, where my cousin is being married tomorrow. The morning was cool, but fairly bright and relatively sunny. We planned to picnic for lunch (and maybe for supper, too) but when we were finally ready to stop, it was still pretty chilly out and was getting pretty cloudy. Since we were wearing shorts and t-shirts, we had an indoor picnic instead. Back on the road, 20 miles outside of Cleveland, I jokingly say to Kevin that I bet it will be raining by the time we get to Pittsburgh. He has commented before that it always seems to rain when we drive through Pittsburgh. The words were just barely out of my mouth when the rain began. I didn't think it was raining all that hard in Ohio, but apparently everyone else on the road did, because the times I was able to come even close to hitting the speed limit were few and far between. I had planned to turn over driving duties to Kevin before we left the Ohio Turnpike, but Alison fell asleep and I didn't want to wake her up by stopping, so I kept on driving.

The rain got worse the further east we went. When we got on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the signs said that there was ponding water in some places. Great! Just what I want to hear. Alison woke up when we stopped to pay the toll to get on, so I decided we'd switch drivers at the first rest area. The road was getting pretty bad.....I felt the car start to hydroplane a few times....and I couldn't wait to get out of the driver's seat. Two miles before the rest area we came to a complete stop. It looked like a car had hydroplaned and gone right into the median wall. Ten minutes later we made it to the rest stop and switched places. When we got back on the road, we had a decision to make....stay on the turnpike, with all the truck traffic and construction, or head down towards Morgantown, W Va and go across I-68. We decided to head towards Morgantown. We no sooner got off the Turnpike and the traffic backed up again. We crawled along for a long time without making a whole lot of progress. Finally we got to the source of the problem. We were being routed up the off-ramp and back down the on-ramp and the going was slow because the police had to periodically let the traffic on the road we had to cross clear out a little bit. The reason for this detour? The highway was flooded! This was not the only place where water was covering the road, but I think it was some of the deepest. During this time I was in contact with my parents, who, along with my brother and his girlfriend, were getting ready to leave to meet us in Frederick for the wedding. I let them know what was going on and told them I couldn't recommend one route over the other.

At 6:30, we stopped for dinner at a Burger King. Did I mention that we were supposed to already be in Frederick by 6:30? Well were actually in Morgantown, a whopping 83 miles from the rest area where we had stopped at to change drivers. It had only taken us 3 hours to get there. We opted to actually eat inside the restaurant. We all needed some time to be out of the car, especially in light of the fact that we still had a looonnggg way to go before we were off the road for the night. We ate, Alison ran around a little bit and then we got back on the road. After another bout of torrential rain while we were eating, the rain seemed to let up a little bit.

Now we were driving through the mountains. It was really strange, but it seemed every time we went up a steep grade, the rain would be almost stopped by the time we got to the top. Then, when we went down on the other side, the rain was horrible again by the time we got to the bottom. Oh, and we also had to deal with fog as we approached the top of the steep grades, and there was a lot of wind. Throughout all this, Alison was quite the trooper. She sat back in her car seat and just read books....until it got dark, then she started to get cranky. About the time it got dark, the thunder and lightening started. To keep Alison from associating it with fireworks, we pretended to be Ernie pretending to be the Count on Sesame Street. When Ernie was "Count for the day," he would shout "Thunder!" "Lightening!" when he reached the point in his counting where the thunder and lightening would just happen for the real Count. So when the lightening flashed, we would say "Thunder!" "Lightening!" just like Ernie. It worked pretty well.

We finally made it back to I-70 and by the time we got to Clear Spring (where my aunt and uncle live) we decided to stop for gas and a diaper change. Good thing we did, because Alison would have leaked out her diaper if we hadn't. I checked in with my parents after we got back on the road and they were about 140 miles behind us....they had opted to take the Turnpike. Alison fell asleep shortly after I got off the phone, and slept for the last 45 minutes of the trip. At 9:20, nearly 13 hours after we left home for our 10 hour car trip, we pulled into the parking lot of our motel.

I could have sworn it was Tuesday.....

....but it sure seems like a Monday kind of day. Today started out just fine. I had a dentist appointment this morning to get my permanent crown and get my spring aligner adjusted. I got to the office, got settled in the chair, got the temporary crown popped off and the area around what's left of the tooth cleaned up and then the assistant tried to seat the crown....and it didn't fit. The reason? It wasn't my crown. My crown was in Sault Ste. Marie. So I got my temporary put back on and scheduled an appointment for the Monday after we get back from vacation to get the permanent crown on, since it will be in the office by Thursday, but they couldn't guarantee exactly when and we're leaving early Friday, so I couldn't do it then.

The afternoon passed quite normally. I played around on the computer for a little bit, did some knitting and then went downstairs and attacked the baskets of ironing that were waiting for me. With that done, I came back upstairs, played around on the computer a little bit more and got ready to take Alison and Bo for a walk. I could see there were some pretty dark clouds over my house, but could also see blue sky surrounding the dark clouds so I thought everything would be fine, especially since it wasn't supposed to rain here until tomorrow night. Well, we didn't even make it to the end of our street before it started pouring down rain. It didn't last long. It had stopped by the time I got Alison off my back and got her "umbrella" snapped on and got her back up on my back. We continued on our walk and I thought we were set. But alas, about 10 minutes later I was walking in another downpour. Fortunately it was in the low 80's today, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but I still could have done without a second shower today. Once we got throught that, the rest of the walk was pretty nice.

We have to go out and do a little pre-vacation shopping tonight. I hope we get it all done without some kind of disaster.

I never thought I'd be so thrilled when my daughter started telling us when she has pooped. But I am. It sounds like such a silly thing, but I was practically jumping for joy yesterday when Kevin told me that Alison told him she pooped and there was really something there when he changed her diaper. It gives me hope that she will, eventually, be successful in potty training and we might escape some of the interventions that other SB kids require to make them bowel continent. And since the same nerves control the bladder, I'm encouraged that she will be bladder continent without intervention as well. Of course, only time will tell.

In other news, Kevin's company picnic was a lot of fun. There were lots of kids there and they had fun stuff for them to do. There were some clowns there making balloon animals and painting kids faces. It was a long wait, but Alison got a cat face painted on her. She looked really cute! I was kicking myself for forgetting the camera, but we did take a picture when we got home There were two moonwalks set up. One looked sort of like a carousel and was geared more towards the little kids and one was a crouching dragon that you went in throught the open mouth, climbed up the "tongue" and slid down into it's "stomach." It was geared more towards the bigger kids, though Alison did get to go in it just before they took it down. Instead of going in through the mouth, they sent her in through the other end. It was like crawling through a wind tunnel! She had been in the other moonwalk, but some bigger kids got in, too, and a couple of them fell on her and one ended up kicking her in the face. :( She was upset by it, but was even more upset when we got her out because she really wasn't hurt and really didn't want to get out! Jumping is her new favorite thing to do, so a moonwalk was the greatest thing since sliced bread for her. At dinner, we tried to get as far away from the dj's speakers as we could, but it was still way too loud and Alison got freaked out a couple of times, until we put some earplugs in. Then she was fine and happily ate chicken, mashed potatoes corn and a roll.

After dinner were the awards and after the awards were all handed out, it was time for the fireworks. Alison did not like the fireworks on the 4th of July, but we were hoping that by using earplugs it would be better. It was not. The first three that were shot off were the really loud booming ones and Alison completely freaked out. We hadn't even had a chance to sit down yet. :( I put her in Kevin's car and he got in there with her, hoping she would be all right, but before long she was hiding on the floor of the front seat. During a lull in the explosions, I grabbed her and headed for my car (and her carseat), but didn't get there fast enough. I nearly dropped Alison as she wriggled around trying to get away from the noise while I was trying to unlock the car (no keyless here). We both jumped in the front seat and I turned on her favorite CD. That helped long enough for me to hop out of the car and run to the other side and get in the back seat, pull her between the seats and plop her in her car seat so I could strap her in and we could leave. Since we don't live that far away from the plant, you could still hear the fireworks quite well at our house. Alison was not happy about that. She wanted to go see our neighbors, who were sitting outside with some friends, until she heard the boom, boom, boom. Even inside she tried to hide. Finally it was all over and she was pretty much all right, though I think she had some bad dreams involving fireworks that night because she woke up screaming a couple times. :( I think we'll probably skip the fireworks next year.

On Sunday, Alison started in the 2 year old Sunday school class. We were also there because we're "teaching" on the second Sunday of the month. She had a lot of fun and loved all the new and different toys that they have in that room. We had a good class. There were two kids who cried a little bit at first, but it didn't take long for them to settle down and get interested in playing. Sunday night was our first UMYF meeting. We're counselors again this year. We have paid babysitters for programs like that (and I am the new babysitter scheduler), so I took Alison to the nursery while Kevin headed down to the meeting. Either she had so much fun at Sunday school that morning or she knew Lillian was going to be one of the babysitters, because as soon as I put her down she ran down to the end of the hall and couldn't get the door open fast enough. She was ready to play!

The rest of this week will be spent getting ready for our big trip next week. I think we're going to have a lot of fun, and I will definitely be ready for it.

The week in review

Tuesday I had my ultrasound and mock trial. Everything looked fine on the ultrasound. The mock trial was okay, I guess. I just think that male doctors should never be allowed to say "you're going to feel a little bit of pressure" when shoving things through delicate female parts. Trust me, pressure was not what I was feeling. Because I have really retroverted uterus and Alison was born by c-section, in order to make getting the cathetar into my uterus easier at my real transfer I will be getting a stitch put in to straighten things out. Fortunately that will be done during retrieval and I will be unconcious.

On Wednesday we found out that Kevin's dad is not going to win his cancer battle. The tumor in his lung has double in size over the summer. He'll be getting chemo once a week to stretch the time he has left to 10 months, give or take, as opposed to the 4 months they gave him without it. When we visit next weekend it will probably be the last time we see him. We're wondering why they didn't keep up with treatments over the summer because someone had to have know that this would happen. Or maybe that's why they didn't keep up the treatments.

Yesterday was Alison's appointment with her new SB doctor. You can read more about it here. It really wasn't a bad appointment. It would have been even better if it had been in the morning. Let's just say we had one cranky little girl on our hands last because the 45 minutes to hour nap that she took in the car was not enough but she would not agree to going to sleep again until bedtime.

Tonight is Kevin's company picnic and awards presentation. I think it will be fun. Kevin is scheduled to give plant tours this afternoon, so we're meeting him there. There will be food and cotton candy and popcorn. And clowns making balloon animals. I'm going to have my work cut out for me keeping Alison away from that. She love balloons, but she can't have the latex ones. :( After the awards, when if gets dark, they're going to have fireworks. Alison was not to thrilled with the ones we saw on Fourth of July, terrified is the word that comes to mind, so I bought some earplugs for her in the hopes that maybe that will help. If not, we'll just come home.

We're on our way

We had our appointment with Dr. Shamma on Monday. Let me just say, nothing ever changes at that place. It's been nearly 3 years since the last time we were there and, just as before, our 1:45 appointment didn't start until well after 2:15. We didn't get finished until 3:30. Why I actually thought we might get in on time and be out in half an hour is beyond me. The longer we sat, the more frustrated Kevin, who was taking time off work, got....like there was anything I could do about it. It is not easy keeping a 2 year old occupied at the doctor's office for that long, either. We did end up letting her trot up and down the hall a few times. She went and talked to the office manager for a little bit, too....she had a radio in her office so Alison went in to "dance."

So we have our protocol. It's the same as last time, really. I was kind of hoping that I wouldn't need quite so many drugs to stim with since I've lost about 60 pounds since our last full in vitro cycle, but since I was 29 then, and I've already celebrated the 3rd anniversary of my 29th birthday now, I'm still doing 4 and 4. That's four amps in the morning (Gonal-F most likely) and 4 amps in the evening (Pergonal or Repronex). All 4 amps get mixed into one injection, but my butt still hurts just thinking about it. :( After procedure, in addition to progesterone-in-oil injections, I'll do Lovenox injections and baby aspirin again. If I get pregnant, I'll be one giant bruise by the time I'm able to stop all the meds. But before we get that far, I have to get through an ultrasound and mock transfer and a month of birth control pills. Oh, and Kevin has to get another semen analysis done. As they said, we really don't want to get to the day of retrieval and find out there's nothing there.

At least the financial load won't be quite as heavy this time. As I mentioned before, our insurance will cover about a third of the cost. Prices have increased about $1000 since we did this before, so the doctor knocked $1000 off our price. I don't know if he did it because we're repeat customers or because of everything we went through last time, but I'm not going to complain.

The doctor told us we could be ready to do the procedure in October, but since we are going to be on vacation for the last week of September, that won't work because I wouldn't be able to come in for blood work and ultrasounds to monitor the stimulation process. So we are going to do it in November. When I get my period next month (because let's face it, I'm not going to miraculously get pregnant on my own this month) I'll start birth control pills. And then we're off.....