May 17 - We traveled to Houston very early in the morning for the first trimester screening ultrasound. We opted out of this test with our last pregnancy, so it was new for us this time. The baby still looked great, had a good heartbeat, and was moving around. It always lifts my spirits to see that! We got the results the following week that everything looked normal.
May 18-26 - We hit the road for a long drive to N Louisiana to attend my mother-in-law's retirement party. It was great to see lots of family and friends there and to celebrate a great achievement for her after 26 years of being an elementary school teacher and librarian.
After the party was over we loaded back up in the car to head southeast until we arrived at our vacation destination of Gulf Shores, Alabama. We met my sister and her family there and stayed all together in a beach house we'd reserved for the week. It was Lily's first vacation and first trip to the beach. She had a great time!
I think the pool was her favorite, but she did enjoy the beach after she got used to it a little. We learned that vacationing with a toddler is not exactly simple, and her sleep schedule got ALL messed up (we're still trying to get it back) but it was worth it to spend a week away with family and make lots of fun memories. Lily also picked up two new states on our road trip, bringing her total number of states visited to 5 (TX, LA, OK, MS, and AL). Not too bad for a 20 month old!
May 27 - Right after we returned home from the beach, we hit a big milestone with our current pregnancy: the second trimester. As you know if you read this blog regularly, this is only our second time to make it this far out of eight pregnancies. It was definitely a reason to celebrate and rejoice!
May 31/June 1 - We spent almost all day on May 31 at MD Anderson cancer hospital doing all of the pre-op stuff for my melanoma surgery. My mom had come the day before and stayed at home with Lily, which was a huge help for us. My surgery was early on the morning of June 1 and everything went well. I'm feeling extremely relieved to have that part behind me since the diagnosis in April. Everyone was great at MDA and took really good care of the baby and me. Someone came to check the baby's heartbeat before and after surgery (it took about 10 minutes to find the heartbeat with the Doppler after the surgery, which was the most terrifying moment of the whole day!) and I was back home and resting shortly after noon that day. My new scar is pretty big, but I'm thankful for it and the fact that we caught this thing so early. I hope it will remind others to keep an eye on anything unusual on their skin and to keep themselves well protected in the sun.
It has been a week since the surgery and the arm is doing well. It's still a bit sore but is healing up nicely. I'll go back to have the stitches removed in about 2 more weeks. The pathology report should be back within the next week or so, and we're hoping that all margins will be clear and that this whole thing will be over!
June 6 - We celebrated 14 years of marriage on the 6th of June. My mom had stayed until the day after the surgery and then my sister-in-law came to help out with Lily for the next 4 days. This was a tremendous help as I continued to recover, and it also meant that we had a babysitter for our anniversary on Wednesday! It's a rare treat for us to go out on a date these days. We enjoyed a nice dinner and trip to the bookstore while Lily played with her aunt. When we got home around 9 PM, she was all tucked into her bed and fast asleep. We were really proud of our big girl!
(The hubs and I on our date. Not the greatest pic of us, but oh well. :))
Quite a lot has happened and changed for us over the past 14 years. There have been lots of ups and downs and life has thrown us some curve balls, but I'm beyond thankful to have my amazing, supportive husband to walk beside me through it all. Truly, I have no idea what I would do without him!That's what we've been up to for the past several weeks. Tomorrow I'll be 15 weeks and my first OB appointment (since graduating from the RE) will be Monday. Things seem to be settling down a bit and we're looking forward to a (hopefully) peaceful and uneventful summer!
