Before we had kids, Nate and I watched a show one night about a 4 year old boy who was super muscular. This boy was insane. He was solid muscle, had a six pack, and when he flexed, there was just muscle everywhere. Nate and I were amazed at this kid and so was everyone else, hence the reason they did a show about him. It was just not normal to have THAT much muscle as a child.

Then, Hailey was born and boy was she chubby. No lie.

(Hailey at 7mo.)

Then, little by little, she slimmed out.  Nate and I started noticing how much muscle this girl had. She has the tightest/flattest stomach of any kid i've ever seen. When she laughs, you can see the ripples. It really isn't surprising given her energy. She never stops.

Now, I can't help but think of that show of the little boy when I see pictures like this:

I tried to find some others that are similar to this crazy muscle shot, but it was taking me too long and I'm really tired. 

She definitely does not get her muscles or athleticism from me, that's for sure. I'm grateful for her energy and i'm grateful for her fearless-ness. I'm grateful for her spunk and he happy personality. She sings constantly. She's always asking me to teach her new songs.  Every time she hears Michael Jackson on the radio, she says "mom, turn it up! It's Michael Jackson!" And, she's right every time. She's smart, she's enthusiastic. She's easy to please. She loves making new friends and talking to people. She obeys. She rarely argues. She loves snuggles. She is the first to calm Addy when she's sad. She loves trying new things.

After seeing this picture, it's got me thinking. Maybe I should just follow her around all day for week and do exactly what she does and I could probably do pretty well at dropping some weight and building some muscle.  At least she has me motivated. 

A Little Humor

This last week I have really been leaning on my girls for some emotional stability and let me tell you, these girls are my rocks.  They are pure, they are happy, they are sweet.  All traits that were a blessing to be around this last week.

A couple conversations occurred that I thought were totally blog worthy.

Addy

We were up at grandma and grandpa's house swimming and Addy got out to take a little break from the pool.  She was drying off when this conversation happened.

Addy:    "mom, when are we moving?"

Me:        "we aren't moving."

Addy:     "but when are we moving?"

Me:        "Addy, we aren't going to move."

Addy looks at me with a worried look.

Me:         "Addy, did you WANT to move?"

Addy:      " yeah. "

Me:        " Well, where do you want to move?"

After looking at me for a second with a shy look...

Addy:     "where does Justin Bieber live?"

I start to smile a bit...

Me:        "He lives in California"

Addy:     "I want to move to California"

Hailey

We were riding in Nate's truck the other day and being the 'cool' mom that I am, we had the music blaring and all the windows rolled down. We came to the light at State St. and 800 N in Orem. We were at the front of the line when this guy in a brand new Audi drives up next to us with his music loud as well.

Hailey yells to him:  "Hi!"

The guy turns around to see Hailey waving at him and he laughs and waves back. 

Then, Hailey yells: "Nice music!"

The guy looks at me and busts up laughing.  The light turns green and he takes off really fast like most guys in their 'cool' cars do. (I hope he appreciates the $5 in gas he wasted to show off to a 5 year old.) 

Hailey says: "COOL! It's a RACE CAR!"

I love my girls. They make me laugh. A lot.  They make me smile. A lot. They make me realize the important things in life are the little things. I am truly grateful for them and their ability to make me happy.

Apologies and Truth

First, since i'm not a Facebook-er, I wanted to put out there how very grateful I am to everyone. To my friends. To my family. I have received flowers, cards, treats, a dinner offer, a family time kit and countless texts and emails. I cannot express how much I appreciate your kindness.  Nate said to me the other night, 'you have really nice friends'. He's right. Only, nice is an understatement. I'm grateful to all of you, I really, truly am. So, thank you for extending a hand during this hard time.

Now for the apology.  I'm sorry for not being here or answering the door when things have been dropped off. I have to admit, I have been avoiding people a bit. The truth is, I am having a really hard time being ok with talking about what's happened. I understand that people deal with things differently but for me, this has been one of the hardest situations of my life.  For many reasons. So, I deeply apologize for not being 'around' or being available to talk to. I am so grateful for all your efforts, I really am. It really means the world to me.

This morning was the long awaited surgery. To prepare, I had to get blood drawn in preparation for a Rhogam shot yesterday afternoon. The hard thing about this was the nice person registering me asked my due date, then congratulated me on being pregnant. I have to just hold it all back or i'll lose it.  Then, they sent me to 'mother and baby' and 'labor and delivery' to make the appointment to come back in a couple hours for the shot. REALLY? It was brutal walking through the very area that I was anticipating visiting in December with a new sweet baby. Then, I had to go back a couple hours later after they prepared my shot only this time, the girls had to go with me. They have been through so much this week and I am very grateful for what troopers they are. They put us in a DELIVERY room to await the shot. The girls were very curious of course, so I had to explain everything to them that was in the room. OH MY! At one point, it was quiet and then sweet Hailey said to me "mom, I'm sorry your baby died. I'm sad too."  It took EVERYTHING in my power to look at her and smile instead of cry my eyes out AGAIN.

 Back to this morning, everything went well physically and due to an amazing doctor, I am recovering very well. Nate was kind enough to take the day off today and take the girls away from the house for the day so I could rest as much as possible.  I know that if I sleep all day, I will struggle to sleep tonight, hence the blog entry. :-) 

I felt I needed to add to my journal some emotions and thoughts that have occurred since the news. The more I think about what happened, the more sad I get.  It hit me again last night when I was getting ready for bed and Nate offered to give me a blessing. I quickly accepted and cried my eyes out the entire time.  It was a sweet blessing of comfort and it made me so grateful for a husband who holds and honors the priesthood. What would I do without him?.  He's my best friend.  For that, is the reason I was able to express to him how I was feeling last night.

With this loss, it was a shock. Unexpected. 

I finally verbalized what I had been feeling all week and that is that 

I wasn't ready to let go.  I wasn't ready to move on from this baby. I wasn't ready to say goodbye.

After years of trying and failing, we were absolutely ECSTATIC! We have felt for so long that this was our priority in life right now. THIS is what we were SUPPOSE to do. We had someone waiting to join our family and we REALLY felt so so strongly about this.  I got extremely attached the minute I saw that tiny heart beating. The last pregnancy, there was no life to get attached to.  I loved going to the baby section at stores with the girls to imagine what things we might need to look forward to providing for this sweet baby.

Seeing that ultrasound and seeing absolute stillness, no beat, no color to the vitals was pure sadness and disappointment.  I still don't understand and maybe I never will but what I do know is Heavenly Father has a plan. I know that I need to be strong for my girls. They deserve that.  The good news is that I have been. Heavenly Father has given me the strength to at least be happy and strong and optimistic around them. But in truth, I hurt. A lot. 

Now that the D&C is over, I feel it even more.  I really wasn't ready to let go, but I had no choice and that pretty much sucks.  My hope is that now that it's over, I can recover quickly and move forward, not necessarily move on, but forward. Step by step. 

So, for those of you wanting to know how things are going or how i'm feeling, I apologize for not being able to express to you in person, but here it is.

I am so grateful for the people in my life who care so much about me and my family. You all are truly angels. Nate and I really appreciate everything and we WILL be OK. In time, but we WILL definitely be OK. 

Just Sucks.

I have a few things I need to catch up on with posting, but those things will have to wait for now. I'll get to them, sometime. Tonight, I need to share a bit of my feelings in my journal about today.  Today was a really hard day.

I had a doctor's appointment. My 12 week appointment. I was really excited and even took the girls so they could hear the heartbeat.  A really exciting and fun idea turned really bad when the doctor did an ultrasound (my last one with him as my doctor) and found that the heartbeat was gone and the baby's lungs were collapsed.  The baby was starting to fold in and the doctor said that my baby had died.  After taking measurements, it was obvious it happened sometime in the last week or so and he informed me there was nothing I could do to have prevented it. I guess it's time to change my header picture again. Ugh.

Now, I have the best doctor. He was SO sad and genuine for the loss. He's been with us through the process of losing Addy's twin, to miscarrying the last pregnancy two years ago, to infertility issues for two years, to finally being excited about a strong pregnancy. He's been amazing. I am grateful to have found him. He ordered quite a few blood tests so he could try and figure out what went wrong this time. He also got me scheduled for a D&C on Friday since my body doesn't know how to miscarry on it's own, unless it's a twin. By the way, since I haven't documented this either, this originally was a twin pregnancy as well. I don't know what it is with me and getting pregnant with twins but never delivering twins. Weird. We talked for a while and he expressed a lot of sadness and remorse for me before leaving the room. The entire time, I was doing everything in my power to not break down.

Then I look over at the girls sitting there and my heart just broke. They had to sit and endure this horrible appointment with me. Seriously? I couldn't believe what had just happened and I kept it together. I felt so bad they were there. Note to self.. NEVER will I do that again. Once we got in the car, we decided to go get ice cream. Then ran a couple errands. I was trying to get back to normal for their sake.

I texted Nate, knowing I couldn't talk on the phone.  He never texted back. A few hours went by and I was wondering why he hadn't called or texted back so I texted him again and his response was "i'm on my way home". He didn't get the first text apparently. I went home and my mother in law was there waiting for me. Even though I didn't want to see anyone at all today, I really was grateful she was there. For the first time, I lost it. Then Nate got home, and I lost it again. He and I both just sat there feeling so sad and shocked. 

 Then, we went to his softball games. I felt like the girls needed to do something fun so we went and I asked the girls to not talk about it at the game and they were TROOPERS. They didn't say one word. Hailey asked if she could tell her 'friend' who was a random girl I've never seen before but I told her no and she was fine with that.  Then, I got home, put the girls to bed, Nate went out with his buddies for dinner and I just cried and cried and cried till my eyes hurt so bad that I couldn't keep them open. 

This just sucks. Everyone has their sadness and their loss. This is mine today and it just sucks.  I'm pretty bitter and extremely sad and VERY frustrated.  At least with my last miscarriage I had known early on that it was headed in that direction and it was just a waiting game. A very frustrating waiting game, but we knew what we were in for. With this, it was a complete shock. Everything was GREAT for the entire first trimester. 

On the flip side. I am VERY grateful for my two sweet daughters we have been blessed with and i'm very grateful it happened now and not later when it's even worse. Still, it's devastating. 

I needed to write this, not to complain or to bring sadness but because I wanted to remember this day. I wanted to remember how I felt. I wanted to remember those moments in the doctors office when I heard those words. Not because I wanted a downer, but because it's life and it's an important day to us. So, I apologize to anyone reading this. We are good. We are fine. Just a little sad, but we'll survive. Phew. Ok, i'm done and ready for bed. It's been a long day.