I am a church loser, part 3

More on the church situation...can you believe what a debacle this has turned into???

This morning the priest that married us finally called and said that he would sign the verification form for us...and then I talked to my sister-in-law who talked to her church who said that they didn't even NEED the form for the class on Saturday.

Miscommunication at its best!

But yay! I get to be a godmother!!!

I'm a church loser, part 2

And so the saga continues, although it now seems to be resolved.

After I wrote that post this morning, I walked the dogs, packed up my stuff and left the house, stopping on the way to work to register with our new church, St. Catherine's of Sienna. They were utmostly helpful, very friendly, gave us a very pretty welcome packet, told me what we needed to know about the baptismal preparation class this month, and told me that if we are very diligent about our tithings and about Mass attendance, the Father might sign our godparent verification papers.

P called his old parish and they told him in no uncertain terms that they would NOT sign his forms unless he was a member for ninety days. He didn't even get a chance to ask them about me.

My old parish in Massachussetts from thirty years ago called this afternoon and I had a lovely chat with the secretary. And thankfully, the parish that married P and I and administered my first Communion and Confirmation did report back to them that I had received those Sacraments, so I was happy about that. (Since I didn't receive certificates for the Communion and Confirmation, I had always wondered about that.) However, she said the same thing...that there was nothing that she could do since I was out of state and wasn't a member of their parish, although she was pretty surprised that all the Texas churches were being kind of sticklers about the ninety-day rule and said that they were making it kind of hard for people who wanted to return to the faith to do so. My thoughts exactly.

So I called my sister in law and laid it all out...and she didn't fire us as godparents! She said that she would call her church and move our class to June and then we would do the baptism a little later this summer.

All I have to do until then is overcome my losery ways and GET MY ASS TO MASS! Our new church is less than ten minutes away. There are a variety of services on Sunday and even one on Saturday night. There is NO reason why we can't get ourselves to go.

I think it'll actually be kind of neat. In our welcome packet, they gave us a ton of stuff about activities, clubs, groups, etcetera, that we can join. I think it'd be a great way to make new friends, and after all, fellowship is one of the main purposes of church.

I am a church loser

I feel so bad right now. I feel SO GUILTY!

Here's the situation.

Last summer after my last niece was born, my brother and sister in law contacted P and asked him to be the baby's godfather. My sister in law was going to ask a cousin to be the godmother.

At Christmas, they asked me to be the godmother since the cousin had declined. I happily accepted.

Here's the thing. I am Catholic. My husband was raised Catholic along with all of his brothers and sisters, but none of them have been practicing Catholics for many years. P and I were married in the Catholic church, but we haven't been to Mass in quite a while, so we're on the inactive list at my church.

It never even occurred to me that my brother and sister in law were going to raise my niece, S, in the Catholic church. They never mentioned anything about it. I've never known them to go to Mass. We weren't invited to either of the other two girls' baptisms.

So, about a month ago, I get these godparent verification forms in the mail from my sister in law. I asked her about them and told her that we haven't been to Mass in a while. She said that they hadn't been either, and that it wasn't a big deal...our pastor would probably sign them and then we could return them to the church. We're supposed to go to baptismal preparation class on Saturday with them.

Like the true procrastinators that we are, we waited until this weekend to call our church. I didn't want to (I feel guilty) and neither did my husband. Finally we called. The priest that married us is out of town until Thursday, but the secretary in the office told P that since we were on the inactive list, they would be unable to sign the forms for us. We then called a church near us that we have been thinking about joining for a few years. They said that we could take the baptismal preparation class at their church, but that until we had been members for 90 days, they wouldn't sign the forms for us either. Out of desperation, P called his church where he received his first Communion as a kid and they didn't answer, so he sent an email, and I called the church in Massachusetts where I was baptized last night and left a message, but considering that neither of those churches has seen us in thirty years, I'm not optimistic that they are going to sign the forms either.

I emailed my sister in law with abject apologies and explained the situation, and she hasn't responded yet. I feel SO BAD about this, even though she didn't tell us in December that we were going to have to have these forms signed. (I doubt that would have changed anything though...we are procrastinators.) She really wanted to baptize her daughter before she turned one, and that's in May. If we start going to Mass this weekend, we won't be able to turn in those forms until at least the end of June. But we've had so much going on the last few years. I know that's not an excuse for not going to Mass, but it really has been busy. Since we last went to Mass, we've both changed jobs, bought a house further away from the church where we belonged, lost weight, gotten pregnant twice, had a baby, my mother in law died, etcetera. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

I suspect that she may ask someone else to be the godmother, which really depresses me. I don't get along with my sister and all of my brothers and sisters in law are finished having children. This is probably my one and only chance to be someone's godparent. I compare this feeling to the same feeling I had when I heard my sister eloped...it was my one and only chance to be a bridesmaid in someone's wedding. But this does feel worse because I know M (sister in law) really wanted to do this soon and now she's either going to have to wait or ask someone else.

Regardless of what happens, we're going to join this new church and start going so we can set a good example for our daughter. This new church is really close and seems really nice, so we'll see what happens.

I'm a church loser.

An exciting Saturday

My days, weeks and months are going by faster and faster now, and I realized the other day that this is never going to get better. In fact, it'll probably get MUCH worse as McKenna grows and gets more active in activities, and then even worser so when I have a SECOND baby!

So, I'm just going with the flow, getting stuff done as quickly as I can, and enjoying my downtime when I can get it. Which isn't often.

This was my day today. I slept in until 8:30 am, got up and fed McKenna and the dogs, ate breakfast, and worked for about forty-five minutes. Then, I froze all the milk that I pumped Friday, cleaned up the kitchen, and put away two loads of McKenna's laundry that has been sitting in her room for a few days. Then, time to get ready to go to my niece's fifth birthday party. I got home from that about five pm, and spent several hours playing with McKenna, nursing, etcetera, and in an attempt to get her to go to sleep, took her shopping at Michael's. After she fell asleep, I spent the rest of the night scrapbooking. At least it was a productive night...I got seven pages done. I realized today at my niece's party that if I don't step it up and quick, I'm going to drown in pictures and drown FAST. It won't be pretty!

McKenna's pages are going really really well. I have the first month completed and am now almost done with the second month, which includes her first Christmas, hanging out with both grandpas, her two-month checkup at the doctor's, her first trip to visit Santa, and her gorgeous first professional pictures. That's not what scares me.

What scares me is that I now have thirty pages completed, front and back. At the rate I'm going, I'm going to have probably three albums for McKenna's first year. YIKES.

Here's a shout out to the crack dealer if she ever has time to read my blog now that Scarborough Faire is in full swing...D, what did you DO!?!?!?!

Work is fine, but very busy as usual. I'm training a new adjuster again...and he's nice. And this next week is our big bonus day on Friday...it's like Christmas Day at my company, so I can't WAIT!

And a quickie update on the in-vitro saga from my infertility post some time ago, which by the way I really enjoyed reading the comments to...

S's betas never really doubled that well and she had an ultrasound this past week. The doctor saw an abnormal sac and told her to stop her meds since a miscarriage is imminent.

H's betas are rising nicely and she has a ultrasound scheduled this week to see the heartbeat.

And so it goes.

Status of Scrapbook #1: completed!

I have nothing of interest to say really...except for the fact that I have my first scrapbook completed! It's my trips scrapbook...I finally bought a coverset, put my pages in it, slid on the page protectors, and voila, my first scrapbook is done! It still has room for about ten or fifteen more pages, and I have a few more trips to scrap still, so it'll be full soon.

But in the meantime, I am WELL on my way to filling up McKenna's first book. I have scrapped my pregnancy, the birth, and am just about to finish up her first month, which includes Thanksgiving, her first bath, her first surgery (and hopefully her last), and lots and lots of fun pictures...pictures of her in her Finding Nemo onesie, pictures in her swing, in her Baby Papasan, being held by daddy, crying, looking at the camera, sleeping...ah, it brings back so many memories.

In a small way, I kind of miss those early days, but she is SO much more fun now!

Not much else is going on right now, which is why I haven't really blogged much. I don't have a lot to say. We bought McKenna a Baby Einstein exersaucer today, so that was kind of fun, and went MAJOR grocery shopping at Target, which was not so much fun but it was necessary, and I saved us $35 by clipping coupons. It poured all day here in Dallas. I took P out to dinner last night for his birthday at this new Brazilian churrascaria here that we haven't tried yet, so that was a lot of fun. Work still sucks, but it's getting marginally better. I got a new laptop...again. My allergies are acting up and I can't talk. McKenna's ear infection is almost gone, I think. And tomorrow we are getting together with my inlaws for a family dinner.

What can I say? Life is good, albeit chaotic.

The unfairness of infertility

I know that this is a probably much different type of post than you all are used to seeing from me, but it's something that's been on my mind quite a bit lately and I just want to vent about it.

How on earth does God decide who is fertile and who is infertile? I just don't get it and it seems so unfair.

Right now there are two wonderful ladies on my TTC board who are battling infertility. I'm going to try to sum up what they have gone through, but keep in mind that I have only been on this board since September 2004, so I don't know them as well as some of the others might. I hope I quote their stories appropriately.

One of them, S, finally got pregnant by in-vitro fertilization after trying to conceive for almost six years and delivered a beautiful baby boy who is now three or four. In the last six months, she has gone through in-vitro another three times. The first two cycles failed.

The other, H, conceived twins on her third cycle of in-vitro fertilization using donor eggs. She has suffered two miscarriages; one before and one after.

Both S and H underwent their final cycles of in-vitro on February 28, 2005, with frozen embryos playing the torturous waiting game of having blood drawn for beta tests to see if the frozen embryos implanted and if they are nestling in for the long haul. Because of the outrageous financial burden of going through in-vitro numerous times, this will be their last attempt.

The reason why I have this on my mind is because I have been thinking so much lately about the differences between when I got pregnant with McKenna and what these two girls are doing now.

Me:

P and I decided we were ready to try to have a baby.
I charted my temperatures and monitored my fertility signs.
We did our thing on the appropriate days.
I waited patiently for two weeks.
I tested as soon as I thought I might have some human growth hormone in my system.
After it was positive, I went to the doctor to confirm it and have a beta drawn twice. My first beta was 1508, and after 48 hours, it doubled to 3608.
I went in at seven weeks for an ultrasound to confirm the heartbeat.

Total cost to me: $19.99 for pregnancy tests and $25.00 for a copayment.

Them:

Their husbands and they decided they were ready to try whatever it took to get pregnant again.
They called and made arrangements for the embryos to be transported to them.
They took injections and pills to ready their bodies for the transfers.
They showed up and the embryos were placed in their uteri with basically what sounds like turkey basters.
They were sent home with instructions to rest, not lift, and think positive.
At six days past transfer, they start going in for bloodwork to get their betas, and then went back at eight days and ten days. H went from 30 to 48 to 70; S went from 15 to 18 to 42.6.

Total cost to them: THOUSANDS and thousands of dollars with no guarantee.

I don't and will never understand why it is so easy for some people to get pregnant and so damn HARD for others. I will never understand why teenage crack prostitutes can get pregnant by just looking at a member of the opposite sex but these two wonderful women who want another baby or babies SO BADLY can't have it and have to go to such lengths to even have a chance.

These girls aren't out of the woods yet, but their doctors are very concerned because the beta numbers are supposed to double every 48 hours and as you can see, their numbers aren't quite doing that. They are going to have more bloodwork done next week.

Please keep them in your thoughts and prayers, and hug your kids every chance you get.

The mother of all growth spurts

What happens when you feed kids? They GROW.

I didn't really think much about it this weekend but P pointed out to me that McKenna nursed a LOT more than normal over the weekend and every night so far this week including Sunday she has woken up around 1:30 or 2 to nurse. Plus, every day so far this week I've had to thaw milk from the freezer to make up her bottles.
Only explanation I can come up with is that it's a BIG growth spurt! And school informed me today that they are recommending that I increase her bottles to six ounces because she's drinking them so fast.

Tomorrow is her four-month appointment at the pediatrician...I can't wait to see how much my baby has grown!

I have been kind of quiet this week with blogging for two reasons...a) VERY busy and tired and b) not much to say. It's kind of a nasty week with work. Only two more days until the weekend!

I ain't no hollaback girl

But here's MY little hollaback girl! I was singing that song to her the morning that I was dressing her in this cute little cheerleader outfit and she just laughed and laughed...



New updates from babyland...McKenna can now HOLD A TOY in her hand!

Granted, she's still not aware that her hand is part of her. If I hold the toy in front of her face, she still doesn't reach for it, but if I poke her hand with a toy, she grasps it and holds it. Progress, progress.

Tonight, we took her out on the town...my sister-in-law threw my brother-in-law a surprise birthday party, and since the party was thrown together at the last minute, we had no choice but to take the baby with us. She had fun though, even though the EXTREMELY loud mariachi band woke her up. (Yes, my inlaws had a mariachi band at their party. Have I mentioned that McKenna is half-Mexican?)

And I am now working on her photos. I was going to do P's family photos next for the scrapbook, but they are just overwhelming...especially since I don't know who a lot of them are. And P said that he wants to go through them and sort out which photos he doesn't want me to do. Fine. I wanted to do McKenna's in the worst way anyway...after all, she's the reason why I started scrapping to begin with! I worked on them this afternoon. I didn't get a WHOLE lot done...I did the cover page with her birth announcement, a page for a letter that I wrote to her to read later, a page with our identification bands from the hospital with a picture and her hospital bassinette card, and a page with our labor and delivery photos. So far, they look GREAT, and I am having THE most fun assembling these pages. THIS is why I started to scrapbook! I even printed out her birth story to post in the pages for her to read later so she's not asking me in thirty years to remember how long it took me to dilate or how it was when I got the epidural.

If only I could get caught up to where I am scrapbooking in real time. According to my friend D the crack dealer, scrapbooking in real time is where you go to an event (like my party tonight with the mariachi band), take pictures, then get them printed/developed and scrapbook them as your next project, making a special trip to get supplies for that project.

Aaah. I can dream, can't I? I only have about a thousand photos to go before I reach that point!