Cat's out of the bag!

We let the big secret cat out of the bag this afternoon and it feels so fabulous....we're PREGNANT, again!!

We are officially out of the first trimester as of tomorrow (or Saturday, depending upon who you ask) and we had our first appointment with the regular OB/Gyn yesterday. We found out in late February and I can tell you that it has been so tough keeping the secret! On the one hand, we wanted to make sure that things were going smoothly, but at the same time, we're so excited that it's hard not to shout it from the rooftops.

Here are a few pictures so far:

6 week ultrasound:

8 week ultrasound:

And here is a picture of me with Dr. Miracles himself, Dr. Jarrett. We really cannot imagine what we would have done had we not made the move from our old RE to him. He's obviously the best that there is, proven by his success rates and the fact that he ranks as the #1 IVF RE in the state. But beyond that, he genuinely cares. He's really invested in his patients and I'm certain that he treats them all as fabulously as he did us. This man literally changed our lives and we have so much gratitude toward him!! (We took this picture right before we officially "graduated" from his care...very bittersweet. If he was available to be our doctor through the entire pregnancy, I'd absolutely make the drive to Indy every month!!)

Anyway, so that's what we have so far in the way of pictures. We didn't get an ultrasound at yesterday's appointment but we did get to hear the baby. Luckily, we have a doppler and we're able to listen to the baby every night. It's a great source of reassurance for us.

As for the little peanut, we're calling it a few different things. Josh is convinced that it is a boy. 100% convinced. (We'll find out in 6 or 7 weeks!) He calls him his little power forward, and based on the wiggleworm that we saw swinging elbows in our last ultrasound, he could be right on about that prediction. I tried to remind him that he could have been doing ballet moves, but J didn't go for that. I sometimes call him our little b-dub. As in, Baby Wright.

But mostly, we call him our lil Poke or Pokey. The reason behind this is that when we went for our first ultrasound at 6 weeks, we saw no heartbeat. This was on a Thursday. We were scared out of our minds, and Dr. J gave us no reason for high hopes...he didn't want us getting our hopes too high. So I took Friday off, got some more bloodwork done (and my levels were skyhigh, which was good news), and then spent the weekend taking it very easy, praying and praying for our little miracle, and I kept saying, "I'm building a heartbeat, people!!" On the way to the appointment on Monday, we were still so nervous, but I said, "Maybe the baby's just taking it's sweet time building its heart. Maybe it's just a little pokey!" Needless to say, there was obviously a heartbeat (pretty sure that Dr. J teared up with us!) and the baby DID take its sweet time and it WAS just a little Pokey. Funny enough, I've been accused on more than one occasion of being a piddler, so it's not surprising that a baby of mine would build a heart on its own time! So Pokey has stuck, plus since Josh's alma mater, Wyoming, is also known as the Pokes, he likes it even more.

So there you have it! Another Baby Wright on the way. We're still very sad over the loss of Mya and we never want to forget everything that she did for us. She gave us so much hope and joy even in just a few weeks. She made us realize that we were meant to be parents and that our 3 1/2 year struggle was worth it. We still believe that and we will treasure her as our first baby for always.

Marching for Mya

Today we did the March for Babies Walk in honor of Mya. It was a really fun day, though very bittersweet.

Shell got t-shirts made for us and they turned out really cute:

Here is a picture of the girls (minus Sloop)

Josh and Danny messing around after the walk:Here's everyone during the walk. Notice that Josh is carrying Lincoln. He did almost the entire 4 miles carrying either Linc or Griff or with Griff on his shoulders! Guess he got a double workout!Here we are after the walk...sad but excited to be thinking of our little girl:

We're so proud of our team!! Together, we passed our goal of raising $1,000 for March of Dimes by $200!! We were in the Top 5 Lafayette-area teams for online fundraising, too! March of Dimes is one organization that I knew I would want to support because of the research they have done for Down syndrome. I know that if Mya had lived, we would have taken advantage of the research and support offered by MOD, so hopefully with our team's help, other families will be able to do so.

Thanks to our walkers:
Shell, Dan and the boys
Ron and Patty
Laura and Jeff
Laura Smith
Elizabeth
Laura Edwards (in spirit!)

And thanks to the many people who donated!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Easter

We had a great Easter holiday this year! I had been planning a big egg hunt for the boys and we had planned on doing it on Saturday, but then it ended up raining. So on a whim, Josh decided to make an Easter lunch for Shell, Dan, the boys and us after church and the day turned out to be gorgeous. We had the egg hunt first, then Dan and Josh took the boys down to the playground and we had lunch outside on the patio. We were hoping to go down to Southern IN to visit Josh's grandma but it didn't end up working out. Hopefully we'll get down there soon.

Here are some pictures of the boys hunting for eggs:

And here is Shell, Dan, Linc and Kowe relaxing on the hammock. Perfect hammock day!!
As always, Josh worked his magic. We made some deviled eggs and I got the idea from Mary in my office to dye the egg whites. They turned out pretty cute.

And here's a picture of our entire spread...salad bar, ham, homemade potato salad, corn and cadbury mini egg cookies. It was all delicious!

Cheap Date: Black Tie Style!

This past weekend, we were able to attend the HTM Black Tie Dinner. Since we went for work, we didn't have to pay for the tickets, so we figured that we would take advantage of the free dinner to enjoy another installment of our Cheap Date! Series. We haven't been too good about our cheap dates lately, but this was a fantastic one! We enjoyed getting all dressed up and eating some unique and new (to us) foods.

Here is a picture of us. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera at home, so Wendi sent me a few pictures. (Thanks, Wendi!) I would have taken pictures of Josh drinking lots and lots...and lots of wine, champagne, more wine, more champagne. Oh, the wine was a-flowin'! I drove that night, so I enjoyed some fabulous NOjitos! They were delicious non-alcoholic mojitos! Sooo delicious!

This is a picture of a giant shrimp with frozen gazpacho. It was very interesting. VERY spicy! At least mine was. The theme for the night was Chilean food, as we have a new chef in the department who is from Chile.
My favorite course of the night was this delicious soup. It was a squash soup served with two types of salsa on the spoon. You dipped the spoon in the soup and swirled it around to get the best tasting soup ever!!

Here is a picture of Wendi, Denise and I.

And here is a picture of me with Ali, the BTD President from last year, and Carter, the BTD President from this year (and hopefully next year, too)! I get to work with them on seating and invitations. SUCH a great group of students. They work for 8 months and the event is comprised of over 400 students. They learn every aspect of the service of a synchornized service dinner. It's such a neat experience. This year's guest speaker was Gale Gand. She has been on several Food Network shows as well as Top Chef. She did a book signing after the event and we all got a copy of her newest cookbook, "Brunches." Funny story: when Josh and I were getting our book signed, I told her she could make it out to Josh since he does all of the cooking in our house. She was impressed with this and said she hoped I did the dishes (ummm....). Then she complimented me on my necklace and was just such a sweet and personable lady. But when we looked at where she signed it, she made it out to John. We laughed.

Overall, it was a fabulous event and we had a great time. Best of all, it was a great date night with my handsome hubby!

snail mail

You know what will really brighten your day?
I'll tell you!

A few weeks ago I checked the mail and found this sweet letter in there from Griffin. He told Shell that he wanted to send me a letter, so he wrote it all out on the back of a colored picture that he had done at school.

He's such a sweetheart. Just the thing to brighten any day!!

Cheap Date! Take Two

We had the opportunity on Friday night to enjoy the second installment of our Cheap Date! Series. We enjoyed dinner at Adelino's followed by a Civic Theatre performance. Adelino's is a local tapas-style restaurant with lots of different and interesting things. Josh hadn't eaten there yet and we had a gift certificate that we'd gotten at the silent auction late last year, so we headed out before our show.

Here's Josh taking a taste of wine. They let me try it first in this tiny wine glass and I thought it was funny seeing him with it. Don't I have an adorable Valentine?!
And here is me with their signature Sangria. Unfortunately, it was too cold for me to be able to really enjoy it (because of the dental work I had done that morning). I had to drink it from a straw which didn't work out too well...sangria is for sipping, not for straw-drinking!! I learned that really quickly!The food was really good! And different. Every time I go, I love to get the goat cheese marinara sauce. It's nice and spicy (which Josh loves) but really good.
Here is a vegetable medley, it was also really good:
Here is the Mahi Mahi skewer. The glaze on top was fantastic:

Our favorite part of the main courses was this sausage-stuffed pepper. Mmmmmm...After dinner, we went to the Civic Theatre to see A Raisin in the Sun. We laughed because the average age of the people in the audience had to have been 70. There was a sea of white and grey hair!! I took a picture of it, but was afraid that someone might stumble upon this and be offended. :) But the show was good and we enjoyed our little date night. The Civic tickets were also from the silent auction, so in total, we spent less than $25 for a pretty fun date night! It's nice to change things up a bit. We get so used to doing the same things, goin to the same places, so our cheap dates are a fun way to switch it up.

Super Bowl!

We had a fun Super Bowl!! We were hoping for a Colts-Saints Super Bowl and were excited when it actually happened! For me, I knew I would be a happy camper no matter the outcome. We had Jeff and Laura over and Josh, Jeff and Laura were all rooting for the Saints.

One thing's for sure: we definitely had a great night full of delicious food, good friends and fun games!

And don't forget these two cuties...they also enjoyed lots of love and rubs from Laura and way too much food:Of course the vajunka had to make an appearance: My contribution was the football brownies (and the presentation!)...
Here's our spread:We had 7-layer dip with Josh's homemade guacamole. Ohhh my gosh, it was good!

We had jalapeno poppers (yuuummmy!):

Here is our game setup (complete with a shot of vajunka!). We played some Sequence and 9-Hole...and you will note that I have a really good hand in this picture! But don't let it fool you, Laura beat us all! Overall, it was a fantastic night! Lots of fun and it was really neat to see Drew Brees (Breesus, as many at Purdue are calling him!) win.

Weekend in Florida

A few weeks ago, Josh, Patty and I visited with Josh's grandpa in Sarasota for a long weekend. We had a really fun time despite having cold, rainy weather! We managed to eat our way through the greater Sarasota area, there's no doubt about that!!

One of our stops was to this huge statue. We had to be silly and get pics of ourselves and we also got some of Grandpa and Sue.Then we headed to the beach because Grandpa loves to feed the birds! Here he is showing us that the birds could hear him coming!
I do NOT like birds. They freak me out and I'm always the one to get pooped on, so Grandpa decided that it would be funny to chase me around and try to get the birds to come to me! Funny man! What you don't see in this picture is Grandpa running behind me throwing bread at me so the birds swarmed toward me! I swear he chased me around this shack at least 3 times!

Here are some pictures of the bird whisperer at work. It was really amazing to see the birds floating in front of him and they would catch the bread in the air.
Here's a cute picture of Josh, Grandpa and Patty:
Another day, we went to see the manitees. I wanted to get in and swim and cuddle and kiss them, but this was the closest we could get. Unfortunately, it was rainy when we went, but it was fun to watch them. They're so cute. We also got to see lots of stingrays playing and flying out of the water. They were feisty that day!

Later, we went to a beach in Treasure Island, where Grandpa and Patty and their whole family used to go every year. Here's a picture of Josh and his mom on the beach (it was coooold!):

And here is a picture of some birds that hang out in Grandpa's little neighborhood. One of the white ones actually goes into one of the houses down the street! The lady cuts up hot dogs in the shape of worms. Patty and Josh and Grandpa also fed them. The brown one became so fond of the treats Patty fed him that we hear he still comes to visit Grandpa every morning!

And I just thought this was a funny picture. It looks photoshopped but it isn't!

Like I mentioned before, we did a LOT of eating! We visited a delicious Amish restaurant that had been on Man vs. Food (yum!). We had yummy ice cream! We had delicious seafood and Josh loooved his fish tacos. And we visited this place below. It is a restaurant in a traincar with a circus theme. They own the original traincar that was used by John Ringling from the Ringling Brothers Circus. It's attached to the car shown below and they are renovating it. It was an interesting experience to say the least. Oddly enough, I was in the middle of listening to Water for Elephants (which is about a traveling circus that competes with Ringling Brothers) so visiting this was particularly interesting to me.

That, along with lots of games of 9 Hole and Sequence pretty much sums up our long weekend in Florida! We were so glad to get to spend some time with Grandpa.

results

We got the results of our chromosome screening yesterday and found out that our baby was a girl. We also found out that she had what is called Trisomy 21, which is where she had an extra 21st chromosome, more commonly known as Down Syndrome.

In many ways, this is good news. It means that our m/c couldn't have been prevented. It also means that we aren't at any greater risk of having another m/c than any other person in the world. It means that we can hopefully get pregnant again (who knows how long that will take) and we should be able to have a full-term, healthy baby. This is all great news and Dr. Jarrett assured us that we will get pregnant again. He was very happy with the results.

At the same time, it's very hard (for me, in particular) to process. Many babies are born with Down Syndrome and live full and joyful lives. Yes, I realize that this wouldn't have been a guaranteed thing and it's not ideal, but it's hard to get past the feeling that she still belongs with us, physical and mental disabilities or not. She would have been the absolute light of our lives. We would have loved her beyond words. We still do.

People can say, "It's probably for the best," all they want. I don't want to hear that. Yes, it probably was for the best. But I feel like the best thing would be for her to have lived. For her to have blessed our lives. I have always loved children with Down's for their ability to show their emotions and their love unconditionally and without hesitation. I have known several families who had a Down's child as well as "normal" kids and the Down's child was always the light of the entire family's universe. She would have been the light of our universe. There's no question about that. It feels like it might have been easier if she had a Trisomy that wasn't compatible with life.

With all of that being said, we are looking for closure on this. We never want to forget her. But we do need to try to move forward. And we are. We have decided to name her and have a few things planned to hopefully help us.

We hope that everyone will continue to pray for our little lady.

Mya Belle

In our hearts forever.

We both chose a name based on the meaning. I chose Mya because it means "great." Josh chose Belle as the middle name because it means "beautiful." She was and is a beautiful part of our lives forever.

Cheap Date! Series

First off, let me say that we had our appointment with our doctor today and we got the results of the genetic testing that they did on our baby. I will write another post about it soon, but for now, know that we are still thinking of our baby and though we certainly feel some closure, our hearts are still heavy. More to come soon...

But in the meantime, I will share with you a fun new adventure that we decided to embark upon. We recently took inventory and realized that after the holidays, birthdays, the silent auction in December, and some other events, we have quite an abundance of gift certificates! We have everything from food (lots of food!) to tickets to a local Civic Theatre show, tickets to a Purdue Convocation, a certificate for a glass blowing class, movie tickets....lots of fun things. So in an event to make the most out of everything that we have, tonight we began what we are calling our Cheap Date! Series. I'm pretty sure that we have a good several months' worth of date nights here, so we're going to get creative and have some fun. Most importantly, it is a great way for us to enjoy some time together and add a little creativity to our routine. So since we were already in Indy, we decided to make tonight our first Cheap Date! Josh's Aunt Sandy had given us a giftcard to Red Robin (looove!) for Christmas and we were able to have dinner for free! I didn't get any good pictures before we dug in (an don't even try to get between Josh and his Red Robin french fries!), so this will have to do. My favorite thing there is the delicious strawberry lemonade.
So that's what we're up to. Looking forward to some fun, cheap date nights coming up. More information soon about our results from the doctor.