Massive Update

Alright, I know I have neglected both this blog and my authors blog, but there have been so many things keeping me away, the biggest one being the hormones currently raging through my body forcing me to be best friends with the toilet. I could also blame the theater, for being just so gosh darn addicting, or my beautiful, wonderful, hilarious daughter who doesn't like me paying attention to anything but her. Unless, of course, she decides she doesn't want my attention. Then I'm just not allowed to act like I'm doing something other than noticing she is giving me the cold shoulder. Aren't toddlers wonderful? [/sarcasm]

Now as for the update, as regarding everything Felicity/Family/Pregnancy. I am, as of right now, 9 weeks and 3 days along. I went off island with two of my best friends Gemma and Coral, to help me corral Felicity around, for my first ultrasound this last Wednesday. We took the 8:10am ferry out of Friday Harbor, got into Anacortes dock about 9:30, and made a bee-line for McDonald's. It's been a VERY long time since any of us have been off island, let alone eaten at a McDonald's, and it's what I was craving. Hot cakes with extra butter, sausage, and hash-browns. Mmmmm. It was amazing, and even Felicity ate. Granted, she ate my sausage and most of my hash-browns, but I did get a couple bites of those in!

After that, we headed for Island Hospital, where we sat around in the waiting room, playing hide and seek with Felicity and the chairs. They took me back to get my weight and blood pressure, and I am very happy to report I am starting to gain weight again! Because of my close relationship with the bathroom for the last several weeks, I lost about 5-6 pounds, dropping me down to 122-123 pounds, depending on which scale you look at. On Wednesday, I was my pre-pregnancy weight (and my happy place weight) of 128 lbs. I'm not overly excited to see that number jump by at least 40 pounds. My blood pressure was fantastic, as it usually is since I have my mothers side of the families blessing/curse of low blood pressure.

Once those little exams were finished, I went back out to wait while the ultrasound room was vacated and prepped for me. Now, I'm going to take a moment and share two of my horrible dreams that I had been having for about a week before this appointment. Some of you may know, that the Fourth of July weekend was stressful. We lost one of our baby kittens and had to bury him, and I bled for four days that weekend. So I was having these dreams that I was going to go in, and be told by my doctor that I wasn't pregnant. Or, I was indeed pregnant, but there was no heartbeat. So walking into the ultrasound room, I was a bundle of nerves. Gemma and Coral came in with Felicity and I, and Felicity was very concerned about Mommy on the table while this strange lady poked her tummy. As Dr. Garde examined my uterus before the ultrasound, she got this little frowny face which immediately sent me into extreme panic mode. She switched on the ultrasound and started looking, while I watched the screen nervously. One little bubble came on, then vanished as she moved around, and then suddenly, there were two babies on the screen!! Dr. Garde said, "Ah. That's why you're measuring large, you're having twins!" I started bawling, which scared Felicity, so she starting crying, which made Gemma and Coral start laughing/crying as they watched the screen. Gemma picked Felicity up and brought her over to me, and she latched onto my hand like a lifeline as I told her "It's OK honey, they're happy tears! It's OK!"

That's right. You read that correctly. Chris and I are expecting TWINS! We don't know yet, and may not know until the gender confirming ultrasound in another 8 weeks, if they are fraternal or identical, but we couldn't be more excited about our double dose of blessing!

4th of July Weekend

Well I hope you all enjoyed your weekend. I know I sure didn't. I'm going to be blunt. Usually, I love holidays, minus the stupidity of tourists and clogged roads and busy stores. I love spending time with my family eating good food. For the fourth, I especially love the fireworks.

Yesterday, Chris and I took Felicity out to Henry island for a picnic with some of my family. My aunt and uncle own property there, so we just took their boat out and had hamburgers, hot dogs, fried chicken, potato salad, and afterwards, smores with chocolate frosting! MMMM!

Felicity had great fun on the monkey rope, that's what we call it anyway. It's a thick rope on the bottom tied between two trees, with a thinner rope on top tied between the same two trees. You stand on the bottom and work your way across, and if you get two or three people on there, you can have a war. The war rules: You touch the ground, you lose. That's about it. It's a lot of fun to watch, even though I declined to participate this year because of my ' fragile condition'.

Speaking of which, it may be more fragile than I think. Over the weekend, starting Saturday, I've been bleeding. Not as heavily as I have in the past, but still. Three days worth of bleeding isn't exactly normal, not at the amount I have been. A bit of spotting here and there, fine. But this much?? So this Friday I get to go in and take another pregnancy test to see if I am still in fact pregnant.

On another upsetting note, one of our little kittens, the runt and little boy, died yesterday at 5:39pm. 21 minutes away from officially being four days old. The other kitten, the little girl, is doing well so far. She's eating healthily, and is pretty active, but you never know. Little Boy, as we called him, was like that too until yesterday morning, and he died that evening. Life is just so fragile and complicated, sometimes it's difficult to keep up my happy thoughts. This morning my friend Gemma is coming over early and we're going to bury him in one of my gardens and plant spearmint over his grave. I haven't cried yet, but that may just be because neither of these things have really 'hit' me yet. I just hope I have enough strength in me to make it to work and back home in one, relatively working, piece.

Now, I'm off to make sure my existing little girl Felicity is alive herself, she's still sleeping at almost 9 o'clock, and that is weird. I'm sure it's because she was up pretty late last night because of the firework booms startling her out of sleepy-time-land, but it never hurts to check!

Kittens!

I apologize for not posting yesterday, but my cat, who's about a year old, had her first litter of kittens. She had two, a fluffy little boy and a beautiful sleek little girl.

Normally, this would be fantastic news and worthy of some celebration. But, it's not. Rin, Momma Cat, isn't producing milk, and we think because of that, she is rejecting the kittens. She shows very little interest in them, and we're all very concerned about it.

Other than being an idiot, she's acting normal, eating normal, and generally being her typical attention seeking annoying hyper self, so we don't think there is anything medically wrong with her, like having another kitten stuck in her belly. (I couldn't feel anything when palpitating her tummy) So my friend Gemma and I went to our local pet supply store and bought some kitten milk replacer and have been attempting to feed the kittens. It's… not going so well. They really hate the little plastic syringe we have, and the ready-made bottles we got expired in 2009!! We've gotten them to pee, no poo yet, and eat maybe a drop or two at a time, but that's about it. They're otherwise pretty vocal and active, which is good, and we got a heating pad which we keep on one half of their box on the low setting, to help keep them warm like their mother should be doing. Gemma had them last night, since I haven't had a straight nights sleep in a while, and because of my growing baby bump and chasing a toddler, I'm exhausted and don't have the energy to feed them every two hours. I most definitely have the will to do it, and I will be taking over in another day or so, but for now, I'm focusing on getting some real sleep.

If you have had any experience with kittens this young (They are roughly 39 hours old) I would be immensely grateful if you would share. We tried contacting the Animal Shelter for help, but they haven't responded, so today we are going out to Wolf Hollow, our wild animal rescue center, and see if they have a rubber nipple we could borrow, and some tips on how to get them to eat. Hopefully our little bundles of furry joy make it!