Another Angel

Posted in Family by teamtradermom

Last night, as I was crafting this post in my head, it was going in a whole other direction. I was going to have a picture of Isabella posed in a special shirt and proclaim to the world that she was going to be a big sister.

But then life took a turn. Let me step back.

Back in 2008, before Isabella, I was found out I was pregnant on a Friday evening in February. I took the test and we jumped up and down with the positive results. We immediately called up my parents, took them to dinner and broke the news. We were young and happy and had just been blessed with a miracle.

2 days later I had a miscarriage. I was devastated. I was 5 weeks along and miscarriages at that stage are pretty common. People quoted the statistics to me and part of me felt silly for being so sad. I mean, we’d only known the news for 48 hours. Is that long enough to bond with a baby?

Yes it is.

We had embraced the fact that we would be parents and were overjoyed. We talked about names and nurseries and genders. We bonded with that baby. Now that child is up in heaven, an Angel watching over us all.

So imagine my fears when almost exactly 1 year later we again got a positive pregnancy test on a Friday night in February. This time we were cautiously excited. We told our family but that was it. I was terrified when Sunday came around. I was just sure history would repeat itself and we’d have another loss on our hands.

But no such thing happened and our beautiful darling daughter was born 9 months later. And what a gift she is!

That was nearly 2 years ago. Isabella’s birthday is September 30th and her present will be a new house!

Fast forward to a Friday night in July. My period was a week late and sure enough, two pink lines showed up on the test stick. I was pregnant again. We rejoiced at the news but were still hesitant. We know what can happen.

I went for my first pre-natal appointment on August 3 and saw the heartbeat and got a picture of the little bean.

Here’s a picture I took of myself on that day. It was the first in a series of belly pics.

What a relief that was! To see the heart beating was so amazing and a good sign of things to come. 2 days later I woke up to blood in my underwear. It was just a little but the sight of it sent me in to a panic. I cried in CJ’s arms. I told him I was sure the baby was gone. He calmed me down and said we’d call the doctor and see what she said. She wanted me to come in for an ultrasound. I went in and everything was fine. Again I saw my little one’s heartbeat clear as day on the monitor. The bleeding was simply implantation bleeding.

Phew.

Life went on. We sold a house. We bought a house. Everything was falling in to place.

Then I woke up today with more bleeding. It was very slight and faint so I wasn’t too worried. There could be a million reasons for that. But it’s better to be safe than sorry so I called the doc. She asked me to come in. I was scheduled for a regular check-up tomorrow anyway so might as well move it up a day.

When I got there she had me hop on the table and she broke out the Doppler machine which can detect the sound of the heartbeat at 10 weeks, which is where I’m at. She moved it around and worked it for a good 3 minutes without finding a heartbeat. It was that dreaded moment that every mother fears – going in for a regular exam and hearing nothing on the machine. She said that sometimes you can’t hear it yet and we’d do an ultrasound. After a minute of not seeing anything on that she moved to the vaginal ultrasound. I already knew at this point. My heart knew. My mind knew. Even though the doctor hadn’t said the words, I knew.

After taking some measurements she turned the monitor around and showed me that there was no visible heartbeat. According to her measurements, it looked like the baby had stopped growing at 7 weeks 4 days, which was 3 weeks ago. But she wanted to be sure. So she sent me upstairs to radiology, where they have better equipment. She cautioned me not to expect a miracle but we needed to make extra sure the baby wasn’t viable before proceeding with anything else.

I headed up to radiology and while waiting, called CJ. Saying the words out loud to him, “They can’t find the baby’s heartbeat” made it real and I lost it there, alone, in the waiting room. I squeaked out the rest of the details to him and slowly pulled myself together. We talked for a bit and then they called my name.

As the tech did her thing, checking all the areas and taking measurements, I just watched the monitor. I saw the little bean that was my child, laying in its little sac. It looked peaceful and still. Very still. No heartbeat. No movement of any kind. Just a shape.

The tech gave me her condolences and had a nurse come up to take me down to the doctor. We went the back way, through the staff only hallways, so that I wouldn’t have to go out and see all the expectant mothers in the lobby. We chatted and she was very nice. I kept myself composed, not one to cry in front of strangers. I don’t really remember what we talked about. I’m pretty sure I gave all the right responses but I was in a fog. I remember walking by a door that had a picture of the Very Hungry Caterpillar on it. That was going to be the theme for our little one’s nursery. It stung a little to see it, but I just kept walking.

The doc explained the options to me. I could either take some medication that would empty the baby and tissue out of my body or have a D & C surgical procedure. The medicine would be painful and involve a lot of bleeding over the course of a day or two. The surgery would be in and out in a day. I opted for that. No sense in dragging it out.

I’ve been pretty numb most of the day. With the first miscarriage, my emotions were all on the surface and the slightest little thing – seeing another baby, thinking about nurseries, hearing a lullaby – would drive me to tears. Not so much this time. At least not yet. Maybe it’s denial. Maybe it’s having done it once before. Maybe it’s just coping. Who knows.

Sometimes my mind drifts to thoughts of wondering what went wrong. Was it something I did or didn’t do? I know the answer to that is “no”. But I can’t help but wonder.

Thursday I go in for the D & C. By Thursday afternoon I will no longer be pregnant. I imagine I’ll be emotional, thinking about someone pulling my baby’s lifeless body out of me. Of never being able to hold that baby or see it or even know if it was a boy or girl. I will mourn.

Then I will go home and hold my beautiful daughter close and most likely cry in to her soft sweet hair. I will snuggle with Samson and make him kiss me even though he pretends to hate it. I will lie in the strong arms of my husband and together grieve over the loss of our third child.

We now have 2 angels watching over us in heaven.

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29Aug2011

Thrifty

Posted in Finances, House and Home by teamtradermom

I’ll admit it. I used to be a snob about thrift store shopping. The whole idea of wearing someone else’s clothes gave me the heebee jeebees. And I didn’t have the patience for combing through the racks or walking around looking at endless shelves of “junk”.

I’d much rather pay full retail price for something shiny and new, I’d say.

But then during a casual conversation with friends, we found out that upon losing a lot of weight, and needing to basically get a whole new wardrobe, they started hitting thrift stores. Virtually their whole closet is filled with items found at said stores (and they always look good). That gave me something to noodle over. Then, in reading more decorating blogs with stories of people finding something shabby for a dollar and turning it in to something amazing, I became convinced that this was worth trying.

So, 2 weeks ago I made my first Goodwill run. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. Not sure why but I guess there’s a certain skill to thrifting and I felt like a total newbie with the spotlight shining on me. I walked among aisles, glancing at things but not really looking. I saw other people with shopping carts full of stuff and was in awe. I went to 2 stores and my total loot was one throw pillow.

I felt somewhat successful though I knew I could do better. I decided to make Friday evenings my Goodwill time so last Friday I carried out the same mission, only I went to two different stores. This time I loaded up.

At the first one I found 2 cardigan sweaters, a pair of slippers (we’re going to have a “no shoes” rule at the new house and want to provide slippers for guests to wear), a blue vase and 4 colorful plates (for the new kitchen). Grand total: $20.

At the next one I got a cool lamp that will be perfect for the family room and 3 pairs of child sized slippers. Grand total: $15.

Then on Saturday, I took Isabella with me and we hit one store. Didn’t find as much there. We got a throw pillow, Clifford book for her, and a water bottle. Grand total: $6.

I’m still new at this and trying to figure it all out. But I’m learning. Here are a few tips I’ve picked up so far:

Go often: this is probably the biggest rule of thumb. You can’t go once every 6 months and expect to find what you want. You have to be a regular as the product moves fast.
Don’t have expectations: unlike regular shopping, you can’t go in with a list of items you want, because they may not have them. You need to have a general idea of what you’re looking for but yet have an open mind.
Isolate: No, not yourself. Isolate the various items. It’s hard to see an item on the shelf, amongst hundreds of other items, and picture it in your house. You have to pick it up, look it over and try to envision it on your mantle or countertop or in your kids’ room. And again – have an open mind!
Carve out some time: you can’t race through the store in 5 min. If you want to find stuff, you have to walk up and down every aisle. That was my rookie mistake the first time around. I was too impatient.
Go to different stores: there are like 20 different Goodwill’s in Omaha, plus all kinds of other thrift stores. Rotate locations. They all have different inventory and depending on the neighborhood, will have varying qualities. It goes to show that a store in a more wealthy part of town will probably have nicer stuff. But not necessarily. Visit them all and find your favorites, then get in a rotation to visit your favs on a regular basis.

My hope is to build my wardrobe and decorate my new house with thrift store items. Not only will it be cheaper but I’m also more likely to find unique and fun pieces that I couldn’t find at Target, Wal-Mart or other retail chain stores.

Thrift on!

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26Aug2011

A Blank Canvas

Posted in House and Home by teamtradermom

So the inspection on our new house took place on Thursday. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the previous residents had moved out already and the place was totally empty.

Yippee!! Funny how a small thing like that can be such a big deal. At first it wouldn’t see so momentous but it is. First of all, we no longer have to worry about inconveniencing them when we want to drop by or need to take measurements or whatever. AND most importantly, it now feels more like ours. With all the rooms empty, we can visualize what we will do with them and the possibilities are endless.

I took some pics of the house while we were there so you can see what we have to work with. Part of me was scared that it wouldn’t be as nice as I remembered or that we’d find something awful. But no such thing happened. In fact, it was even better than we had remembered!

I was trying to get a pic of the house with the SOLD sign but was parked in the middle of the street and had to hurry. You can kind of sort of see it there, front and center, from the side. Still pretty as a picture though!

Here’s what you see when you first walk in (well try to picture it without the step ladder…). Stairs on your left (along with a coat closet), kitchen straight ahead, living room and dining room to the right.

OK so it just looks like a big empty room. But the back part is the dining room (under the light) and the front part is the living room (which really starts on the far right of this picture, where the baseboards run out of the frame).

If you walk straight in from the front door, and keep going, you’ll walk right in to the kitchen. Unfortunately I didn’t get a pic because the inspector had his stuff all over it and I forgot to take one when we left. But it still looks a lot like this, only without the table.

I had forgotten how many cabinets there are. Easily double what we have now. I don’t know where to begin to put all my stuff away. And the counter space! Mama mia! New details I noticed: there is a Lazy Susan cabinet in the corner (love!), the sink is deeper than average and NOT stainless steel (which is what we have now – they look pretty but are sure hard to keep clean), the countertops are a solid surface Corian, (which meant nothing to me. Apparently it’s meant to mimic the look of granite but is better because granite and some of the others stain really easily), and they left us a cutting board that matches the counter tops. Win!

That white door on the left goes to the basement. More to come on that later.

Just off the kitchen (to the left of where that photo ends) is the family room.

The fireplace is gas and that little white/black thing you sitting on the mantle is a remote control for it (the white part is a note they left themselves saying DO NOT PACK)! Who knew! I guess we can be sitting on the couch and just push a button to have a fire. Hells yeah! The ceiling fan is also remote controlled which is so nice. I HATE having to reach up on my tip toes to pull the stupid chains in our house now (and I always pull the wrong one and end up putting the fan speed on turbo when I really meant to turn on the light!).

By the way, the wall colors and trim are what I always wanted in our house but we never got around to doing. In fact, we (er, CJ) were going to paint it like that the week before it sold and ended up not having to! Another sign that it was meant to be!

On the other side of the kitchen is the door to the garage, a half bath and the laundry room.

Then we venture upstairs. Isabella had fun playing on the stairs, though she’s starting to learn that she can fall down them (since she’s done it 3 times).

No, she’s not in the process of rolling down. She was pretending to nap and asking me for a blanket. I didn’t have one so I laid on top of her and said I’d be her blanket. I was told that was wrong.

This is what you see when you get to the top of the stairs:

The master bedroom is on the left (double doors), another bedroom straight ahead (though that will probably be our guest room/office), and the kids’ bathroom to the right.

Looking down the hall to the right are the other 2 bedrooms and the “loft” at the end. I discovered all the rooms have cable outlets in them, even the loft – sweet!

Isabella has claimed this room. I think she likes it because of the pink/purple dots on the wall and the flower. I tried to peel one off and some paint started to come with it. Not sure if we’ll leave them or what but she seems to like it!

She had fun hiding in the closet too. Peek-a-boo!

The main bath has double sinks which will be great for when we have more than one kid. They won’t have to fight over sink/counter space. Yes I know she is touching the toilet seat. Don’t worry – I hosed her down with lye soap when we left.

Here’s the panorama of the master bathroom – double sinks and whirlpool tub on the left (Mickey is about to take a bath himself)…

then the shower and then the toilet, which I didn’t take a pic of. I think you all know what those look like. It’s not like this one is gold plated or anything.

And our walk in closet. It’s bigger than it looks in the pic, though not as big as one that we saw in another house. That one was literally as big as Isabella’s room. I die. But, that house didn’t have the other features we wanted so I gave up that closet for a house that has everything else.

View of the backyard from the upstairs rooms.

I like that the patio is curvy like that. Gives it some added interest.

Here’s the view from the top of the stairs, looking down to the front door.

I like the the steps have that one at the bottom that curves a bit. Gives it a spiral staircase feel and adds just that much interest to it.

Now we shall head to the basement.

Oooh…..aaaahh…Yeah ok so it’s not that exciting. But it is big and full of potential! Plus Isabella loved running around in it!

The back of the house and North side of our backyard.

And the southwest side.

There you have it! Our new house, ripe and ready for us to move in! Oh, by the way, the inspector only found one thing that needs to be fixed so we’re good to go after that! Everything seems to be falling in to place. We are scared that the other shoe is going to drop one of these days – can it really be this easy? But then we remind ourselves it wasn’t easy. We had to search and search for this house.

As we were leaving (on our way to dinner for spaghetti) Isabella looked up at me and said, “I like this place mommy.”

That’s all I need to know.

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23Aug2011

Google me this…

Posted in Blog Stuff by teamtradermom

Once again I am stealing ideas from other bloggers. Hey, it’s the internet. THAT’S WHAT IT’S FOR!

When I first started this blog, I was all focused on the stats – how many visitors did I have today? Which posts were the most popular? Where were people referred from? I can’t tell you how happy I was on the day I hit double digits for the first time! WordPress has a pretty good Site Stats page that tells you all this and more – such as what search terms people used to find you. I was sure this would be very helpful and revealing information until I read the terms/phrases and realized it’s totally B.S. that people found me by typing in that. Some of the stuff was downright creepy and it worried me that my family friendly little corner of the blog-o-sphere could be uncovered by searching for something like, “wife catches her kids and neighbor kids sniffing my panties”.

Uh.

Until I realized that every blog gets those weird searches (for example here and here). So I’m following suit and using those crazy searches for blog fodder. Hopefully they make you laugh (or cringe or furrow your brow) as much as they did me!

1. Million Dollar Homes (related searches: 10 million dollar homes, million dollar houses, 5 million dollar homes/houses, million dollar dog house, island mansion plans, biggest dog house): By far the top search with about 175 people typing in one of these terms and finding Team Trader Mom. I can only assume they found me because Google thinks my current house looks like a million dollar home and my soon-to-be new house looks like a 10 million dollar home. Or because I posted about my dream island and linked to some other websites that probably reference million dollar homes. But I’ll choose to believe the former.

2. Leaky ceiling: this is the next top search with 18 instances. That’s a lot considering most of the search terms happened only one or 2 times. This one is no doubt due to the cruel and unusual conditions we had to endure at The Mall.

3. Young girls biceps (also mom biceps, licking her own biceps, girl next door biceps, 13″ biceps, woman biceps, circus biceps, wonder woman biceps, april hunter biceps, big sweaty swollen biceps, fat girl biceps, my gunz biceps woman, a pic of my guns biceps, grandma biceps): 37 people want to know about biceps. All kinds of biceps. I don’t know who April Hunter is but I’m afraid to search for it. Apparently she has good biceps though. And hey, who wouldn’t want to see some grandma biceps? Or circus biceps! Count me in! Or not. I hope when they stumbled upon my biceps, they weren’t too disappointed. After all, though CJ calls me wonder woman, I don’t think I have her physique.

4. cute security guard at Oakview mall: 4. No where do I recall referring to cute security guards or Oakview mall but hey, if this so-called cute guard does exist, perhaps I should shop there more often! I used to work at Oakview back in high school and let me tell you there were no cute security guards then. But there was a cute UPS driver. Ah, the memories.

5. who went to private school on the steelers team? (also, Steelers bow, steelers fuzzy blanket, samson steelers, steelers spelled in hair, steeler cheese): 8 combined. Do you know how happy it makes me that my little blog home gets included when people search for Steelers stuff! I get where the bow and blanket references come from. And naturally if someone searched for a samson steeler, they would probably find Samson posts. But private school on the team? Hmm. If there is such a thing, sign me up! Steeler cheese? What a great idea for the next Super Bowl party (because you know we’ll be there – #7 baby!).

6. i want to date josh groban (and also groban+frontrow seats + crew, josh broban omaha firebreathing panda, josh groban with mum, josh groban older women, i actually dated josh groban): 9. A lot of women like Josh Groban and who can blame them. No doubt they were all jealous of my date with him. Eat your hearts out ladies!

And now for the rundown of all the really weird ones:

person kissing fire truck – hey, whatever trips your trigger
mom pooping with daughter – um, ew.
snowpants camps – there are special camps where snowpants go to learn how to become better at keeping me warm and dry? Who knew!
snowpants peeing – peeing in snowpants is indeed a challenge. However I don’t think I need a tutorial on how to do it.
parts of a lion – I hope this person is looking for parts such as “mane” or “tail” or “big teeth” and not something else that would totally go in a different direction than I’m willing to go.
happy tickles – aren’t all tickles happy?
kids hazmat gloves – I’m sorry that someone needs hazmat gloves for their kid.
i have an eye patch – you do? Cool! Do you also walk around and say “argh!” a lot?
bikini model with big ass and breasts eating a cheese burger – there is one word that comes to mind when women see another woman, with a killer body, eating a cheese burger: bitch.
red thing on forehead – well that doesn’t sound good. I hope that clears up for you!
cj cake – now where do I find one of these cuz I think I need one for a certain 50th birthday that’s coming up next year….
12 rods – split personalities – you’d think if you have 12 personalities, you could come up with 12 different names. Unless he’s the George Forman of schizophrenics.
homework sucks go scooter – homework does suck but go Scooter go!
pretty girl like you dont need to go messin round a dirty old house … ha . ii… i .mean .. aaah come on . t.t.m – I got nothin’

Well there you have it. Some of the ways that people got to my site. And yes, I’m totally aware that by typing the above phrases in this post, I’m more likely to get repeat traffic for some of those searches. What can I say, it’s a sneaky way for me to get more hits!

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From the Mouths of Babes

Posted in From the Mouths of Babes by teamtradermom

While changing Isabella’s diaper this morning, CJ heard an engine type noise outside but couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. So he said aloud, “Hmm, what’s that noise?”

To which Isabella replied, “It’s a motorboat!”

Backstory: apparently sometimes when Grandpa Fred is over and CJ leaves the room, Munchkin will ask where daddy went. Grandpa always says, “Daddy just went around the corner in a motorboat!” So, that’s where she got that!

—

When I got home from work, Isabella insisted I lay down and take a nap on the couch. Then she laid on the floor and covered up with a blanket. I let her lay there while I tidied up a bit. After a few minutes she said, “Wake up me, mommy!”

—

I was trying to get dinner ready so I gave Isabella a pack of her new Animal flashcards. She took them and said, “I don’t need all mommy! I have plenty of time!”

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From the Mouths of Babes