The difference between Child 1 and Child 2...

With child 1, it physically hurt me to hear her cry in her crib for more than 2 seconds. With Child 2, I'm so busy I don't even notice when he's crying in his crib.

With child 1, if her pacifier fell on the floor, I'd wipe it down with a wet wipe. With Child 2, it goes straight back in his mouth, dirt and all.

With child 1, we took months to decorate her room all pretty and wonderful. With child 2, the poor boy got child 1's old nursery. No change whatsoever to the decorations, including child 1's name still on the wall.

With child 1, she had Huggies diapers because we thought they worked SO much better than any other brand. With child 2, he gets the cheap Target brand (which actually works just as well as the Huggies and are tons cheaper)

With child 1, we started a Iowa 529 plan right away to start saving for her college tuition. With child 2, we completely forgot until he was 9-months-old. Oops.

With child 1, I had the house completely baby-proofed long before she was even crawling. With child 2, I baby-proofed the dangerous stuff and let him figure out the rest.

With child 1, I washed her clothes in Dreft so as to not irritate her sensitive skin. With child 2, not so much.

With child 1, I didn't think I could ever love anyone as much as her. With child 2, I learned I can.

Random thoughts

As I sit here in the relative quiet of my house (both kids are napping and Joel is out for a run), my mind is drifting over the millions of things on my "to do" list. Clean, do laundry, start supper, change sheets on bed. Blah. That's what I think about it all. It's rainy and cloudy outside so it's the perfect time to just sit on my couch a fiddle on the internet. I finally uploaded a bunch of pictures from my camera. Amazing how many pictures just get left on there. I need to finish Noah's on-line scrapbook (FYI. Mixbook.com is an amazing website for scrapbooking) so maybe, just maybe I'll get that done during naptime. Yea, for me if I do.

Here are some random pictures of the kids from around the house. Noah is getting so big! He's finally in the 15%-tile for weight. That was a huge answer to prayer. He got his first ear infection this past week (boo) and he's cutting 2 teeth on the bottom, so he's been a little cranky and not wanting to eat much. At least he was weighed before all that started. I'm sure he's not gaining much right now.

Looking across the street. Probably wishing they could go out and play

After he ate a bite of Joel's apple, he really didn't know what to do with it

Noah found a new toy. Yep, it's a tampon

Hannah loves Noah so much, it looks like she's choking him

This is how Noah's hair dried after bath one day. Looks like a mini-mohawk :)

Funny quotes

My daughter is funny. She is 3, almost 4 years old now and she's said a lot of really funny things in her 4 years of life. I've been told I need to write them down. So, here are some of the funny ones:

Mommy, I need my eyes (wanting her binoculars)

Mommy, why does Noah have boobs?

Hannah's verse for Awana one night was: God made the Heavens and the Earth. After reciting this, she thought for a minute then announced that God should have also made the stars.

Hannah: Mommy, I can't find it!

Me: Find what?

Hannah: The other one (while making hand motions)

Me: The other what?
Hannah: I can't remember. Where is it!?

Me: Uhhh...hmmm

Mommy, if the lions come to get you, I'll growl at them and scare them away.

Mommy, I want to ride a horse. Then I want to be chased by a lion so the horse runs really fast. That'd be really cool! (she had watched The Lion King a few too many times)

Hannah's Awana verse: Serve the Lord with gladness.

Hannah's version: Serve the Lord with the glasses.

Mommy! I can't pee. It's all inside me and won't come out! See?! (as she pulls up her shirt and shows me her underwear)

Mommy, I ate all my food. You can't see it because it's on my bones.

Contemplation

Since learning of my friend Aimee's death, I've been doing a lot of thinking about life. I have such a great life. It's hard to believe how blessed I am. I have an amazing husband, two wonderful children, a great job, and now a mini-van! Woo-hoo! I'll post about that later.

Noah is about to turn 1. It's been such a fast year! He turns 1 on Wednesday. I can't believe that one year ago, I was miserably pregnant, overdue and thinking he'd never come out. And now Noah is starting to walk, talking up a storm, getting into everything and just being a boy. I still remember when Hannah turned 1. It was a really tough time then. The week before her 1st birthday, I was having some pain in my side and figured I had an ovarian cyst. I'd had several before and they're no big deal to me. But being an ultrasound tech, I had to take a look. I remember it was a Friday at the end of the day. My co-worker had already left and I was there by myself. I went into the exam room, shut the door and lay down on the table. As I moved the camera over my belly, it took me a minute to comprehend what I was seeing. I was convinced I was scanning someone else (even though I was by myself and clearly had goo all over my skin). There was a baby in there! Yep, I was pregnant. In all the years it took for me to get pregnant with Hannah, I remember the doctor's saying it would be so difficult for me to get pregnant without medical help. Well, it happened.

Then the medical side of me kicked in and I noticed there was something very important missing from my baby...a heartbeat.

It looked perfect in every other way. It was like looking at a still picture. I would pick out the little arm and leg buds, the head and body. But instead of a heart beating very quickly, it was eerily silent and still. My baby was dead. I remember being so torn between elation that I was pregnant at all and devastation that the baby was dead. I immediately called my husband but he didn't answer his phone so then I called the next best thing...my mom. Mom's are great. I can't imagine going through life without mine. Crying, I told her I was pregnant. Her response "well, honey. That's wonderful!". Then I told her there was no heartbeat. She switched over to "nurse-mode" and made me call my OB doctor. The OB doctor simply said that it was a Friday so there was nothing they were going to do about it until Monday. Go home and rest and call the office on Monday. If I started hemorrhaging, go to the ER. The medical side of me completely understood that they were letting my body "take care of it" on it's own. The maternal side of me was screaming for them to do something to save my child.

The next few days were a blur. It wasn't just Hannah's birthday weekend; it was also Mother's Day weekend. I had to host Hannah's birthday party on Saturday with lots of family and friends at my house. Then Mother's day was Sunday. It was awful. I got through it only because I would look in my baby daughter's eyes and know that she was mine. No matter the reason that God chose to take my 2nd child away, I had a beautiful daughter with me on Earth.

The next week I had blood tests followed by an "official" ultrasound which proved that yes, I was pregnant but no, there wasn't a heartbeat. My body wasn't taking care of it on it's own so I had to have a D&C. I was a wreck. I seriously don't know how I got through all that. I remember thinking that I wasn't protecting my baby since they were going to take it out of me. Even though I knew it was already gone, I still felt like I was doing something wrong by having that procedure. So many people told me that I'd understand someday why God chose to take the baby away. I never thought I would.

A year later, someone very close to me suffered a miscarriage. I was able to talk her through what was happening to her body and what the doctors were going to do about it. She later told me that she couldn't have gotten through that time without me. There was the reason. My baby is in Heaven playing with all the other babies taken from their parents far too soon. If he/she's anything like Noah, he/she's being put in "time out" quite a bit. :)

Noah will turn 1 on Wednesday. This 1st birthday is looking quite a bit different than Hannah's. And that's not a bad thing.

A great loss

Back when I was in ultrasound school, we had to do clinical rotations at the different hospitals in the area. While doing a rotation at Mercy, I met a sonographer named Aimee. Right off the bat, we students loved being with her. She was always upbeat and fun, made learning easy. At some point during my schooling, she left Mercy to work at Lutheran Hospital, another hospital in Des Moines. We didn't have a rotation through Lutheran so I lost touch with Aimee.

After a few years and a series of random events, Aimee and I started working together at Lutheran Hospital. Along with fellow songraphers Karri and Lisa, we all hung out together inside and outside of work. It was a fun place to be. Aimee was always ready to help and be a great encouragement on days when we were all tired or busy or just plain cranky.

Aimee and her husband, Adam had always wanted children but after several miscarriages, they settled for adopting a daughter from China. Aimee shared with us all the struggles and red tape she and Adam had to go through to adopt little Kiera. They finally went to China in late 2005 and brought Kiera home. Soon after that, Aimee discovered she was pregnant. Figuring she'd miscarry again, she didn't announce her pregnancy for quite a while. I still remember the day she came to work and told us not only was she pregnant, but she was almost 20 weeks pregnant! She had never made it past her 1st trimester before, so this was a big deal. Her pregnancy was hard and in the end, she had an emergency c-section to deliver Brooke, a few weeks premature. While in the hospital, she tried to breast feed Brooke. After 2 days of trying but no success, the doctors recommended she have a mammogram to see if there was anything going on. She checked out of the hospital early so she could have her mammogram back at Lutheran with people she knew and radiologists she trusted. It was discovered that she had breast cancer. She was just 37 years old.

A few days later, a biopsy discovered it was a very rare, very aggressive form of breast cancer. When Brooke was just a few weeks old, Aimee started her first round of chemo. Aimee always had super curly, super long hair. In just a short time, it was gone. Through all this, she was a fighter. She was convinced she could beat the cancer. She knew the prognosis wasn't good, but she never asked for an exact time-line. No one can predict what's going to happen so why ask a doctor to play God? She didn't want the threat of death to keep her from experiencing her children's lives and continuing to travel, which she was ALWAYS doing!

Last year, she got some good news! It seemed like the cancer was gone. She was thrilled. She turned 40 and thought it was going to be such a good year.

Then January 2010 came.

During a routine PET/CT scan to look for cancer recurrence, it was found that the cancer hadn't just returned, it had come back with a vengeance. It was now in her brain. She still felt confident she could beat it. After all, didn't Lance Armstrong beat the odds? And look at him now? If he can do it, anyone can. She turned 41 knowing she had an uphill battle.

My friend, Aimee Krug lost that battle April 3, 2010. Kiera is 5, Brooke is 3. Adam is now a widower.

The world has lost a great woman. She will be missed for years to come. It's a sad day.