Photo Friday - Show and Tell

I'm a little early with posting for Photo Friday but I couldn't help myself.

Tonight we are going out to celebrate my friend Claudia's birthday. And what better way to celebrate then to embarrass your friend by making her dress up as you crawl from bar to bar. In order to do this I made her a tutu and bought her a birthday crown. Since I was NOT going to model the tutu for you I decided to make the only male in our house show off my creation.


Is it me or does he seem unimpressed?

September

So we went to the doctor today to see if Melissa had any bad side effects to the Clomid. Like we expected everything was normal and we have a good idea that we are going to inseminate sometime the week of the 10th of September. We made the placeholder appointments today and if Melissa’s body is on the schedule we believe those dates should be solid. If not we will adjust it accordingly.

It is great for me because I can look at arranging my work schedule ahead of time so that I can be more available that we to be there with Melissa. It is important for me to be there for this and I will do anything to make it happen. The thing that stinks is we are attending ACL (Austin City Limits Music Festival), a huge music festival, the 14th, 15th, and 16th. If we have to move our dates back it will screw with our plans but our priority is the baby so anything else comes second.

YAY Ovulation!

Currently on CD20 and it looks like I did in fact ovulate on CD16!! It's kinda scary relying more on technology than my own feelings and instincts. From all the other blogs I've read and my own natural instincts I feel like the situation should be flipped.

So unless the doctor says differently on Friday I think we are green lit to do our first insemination in September. Let the nervousness and excitement commence. Thank you all for your words of encouragement. Bring them on in September as they will be much needed as I'm sure our newbieness will shine brightly.

In baby fund news. Our stupid garage door broke and the repair man is coming tomorrow to let us know how much it's going to cost to fix. :( Here's wishing for a small small number.

UPDATE: The garage door only cost $100! Double yay!

I think I just need to breathe

All of this stressing isn't helping so I've decided I need to step back, take a breath and let the chips fall where they may. Today is CD18 and in looking at my chart it looks as though I might have ovulated on CD16 (I'll know for sure tomorrow based on my temperature.) I think my reason for stressing was that this cycle was unlike any of the others. All the signs I used to use to gauge my ovulation didn't appear, but the monitor and OPK both read a peak/positive. I'm not sure if it's the effects of the clomid or the acupuncture or my change in diet and cutting down on caffeine or all of the above that created this different cycle. Instead of concentrating on all the worrying and the uncertainty I need to focus on the facts, that is if I did in fact ovulate on CD16 then the clomid worked! Yay!

My biggest worry is that this cycle will follow the same pattern as the other ones, in that I won't ovulate and then we'll have to wait some more. But since I don't have control over any of this (something I hate!) I have to just go with the flow (no pun intended).

I'll continue taking my temp., go to my doctor's appointment to make sure the clomid didn't have any nasty side effects and go get my blood work done to check my progesterone levels. In the meantime I'm going to relax and go to the acupuncturist and then out to drinks with friends. If breathing doesn't help at least a beer will!

Continuing to Wait

Tick...Tock...Tick...Tock. Still waiting to see if the Clomid had any affect on this cycle. I'm currently on CD15 and on my 4th day of getting a high on my monitor and negative OPKs. I have no symptoms that I'll be ovulating anytime soon. If this is how it feels when we aren't even trying I can't imagine how it's going to feel when we hopefully do try in September. Even though I bitched and moaned about having to do a dry run this month I'm getting to appreciate it because it allows me to relax a bit and not have to stress out about timing.

Photo Friday: Trees

This week's theme for Photo Friday was trees. In looking at our library of pictures I stumbled across this picture of last year's Christmas tree from when we were at Amy's Mom's house.

Since it's hot as hell here in Austin I hoped thoughts of Christmas would help cool us down (considering this year we're going up to Canada to visit my side of the family). It's not really helping, but the air conditioner sure is!

Donor Woes

Mid last week we called the bank and were told that there was an "ample" supply of the donor we selected. We were sent our storage/order documents to fill out and we faxed them back over. It turns out that we must have picked the high school quarterback of Cryobank High because he now has 1 vial left. :(

So our our choices are to wait until October when the "quarterback" will be back in stock or go with our second runner up. Amy was more upset about this turn of events then I was, she really liked everything mentioned in the long description.

This whole process flashes me back when we were looking at buying a house, we found many we liked, some we even made offers on but in the end it all worked out and we got the house we have today and now look back on those other houses with wonder at what we even liked about them.

We have decided to go with Donor #2 for our first 3 tries. If it doesn't work out over the next few months then we can always go back to the quarterback. And on a more positive note, if it does work with #2 I have a ginormous feeling that we will look at our baby and wonder what we even liked about the quarterback in the first place.

Photo Friday: Art Attack

This is the first piece of artwork I ever created. We have a huge wall in our living room and couldn't find something big enough to fill the space. So I decided to take actions into my own hands and ran to Michael's to pick up some canvases. Taking inspiration from a quilt pattern I set paint to canvas and Volia! you have the piece I painted above.

On a side note, I started my first round of clomid this morning and wanted to thank everyone for their feedback and well wishes. It eased my worries and concerns taking that first pill this morning.