Summer's End

For the first time in....ever...I'm actually OK with seeing summer fade away.  Kids are going back to school.  The sun is setting earlier.  The farmer's market vendors are talking about apples. And while there is definitely a part of me that aches at the thought of the end of warm days and long nights, there's another part of me that smiles and let's out a big breath of relief.  

I know that summer ending means things are just going to get colder from here. And I hate cold weather.  But honestly, this summer, which I looked forward to so much in January, has really drained me.  It drained me dry emotionally, mentally and physically.  

They Don't Talk About the First Trimester-- Part One

Because I'm a writer, one of the first things I did after finding out I was pregnant was start a a little pregnancy diary.  Once a week or when the mood struck me I would write down what I was thinking and feeling about the pregnancy and the changes that were happening.  And, with all writing, even this blog, it's so fascinating to go back and read what you wrote a year ago, a week ago or even a month ago.  I've found in my own writing that it really is a testament to how quickly your circumstances can go from good to bad and then back to good again in just a day's time. 

If I could describe my first trimester diary in one work, it would probably be unbalanced. Either because of hormones or just the natural reaction to being pregnant, I was constantly oscillating between immense fear and happy excitement.  I think that what made matters worse was the fact that I felt like I couldn't talk to anybody about it.  Even most of the other bloggers who I read daily who've had children never talked about their first trimester.  The practice seems to be that you don't tell everyone about your pregnancy until you're more confident that the baby is going to survive. And that confidence, doesn't come for most medical professionals until the first trimester is over.  It's a sad, but true reality.  

I can't tell you how helpful and therapeutic it would have been to have some source of real-life, first-hand experience to go to when I wasn't glued to the online version of "What to Expect."  Because I want to fill what seems to be a void in that area, I'll be posting from my real and raw first trimester diary in one to three parts on this blog.  So if you're in your first weeks of pregnancy, tender boobs, excitement, peeing a lot, but also freaking out about everything...don't worry.   I was there too.  

Dad's Kidney Meets Growing Fetus

Finding out that I am pregnant was kind of an unexpected turn of events on what started out as an awesome day, but ended up kind of spiraling into a depressing one.

Two days before our two-year wedding anniversary, I took a pregnancy test.  This happened several hours after Ben and I had taken our first fly-fishing course and just a couple hours after we were rejected by yet another person selling a home we were hoping to buy.  This instance of rejection stung a bit more than the previous three rejections we'd already suffered.  Our realtor has this great talent of getting information out of other agents. So the seller's agent for the home we were looking to buy basically came right out and told us what numbers we would have had to offer to win the home from another prospective buyer.  With that information, we were armed and ready to submit the winning bid and be under contract that night.  We were counting down the minutes to the end of our housing search.