Park Pictures and Videos

Went to the park again today. The boys did better sticking by me this time...for the most part. The longer we were there, the more confident they got walking away from me.

Anyways, I still didn't bring my camera with me today. However, I did have my cell phone in my pocket so I got a few pics. I also took a few videos. The quality sucks but it's better than nothing. Enjoy!

Park Day

It reached 60 degrees today so I took the boys to the park...all by myself. It's not easy chasing down two toddlers who run in opposite directions. So because of that, there will be no photos accompanying this post. I knew it would be impossible to take photos and watch them both carefully.

The three of us had a blast though. I loved watching them walk up to other kids and smile and wave at them. At one time Brayden tried to take a woman's pair of sunglasses lying on a bench. And Hudson tried to help himself to a woman's container of trail mix. It was hilarious! Everyone was a good sport about it.

They swung on the swings, went down the slide (with my help or course), played in the sandpit (where Brayden decided to eat the sand), and went wherever mommy was not. They never stopped moving. I'm exhausted! Either I need to get better at this or I need to bring someone with me to help keep watch.

Brayden is still a ladies man. He followed a few girls around the play area and smiled and giggled at them. At one point he tried to pet a girl's head (I think he has been around dogs too long). What a flirt! I think I need to be worried about this boy when he's older. I see a heartbreaker down the road.

Hudson didn't give the girls the time of day. He did follow the older kids around to watch them climb on the monkey bars and other objects he's too young to play on. He always wants to do things not at his level. He tries though. He's a quick learner. I bet the next time we go to the park he'll be doing those things the older kids were doing (but not the monkey bars). At one point he kept spinning in circles out of excitement (can you say "cabin fever"?). He had a smile on his face the whole time!

When it was time to go home for a nap I tried multiple times to hold Hudson's hand and lead him out of the play area and back to our car. He kept sitting down or would twist around, whatever it took for me to let go of him. Cause as soon as I did he'd take off. That boy did NOT want to leave. I eventually had to pick him up (along with Brayden) and carry him back to the car (crying...but only for a minute). Neither of them was happy to leave. I think they could have stayed all day.

We have great weather the rest of the week so I see more trips to the park in our near future. Once I get better at this (or when the boys decide not to run away from me in opposite directions) I'll bring the camera and try to take some photos.

Valentine's Weekend

Happy Valentine's day ya'll! Remember, Valentine's Day shouldn't be the only day we show our love to others. That's the lesson of the day.

My parents came to visit this past weekend. I love when family visits! The boys love it too! I think I've mentioned this fact a million times.

Tommy and I celebrated our Valentine's Day on Saturday by going out to dinner at J. Alexander's while my parents babysat. The best part? My parents paid for it! Such a nice treat. Then we watched a movie at home with the 'rents. Today Tommy rented "Letters to Juliet" and got me this...

I've got the best husband!

We also had the best weather Sunday. It was beautiful! I've got spring fever bad. So after church we let the boys play in the street. I know, what kind of mom lets her children play in the street...but it's a quiet street and the boys will never remember this day.

They absolutely L.O.V.E.D playing outside. Brayden cried when it was time to go inside for a nap. I have a feeling he's going to be very outdoorsy when he gets older.

Going for a walk down the street.

Grandpa Widell with Brayden. Brayden is happy.

Now Brayden is ecstatic! That boy is always happy.

Daddy with Hudson.

Hudson enjoyed pulling daddy's hair. Daddy, not so much.

Brayden running in the street. At least he wasn't running with scissors.

Brayden pointing at something. Probably a leaf (because we never raked them up last fall). He was chasing them everywhere.

Brayden wanting to pet Bella. Hudson running over to do it first.

Brayden lost interest.

Hudson loves Bella (note: my mom was holding back Bella to prevent her from running down the street. She escaped out of the house and we didn't have her leash). I call Bella "devil dog".

Brayden in his FAVORITE swing. He cried when I took him out of it. Sad.

Grandpa Widell with Hudson.

Grandma Widell swinging with Hudson.

All in all, it was a great weekend spent with people I love. Go do the same!

Things are a changin'

Things are changing at the Hitch household. And it's not just the house. The boys are changing so fast and learning new things.

Over the past couples of days I've been working on teaching the boys how to eat with utensils. Hudson was the one who gave me the idea that they were ready. He kept grabbing the fork/spoon out of my hand and putting it into his mouth himself. Of course the food usually fell off before it got into his mouth, but he's doing better. Brayden too. All he had to do was watch Hudson. That motivated him pretty quickly. They haven't been able to put the food on the spoon/fork themselves yet. They try though. Here are some pics from dinner yesterday.

Did you notice Brayden switches from his left to right hand and back to left again? Funny guy.

I also got them drinking out of straws now. That just happened in the past three days. Their old sippy cups were leaking so I purchased new ones with straws instead of the usual spout. They still like to hold the new straw cups high in the air while they are drinking. Of course that doesn't work. I've been trying to get them to just hold the cup down and sip threw the straw. They do it when I hold the cup but as soon as I let go they put it right back up in the air. It's hilarious watching them walking around the room sucking air. Here are some pics of Brayden drinking out of the new cup. I don't have any pics of Hudson. Sorry.

 

 Brayden holding the cup in the air sucking air.

 

 He thinks it's empty. So he gives it to me to fill up.

 

I get him to sit on the floor and for some reason that gets him to hold it down to get the water.

On a completely different topic, I was looking through a bunch of boxes in our office looking for a pad of paper (yes our office is still completely filled with unopened boxes). I found this...

It's a notepad I got while working at the church. The company on the cover was trying to sell their printing services. When I opened it up I saw this...

It's a log of all the pumping I did when the boys were first born. I always wrote down when I pumped so I wouldn't forget the last time I pumped and so I knew when I needed to again. This is what a typical page in the notepad looked like...

There were 25 pages of that. Wow! In case anyone wants to know what I was doing on December 6, 2009 at 2:37 am...I was pumping. And again at 5:36 am.

I'm not really sure why I'm sharing this. It just brought back a lot of memories when I started flipping through the pages. Babies are a lot of work in the first few weeks (and months). Especially two at once. They were good times though. It reminds me how much they have changed since their birth. They don't need me to hold their bottles and burp them anymore. They are growing so fast! They'll soon be wiping their own butts too. Can't wait for that one! :)

Reminder

I got my yearly reminder in the mail yesterday. I usually don't think about it much during the year. I don't like this reminder, although I am truly grateful for it.

This reminder comes in the form of a "patient statement." It's an invoice and consent form for the storage of our embryos we fertilized during our IVF (in vitro fertilization) cycle in 2009. Wow...2009. It feels so long ago yet I remember it like it was yesterday. I've been debating whether or not to blog about our struggle with infertility. I started writing about it months ago but never finished. And I'm not sure I want to post it. Part of me thinks no one would care to read about it. The other part of me thinks that maybe it would help and give hope to someone else going through the same thing. I don't know. I'm still thinking about it.

Anyways, I don't like receiving this "reminder" in the mail because it reminds me that I could have 17 (yes...SEVENTEEN embryos) more potential children. Of course Tommy and I are never going to have 17 more kids. That's what makes me sad. We are never going to be able to see all those embryos become babies, children, teenagers, and adults. On a lighter note, if we did, we could probably have our own dysfunctional reality show with that many children. Ha!

Some days I'm content with our family of four. Other days I would love to have another baby. For this reason, I couldn't imagine not paying this invoice for another year of embryo storage in case we do decide to have more kids in the future. However, it's not cheap...and our insurance doesn't cover it.

If we decided not to pay for the storage we only have two options. One, donate the 17 fertilized embryos to other infertile couples. They are half me, half Tommy. My eggs, Tommy's sperm. I'd have a hard time donating them to anyone else. Although we have thought about it before. Maybe if they were donated to someone close to us. I just don't know...it's a hard decision to make.

Option two, would be to have them disposed of. I have a really hard time imagining this option. I feel as if those 17 embryos are already my children even though they are not inside me developing. I can't just throw them away.

See the dilemma?

I am also truly grateful for this reminder. It reminds me that our one and only IVF cycle was successful when it's unsuccessful for so many other couples. It was absolutely a blessing from God. A long awaited answer to our prayer. This "reminder" reminds me that God does answer our prayers. It might takes weeks, months, or like in our case, years to be answered, but He does.

I couldn't imagine my life without these two little guys.

Whether or not more babies are in our future...well that's in God's hands.

I pray for anyone else who has also been struggling with infertility. Women don't like to talk about it (especially men). Keep the faith that God has a plan for you. If it hasn't happen for you yet, there is a reason. Your time will come.

Another House Update

Yep...another house update. This is what my life consists of right now. Working hard to get the house 'livable' so the boys can tear it all up. ;)

So the dinning room is finally painted! We still need to put up the missing crown molding and baseboard trim where we built the new wall but that's it! Here are some pics of the painted room.

I love the green color. So juicy! Can't wait until we work on the kitchen so we can paint it a green shade too.

So, what's next? Replacing our front door. Why? Here is a photo explaining the reason.

Now we knew what we were going to find when we tore up some of the wood flooring by the door. The door had been leaking for who knows how long. As you can tell from the photo the wood is rotten and the door frame as well is rotten. We knew this before we bought the house. I'm sure some of you are wondering why in the world did we buy a house with so many problems. The house has so many more pros than cons. The number one reason we bought the house was because of the location. It's only 2.4 miles from Tommy's work and it's in the Williamson County school district. When we lived in Bellevue, Tommy worked in Murfreesboro 52 miles away. That's right...he drove 104 miles a day. And at the time he drove a Ford F-350 crew cab dually. Let's just say both of our incomes went straight to BP and Shell. Thank the Lord we sold that gas guzzler.

We also love the layout and size of the house. We have plenty of room for the four of us and space for friends and family to come visit.

Anyways, the new door was ordered last week and it came in yesterday (it's pretty much the exact same door with the window on each side). Tommy's mom is coming in town tomorrow morning to watch the boys so Tommy and I can focus all our time and energy installing the door tomorrow. Please pray we have it installed before the Super Bowl game starts. ;) I'd hate to leave a big hole in the front of our house while we're eating junk food on the couch while screaming at the TV.

Do you notice anything else 'odd' with this picture?

The previous owners painted over wallpaper. This seems to be a trend. Our whole downstairs and upstairs hallways are like this. We will be working on fixing this problem after we finish the front door project. Stay tuned for that. But don't hold your breath. It's going to take a looooong time.

On another note, one of my Nashville besties, Kaylan came over to hang out with me and the boys. She took a few videos with her cell phone of the boys. Here is one of them. Enjoy! And go Packers!

I'm Special!

At least that's what my doctor said. Actually, I think he used a different word. Like 'unique' or something like that.

I got some interesting news this January from some blood work I had done three months ago. Let me first begin with some background info...

I was first diagnosed with diabetes about five years ago. My doctor at the time said I wasn't really a Type 1 (insulin dependant) or Type 2 (insulin resistant) diabetic. She called it Type 1.5. That made no sense to me at the time. I spoke with other diabetics and they had never heard of it as well. Anyways, she had decided to treat me as a Type 2 diabetic anyways and prescribed oral medications. While I was pregnant I switched to insulin injections because it's very important to control your blood sugar (BS) levels at that time and insulin was the only way I was able to control mine from going too high. After delivery I went back to just pills.

Fast-forward to today...I decided to switch to a new endocrinologist closer to my new house. And I've heard awesome things about this doctor. I met him back in October. One look at me and listening to my history, he wanted to do a DNA test to check for a diabetes gene. I didn't know you could do that!

Anyways, three months later (it takes a LONG time for scientists to look through one's DNA) I met with him again. The result? I have MODY (Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young). My doctor said it means that I was pretty much BORN with diabetes...or I was born with the gene that causes some people to develop diabetes later in life...whether you like it or not. Only 2% of people with diabetes have it. In other words,  I'm the 1 in every 400,000 people with this 'abnormal gene'. So...I'm SPECIAL...I guess.

These are the reasons my doctor suspected me of having MODY:
1. Diabetes presents at a young age, usually less than 25 years of age. (I was 24)
2. You are not overweight. (No I'm not)
3. MODY runs in families through several generations. A parent with MODY has a 50% chance of passing on MODY to their child. This is called autosomal dominant inheritance. (My dad, grandfather, and uncle all have diabetes. If you go by the statistics, Hudson or Brayden probably has the gene now)
4. People with MODY do not always need insulin treatment and can often be treated with diabetes pills or meal planning alone. (I've been on both insulin and pills. Both have worked. I like carbs and sugar so meal planning is not an option for me)
5. People with MODY do not produce enough insulin; this is different to Type 2 diabetes where people frequently produce lots of insulin but don't respond to their insulin. (My body is producing enough insulin however I'm also somewhat resistant to it...so odd)

So, what does having MODY mean for me? Not much. My doctor thinks it's kinda cool though. Whatever. I'd rather not have diabetes to begin with. My diabetes is well controlled right now. I have an A1C of 5.9 which is PERFECT for a diabetic. An A1C below 6.0 is actually considered 'borderline diabetic' but remember I'm on medication. If I wasn't, my number would probably be higher. People with diabetes should have an A1C below 7.0.

If my diabetes was out of control then my doctor would prescribe a new treatment plan with MODY in mind. 

I hope all that made sense to you. If not, you're not alone. I still don't understand most of what he told me. One thing I did read while I was doing my own research online was that one site described MODY as...you guessed it...Type 1.5 diabetes. We came full circle.