Month in review: April 2012

I try to keep this blog interesting, really I do, but the bottom line is, I don't write this blog to please the general masses. I have feebly tried at this and failed. So in being my personal blog, it also happens to be the only representation of my child's youth (save the gajillion photos that I take). So for the sake of record keeping and personal interest I've decided to start a Month in Review on the last day of each month. I don't expect there to be mass interest in the details of what we do on our weekends, but perhaps someday my daughter will be interested. And if my brain starts going south I'll at least have some vague reference points to rely on.

So anyway, here leaves April, like a newly budded season just popping open. Again, a beautiful month to remind us how blessed we are.

Garden of the Gods

Finding treasures at the Botanical Gardens

Throwing rocks in the water, a favorite toddler pasttime

A gorgeous view during one of my runs. I've been running so much this month and feeling strong.

Again with the rock throwing, this time in the middle of a bike ride through Boulder.

Easy afternoons

I just love this picture of my sweet niece, Adaleigh, taken on Easter Sunday.

She may make give us a few gray hairs, but when it's good, it's good!

Do we look alike? 

Our front porch gets a lot of living these days.

I had to say goodbye to my sweet friend, Sarah. Love you girl.

Pretend fishing at a PBS Sprouts event at City Park.

Hoo, hoo! I adore this owl's face!!!

.Teaching my girl how to hoop like her mama!

A dream come true for Ellie, using a REAL fireman hose!

Clifford the Big Red Dog. I think he freaked Ellie out.

I even got a girls night out! You know, the kind that makes you feel like you're 100 years old. STILL FUN though!

This is the what happens when 30 year olds get a hotel room WITHOUT children: BED JUMPING!!

Us!

Adoption, and platelets and running, OH MY!

When you have no specific theme in mind and you have lots of things to say there is only one answer to your blogging conundrum.

Bullets!

• Adoption: We have been doing our homework, yo! We met with an adoption agency, attended a Denver County foster/adoption info session and had lunch with a couple who have a 3 year old adopted Korean son. He was awfully cute. His name is Michael and  Ellie refers to him as "that new boy" and I will admit when I saw the two of them playing together my heart sort of grew another size thinking of her and an adopted brother. 
• I have learned that adoption is a very LONG and detailed process. I have learned that international adoption looks and sounds very cool but is RATHER expensive, whereas going through Denver County nearly everything is paid for regarding training. 
• We're going to go with Denver County. 
• This will be a long process. We both need to take 6 week classes as part of our "homestudy" and unfortunately, we'll have to take them at separate times. 
• Doing the math, that's at least 3-4 months until we can start even being applicants. 
• Though we highly considered it, in the end we decided that we definitely do not want to foster. As big as our hearts may be, we are not up to the challenge of incorporating another child into our family who actually still has a family of their own. It's not fair to Ellie or said foster child. Having said that though, we would be willing to "foster to adopt" which means that the child's relationship with their parents has not been completely terminated by the courts yet, and there would be risks involving getting attached and needing to say goodbye, but yet, with the idea that they COULD be ours we are willing to try. And I do strongly believe that any interaction in a stable and loving home has to have some sort of positive effect, even if we don't see it right away. 
• We are moving forward with this. I am excited and still have a million questions. 
• So now about Ellie. Remember her ITP? Well, last week her platelet count was 122,000. 150K is our jackpot goal! We were stoked. We thought we were out of the water. We took her bike riding, let her play at the park, did all sorts of "no-no's" in our ridiculous naivety of this highly annoying condition. Today her platelets were 62K. DOWN by half! No viruses to speak of, no issues. All I can say about this is..."FUCK!"
• FUCK! (because that deserved its own bullet)
• Another thing about Ellie is that she has developed a rapidly growing habit of LOUD, TORTUOUS  temper tantrums that simply do NOT cease nor are they UNABLE to be reasoned with and let's just say that life at chez Nicklasson has been extremely stressful, during the tantrums anyway. 
• Her newest thing is yelling "YOU HURT ME" , at, you guys, the most RIDICULOUS things like tying her shoes or picking her up or WHATEVER. When she's on a real tear she'll even say it when I'm no where near her. No reasoning! So she kisses her arm or whatever tortured body part it is, which makes it all better, but guys, the GROCERY STORE! "YOU HURT ME!" Can you imagine how embarrassing this is? The neighbors. Dropping her off at school. I am so thankful that DHS hasn't come knocking on the door from some bystander call in. 
• Moving on. I am running another half marathon in less than a month. I don't actually think this is a big deal in which I want to write all kinds of details about my training; it's boring. But I will say that there is a very real fear that I am NOT ready for this as evidenced by last weekend's 9 miler in which I slugged around my overly hot (meaning temperature) body only to come home to complete parchment and a night of dry heaving over the toilet. It was hot (meaning sexy). Well the lesson I learned in that, and one that I actually knew but chose to forget due to convenience, is that long runs on hot days REQUIRE water and likely some Gu or gel of some sort. 
• My running fanny pack (Yes, I bought it and I LOVE IT!) is locked and loaded (er, at least it will be) with water, electrolyte replacement tabs and some gel packets for this weekend's run. 
• Have I lost you yet? Please don't go. I hate reading about other people's trainings, too. 
• My friend Sarah is moving to Wyoming and I am sad. But I already wrote about that.
• Tomorrow is a Girls Night Out in downtown Denver and we rented a HOTEL! This is literally the first time since I've had Ellie, who will soon be three, where I have done something like this. And let me tell you world, I AM READY!
• The summer calendar is shaping up NICELY. I am so excited for some pop up camper adventures, one of which will head up north to Wyoming to see said friend who's leaving and to Montana to see my totally fun and cool aunt who let's us use her backyard as our own personal KOA. 
• I'm scared of bears. There, I said it. Namely, I'm scared of them clawing through the canopy that protects us against the predators in nature. 
• I think we need a Vanagon.
• I have this really fun memory of seeing Nitty Gritty Dirt Band at Hudson Gardens here in one of Denver's suburbs and in that memory I had SO much fun. So this year I turn 35. And as every multiple of 5 should be celebrated in style, I invited slews of people to come see Nitty Gritty with me at Hudson Gardens ON my birthday. 
• Silence. 
• I felt like a four eyed nerd with a pocket protector and boob high pants saying "hey (snort) you wanna go to my (snort) birthday?" 
• I. Am. Awesome. (mantra)
• I'm nearly finished a very pornographic book that is truly terribly written yet sucks me in just as guiltily as the Twilight Series. "Fifty Shades of Grey", you won't be winning any writing awards but you probably put more spunk into old married couples bedtime shenanigans. Is there an award for that?
• We are needing to acknowledge a certain soon to be three year old with a most fabulous birthday so we are in suggestion mode. Which means pinterest. Which also means will accept unsolicted advice. 
• Life is hot (meaning weather). We've been eating dinners on the porch, taking walks before bedtime and relishing in the sweet new beat of this change of season. 
• I think this is going to be one long, HOT summer.

Toodles!

Friendships post children

I have a friend, one that I was not so long ago, very close friends with. We shared a very special, intimate time together as new mothers. We were both hospice nurses, had babies four days apart, went back to work in a job share AND watched each other's infants while the other worked. We thought we had it all figured out, and in a sense we did, on paper. But then the magnitude of transformation into motherhood hit us and life, though full of joy and wonder, became heavy and it was easy to feel lost in my foreign and precious responsibilities to my child.  Intense doesn't begin to cover it. We lasted four months of the baby share/job share. Then I found a new position in the same company, and the opportunity to share the intimate details of our lives became abandoned as we both retreated to our own home nuclei. Me, my daughter and our quest to have another. Sarah, her son, and her TWO sons after that. Suddenly we went from having everything in common to very little. Which of course is total BS because we were both MOMS and NURSES and most importantly, FRIENDS.

I'll keep this short but a lot of time went by with this friend where we sort of stopped talking. Our daily need to talk was gone, and soon we found ourselves a year in with no connection. I became so absorbed in my home space, in my motherhood, in my child, that, and this is a revolving theme, making time for friends became a big challenge. It often required an effort that I didn't want to make. I dare use the word laziness, but really, life just felt so full in my immediate existence.

So, this friend, this friend Sarah, is packing up her and her family and moving to Wyoming. They leave on Saturday and suddenly, in these past few weeks, I have been overcome with an appreciation of her, a mourning for all the time that went by where we made no effort to know the intimate details of each other's lives. This week I've sort of had this Carpe Diem mentality and have really made an effort. And what an easy effort it is. We just went out and had a drink, and it was great, and cathartic, and why the hell did we wait until she was leaving to do this? But really it made my heart swell with love for this friend of mine who will now become one of the many good friends that I have had in my life that I have an incredible amount of distance between.

This irony of sudden camaraderie after such a hiatus has been a real eye opener for me. Why does someone have to leave to make you acutely aware of just how much you will miss them? As Sarah just said, it's like when someone is dying and suddenly everyone visits, says what thy want to say, listen to what they need to hear. But the truth is, all of that could have been happening all along, in mindful and meaningful connections. This is a lesson that I have gleaned through my short journey into motherhood, after I metamorphosized into the doe eyed mother and rounded back to a wiser perhaps more nervous version of myself.  I've gained confidence in mothering, and every day I become better identified with who it is I am status post child. I've learned that it's okay to leave your child (this was a really tough one for me). And I have learned that FRIENDSHIPS are valuable, cathartic, and oh so important.

For me, it's easy to be a homebody. It's comfortable. At the end of the working day I just want to put my feet up and relax (yeah like that happens). But, having said that, I want to go through this world being the kind of FRIEND who makes the effort, who knows that as comfortable as it might seem to curl up with my laptop and watch reruns of Parks and Rec, it will be even more fun getting my ass OUT of the house and having meaningful connections with my friends. Because  have been blessed with some really super duper ones.

Barren, but full of hope

Well guess what guys? I'm not pregnant. Nope. Barren. Wind whistling through the desert. Dust bunnies travelin through the ovaries. Haunting echos in the uterus from all of the sperm ghosts yelling "Helloooooo, the egg you sent was bunk".

Do I have a touch for exaggeration? Perhaps.

I was sad this month, because well frankly and (cover your eyes mom and any relatives) we had a ton of sex.WHICH, when it's the baby making perfunctory kind, is really all not as exciting as it, well, it used to be. So we talked about our future. We talked about being really sick of trying. We talked about our original ideas for a family (have one, adopt one). Sometimes I talked with pressured speech because this clomid made my period the most horrifying, emotionally and physically exhausting experience. (When I say pressured speech what I'm really saying is cursing yelling, which I blame the clomid, because I can).

We came a decision. And frankly after coming to this decision the world felt lighter, my days felt brighter and my soul said, "well DUH!".

We are going to  adopt. At least that's the hope. We are going to two different  info sessions this week. We are going to decide if fostering to adoption is the road we want to go down (free, but with risks) or just a straight up normal adoption agency (extremely expensive, and with risks). There are risks all around. We have to think about our (nearly) 3 year old and how it will affect her. We need to think about age, medical conditions, behavioral conditions, basically what are we willing to take on?

I want this. I have so much mothering inside of me. I'm a nurse, a hospice one no less, so I have a thick skin when it comes to getting attached and then having to let go. I  have a BIG heart when it comes to being a mother, and now that I've decided to chill out on my quest to add another human to our extremely large world, it seems right to bring one into our homes that needs a loving mother and father like myself and Mike. This is our path. I get chills when I write about it. I have hope in my fingers as I type. And I also have an inner horseman pulling back the reigns sayin "EASY UP THERE PARTNER!". This is a process. A process that will take time, financial commitment, emotional commitment, and lots and lots of education. But in the end, I hope that it brings a child into our house, one that will think of us as his/her parents and integrate into our already beautiful family unit.

I'll be sure to keep you all posted.

Incredibly good looking

 It's hard to be so good looking. All of the paparazzi. The gigs. The tourists that want to get their pictures taken with us. For us over here at Chez Nicklasson it's all a day in the life. I blame it on the beauty sleep. And our parents. Chalk it up to whatever you want but we are one good lookin bunch!

 

And we have fun together, too. And THAT is the most good looking thing of all!

It's the magic in the air.

Last night as I was putting Ellie to sleep I told her that I've watched her get bigger every single day ever since she was born. And she says to me "From the broccoli's, Mommy?" And I replied yes, definitely from the broccoli's.

This is my 34th spring. Each year it invokes my sweet, innocent girl who partly believes that we get bigger from the broccolis. A girl who will accept ideas readily and with enthusiasm, because spring is a time for magic. Spring is a time to put the books down, watch the Earth unfold in its majesty of colors and a time to get out and play! 

Happy Spring to all you young lovers and children at heart! There's some good stuff being born as we speak!

 

Hello (hello hello), is there anybody in there?

This infertility stuff is a real emotional roller coaster. The first of the month is full of possibility. The middle of the month is full of you know, that baby making part, the latter part of the month is the wait. The fingers drumming on the sideboard wait. Trying to keep busy wait. Trying to forget that you're waiting wait. And then the blood comes and you go through it again, the cycle of babymaking and the emotional blow as the reality that your blessed womb may never again carry in it a precious child becomes more and more clear. It can be downright depressing.

I started on Clomid this month and let me tell you I was full of excitement. For sure it would work, right? I've recorded my temperatures every morning. I've filled out my fertility charts. But here we are at the end of the month and it's just unbearable. Do I feel pregnant? No.  I feel normal. And really I feel sad, you know, about the feeling normal. I feel disenchanted. Hopeless. There's a whole gamut of kind of crappy emotions associated with this. Emotions that I highly doubt my husband feels. Emotions that, beyond this highly therapeutic blog are never conveyed to the rest of the child-bearing world, never conveyed to my many many childbearing friends, and emotions that even I like to pretend don't exist.

They do.

We just spent the afternoon with my friend Sarah, who if you were to go back and read my blog in 2009 she was a key player in it. We had our first babies together, shared a patient load when we both went back to work, and shared a beautiful, scary time together as new moms. Fast forward almost three years and Sarah now has three kids, all gorgeous, and TRULY I am so happy for her and her absolutely wonderful family. But I won't lie that when I watched her sons go down the slide holding on to each other and smiling, holding hands as they climbed hills, and playing together with the kind of comfort that only siblings can have, well I felt jealous. No, I felt sad. Sad because I want that close knit sisterhood, brotherhood, and I can not offer that to Ellie. Yes that makes me sad. Yes I can say that and not project that on to my true feelings of happiness for Sarah or any other friend of mine that has flourished in the fertility field. They are separate entities. But here on my own journey, it's hard to understand why this is so difficult. I'm 34. Yes I'm not a spry youth. But still, I've felt young enough to hold on to the hope that my body is still fertile.

I'm on day 24 of my first Clomid cycle. Still not feeling pregnant. Still going through the motions.

IN THE MEANTIME as I crawl out of the little pit of self pity I just let myself go down (and thank you for listening), this is the beautiful face that I get to see every day. Oh how I love her so.

Morning mantra

My eyes snap up, the stars have set.

I open the curtains. I feel the sun slowly circle through the rough edges of night.
My consciousness , it remembers feelings from last night.
Stress, a joy,  assignment.
This brain is busy tending to the day before it begins
and yet in a small, rare moment while standing in front of the sun,
greeting it with my small, gorgeous being
I get to baske in the momentary hope that I can be
anything I want to be.

Fullness, don't leave me. Don't let this brain insert its foot
into the path of sweet morning calm.
The cycle of daily duty will continue to beat down.
But today I want to remember this swelling of my heart
as the sun shined its healing into the pores of my soul.
Life will be what it will be.
Open. Pliable. Full of second chances.
Full of opportunities to react, adjust.
Full of moments to be everything I want to be.