Transitions

Poor N is having such a hard time leaving work at the end of the day. He's really been loosing it when I tell him that it's time to go home. Last night he threw a pretty impressive tantrum about leaving and cried for a while in the car before falling asleep. I transferred him to bed when we got home and he still woke up crying for the big boy this morning! He is seriously in love with those kids and they definitely play a sibling role for each other.
I always give him lots of warnings that we are getting ready to leave and even the promise of seeing mommy isn't enough to get him to go without a shedding some tears. The other day he said that he wishes J and I could live at work with him, the kids and their parents. Not sure I can convince the rest of the adults about that plan, but the kids would all be for it :-)
Tonight the kids Grandma is coming to stay for the night, before taking the kids to her house for the weekend. She doesn't like it if N and I are around as the kids only want to play with N, so it usually means that we have to leave. Poor N is probably going to be so sad, me on the other hand, I'm looking forward to 3 days off!

RE appt

I had my first visit with our RE on Friday. I'm still waiting for the blood work results - they took 12 vials! Only the second time I've had blood taken, when I told the tech he started to get worried that I would pass out, he kept checking on me which I thought was funny!  I ended up being the only person is the lab so it was much more relaxed than I imagine it is during regular morning monitoring hours.
The meeting with our Dr went as I expected. He told us that it sucked that J lost the last pregnancy and that she'd given it a really good shot and then turned the attention to me. We talked a little about my medical history, marriage equality in NJ and insurance coverage before getting down to the ultrasound. I was at cd15 so knew I was about ready to ovulate and was really relived to see a 19mm follicle. I also had 10+ follicles on the right and over 20 on the left. I didn't realize how worried I was about whether or not I had any eggs until I was trying to make out the fuzzy picture on the monitor. 

The Dr started to say that I would get lots of eggs from an IVF cycle and then changed directions and said that unmedicated IUI should do the trick. I'm hoping he's right as we still aren't sure whether I'm covered by insurance. Our insurance contact told us I would be, our Dr said I wouldn't, the finance lady said I would and then called half an hour later to say I wouldn't. We will have to see what they cover when it's submitted and will pick up the rest. 
I'm pretty sure that the next thing they will want me to do is go in on cd3 for blood work and then have a HSG which is standard testing for them I think and will make sure I don't have blocked tubes. We still haven't decided exactly when we will start IUIs and how we are going to cover childcare for N, but wanted to make the most of J being off work to fit in the appointments so that we could go together. 
The next thing we have to do it pick a new donor. N's donor isn't available anymore so we have narrowed down our choices and will pick a new one soon. I'm slightly freaked out by all the attention that sperm donors are getting right now. There is that new movie coming out and a series on MTV where a group of half sibling set out to find their donor. Using a sperm donor is the way we picked to create our family, but is not something that I want to discuss with every Tom, Dick and Harry.  I haven't dealt with many questions about it since N was a baby, but wonder if we will start hearing some more now. 

School days

We had N's first parent teacher conference last week and I think it went really well. We were glad to hear that he is doing well in school and is proving to be a leader and a bit of a rule follower. He will remind the other kids of the schedule or the teachers instructions if they aren't following along. His teacher also said that he's a cerebral kid that likes to take it all in and think things through before acting.

The kids in his class are between 3 and 5 years old so letter and number learning is part of everyday activities and not learnt through letter of the week. The teacher keeps track of what the kids know and says that N is doing really well for his age. There is one formal evaluation that she does on the kids and he was one of the only kids that got it all correct! 

N still hasn't picked a dominant hand for writing so I asked his teacher which one she saw him using more. Interestingly she said left, while we have seen him using the right more. She said that he may never pick a dominate hand and that we can hand him things at his mid line and let him pick to see if it gets more consistent.

The only area of concern is that he needs to stick up for himself a little more. She told us a story of him being pushed over by another kid and when she encouraged him to talk to the other kid he told them not to push him....with a huge smile on his face! We hope that he will get better with that as he feels more comfortable with the kids, as we've seen with a friend's little girl who used to push him around all the time. We don't want him fighting back physically but we do want him to be able to stand up for himself and not be pushed around. 

N isn't signed up for any extra curricular activities right now and hasn't been for a while. He has tried soccer, tumbling and music class but none of them really held his interest. We aren't sure if it was because of his age or a lack of interest but we ended up feeling like it was a waste of time and money. I resisted signing up for anything in the fall as he got used to school and our new work schedule but he has talked about playing soccer again so we will see. J is thinking about taking him to try out karate so maybe that will be something he will enjoy and I often wonder if he would like gymnastics with all the jumping and tumbling he does. It's hard to know which activity he will like, especially when all he seems to want to do is stay home and play with his toys! 

After hunting them down we finally got his class pic. We weren't that impressed, but it does make him look very grown up already! 

Halloween

N couldn't make up his mind which costume he wanted to wear this Halloween so he ended up in 3 different ones. 3 days before Halloween he started saying that he wanted to be a mouse...but sadly I couldn't come up with a mouse costume without more notice so told him he needed to pick from the mountain of dress up clothes we have at home.

For school he was a dragon who spent lots of time growling at the other kids and staff. I tagged along to watch  the school parade and then helped with his class party afterwards. His class doesn't get to participate in the parade which is at least an hour long. The kids in kindergarten through 8th grade follow the band into town and along Main Street before looping back to school. It's quite a walk for the little ones so they got to trick or treat around school instead and I was surprised by the loot he got.

The party was fun. They made a little pumpkin beanbags, which were so cute and easy to do thanks to the sewing one of the other moms did and had a snack. Before I knew it the morning was over and we had a quick lunch before getting the big girl and bringing her to the Drs for her physical. Why yes, I am the mean nanny that schedules appts on Halloween! She wasn't happy about missing recess and was even unhappier when I took her back to school after her appointment! :-)

We ran a few errands and before we knew it were back at school to pick up the big kids. It was back to their house to change into costume number 2 for N and trick or treat with the kids for a while. N and the big boy had matching transformer costumes for this round. We only trick or treated 3 places but it was certainly not your ordinary trick or treat. First we went to the kids great aunt's house and then headed to the farm to visit the horses and then the cows! We've done the horse barn in previous years but the cow barn was a first this year. The kids love to get involved with milking but were all about the candy this time.

After dropping the kids off with their parents for more trick or treating N and I headed home to meet Mommy, change costumes and met our neighbours to trick or treat our street. There are about 10 houses on our street so it's the perfect number and we spent an hour walking around collecting lots of candy before the rain came. This time N was his favorite superhero Iron Man, minus the mask. 

He got so much candy and we had lots of leftovers as we didn't get that many trick or treaters here. We were actually surprised that the bowl we left out still had some in it when we came back from trick or treating with N. Now I am slowly working my way through it all.....It's so much fun to see N getting more into the holidays this year. He is already adding things to his Christmas list daily so Santa will have plenty of ideas this year :-)