I'm back! Here is what's been going on... Part one.

So wow! Where has the time gone? It's December 30th and I am looking into the dawn of 2012, realizing my life has changed so much, so fast and on a road to unfamiliar territory.
My last post in September, talked about autumn, kids, and pregnancy.... more specifically why I was having weird dreams and thoughts about getting pregnant again. WELL, it turns out that my body was gearing up to be fertile again; unknown to me (until the day after Serenity's 1st birthday) I would get pregnant again the following week. Wow. whoa. whaaaa? Yup, I came face to face with what I had been pondering and realized, oMFGAwd I actually do NOT want to be pregnant right now... my daughter is only 1 and the center of our life, I am still in school and my husband's work is not stable. But the universe has had other plans. Today I am 15 weeks pregnant and I will catch you up a little more on what happen in those 15 weeks I haven't blogged.
I started school again for Fall term. Anatomy & Physiology (part 2 of 3). This is a 3 hour lecture class and a 3 hour lab class, one on Monday and one on Wednesday. I'm not sure if I mentioned it before, but when school ended for summer I took my daughter off the goat's milk formula ( I will do a post about this later) that I make myself and on only breast full time. She was only drinking a bottle at night and sometimes during the day if I wasn't home, so it was rather easy for my body to pick up the slack when I was home all the time. I took my Mother Love Herbals, More Milk Plus and ate a lot of oatmeal. So, when school returned for Fall, I wasn't sure what was going to happen, I knew that I really didn't get much from pumping and pretty much hated everything about the damn thing. So the first month, I painstakingly did a combo of pump and hand expression so I could give her papa a bottle for her bedtime. It seems to work fine as long as I did it right after class ( I a couple of sessions to get enough for that first week).
As it rolled into October, our breastfeeding relationship starting getting stressed. She took up biting me and getting really frustrated and I had no idea what was going on. About a week and a half before her birthday, I took a pregnancy test... I'm still not sure what compelled me to do so, other than there was one sitting in the cupboard when I grabbed some TP. After seeing the results, I climbed back into bed and cuddled with hubby. He said "so?" I said "nope" he said "oh" and I said "are you sad?" he said "a little" and I said "ya me too, but its better this way" and he said "ya I know."
We went on with birthday plans; creating an enchanted party for Serenity was one of the greatest joys of my life. My mother was coming into town for the party and stayed for 10 days after. We rented the family room at Milagros Boutique on NE 30th and filled it with balloons, a bubble machine, brightly colored butterflies, a playdough table, a playhouse you could color on, a little music station and a pinata full of sugar free organic suckers, finger puppets and bubbles. We had an amazing time and Serenity was glowing. Our friends did an awesome job helping set up and clean (and even running across the street and getting coffee for everyone). The kids had a blast, we had a face painter and as a party gift we gave different colored fairy wings and even the boys loved them! Here are some photos of the fun:

My sweet girl. 

       My man, filling up balloons for his lil lady

                               

Have I mentioned she looves music (that alligator is a piano). I got these lovely wings for her on Amazon!

          

Jude (left) enjoying a muffin in the playhouse with purple wings.  

Darby (right) playing with playdough in his green wings

More playdough with Jude and Tegan

Serenity's smash cake. I made it from scratch and its a gluten free, sugar free carrot cake with coconut nectar icing. It was amazing and thank you to my Aunt Jill for giving me the original recipe.

Her birthday ring and caterpillar candle were cute additions!

Smash cakes rock mama!

The gang watching her eat

                               

Here she is telling us that she is ONE!    

Skylar gets her face painted (she's wearing pink wings) and Cyrus finds a balloon (and looks so cute in those blue wings)

 

Amber and cute little Anneliese

The Pinata was a big hit (no pun intended, it was the pull string kind).

Cyrus in bliss! And Tegan and Serenity jamming out on the pianos.

Present time! Amber made this awesome headband... she loved it!

From Jude: a Shrink-a-dink bracelet and cloth ball.

From Skylar and Tegan: a book of animals.

Overall, I did a good job at not being sad that my baby had grown so fast. She promptly passed out on the car ride home, woke up hungry, a little dazed and excited about new toys. My mom spent the night with her friends at a hotel, who had come down from Washington for the party. Hubby and I cuddled up and chilled out with a movie... I'm pretty sure I passed out way before it was over.


So, the next day I woke up and I looked again in the bathroom cupboard, saw the last pregnancy test and this time I started to think about the week: I had been nauseous, I kept telling hubby that it was this bad food I ate, or this thing must have had sugar in it or it was all the stress of planning a big party and having an A & P exam coming up. Nope, I realized it right there... I was pregnant. That's why Serenity had been biting me and not nursing well. That's why I was emotional and nauseous. As I peed on that stick, I thought about the negative one from before. I didn't have to wait long... it was positive. I sat there for a second and then climbed back in bed with hubby and Serenity. I cuddled her to my breast, looked at him and said "I'm pregnant."