The Strongest Baby in These Islands

Well, hello.  It's been a while.

I haven't gone so long between posts since I started this blog in 2008. There are several reasons for this.  For one thing, I've moved home to Rochester, and I kept this blog at least in part so that people in Rochester could keep up with us.  I'm now seeing a lot of the people I was trying to keep in touch with on the regular!  Of course, there are other readers in other states, and there are other reasons I haven't kept up with the blog.

For another thing, in transitioning to a new state and a new job, we've been focusing on building that new life.  And, I've started writing in a new vein in the past six months with my multi-chapter fanfiction project 😁 so that's been getting a lot of my creative energy.

But the main reason, honestly, that I haven't been keeping up with the blog? I didn't feel like writing about the three back-to-back miscarriages I had in the last year.  I still don't feel like writing about it at length, to be honest.  This seems uncharacteristic. I want to write and talk about everything, in the main.  I can't explain it, I just felt I wanted to hide and lick my wounds after each successive loss.  Each time I become pregnant (in August 2018, in November 2018, and in January, 2019), I would plan to write a blog entry announcing the pregnancy, and each time my plans would be dashed.  Each time I went in for an ultrasound and learned that the heartbeat had stopped, or that there had never been a heartbeat to begin with, I was crushed. And yet, the last thing I wanted to do was share this with the outside world.

I had to do what I had to do to cope with last year, and I don't regret taking a year off blogging.  My closest friends knew, and that was enough for me.  And I need to give a shout out to those people who knew what I was going through and who let me do what I needed to do to cope with it.  They listened to me, they sent me gifts, they invited me over, they let me lean on them when I was hobbling and cheered me on when I recovered my steps.  I am profoundly grateful for my friends and family this year.

In 2018-2019, Jon worked at Geneseo, I worked at RIT and for VIP Kid; Miles went to fourth grade; Adele, first.  I will post a few entries with summaries of the seasons we've spent getting accustomed to life in Rochester.  But today is for some good news that couldn't wait any longer.  I'm finally confident enough to say that we're expecting baby number three in late January or early February! I'm twenty weeks pregnant today.

(Oh, yes, by the way, Dad got married to Agnes McClear this August.  It's been an eventful year).

Anyway, say hello!

The children are SO excited.  Below is a video of them finding out about their brother or sister in July.

I had so many hopes for the third pregnancy.  There is a helpful saying, after all, that the third time's the charm.  It seemed a fortuitous number.  When I lost the third baby I was crushed.  But when the fourth pregnancy proved different, I wondered.  Where did I remember the 4th iteration of something being successful?  And it hit me.

The fourth one stayed.  So, may I present, The Strongest Baby in These Islands.

We will not be finding out the gender before birth! Sorry/not sorry! As, it's probably our last time at this and we want to savor one more surprise.

We usually give our babies the names of Lost Boys before they're born.  Miles was Tootles, and Adele, Pockets.  But we used Slightly last fall, and Nibs in the Spring, and we weren't having twins and Curly makes me think of the Three Stooges.  So this one is dubbed Tertius, for Third. However, you should know that Miles is calling his tiny sibling "Trillion" and Adele is calling it "Sharkey." I'm still not sure why.

I hope to resume blogging at least twice a month now that we will again have the fast-changing landscape of pregnancy and infancy ahead of us.  Stay tuned!