the months that have gone by.

couple things:

i suck.  wow.  i knew i was bad at blogging, but this is reallllly bad.  for a minute i was going to move my blog to wordpress, but below is the one and only post from that site.  change of plans.  guess i'll stay here...

also, it's been a crazy few months!  gosh, let me think.  so noah started preschool, and has loved it.  academically, he is so smart.  i really think he will be great in school.  he loves letters and numbers, and can sound out words (when he is in the mood).  he's done well on the testing they do, but the teacher's most recent comment was about how he doesn't quite understand personal space.  he's touchy feely and gets in your face to get your attention, and 3 and 4 year old don't like that....  it's a prime example of why the school cut off is appropriate.  would noah be ready for kindergarten in fall?  academically, i believe he would love it.  socially or emotionally, no.  he needs to learn personal space and needs to become more independent.  he is a bit of a baby still, and i think that's in part due to him being the first born, and yeah, we kind of spoil(ed) him!  but he also needs to learn to be more independent, and dare i say, take risks?!

emily is thriving.  she is an incredible child, and so different from noah in so many ways.  she is a daredevil.  she is going to be the little monster climbing the shelves and finding her way out of her crib (yikes!).  she started walking right around 14 months, loves crawling up the stairs (yikes), climbs onto her little bike and scoots back and forth across the room.  she is trying to climb onto the couch and LOVES to climb onto noah's little chair at his little table in the family room.  and she is chatty.  oh dear, *this* child does not need speech therapy!  she knows so many animals, animal sounds, says car when she hears a car, says truck, mama, dada, gaga, recently started calling grandpa (who she adores) "pa".  if you ask her a question, like "is that bear or toby?", she'll respond with the last thing you said, pretty consistently.  she will ask to eat, ask for a baba, ask to color ("cu-dor") on her magna doodle, says go-go when she's ready to go.  says hi and bye, waves, blows kisses, gives high fives, gives kisses and hugs and cuddles.  she is sleeping well and eating everything in sight.  i still nurse her twice a day.

in september, i started having a weird pain in my side.  my left side ribcage to be exact.  the first 3-4 days, i thought little of it.  assumed i slept funny.  but when it didn't go away, i googled "left side ribcage pain" (imagine that), and the first thing that came up was enlarged spleen.  and i immediately said "crap".

the kids and i have a condition called hereditary spherocytosis, which basically means the red blood cells are goofy and kind of makes you chronically anemic.  it can also cause problems with the spleen and gall bladder (which i had out when i was 13).  so when i see this pain could possibly be related to my spleen, i pretty much resolved myself to the fact that this was in fact the issue.

i saw a general doc, who wasn't convinced it was my spleen, but sent me for an ultrasound to check it out.  the afternoon i had the u/s, a nurse called me and told me i needed to see a hematologist soon, because my spleen was enlarged.   so i made an appt with a hematologist, who said, yep, spleen's huge, but she wasn't terribly concerned because i wasn't in any sort of hemolytic crisis (ie. my blood counts were normal) and it wasn't ruptured.  however, she recommended surgery to remove it basically for quality of life.  i was having a hard time bending over, picking noah up, and finishing a meal.  it didn't exactly *hurt* but was definitely uncomfortable.  so she then referred me to the surgeon, or hot doc... young, good looking, and definitely younger than me.... and he said they would try to get it laprascopically, but wouldn't know until they got in if it would come out that way.  lap would be 3 days in the hospital, and the other way would be a week.  in either case, i would be out of work for at least two weeks!

i decided to have surgery mid-november.  they did surgery on mondays, and i did not want to have to early vote and spend election night in a hospital!  (i was able to take both kids with me to vote, and both wore their little Obama shirts that day too.  and ben and i stayed up watching returns on msnbc until the president was officially re-elected!)  i was also leary of waiting until the week of thanksgiving (for the obvious reason), and then into december was emily's party, her birthday, and then christmas, so that was out.

i had surgery that 2nd monday of november, and woke up in recovery to hear the nurse telling me they got it laprascopically.  i was so happy.  that afternoon was the one "pump and dump" i did, but after that i pumped the whole time, or a couple times in the evenings actually nursed emily in a sort of upright position.  i think she was so happy to see me, she didn't care.  she just kind of sat next to me on my right side both times (cuz my gross drain and main incision were on the left), and craned her neck up to make it work.  it was lovely.  i did wind up being out of work for two weeks, but the tail end of that time was thanksgiving, so it was kind of nice that it worked out that way.  ben was off work the day of surgery (monday) and the day i came home (weds), and then the entire week of thanksgiving.

in december, emily turned one.  not spoiled at, the girl had a ginormous birthday party with family and friends.  like her brother, she wasn't so sure about her first birthday cupcake, but gave it a whirl.  it's so crazy to think she is 16 months old already, and that it has already been four months since that big day.  on her actual birthday, we had cake and lou's pizza.  :)

in february, i went on a girls weekend to the wisconsin dells with some former co-workers and very dear friends.  it was lovely.  saturday was a spa day, where we got massages and literally chilled in an outdoor hot springs pool.  it was 0 degrees out that day!  saturday night, we did dinner and lots of drinks.  it was a fabulous time.

in march, i went on another girls weekend.  this one was a once in a lifetime trip to long beach, california to meet 20 of my online IVF mommy friends.  i met most of them on an ivillage.com message board in 2007 when we started down the IVF road.  we have been through the lowest lows and highest highs together, and continue to be there for each other on our new facebook group.  it was truly a life changing experience.  to finally hear the voices of these women that i already "knew" and to learn that they all really exceeded my expectations of the people i knew them to be.....  there really are no words.  it was an amazing, amazing experience.

and now, i don't know.... what's next for the koechlings?  just taking it one day at a time.  :)

(here is the lone post from the now defunct, "new" blog)

february 12, 2013:
bad mommy.  i have such mommy guilt over my lack of blogging, journaling, scrapbooking, baby booking….  ugh.  i have pictures upon pictures and facebook statuses that i’m sure will jog my memory in the future…  but for now, a list of emily’s amazing tricks!

body parts: points to her nose, ears, eyes, hair, tummy, belly button and sticks out her tongue
animal sounds: kitty says meow and purr, monkey say “ah ah”, duck (“guck”) say “kahk kahk”, dog says oof oof, dino says “rahr”, sheep says baa, owl says “oo”, elephant sounds with arm for trunk

she waves and says hi and bye, she recently started blowing kisses, points, gives high fives, reaches for uppies, claps and rolls her hands for patty cake

in the past week or so, she has started walking across the room!  she falls gracelessly to her hands and knees, but keep on trying!

new favorite word is “nana” for banana.  she babbles and talks all the time, much of it is jibberish, but she is so communicative.  it’s such a welcome change from noah, who maybe said one word at her age.  she calls “dada, daddy” non-stop, and ben and i are both “dada” with the occasional mama…  she points at pictures of gaga and proclaims “gaga!”  noah is not consistent.  the other day it was na-na, sometimes it’s wa-wa…
in that vein, she is also different from noah in that she will literally eat anything you put in front of her.  it’s amazing to see!  it makes life so much easier.

sleep is still a stuggle, but we did do cry it out the week she turned one.  it was going well at night til recently (maybe past 3 weeks) when her top molars started coming in, poor baby.