Wowza, life is interesting! This month has been crazy.

I'm applying to nursing school and dealing with all of the paperwork and craziness that comes along with that.  . Wendy and I are both working on finishing up degree programs this semester. (Wendy will be getting her BA and I'm finishing up my AA.) We're long-distance planning a 90th birthday party for Wendy's grandmother, the sweetest tiny woman to ever live south of the Mason Dixon line. We're both a bit overloaded.

Ozzy has been...pleasant.  Okay, that's a bold faced lie.  Ozzy has been an absolute challenge lately.

Naps:  I know that part of it is the struggle we've been having with keeping him to a consistent schedule. Ozzy is trying to phase out one of his daily naps. The remaining nap has been all over the place. If the kid sleeps for more than 10 minutes (like in the car in between activities), he thinks that's all the nap he needs for the day, and is therefore impossible after 4:00 in the afternoon.  Or he'll decide he wants to take another nap at 6 o'clock at night, which means he's up until 10:30.  When you tie those things together...well, it's had to get schedules to sync up. We haven't found a solution yet.  I've been getting up at 5:30 every morning to get a couple of hours of studying in, but we're still working to find a solution for Wendy. We'll get there.  We have 12 weeks left of the semester.

Nursing: We've also been working on finding a more suitable nursing schedule for us. He has started to just "help himself" by reaching into my shirt and whipping things out for himself. If I'm not wearing a high neck shirt, it's a downright baby buffet.  As much as I hate to admit it, I'm starting to feel...a bit resentful. And since breastfeeding is a relationship, we both need to be happy. So, we're working on it. We nurse at naps and at bedtime, guaranteed. And if it's not one of those times, he needs to ask nicely for it. (For my non-verbal toddler that means signing for milk or hungry). We've only had about two major tantrums about the new arrangement. So, I'll call that a minor success.

Combine Ozzy's battles with everything else that is going on and life has been rough.

We lost our best friend on January 15. Riley, our 10 year old boxer, died from a very quick fight with Cancer. We noticed he was struggling over the holidays and took him into the vet when we came home from Missouri.  An exam and an x-ray found a large tumor in his lungs. The vet estimated he had two weeks to live. We brought him home and we made the seven days after that appointment the best days we could. He ate fast food, slept whenever he wanted, got tons of extra cuddles. His discomfort began to get more and more obvious.  The day that we decided we would take him in to help him pass, we got ready and took him to the car.  As soon as the car pulled out of the driveway, Riley laid down and died. The car was his happiest place, so it was suiting that he died there.  He will be sorely missed and there will never be another dog like him.  I know that everyone says that, but Riley truly was special. Everyone who ever met him loved him.

Overview of My Time Away

So much has happened since I wrote here regularly. Part of my New Year resolutions is to begin writing more often. But I feel like a brief catch-up is necessary.  I'll try to keep it succinct.

November 2014

We welcomed this amazing little boy into our family. And we all fell in love with him. Deeply in love.

The first six month flew by, in a fog of postpartum depression to be honest.  I struggled. Hard.  That is another post of its own. But we had this little guy, and he is amazing. 

June 2015

This kid. Ash became an adult. He graduated from high school.  He got accepted to three of his four first choice colleges with scholarships at all three. He chose the perfect school for himself.  I could not be more proud to be his mama.

As a graduation gift for Ash, we took the most amazing family vacation to Disneyworld! 

We met with a mortgage broker in June and found ourselves a real estate agent. Big steps in the Berry clan! It feels as though we saw a hundred homes. We put in an offer on one house, and ended up losing it to another bidder.  During the house hunting, we also took a little break to rescue this little guy and his siblings from a sewer drain.

July 2015

We saw a house, put in an offer, and it was accepted!  With it came a move to the suburbs, but we truly found our "home".  We love our new community and location.

Ozzy got to experience his first baseball game in July, as well! 

August 2015

One of the hardest things I have done in my life was moving Ash into his dorm room.  It was surreal. How in the world has 18 years passed already? 

We celebrated our two year wedding anniversary on August 24. 

October 2015

Ozzy celebrated his first Halloween! He was not thrilled with the wet leaves, the cloudy weather, or his dragon costume.  But we had fun anyway. 

November 2015

His first birthday. And we made it one cycle around the sun. There was much cake eaten, multiple parties, and a visit from his Papa and Nana Berry.  

I'm never good at year in review posts. I also couldn't just leave a giant blank space for all of the time that I was away from blogging.  So, you got a brief peek. I'm sure I will expand upon it as I get into writing more, but for now, this is what you get.  

It's been 580 days since my last post and our world is forever changed

It is coming up on our son's first birthday. Everything has changed. And yet it all feels as though it is exactly how it has always been.  Oslo fits perfectly, because his space in our family was always just right here waiting for him. I am so deeply in love with this little creature.

There is no way for me to update you on the exhaustion, elation, depression of this first year of his life. I am still struggling with pretty severe postpartum depression and anxiety. I spent some time trying to recover in a partial hospitalization program. Ozzy has been the light of every day. If I could spend all of my time curled up in my bed in the dark with Oz, the world would be okay.  Postpartum depression is not very logical.

 In chronological order, Ozzy's first 11 months in 108 photographs.

And then we were able to sigh (and scream) with relief

Our perfectly measuring, perfectly heartbeating little bug! at 8 weeks

By the time we got to our ultrasound appointment on Monday morning, I had honestly come to terms with the idea that we might *not* be pregnant. If we had a blighted ovum, I was ready to ask about surgery to remove the fibroids and recovery time before we could start our next cycle. 

The nurse practitioner got us all set up in a room and immediately saw "something" on the ultrasound screen. She thought that it might be a yolk sack, but the machine she was using was showing a lot of interference and static. She asked if we would mind switching rooms. At that point, I was so excited to hear that there was anything at all in my uterus, that I would have run to the other room without bothering to put on my pants. Thankfully, The Wife was there to remind me that I should get dressed first. 

We got settled into the other room, and as soon as the nurse turned on the ultrasound, there was our little bean. There was still a lot of interference from my fibroids and my very anterior uterus, but the baby was there. There was no denying that the baby was there. She took a few measurements and decided to try using the abdominal wand instead of the transvaginal.  And immediately we were able to see everything we had missed last time. And a perfect little 164 bpm heartbeat flickering. She turned on the sound and we heard the little wubwub wubwub. At that point, I think the wife and I may have had a bit of built up emotion because we both screamed and started crying. (The front desk staff was greatly amused!) 

So, now, we have a healthy little pregnancy going on! We've been released from care at our fertility clinic and we have our first appointment with a midwife on Friday.