Goodbye Lakeside

As I've said before, my dad is now the Senior pastor at Faith Fellowship Church in La Palma. He has been living in the RV in the church parking lot for the past two months as my mom finished the school year at El Cap and started packing up to Lakeside house. They've lived there for 23 years (moved in while my mom was pregnant with Melissa)!

One important thing for them is to get the house on the market as soon as possible in order to purchase a house in Orange Country; Melissa and I were paged to come get our "stuff" out of the house. I really only had books and Barbies left there, but Melissa has an entire bedroom.

For two days between summer school ending and yearbook camp starting, we headed down and started working.

Sometime between heading off to CBU and now, I've managed to take most of my stuff... but there were a few boxes of books up in the attic that we had to take down (thus the butt shot).

Books, books, and more books were sorted into childhood books to keep (Babysitter's club, Mandie series), classroom books to go to Arlington, books to donated to the library or Tawni's classroom. Melissa had a few thousand sentimental moments.

My sentimetal ideas consisted of 20 (yes, I did say 20) collectible Barbies.

All over the place :)

By the time we left, Melissa's bedroom was completely empty of everything but furniture!

New Daddy

July 30, 2010

I wrapped the pregnancy test from home and Kaiser, my Kasier "after care" page, two Father-to-Be books, and a onies for Daddy. Before bed, I told Dave I had a present for him.

After opening his present, Dave was a bit shocked that he was going to be a daddy (just like me!) so soon; after asking "really?" about 100 times with a giant smile, he made the same comment that I thought immediately as well, "I thought it was suppose to be impossible."

Baby also gave daddy his first card,

Dear Daddy,

I know you weren't quite expecting me to come so soon, but I am so excited to be growing and soon to be a part of your and mommy's family. Right now, I am only the size of a lima bean, but my brain is growing at a rate of 100 cells per minute. By next week, I'll have eye lids, lips, and mommy's nose.

I love you already and can't wait to meet you some time near the end of March 2011!

Love,

Baby Pfeffer

Closet Doors

We've been working on a few little project around the house, but I've been so swamped that I haven't blogged in a full month! The first of our small projects was closet doors for the guest/Melissa's bedroom and our master bedroom closet. I looked EVERYWHERE for ones that I liked and didn't look cheesy in our "old" house.

They took Dave about 30 minutes to install each door.

These beautiful closet doors came from Home Depot's special order department. It is hard to tell from the picture, but there is a 2 1/2 inch white picture frame around the mirrors. Pretty heavy duty in construction, these babies required David Lamberth's help to get them home and into the house! Thanks David!

Reese is super happy not to have to see are closet mess anymore (even though she is sleepy).

Oh my, that hunch was REAL

Thursday night I could barely sleep. I keep thinking about the possibilities of pregnancy, then I'd reassure myself that it couldn't really happen and I shouldn't be getting excited and the cycle would repeat itself. DH got up and went to work early (it was the big day of job continuation); I got up at 6:55 am and immediately went to the bathroom. I peed into a cup and quickly jumped into the car and drove to CVS to get a pregnancy test.

I dipped the test into the cup and set it down in the half-done closet. Within one minute it was incredibly clear that there was a plus sign on the little screen. OH MY! Called kaiser to get an appointment to confirm and was told that I didn't need an appointment instead just walk into the ObGyn Nurse Clinic. Thirty minutes later, it was confirmed with another urine test--I am PREGNANT!

Between the shock of "we're going to have a baby" to the repetitive thought of "holy cow, this was suppose to take a year" to the slight panic of motherhood, I tried to go and get things "done" for the cruise. My entire day was consumed with the cycle of these thoughts.

And of course, my hunch was right and I should have let the Ob "confirm my pregnancy" when I was there in Fontana last week. The first day of my last period was June 15, 2010 so that puts my estimate due date at March 22. I highly doubt that that would be accurate considering the length of my period cycle with PCOS.

Our first real appointment is August 17.

Questioning

Logically I know that it isn't possible, but I have a deep down feeling that I may actually be pregnant right now. It has been in the back of my mind for the past four days and it is all consuming.

According to my basil temp monitoring, I haven't ovulated in the part 102 days. I did have two days of spotting 51 days ago and 37 days before that. So being pregnant right now isn't really an option.

But still, the nightly tummy ache I've had this week and the overwhelming tiredness I have been experiencing, makes me think...

I am too scared to take a pregnancy test because I could almost tell you right now that it CAN'T be positive.

The Background

As friends got pregnant and had babies, I watch and participated in the best way I knew how--threw parties, bought adorable little outfits, supported the new moms in anyway I could and loved on their babies like they were my own. Oh, the joy that my friends have experienced has been my joy as well.

Dave and I were teased over and over again when we were going to join the ranks of new parents starting shortly after our wedding in August of 2006. Our standard line has always been, "in 2010." This was the magic date picked out of my overly obsessive planning brain. Back in 2006 when we uttered it for the first time, 2010 meant that Dave will have graduated with his BA, I'll have taught for five years, we'll own a house, and be finished with my continuing educational journey.

It is 2010. Just as I'd pre-planned back as a newlywed, 2010 is the year of having everything "together." We bought the house a little early (Dec. 2008), but he did graduate in April and I graduated with my 2nd MA in June. I'm about to start my sixth year teaching, and I'm pretty good at it. We're stable and things are in order; however, the year is almost half way over and there is no baby.

The questions have changed now from, "when" to "how come you're not having a baby?" There is also this look of pity mixed with contempt that I get when I reply with, "not yet."

Anyway... Being the planner that I am, I made an appointment to see my ObGyn in June of 2009. Without confirmation from anyone but my own deep-seated fear, I just knew that there would be something wrong that would make the dream of my little family happen smoothly. As my new OB went over my history, she casually said, "oh, I see you were diagnosed with PCOS in 2004..." and kept talking about the many trips I've made for issues, etc. I must have looked shocked, because she stopped mid-sentence and stared at me. After asking her to repeat herself, she said, "PCOS."

My limited background of the dx didn't stop me from asking 101 questions and wanting immediate follow-up. That weekend I read everything and anything I could get my hands on and felt deflated and depressed. After emailing the OB several times (gotta love Kaiser's techie system), she referred me to an endocrinologist for further testing and treatment of PCOS.

The endo was a dream and informally the target for "getting pregnant" was set for June 2010. Again, the compulsive planner in me wanted to prepare for this in every possible way. I started taking Metformin for the PCOS in January, stopped taking birth control pill February (endo recommended to start Metformin a full month before stopping the pill to help with some of the PCOS symptoms that would flare up without the pill to help regulate my hormones), began charting my basal temp every morning in March.

The first month off the pill held promise. I had a full, regular period after 29 days. The second month I noticed something was a bit off--my period came after 32 days and only lasted 3 days (I was a 5 day period girl on the pill). In April, it was clear that my ovulation wasn't going to be "normal." I showed no spike in temps, nor any noticeable pattern. After 41 days, I had a bit of brown spotting, followed by one day that appeared to be actual blood but it wasn't even enough to need a light tampon. Since then, there have been no periods...

The endo seeing the end of his "usefulness" has referred me directly to the reproductive endocrinologist...

Master Bedroom Update IX

We have paint!

This is the actual color--Laurel Leaf--with trim at the ceiling and baseboards in Swiss Coffee white. Dave did 99.9% of the work and I used the nail gun twice to put up one board.

Melissa sanded the pink closet and Dave primed, painted, and put a coat of polyurethane on the closet. I spent an hour of so putting all of his stuff back into the closet in an organized way!

Then we switched the beds...

More to come...