I haven't posted in a really long time. And I've noticed that some of the blogs I used to follow when I was on bedrest and soon thereafter are coming down. Most in fact... coming down or slowing way down as mine has.
There is lots to tell I suppose but I don't even find myself composing posts in my head anymore. I am just simply too busy. And I don't quite feel that this is where I belong anymore. Posting about the daily struggles of being a working mom seems misfiled on this blog. On the other hand, my issues with having been infertile are particularly unoriginal. It still affects my life (in fact, I think I may have developed Asherman's again, though no doctor will believe me... again), but then work needs to get done and diapers get pooped in, so I dust myself off and move on.
I don't need to blog about it to move on. I still check other blogs often, but the list grows shorter all the time.
I have loved having this space, but now I think it is time to dust myself off and move on again.

I don't ever have one long enough to put together a post. Here's how it is around here: Mr. Kim's job is very demanding lately, so is mine coincidentally. I feel like I'm doing a craptastic job at home and at work because I am always doing something half-assed in order to get on to the next thing I'm going to do half-assed.
The Bug is turning one in a few weeks. I can't freaking believe it. She is adorable and hilarious. She cackles wildly whenever she is crawling onto something she shouldn't or swinging in the baby swing.
Next year I'll be cutting back to part time and work. We just decided and I've submitted some of the paperwork so I guess I can untie Mr. Kim and take the tape off his mouth. Good negotiation, very productive.
But seriously, we both feel that this school year has just been way too much. And of course at work I'm doing more than a full time job without ever being able to stay a little late to catch up.
Speaking of birthdays, in a few days I'll complete 37 years of whining to get out of backbreaking gardening chores, avoiding annoying people, eating too many Oreos, drinking sweet tea like a fiend, and appreciating every single warm day. There was other stuff but I can't remember it because it didn't happen today.
Oh, and the Bug is weened so I am free of the burden of her hypoallergenic diet. Cheese, treenuts and seafood are on the menu now but it turns out that I remembered them as better than they are. Damnit. I thought it would be a transcendent moment when I could go back to a regular diet but instead it's a little disappointing and I kind of miss nursing.

It's been so long since I've posted I doubt anyone is still reading, but the blog is good for posterity so here goes a quick update:
- The Bug is doing great. She is 8 and a half months, and I think she mainlines sunshine she's so freaking happy.
- The Bean loves her sister so much she was crying tonight because she missed her sister who had gone to bed about an hour earlier. No trace of jealousy, certainly.
- Work is beyond crazy and balancing it (full-time) with Mr. Kim's demanding job and the family thing means there is often just nothing left. We are all hoping that next year I'll be able to cut back to part time (maybe 4 or 4 and a half days a week - grad school ain't cheap and we're still paying for it).
- And that's probably why my little chest cold got to where it is tonight. Probably bacterial bronchitis. Yeck. I'm home today and have a doctor's appointment at Mr. Kim's insistence.

About a year ago I got my bedrest sentence and about a year ago I started this blog, sitting at home, in bed, bored to death, with bronchitis, worrying that every cough was shortening my cervix. Here I sit today, in bed, bored, disappointed at the lack of progress in daytime television since I left bedrest. At least I don't have to worry about coughing this time.
But the similarities feel a little eerie. Most of the time I'm honestly too busy to remember how panicky I felt a year ago.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm hallucinating this happy ending. I imagine people clucking and shaking their heads after I give an update on my beautiful, happy, good sleeping baby girl who has blue eyes (I had one grandmother with grey eyes, otherwise I can't point to one blue-eyed person in my family). "They say to just go with it, she'll come out of it eventually... so sad" they say as I walk away. My husband pays the daycare lady a little to pretend she is taking and returning my baby each day. Crazy, I know. But the journey of infertility and a tough pregnancy, it's crazy too. It trains us to expect failure, to expect the worst. My well-guarded mind doesn't know what to do with this sunshine and rainbows ending.

I'm still here, still reading and still commenting but not blogging much since work started. It has been craaaaazy. I have a huge caseload at work, continuing ed units to finish by Dec 31, and 4 different schedules to coordinate.

The Bug was 6 months old yesterday! She is doing great with the notable exception of some nasty eczema. Like blistering and oozing nasty. We've gone to the dermatologist, the pediatrician, and back to both. It's kind of under control, but never really goes away. And all we have to do to achieve this dermatological purgatory is smear steroid cream all over her every night! It's that easy!

When I got back to work I found that they had taken the sick leave I didn't earn back last year out of this year. So I have 3, count 'em 3! sick leave days this year. Wait, 2, I already took one. I guess technically I can have more but I just won't get paid for them. And I've got a cold.

It's like the entire time I was on bedrest I was pulling back this enormous rubber band and when I went back to work I let it go. I'm not sure how to finish this metaphor, I'm either being catapulted along working hard at work, working hard at home and having absolutely no safety net of sick days. Or, it continues to smack me harder each day for every day I laid around worrying my ass off (apparently literally). Pick your metaphor.

As shitty as all that sounds and as much as I just whined.... I'm really happy and I never, ever forget how long and hard I worked longing for just exactly this brand of exhaustion. Failed ART cycles, bedrest, shortened cervix, 9 days in the NICU... I'll take some exhaustion if that's the toll for having my heart's desire fulfilled.

The last day of summer. The laaaaaaaaast day of summer. Woe is me.

The Bug is at her first full day of daycare. The Bean is at camp. I have a day to sit around and do nothing (or do something) and I've been looking forward to it but I feel oddly misplaced without them. Like a puzzle piece lying under a sofa somewhere - meaningless and unidentifiable without the other pieces.

Tomorrow I'll be sitting through hours upon hours of dreadful meetings the in no way apply to me. So I'm looking forward to that. Well, I am looking forward to gainful employment. Bedrest is hard enough, but if you happen not to qualify for short term disability (I had not been with my employer long enough to qualify), it can be an economical train wreck. We were incredibly luck to have parents willing and able to float us a loan on very good terms. We'll start paying that back in January after a few months to recover.

I was so, so, so excited to hear that Ms. Heathen has gotten a BFP - between cycles no less. I don't talk about it much because it is uncomfortable still - but we conceived the Bug the same way. Why uncomfortable? Everyone who has gone through IF can attest to why they hate hearing those stories. They usually have that "see, they just relaxed and boom!" subtext to them. So I didn't tell most of my non-IF friends that it happened that way to avoid an "I told you so!" or being the protagonist in their handy "cycle break BFP" story they would go and tell all their IF friends to make them feel "better." Weird, right? I didn't say it was an assisted cycle, I just didn't say either way and they didn't ask. Ok, then with IF friends I don't mention it - and I'm not sure why. Does it feel like I cheated? Like I was posing as IF when I failed 3 Clomid, 3 IUI and 1 IVF cycles? Or maybe I just think there are times people don't want to hear a story like that, it's hard to know when, so I keep it under my cap.

Anyway, so happy for Ms. Heathen, and I'll be thinking about her during that nail-biting first trimester.

I'm off my blogging game on both blogs right now. I work for the schools, so my maternity leave was extended by summer vacation. Now that it's coming to a close I'm spending a lot less time online in general.

All is well though. Baby Bug had her 4 month appointment and she is doing great. She sleeps 9 hours a night between 11 and 8, seems to be getting red hair and is completely charming and adorable. So she was probably switched in the NICU, but I'm keeping it on the QT.

Life with 2 at home has been interesting. The Bean really has been helpful in a lot of ways. But this week she is in camp and I must say that the break is nice. Mostly the break from the sentence. The one she begins when she wakes up in the morning and ends when she goes to bed at night. It works like an auditory Where's Waldo. She talks constantly, using a good number of made up words and hours of pretend play schemes and just babbling (e.g., "When baby has a poopy diapers it's huuuuge. Sometimes huuuuge. Huuuuge. Huuuuuger. Sometimes it's small. Small. Soooooo small. But usually HUge. MOMMY, are you listening?") but buried in there are vital bits of information (e.g., "So then you have to just *touch* this light switch if you want to be a glitter princess... I have to go potty so bad... and then you'll be a glittery, glittery princess becauuuuuuuuuuse, well, that's just what you have to do...").

However, over the course of the summer we have managed to have some fun and expose the girls to some culture even. We visited the National Portrait Gallery with a friend who was visiting. Here's a tip for all you new mommies (or not-so-new, I thought it would be a train wreck): give anything a try once, you never know. Turns out the Bug LOVES to stare at art (if she's in the Bjorn where she can see all). Loves it. Goes crazy for a Metropolitan Museum of Art counting book her big sister checked out of the library. We were there for well over an hour and she loved every minute. Big sister also enjoyed herself, although she is partial to sculpture. She did discover Mary Cassatt, got a book about her we read often and can pretty accurately point out her work (not too hard since if it has a baby or a tea cup it's probably hers). She calls her Mary Croissant, which sounds pejorative, but the kid loves her buttery flakey pastries. Not a fan of the French though. After attending a French preschool for 2 years, then switching to a Jewish school she said "I don't mind speaking French, I just don't like French people." She was 3 at the time. Mr. Kim and I loved it. The food at all school events was great. The Bean loved the food too, honestly, and she loved a number of the teachers. It was just the mime she didn't like. But I digress. Really must post more often.

Here's something interesting. At the zoo the other day I saw a family with a (probably) adopted chinese girl and had a pang of longing to go through with our adoption plan. Because I need to be medicated I think. So far two isn't as hard as I thought (all the hardship to get to 2 might make it easier I admit), but I am happy and satisfied. And yet... I always planned to adopt and I was very excited about China until it started to take years to get a child. What am I thinking? Am I thinking? Mr. Kim comes from a family with 3 kids, one of them adopted and of a different racial background, and the other 2 biological. And it has been tough. I don't know what I'm talking about right now. It may well the be the IF withdrawal talking.

The Bug went back to the pulmonologist yesterday and was declared "a completely normal" baby. All inherited personality traits aside, of course.

She was removed from the monitor and set loose to continue devising adorable expressions that make her lapses in personal hygiene endearing. In fact, the good doctor would have allowed us to keep it for another month, just for nighttime, but it seemed to me that no matter when we get rid of it, there will be a few (dozen) tense nights. Better sooner than later, before this "sick baby" stigma starts to stick.

Still, I miss the lights flashing away reassuringly while she dozes. And now I kind of miss the whoosh whoosh sound the monitor made each morning when I went to get her and scooted it along the floor on our way to my bed and the Boppy.