Happy Halloween!

I have to admit, Halloween has never been a favorite holiday of mine.  I have a lot of bad childhood memories of the day (not worth rehashing; suffice it to say, one example is that my mom rarely let me wear the costumes I wanted and usually went a cheap route which resulted in my feeling uncomfortable and/or being teased by other children), and we got candy regularly from my grandmother during our childhood, so that part of the day didn't make it special for us. 

As an adult, I've rarely dressed up because I lack creativity.  I don't particularly like horror movies.  I don't enjoy decorating for any holiday, and Halloween is no exception.

MM, on the other hand, loves Halloween.  It's his favorite holiday.  So I've tried to make a bit more of an effort to get into the spirit of the holiday since we've been together.  I've dressed up two of the past four Halloweens (once as a "naughty nurse" and last year when I was pregnant, we went to a costume party dressed as Mary and Joseph).  I've carved pumpkins and bought a ghoul for the front walk.

Time will tell whether AJ & MJ love the holiday as much as their dad.  For this year, they will be dressed in their skeleton costumes to help us hand out candy to the neighborhood children, and their grandma and grandpa will be coming up to see them (and take photos of them in costume, no doubt).

Trick or treat.  Stay safe out there.

Hurricane Sandy

The photos I am seeing of Manhattan and Hoboken, NJ--places I visited just a few years ago--are just unbelievable.  I hope that anyone who reads this blog who lives in the areas affected by this hurricane stays safe.

For today, I am grateful that I live in a part of the country where hurricanes don't hit.  It was 89 degrees and sunny here yesterday and promises to be the same today.

Pumpkin patch

I wanted to get photos of our sons picking out their first pumpkins, but when we headed to the nearest pumpkin patch today, we had limited time and did not want to fight the large crowd we saw there.  (Good plan, waiting until the Sunday before Halloween to go.)  So instead, we stopped at a nearby church we'd passed on the way to the pumpkin patch that had a small bazaar going on and pumpkins for sale.

Things did not go as well as we had hoped.  Our sons had fallen asleep in the car--even though it wasn't their usual nap time--and they weren't into the whole scene and starting crying after a few seconds when we put them down near the pumpkins for photos. 

They were OK for a few minutes while MM snapped a few pictures of me holding them in my arms

But when MM took them over for photos with them, MJ promptly spit up all over his adorable Gymb.oree shirt, and both boys started crying.  We decided to quickly pick two small pumpkins for them and finish our photo taking in the park near our house.  That didn't work well either.

Oh well.  I am grateful for great weather here--particularly as over half the country is having storms--and grateful to have children to buy pumpkins for, even if they don't exactly love the pumpkins.

Did I jinx myself?

I'm wondering if maybe I shouldn't have written my post on gratitude.  Since I put up yesterday's post, I have had a lot of negative crap happen!  My father and my sister got into a huge fight on the phone, which led to calls from her yesterday and from him this morning where I got to hear about it from both sides.  My husband's car battery died twice yesterday, which meant he got home from work much later than usual, leaving me alone with the boys during their fussy period longer than usual.  (AJ had a meltdown at one point, and I must've removed them from the dog's water bowl at least 10 times while I was making their bedtime bottles before I finally gave up and put them in their play pens.)

Opposing counsel in one of my cases pulled a real d!ck move and filed a motion for something we had already discussed and that we had already agreed our firm would take care of without the necessity of such a motion.  Of course, the motion was filed at the end of the day, when I had already left the office, so I had to respond to emails from the partner on the case about what was going on while I was trying to feed the boys dinner.  I still have to straighten this out today.  Also, this has happened right at the outset of this case, which makes me dread having to work with this attorney on the other side for the next several months/couple of years.

MJ woke me at 5:15 this morning, which led to my being irritable.  (Nothing like being awakened in the dark 30 minutes before your alarm goes off to start the day on the wrong foot!)  MM didn't want to get up and take care of MJ when he was up for the day at 6:15 because he was "tired," which made me mad.  And he let MJ cry in his play pen while I was in the shower for so long and to such a point of distress that I jumped out of the shower dripping wet to find out what was wrong. . . right as he finally addressed the situation.  And then he "didn't hear" AJ fussing in his crib to be gotten up.  All these things led to my having a fight with MM this morning before leaving for work.

And I can't find my Gymbucks for the January redemption period (yes, I know I won't need them for three months), and I'm afraid I threw some of them away.  (You'd think I'd be able to just forget about this one, especially in light of everything else going on, but for some reason, I can't seem to.)  I was planning to use those to buy the boys' holiday clothes for next Christmas when they are on clearance in January.

Well, in spite of all this, I am grateful for having my job.  I may have to deal with annoying attorneys, and it's not my favorite place to be. . . but it pays the bills, and it gives me somewhere to go every day.

A month of gratitude

My posting here has been sporadic since my sons were born in January, which is to be expected.  I have far less free time these days than at any other time in my life.

I have found, though, that I enjoy writing here.  It's therapeutic for me, in a way, just to get my thoughts and feelings out on "paper," and when I get comments, that can be therapeutic as well.  So I want to get back to writing here more regularly.  Most of my posts are quick and dirty, rather than taking me hours to write and edit, so the time commitment really won't be that much.

I thought one good way to get back into the habit of posting regularly would be to do a daily post of things for which I'm grateful, and what better month than November, when we celebrate Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., to do that?  I've done similar things before on this blog (one example here), but it's been a while, and I do believe in the positive effects of gratitude on mood and mental outlook.

When I was in my late 20s, single and childless, I actually managed to keep a gratitude journal for most of a whole year.  I still have it, and when I've looked backed on the things I've written, I smile.  I think it's always a good thing to pause and reflect on the things for which I am grateful on a daily basis.  Not just the big and obvious things, like my sons or good health, but the little things that happen in the course of going about living life.

Would anyone care to join me in this endeavor?  I would love to read your posts on this topic as well as sharing the things for which I'm grateful each day.

It's not November yet, but I'll go ahead and share something that happened to me for which I'm grateful.  I had a dental appointment this morning--just a routine cleaning--and on my way to the office, I stopped by the Star$$ drive-thru for my daily morning caffeine fix.  As I was pulling up to the lane for the drive-thru window, another car was pulling up around the same time.  The other driver was a little more assertive than I and pulled into the lane in front of me, although if we'd both maintained the same speed we'd been driving as we'd entered the parking lot, I would've been ahead of her in line.  No big deal, I just shrugged it off.  (I don't usually sweat that kind of small stuff; road rage isn't one of my problems.)

When I reached the window to pick up my caffe mocha, the barista told me that the woman ahead of me had paid for my coffee "because she cut you off."  Wasn't that a nice thing for her to do?  So I was grateful for saving the $4.50(!) I'd been prepared to pay for my morning coffee.

Happy Thursday!

Trading Places

This post is on a topic suggested by PAIL bloggers related to Keiko and Pamela's "To Mom or Not to Mom" 5-day open salon.

Because our journey to using DE IVF was a long and winding one, I have actually contemplated some of these questions before.  There were periods during our 3+ years TTC when I thought living the rest of my life without ever being a parent would be my reality.

What would it be like for you to have made the decision not to parent? 

MM and I joked a few times during our years TTC that if we never had children, we would just go on a two-week vacation to Europe every other year instead.  Although these comments were made in jest, they were also, to a degree, serious.  We both realized that if we never had children we would have more money, time and freedom for things like travel than we would have should we become parents.

For me, at least, had we made the difficult decision not to parent, I suspect my life would've continued on in much the same way it had for many years. . . working full time in a demanding profession, spending lots of time with friends, volunteering for various causes, reading lots of books (both fiction and non-fiction), lavishing attention and affection on my nephew, my friends' children and my dogs in lieu of having children of my own for whom I could do this. . . and yes, traveling to places I've longed to visit for years.

I know firsthand that the life I just described has its pleasures and its rewards because I lived a version of it for most of my adulthood.  I spent many years creating that life for myself.  At the same time, although it hasn't always been obvious due to the other choices I've made in my life, both personally and professionally, being a mother has been the desire of my heart for as long as I can remember.  

During a brief period a few months before our DE IVF cycle, MM had second thoughts about doing a DE IVF cycle because of the expense involved.  While we were in this limbo, it wasn't clear if there was any other way that I could/would become a mother.  At a counseling session during that period which I wrote about here, NC asked me how I felt about never being a mother, and I said "When I'm on my deathbed--which I hope won't be until I'm at least 75--I know I will regret it if I was never a mother" and uncharacteristically burst into tears.

Those words are some of the truest I've ever spoken.  If I hadn't had the opportunity to be a mother, I truly feel that I would've looked back on my life with regret and that all the other things I've experienced and accomplished would've meant little to me.  I know many women find a great deal of fulfillment and satisfaction in work, marriage, volunteering and other things--I'm friends with a few people who are either childless by choice or who never had children due to circumstance and have still lived happy lives--so I don't think that children are necessary to a woman's fulfillment.  But for me, even before having children, I suspected that there was nothing else that would bring me greater joy.

Now that I am a mother, I am even more certain of the truth of my words at that session.  It's difficult for me to even put into words what being a mother to my sons has meant to me, and when I think about the possibility that I might never have had this experience, just the thought makes me unspeakably sad.

Having said all that about myself, let me add this: I think that making that difficult decision is the right one for some people, and I applaud them for their strength in being able to make the choice.

What would it have taken for you to come to that place?

I was close to it more than once.  I think I would've had to go through a lot more counseling to come to terms with that loss, and I'm not sure I would've ever felt 100% OK about it.

How do you think you would feel about parenting if you had never experienced infertility or loss?

I think that, having waited so long to become a mother, I would've still been more than usually appreciative of the experience, but I do think that having gone through such a struggle to have my sons makes me more mindful of the great gift it is to have them in my life and makes me reflect more often on my gratitude at having the opportunity to be their mother.

What other aspects of your parenting journey could you see playing out differently in an alternate universe?

I do still sometimes fantasize about how different our lives would be had we conceived on our own.  We could have a 3-year-old by now if I'd gotten pregnant within our first few months of TTC.  We could have a 2-year-old if my miscarriage in August 2009 hadn't happened.  In either scenario, we'd have a lot more money in the bank because we wouldn't have paid for fertility testing and treatment, and we likely would've only had one child, so our current costs would be lower as well.

I am not sure I can fully visualize a life in which I never had children at all through any means, though.  Whether by birth or adoption, I do feel that being a mother is something I was meant to do.

How has the specific path to parenting that you have taken changed who you are as a person (or do you feel it hasn’t)?

Wow, heavy question.  I think that all we have gone through to get to this point has certainly made me more appreciative of the parenting experience and more eager to drink in every moment of my sons' babyhood: their growth and development, their emerging personalities, even the drudgery of bottles and diapers and laundry.  But I think that would be true of anyone who'd experienced infertility and/or loss.

Having used DE, I think I am much more aware than the average person of various alternative paths to parenthood, certainly much more aware of this than I was before we used DE.  Also, I hope that doing something like this which is still outside the norm has made me more open-minded.

Bullet Tuesday

No time for a real post, although I have a few percolating in my head, particularly after my session with NC this past weekend.  Soon, I hope. . . .

• The boys turned 9 months old last Friday.  They have now been alive outside of my body longer than they were ever inside my body.  Crazy!  They are crawling everywhere and pulling up to stand, and AJ is trying to climb on everything: Daddy, the dog, the furniture.  He has become quite a daredevil!  MJ has always been very physical, but we've been surprised at these recent developments with AJ.
• MJ says Mama pretty often now and usually seems to be directing it at me. It's very sweet.  (I try to get AJ to say it, too, but he just smiles and laughs.)
• It's funny how, not long after posting about feeling stressed, I read some similar posts by other new-mom bloggers.  It seems I am not alone in feeling overwhelmed by new parenthood.
• After feeling so good about our progress with MJ on the Ferber method, we've had both babies awake before 5 a.m. the past two nights in a row.  Not good.  Mama needs her sleep!
• The weather here is FINALLY cool enough to take the boys places during the day!  We went for a long walk last Saturday morning with my friend J and her baby girl and are planning to do it again this coming Sunday.  We are meeting another twin mom (who I have yet to meet in real life) at the zoo a week from Saturday.  We are having our outdoor family photo shoot the same day.  I love fall in Arizona!
• I am so glad the last presidential debate is over, and I am counting the days until the election.  I don't care to talk politics on this blog, and my own affiliation really doesn't matter.  Either way, I am tired of MM's obsession with CNN and all my friends' posts on Fa.ceb.ook about their respective candidates.
• How did I miss that Justin Timberlake got married? I think I vaguely remember hearing that he and Jessica Biel were back together, but not sure I knew they were engaged and definitely didn't know they are now married. Hmm.
• I am actually managing to read a little at bedtime each night!  This development is huge for me, as reading has long been one of my greatest pleasures, and it's something I've done very little since getting pregnant and having my sons.

Happy Tuesday!