Months...

I know it's been months since I've written here and I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but I thought I might just post a quick update because soooooo much has been going on.

1) J's first birthday was a success! We had the Korean traditional dol ceremony and he ended up selecting the pencil which means he'll be a scholar. We were hoping for the money, but being smart is not so bad either. Anyway, we just barely managed to pull the whole thing off because...

2) We moved! Yes, we finally moved to our "dream" area. It's a small suburb of SF and has great schools. It was completely unexpected. We had been looking for awhile and put on an offer in on our first home which was rejected for another all-cash offer. But, low and behold, 2 months later the seller's agent contacted us and asked if we were still interested because the cash offer had not materialized. So, right when we were about to leave for our vacation to Ireland (yes, we were planning on our first real international vacay with J) we ended up in escrow and having to cancel our trip. We really like the new neighborhood, but part of me misses the diversity of our old 'hood.

3) Ah, so, that leads me to the selling of our old home which was the BIGGEST pain in the ass. With a baby at home all day (with our nanny) it was so hard to schedule viewings of our house. People wanted to come in the middle of his nap or in the evening after his bedtime. Luckily, it sold pretty quickly, right after the first and only open house. But after experiencing the pain of selling, buying and moving, we've decided that we're never moving again. Someone will have to remove my dead body from this  house.

4) Speaking of nannies, this was also the biggest clusterf**k ever. Our nanny, whom I'll refer to as Mim, has been with us since J was a little less than 6 months. She is great! She fits well with the family, super energetic, loves J and vice versa, very outgoing and is in general a really nice person. But (there's always a but) she doesn't drive and we were fortunate that our old house was within walking distance from BART (ah, BART...that is another headache we're dealing with because of the damn strike, but I digress). Ok, well, the new house is not within walking distance to BART, however, there's a bus that runs from BART that will drop you off about 3 blocks from our house. Our concern was that although Mim may be able to get to-from our house, how would she ever get J to the park and any other activities. So, began our search for a new nanny...In a span of 3 weeks we interviewed 8 nannies, and "tested" 2 nannies. One nanny we immediately knew was not for us and the second nanny we tried out for 3 weeks. I assumed J would get used to his new nanny, but he never did. He would cry and whine every morning when I left and would never be happy to see her. But, the kicker was when I found out she had been doing her laundry at our house without ever asking us. She would bring in her laundry after I would leave in the AM and hide it back in her car before I came home. I wasn't so angry about the laundry itself, but the fact that she was hiding this and doing her laundry "secretively" behind our backs. It just bothered the crap out of me, so we gave her the boot and asked Mim if she'd be willing to take J on the bus to the park and around the 'hood. And so far it's been great! He loves riding on the bus and is so happy to see Mim in the morning. I guess I took it for granted that it was so easy to find Mim...I didn't realize how hard it is to find a good nanny.

5) The other life changing event (or possibly event-to-be)...I am pregnant! We got a surprise BFP last week after my period was late. I still can't believe it. I checked my HCG on Monday and it was 1,215 and on Wednesday it had increased to 2,800. So, it's doubled and we're progressing along. Based on my LMP, I should be about 5 weeks pregnant (give or take a day or two). Doc and I are still shocked. We had just scheduled a workup date in August with CC.RM for our FET, and had planned to do the actual FET in November. That way J and the baby would be a little over 2 years apart and we'd have time to fit in a nice international trip during my second tri. I still can't believe that I'm actually pregnant considering my first real period was my last one back in May. We have our first ultrasound scheduled in a three weeks so I'm still really wary of expecting too much. I mean, come on, we did 4 IVFs to get J!

So, I'm still alive and kicking, although sometimes I feel like things are a bit out of control. And with that, I'll leave you with a couple of pics of J.

Excuse the nasty bib, J's been teething like a maniac and drools constantly.