Holy cow. I'm pregnant.

I'm using my old xanga because I don't know how to make a private entry in blogger. I need to write all this down, but am not ready to share it with the world yet.

So I've been off the pill for 2 months and we've been "trying." But I wasn't charting and we weren't trying too hard. Haha. It was kind of a "I think I'm ready, let's see what happens" kind of thing.

I haven't felt any different than normal over the past couple of weeks. No nausea, no acne or heightened sense of smell or anything. Today marked 28 days since my last period, so I decided to take a test instead of wait for my period to show up. I just took a cheap dollar store test. You're supposed to wait for the control line to appear. If a second line appears with it, it's positive. Well the control line appeared almost immediately with no second line. I was mildly upset, but went on to brush my teeth, leaving the test next to me on the counter. As I started brushing, I thought, "Is that a second line?" I got my face really close to the stick I had just peed on to inspect and started to get butterflies in my stomach as I realized it was. The line got darker and darker over the next few seconds, and within 2 minutes was almost as dark as the control line.

Holy cow. I started shaking. Lucy was standing next to me in the bathroom and I exclaimed, "Lucy, we're going to have a baby!!"

I have very intensely mixed emotions. I'm super excited to be pregnant and have a baby in the house again. But I'm terrified to have 2 kids and I'm horrified that Lucy will feel replaced. She is the center of our world, and I hate that we're purposely disrupting that. That said, I absolutely want her to have a sibling, and know this will be a good thing for her. I'm also sad that the new baby will never get the one on one attention Lucy got as a baby.

Not to mention the money aspect. I have no idea what we're going to do. Haha. Babies themselves aren't that expensive (especially if you breastfeed), but my work situation is going to have to change. There's no way I'm bringing 2 kids with me to my nanny job every day. (And I doubt my boss would want me to.) So I'm going to have to quit. But we absolutely can't afford to live in this house on one income.

I'm due August 17. Thank goodness God gives us 9 months to figure things out! August. Wow. I'm going to be huge and pregnant through all of summer. I got so big with Lucy. I can't imagine how big I'll get with a second one!

Ok. I feel better now that I wrote some of that down.

1. Justin and I have been married for 5 1/2 years today.

2. In case you're not friends with me on facebook: Lucy had her blood drawn last week to check her bilirubin levels (because she's so yellow). Everything came back normal. Praise the Lord!! It was so sad watching her get her blood drawn. They did it in her arm just like an adult. I had to sit in the chair with her on my lap, then they pinned down her arm and stuck the needle in it. She actually did amazingly well. She cried when the needle went in, but stopped before they were even done sucking all her blood out. She just sat there and waited. Such a good girl.

3. Last night was our high school's homecoming. It was actually pretty lame. I'm not sure how many more years we'll go to it. No one from our class showed up except the 3 people who are in the small group we meet with every month. So we just talked with them the whole time! Haha. Lucy loved the basketball game, though. She was smiling and giggling and squealing all night.

4. Lucy is finally starting to sleep through the night consistently. We did CIO for about 2 weeks, and coupled with the dream feed it actually worked this time. It wasn't awful. She only cried hard the first couple of days. But it was definitely a solid 2 weeks before she stopped crying altogether. And I know we're still not out of the woods yet. The next step is to eliminate the dream feed. Last night, we got home late from homecoming and post-homecoming partying (ha ha - watching the Office at Matt and Kelly's house), so she didn't go to bed 'til 11. But she slept solidly until 9:00 this morning! I actually woke up pretty drenched because my body is not used to such a long stretch!

5. I'm to Judges now with my quest to read through the Old Testament. The story of Samson is so bizarre. I had so many questions while I was reading through it. Like - where did Samson find 300 foxes? He just happened to be walking through a field with 300 foxes scampering through it? Why did he stay with Delilah when she repeatedly tried to find (and use) his "cryptonite"? And the one I'm most confused about is: what did he ever accomplish for God? The Bible says he led Israel for so many years, but all the stories about him are centered around prostitutes, recklessly killing people he didn't like, and getting his eyes gouged out by the Phillistines.

6. We got our taxes done this week. You know we've been in financial dire straits for about a year now, so I was really hoping to make some money. I prayed and prayed that God would provide a sizable sum for us to pay off some debt and get back on our feet. He did just that. I was amazed.

7. I'm especially thankful God provided when he did because of the Fridge Debacle 2011 that took place this week. One day this week we came home to a puddle on the floor in front of the freezer, everything inside thawed, and a warm fridge. We had a friend come look at it that night. He replaced a cheap part and it worked . . . for a few hours. The next morning, the puddle was back. We called a repairman and his diagnosis was: bad compressor. Cost: $500! That's like the cost of a car part! Stupid fridge. Fortunately, we have some VERY generous friends who happened to get a new fridge recently and they are giving us their old one free of charge! Seriously. We are so blessed.

Anyway, all week we've been keeping our food in the snowbank on our deck. Haha. It worked pretty well for the first couple of days, but now everything is frozen (milk, cheese, lunch meat). And we got like 3 inches of snow last night, so everything is buried. Haha.

Overall, the theme of this week has been "provision." God provided for us in so many amazing ways and we are so so grateful. Stay tuned for more exciting events in the life of the VanderKoddes.

Sade