Not One But Two.....

Milestones! Teeth! Blog posts in one week!

Yesterday I saw them, two little white dots on the bottom of C's gums.  I couldn't feel anything but decided I would keep an eye on them.  This morning I felt her gums with my finger and felt it!  A sharp little tooth had broken through!  Though it's no more visible than it was yesterday.  I expect its neighbor will arrive any day now.

And now here's a little video of C's other milestone which she accomplished on Tuesday and is now her favorite thing to do.

9 Months and Other Updates

This past Saturday marked C's 9 month...birthday? Whatever it is you call it. A milestone I guess.  Now that she's mobile and thisclose to walking she seems like a happier baby.  Maybe it's because she can physically get away from strangers she doesn't like or maybe it's just because the world doesn't seem so scary now that she's had time to explore more of it.  She's developed some weird obsessions, the latest one being shoelaces.  Particularly my shoelaces.  Other obsessions include: my coffee mug, my coupon book, the bathroom scale and the opening intro music for the Daily Show with John Stewart and The Colbert Report.  C is still eating pureed foods because she still has NO TEETH, even though we might only be days away from seeing the first one.  Of course I said that months ago and we still have NO TEETH.  Still, we may have had a breakthrough in the self-feeding department.  This past week she held a Baby Mum Mum for the first time and stuck it in her mouth.  So far it's been the only thing she'll stick in her mouth, though today we're going to try frozen yogurt drops and see how that goes.  I don't think I'll buy another box of the Baby Mum Mums now that I discovered they were made in China.  Something about baby food made in China just kinda weirds me out a bit.

My sisters and I are still working on my dad's estate which will probably take a while.  We have multiple properties to sell and he didn't exactly take good care of them.  As in, there were no doors to the bathrooms or bedrooms in his house and he had a mild case of hoarding.  But at least that didn't reflect in the legal side of his life because he kept all his paperwork and documents carefully organized.  Thank God!  In a few weeks I plan to go back and visit to help clean up his estate and I know it's going to be a very depressing trip for me.  Because my dad always lived far away it's been easy for me to convince myself that he's not really dead.  However it's hard to avoid that fact when I'm sitting in his house going through his things.

I've toyed around with the idea of shuttering Fearlessly Infertile.  Not because I don't think anyone reads this space but because I don't really have that much to talk about.  At least not things that would count as informative or inspiring or even interesting.  I do love writing and I though about just maintaining my travel blog instead, or starting a Fearlessly Frugal blog.  I'm still debating what to do about this space.

And now for the pictures.  I wanted to wait until I shared these pictures with our birthmom first.  For some reason I just don't feel comfortable posting pictures of C until I've posted them to her share site first.  The Adoption Day pictures were taken by my friend Suzanne from Ginger Snaps Pictures.  I simply love how they turned out and that she was able to Photoshop all the snot off C's face from her terrible cold.   

Happy Adoption Day!

C legally became a member of our family on September 25th! I would have posted about it sooner but she and I both woke up with a cold on the morning of her finalization and we have family members visiting from out of town so things have been a little hectic.  My friend Suzanne attended the finalization and took some family photos which I will post in a couple weeks.  But for now I will flood you with some recent pictures of Ce, now that we're allowed to share them publicly.

Happy Adoption Day Stinkydoodle!

Dreams About My Dad

It's been a long two weeks since my dad passed and not a day goes by that I don't think about him.  Some days I'm sad, other days I'm angry that his life choices caused him to die too young, still other days I have a hard time comprehending that he's really gone.  Lately I've been consumed with worry that I too will meet an untimely death, with no will set up, just like my father did.  I find myself scurrying around to document all sorts of things that need to be taken care of, should I die tomorrow and Brandon be left to take care of things on his own.

A few days after my dad passed away I went back to Paula for another tarot reading.  It was very enlightening and much of what she said came true, but that's a story for another day.  She did mention that my dad would visit me in my dreams and all that week I had the most vivid dreams about him.  Not when he was sick but when he was younger and healthier.  Still, I always awoke and could never remember what the dream was about.  This lead me to wanting to sleep all the time, just so I could see my dad again in my dreams.

Then one day I had a dream about him that I actually remembered.  He had died and my sisters and I were in his house going through his things, trying to sort through all the paperwork that he had left behind (because as I said before, there was no will).  Then my dad comes walking through the door!  He hugged us so tightly and explained that he hadn't really died.  The nurses at the hospital had to stop his heart to perform some procedure and when his heart didn't start again they pronounced him dead.  But he wasn't really dead!  He hugged us so much and told us how sorry he was that we had to go through all this pain.  It was the happiest moment ever, finding out that my dad wasn't dead after all.

And then I woke up.

It took me all of 5 seconds to realize that the elation I felt was just a mirage, that my dad really wasn't back from the dead.  And the sadness I felt after realizing that was so overwhelming, it took days to recover from that dream.

But after the clouds parted I started to think that maybe it wasn't just a dream.  That my dad really was visiting me in my dreams like Paula told me he would and that he was trying to let me know how sorry he was that this was causing us so much pain.

I haven't had another dream about my dad since then.  Maybe it's because he feels like he finally got his message through, I guess I'll never know.  But I will never forget that dream as long as I live, and the joy I felt when my dad hugged me that one last time. 

5 Weeks

It only took 5 weeks from my father's diagnosis to the time he passed away on Monday evening.  5 short weeks.  I am so very glad that we had the opportunity to see him two weeks ago but at the same time I'm incredibly sad that C will never get to grow up with her Pappy.

Fuck cancer.

Fearlessly Frugal Goes Shopping!

My weight loss has slowed considerably in the past 3 weeks (as in none at all. But at least I'm maintaining) but I still have a little non-scale victory to share.  When I started this weight loss journey I was in a size 18 and getting ready to fit into a size 20.  20!!!!!!   I had never ever been that large before and did not want to have to start buying clothes in the next size up.  Since then I've lost 9 pounds and my current clothes are starting to finally feel loose again.  This past week C and I were shopping at Goodwill and I picked up a pair of Sonoma capri jeans, size 16, and they fit!!  They're a little tight but I can still wear them all day and feel comfortable.  I'm super excited about that.

But I still have 12 pounds to go so I don't plan on buying any more clothes until I lose some more weight.  Then I saw this deal that thredUP has.  For every boy, girl or junior clothes purchase you make through September 13th you will get 10% back to use on a purchase for women's clothes!!  Woo hoo!  The deal comes back as a coupon on October 1st so that gives me plenty of time to lose more weight.  For those of you who aren't familiar with thredUP check out my post here.  You can also use this referral link to get $10 off your first purchase.  I do need to start buying C some shoes because she's learned how to stand and is semi-cruising so walking is right around the corner.  I measured her little feet and it appears that she wears a size 3 now so I'm hoping that if I buy her a size 4 then she will be able to wear them this fall/winter.

Tomorrow I need to sit down and figure out a serious plan for losing the rest of my weight.  I need to calculate how many weeks I have left for the Healthywage challenge and adjust my calorie intake to ensure that I lose all the weight by then.  I also need to start exercising more which means just exercising at all!  It's not going to be easy but it will definitely be worth it.  Wish me luck!

The Things We Do As Kids

Childhood is so full of fun, especially from the eyes of a parent. Your kid says the darndest things and you wish you had a book to write them all down in. Well there is such a book.  My Quotable Kid is something I plan on getting for C (or is it really for myself?) when she gets a little older.  But until that day comes I thought I'd share some hilarious things I've said, done and thought as a kid.


When I was very little I would throw temper tantrums by crawling under things.  End tables, kitchen tables, beds, you name it.  Any amount of coaxing would just cause me to stay under there even longer.  My kindergarten teacher called my mom one day to ask her why I was hiding under her desk.  My mom just said "Let her be, she'll come out eventually."  My grandmother recalls the day that I tried to throw a tantrum by crawling under the end table only to discover that I no longer fit.  I completely flipped out.

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My mom and dad split up when I was very young.  I remember when I was about 4 or 5 we flew on a plane to go see him.  This must have been my first plane ride.  I remember my mom explaining to me that we were going to see Daddy and with that information I came to the conclusion that my dad lived in the clouds.

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I remember being convinced that my mom had magical powers because she knew the words to every song on the radio and could magically switch the radio station in the car (I was too short sitting in the back to see her turning the knobs on the radio)

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When I was in grade school I always came home crying because the other kids on the school bus were so much bigger than I was and they would pick on me.  My step-dad got fed up one day and told me that I should pick up a stick and throw it at the next person who makes fun of me.  So I leave and go outside to play.  10 minutes later my sister runs in with a bloody mouth.

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I was about 13 years old and waiting in my mom's car in the driveway to go shopping.  My mom was inside putting around so I decided to snoop through her glove compartment.  I came across a tiny spray bottle that looked interesting.  I decided to test it out.

It was mace.  


What were some hilarious things that you remember doing or saying as a child?

Vacation Recap and Other Updates **UPDATED**

I'm back!!! It was a very busy trip to Pennsylvania and now I'm nursing a cold and sore throat that my sister passed on to me but things are going well.  First I'll start with the vacation recap.

We arrived in PA on Sunday the 4th in the evening and just relaxed in hotel for the night.  My sister and I split the cost of a hotel room and I must say that sharing one room with a teething infant and 4 year old boy is not ideal.  The next day we headed over to my grandmother's house to meet my half-sister and niece (whom I've only met once before) and my dad.  While my dad seemed to be in good spirits, albeit a little tired all the time, he looked ragged.  My 6'2" father was only 155 pounds and bone thin.  Literally, I could feel the back of his ribcage when I hugged him.  It was pretty hard to see.  But we didn't talk much about the cancer and instead chose to focus on spending time together.  He received one round of chemo and is now getting radiation every weekday.  **UPDATE** I spoke with my sister and she said that our dad was told by doctors that he has stage 4 non-small cell lung cancer, which has metastasized to the adrenal glands. He will start chemo back today, along with the radiation treatment he has been receiving over the past 2 weeks.  Unfortunately she has also researched this and found that the average life span of someone with this type of lung cancer is only 8 months.  A 5-year survival rate is less that 10%.

During the week that we were in Pennsylvania we met our great aunt and uncle for breakfast at IHOP where C suddenly decided she was interested in what everyone was eating so we had to placate her with a banana in her mesh feeder.  We also went to the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp and got a few autographs.  Being the Fearlessly Frugal woman I am I had received a free Terrible Towel months ago so I brought that with me and my sisters got 3 autographs on it for me.  I stayed a far distance behind, taking pictures and trying to get C to nap (failed) so eventually I just left and took my dad back home because he was feeling tired.  My sister had purchased Blake a Steelers helmet to get his autographs on which turned out to be a bad idea because he started asking when he could get the autographs off so he could play with it.  Shoulda bought him two, sis!

#7 is quarterback Ben Roethlisberger

The day we were supposed to go to Idlewild Park turned out to be rainy so instead we met our cousin in a nearby town to play Monster Mini Golf.  It's an indoor putt-putt place under black lights with a scary monster theme.  My sister was concerned that Blake would be scared but he was just fine.  C, on the other hand, decided she was hungry mid-game so I had to rush through so I could feed her.

The next day was bright and sunny so we went to Idlewild Park.  It was just as I remembered, as though everything had been frozen in time since I last left!  We started out in Storybook Forest where we met characters from all the traditional stories and nursery rhymes.  C had her portrait drawn at the end and we had a second copy made for our birthmom.

After that we headed over to Mister Roger's Neighborhood trolley ride.  I'm not kidding when I say that nothing changed about this ride!  It was great being able to go through the ride exactly as I remembered it but I do wish they had replaced some of the puppets with better looking ones.  Some of them are downright scary.

King Friday says "Come along, come along, to the Castle Hug-and-Song!"

Shy Daniel Tiger

Then we headed over to the rides.  C was dead asleep when we got to the carousel but because her Pappy was feeling tired and ready to go home we woke her up so she could ride her first ride with him.  She loved it!  Then our group split up, with one half going to the waterpark and the other half going to the kiddie rides.  I went with the kiddie-ride group, though C was too young to ride any of them.  We ended up staying till the park closed that night.  10 hours at an amusement park and C did very well!  Now I'm not so worried about how she will do at Disney World in December.

On the last day of our trip we headed to JCPenney to have a group family photo taken.  Miss Fearlessly Frugal used her military discount to get 7 sitting fees for free and 17 portrait sheets for only $73!  Woo hoo!

Now for the random updates, mostly about C:

• I've been a bit more relaxed about what she eats now.  After the trip to PA and having to feed her things I would never have fed her before (like ice cream and a yeast roll) I've learned that she won't choke on every little thing.  She's begun to reject plain cereal so I mix it with the pouch baby food in the morning and in the evenings she gets homemade baby food.  This week we're trying butternut squash and butternut squash with pears.  I'm also starting to add spices to her food (this week it's ginger).  Next week, because I bought white potatoes on sale, we're going to try mashed potatoes and then mashed potatoes with garlic powder.
• C can now pull herself up to a standing position, but only using items that are short like stairs and boxes.  She did it for the first time yesterday, though she falls over within seconds so someone always has to be there to catch her.  Unfortunately that's ALL she wants to do now!  No more playing with toys, now those toys are just a tool to help her stand.  Needless to say she has been taking quite a few tumbles in the past week.  Also, every time she cries in her crib now it's because she pulled herself into a kneeling position and is too afraid to let go of the edge of the crib so she just sits there and cries...and gnaws on the crib.  She's so quiet about it that we don't even know she's awake so this is how we usually find out.
• Brandon's new job has been working him to the bone and it's really taking a toll on our family.  He works 12 hour days and has to work on the weekends twice a month.  It makes me sad that he only gets to see C for about an hour in the evenings before she goes to bed.  I'd like to go back to work in a couple months but with his schedule it might be too difficult.  We are literally counting down the days until he gets out of the military (482!). 
• I was warned by the agency about not posting public pictures of C online so I took them all down until we complete finalization.  Still waiting on a date for that but we're hoping that it will be sometime in September, maybe even at the end of the month when my grandparents will be visiting.

C's First Birthday and the Books We Love

Is that crickets I hear? Alas, I must be the only weirdo to have gotten a tarot reading done.

So today I thought I would switch the focus and talk about C's first birthday party. We've got 5 months to plan it but this girl isn't the least bit crafty so it will probably take me that long just to make the banner.

I've been scouring Pinterest for some ideas and liked a few girlie themes but the one that really stuck in my mind was Dr. Seuss's Oh The Places You'll Go!  Brandon loves Dr. Seuss and though I think the books are a little long for the wee ones I do love his books too and I think that the theme would be very appropriate for C's first birthday party.

I've been hitting the Goodwill every week looking for the book and finally scored one last week.  I plan to take some of the pages out to make a banner and then I might try my hand at making these for the centerpieces.  But let's face it, I'm no Martha Stewart.  My project would probably end up looking like this

At least the cake will taste good because I'm having a professional do that.

But all this planning has had me thinking about all of the books that I want to eventually introduce C to.  I've already got some classics on her bookshelf like Where the Wild Things Are and Charlotte's Web which are intermingled with various Disney-themed books as well as adoption books.  She will grow up reading Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Beatrix Potter and Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.  And perhaps one day I will show her my favorite childhood book of all time, Boy Was I MAD! which unfortunately is no longer in print because it's been replaced with this book.  My copy is old and tattered but if C likes it enough then I may buy a copy of the vintage version for her to keep. 

What books do you look forward to reading with your children?  Do they show interest in the same books that you enjoyed as a child?

The Time I Had a Tarot Reading

I want to preface this story by saying that while I am religious and do believe in God, I also believe in the supernatural and tarot reading.  Some may think it's fake or hokey and that's fine.  But this is my story of my own tarot reading and I would prefer that if you don't believe in it, please at least keep your comments civil.

I want to share something with you all that happened just a few months before we were matched with C's birthmom.  It was September 22nd (thank you Facebook for recording my posts for all eternity) and I had spent the day at a spa.  I decided to get a tarot reading done while I was there because I've always been interested in this mystical way of reading fortunes.  I had two tarot readings done prior to this, years apart from each other.  One was moderately accurate, the other was bogus.

If you're a long-time reader you'll remember that Brandon and I had given up on adoption right around this time.  I had lost my job over the summer, American Adoptions wanted us to renew our homestudy (for another $800) and we hadn't heard even a whisper about a match with a birthmom.  So we decided to put things on hold indefinitely with our adoption.  We kept our profile active with our local agency just because our homestudy was good in the state of CT for one more year.  I mean, why not, right?  But we just knew we weren't going to be matched so we spent every penny of our adoption savings paying off credit cards and my car loan.  We were planning a trip to England, spending money freely and enjoying our lives as a child-free couple.

So back to my tarot reading.  When I first met Paula I saw her as a calm yet inviting person with a soft-spoken voice.  She invited me to sit down, took down my name and birth date.  Some of the memories from our session escape me but I remember that we said a small prayer to whatever higher power we believe in, to help channel my aura into the cards for my reading.

Then it was time for the reading itself.  After I shuffled and cut the deck Paula first laid down three cards: one each for the past, present and future.  I don't remember what the cards were for the past and present but the future card was a "child" card.  Interesting, considering we had stopped pursuing parenthood.  Still, I brushed it off thinking that because we had been pursuing fertility treatments and adoption for so long and had just recently stopped that process that maybe my aura was still presenting as though we were going to have kids.  I explained all of this to Paula so she was aware that we were no longer pursuing adoption.

Then Paula used the Celtic cross layout for my tarot reading.  She had a printout where she wrote down each card and their position so that I could take it home with me.  I still have it.  In the Celtic cross layout I pulled yet another child card, and this time it was positioned next to a card that depicted a woman.  There are only 4 "child" cards in a deck of 78 cards.  The odds of that happening were less than 1%.  This gave me chills.  Paula interpreted the meaning of the cards and the layout to say that I would have a child through another woman, either though adoption or surrogacy or foster care. 

A lot of the other cards accurately portrayed my feelings and emotions during that period in my life.  Some depicted a heavy burden I was carrying (the decision to quit adoption), many depicted a crossroads between two opportunities and having to make a decision (live child-free or continue with adoption?).  The center of the layout, the immediate future, held the 9 of swords.  I looked this up later and it meant "Regret of choices made and anxiety of choices urgently needed to be made.  There's no way out of responsibility."  Highly accurate.

After loosely interpreting the cards Paula asked me what questions I had for her.  I asked her about two job interviews I would be having the next week and whether any of them would work out.  She asked for the names of the companies and wrote them on a piece of paper.  Then she took her charm, a pyramid-shaped gem at the end of a chain, and dangled the pendant over each name as she concentrated.  She told me the first job would not work out but that the second job might.  She also said that she only saw the second job as being short-term, about 9 months or so.

As part of this question Paula flipped over another card to lay in the center of the layout, where the immediate future was held.  The card was death.  It wasn't an interpretation that I was going to literally die but that my life as I currently knew it would end.  Was this a foretelling of the loss of our child-free days or of the job I currently held?  In the end it represented both.

The second question I asked was where we were going to be living.  I told her that my husband was in the Navy, we wanted to move back to Washington but ultimately we wanted to live overseas somewhere.  She said that she did not see us living overseas but if it was a dream of ours then we would have to work hard to make it work.  I told her that he wanted to live in Switzerland, I wanted to live in England.  She did not see us living in either country but somewhere in between.  France is technically the country in between the two but she said that she kept envisioning Belgium.  Very interesting.

The next part of her reading also gave me chills.  It was in regards to our more immediate move and where we would end up in the next couple years.  She held her pendant and pondered this situation and simply said "Utah".  It wasn't her answer or even a question, just a word.  I told her that Brandon was from Utah.  She kept pondering, staring off into space while holding her pendant and then said "North Carolina".  I am from North Carolina.  There was no way she would have known either of these facts and I don't have a Southern accent.  She said that she doesn't see us living in either place because we don't like them (very true) and that she sees us moving back to Washington.  She sees Brandon getting a government job, though she didn't specify what kind.

So did any of her predictions come true?

Prediction #1- Having a child through another woman: TRUE

Well, we all know how that turned out, don't we?

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Prediction #2- Job #1 wouldn't work out: TRUE

I had my reading on a Saturday and my interview was that next Monday.  On Monday morning I got a call from the company stating that they had already found someone for the position.

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Prediction #3- Job #2 might work out but it would be short-term: TRUE

I was offered this job and had only been there for 3 weeks when we got The Call about being matched with a birthmom.  I tried to have the best of both worlds by becoming a new mom and still work but unfortunately I had to take 3 weeks of maternity leave before C would be old enough to go to daycare and they could not accommodate that.  I was laid off while out on maternity leave, after only having been with the company for 3 1/2 months. At the time of the reading Brandon was due to go to a new duty station the next summer, so I interpreted the "short-term job" prediction to mean that I would have to quit my job to move.  While we almost went to Hawaii that didn't pan out and we ended up staying here.  My short-term job was short-term for an entirely different reason than I originally thought.

All the other predictions have yet to come true.  Brandon desperately wants to move back to Washington when he gets out of the military in 17 months but I am fearful of not being able to find a job and support us while he goes to school full-time.  Staying in Connecticut would be easier, even though I too would like to make it back to Washington.  And living overseas is so far into the future that we only dream about it at this point. 

As Paula was saying goodbye to me after my reading she mentioned that she kept seeing a yellow boat.  Neither of us knew the significance of this yellow boat and though we took a windjammer cruise the next month for our anniversary it wasn't yellow.  I wonder if I missed this sign in the past year or if my yellow boat is still out there waiting to reveal itself.

Have you ever had a tarot or psychic reading done?  Did any of your predictions come true?