42

As a child and teenager and young adult I remember eagerly anticipating my birthday each year. You look forward to being a year older when you are young because of whatever new thing you get to experience at a particular age - getting one's ears pierced, driving a car, voting, going to college, getting a job, etc. Somewhere in my 20's I stopped feeling that way because I was single and longing to be a wife and mother. Then once I got married it didn't bother me until we realized that having a baby wasn't going to be easy for us, and then I really dreaded my birthdays because each one was bringing me closer to the big 40, which I viewed as the end of fertility. Once I had Nadia, birthdays became far more enjoyable. In terms of getting older, I actually think that getting closer and closer to 43 will help me because I now view that as the end of fertility. I'm hoping over the next year I can fully wrap my brain around the notion that our family is complete and that we are done doing ivf. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind at all if the gray hair reproduction could slow down just a tad. I don't have any desire to look older, ha ha! Maybe toting around these young children will make people think I'm a bit younger than I actually am. :)

This birthday certainly hasn't gone as planned. Life is like that some times. We had planned to go on a dinner and ballroom dancing date on Saturday night in Williamsport. The pastor's daughter was going to watch our kids for five hours (would have been our longest date in more than four years). My parents were planning to spend the night last night and be with us today to celebrate my birthday and take us out to eat at Bonanza. Paul was supposed to be in West Virginia interviewing today. That was the hardest schedule change to accept. He had a string of phone interviews that did not result in invitations to interview on campus, and then he finally received invitations to interview on campus for tenure track jobs in two states that are on our short list of states we'd like to live in - and he cancelled both of them. I am still in shock. Of course I want my husband to like his job, but it's rather disconcerting that he's 44 years old and has no idea what he'd like to do for a living, especially since he's currently the sole breadwinner for our family of five since I resigned from my position 15 months ago. We are probably going to put the house on the market even though we have no idea where he'll be working or where we'll be living. It seems highly unlikely that he'll have a job within 40 minutes of our house, and it doesn't make sense for him to have a really long commute to work. His current job ends on June 26, and our health insurance ends on May 30.

Paul did prompt the kids to wish me a happy birthday, but none of them ever sang to me today. My parents did sing to me on the phone, and my sister's family in Turkey did sing to me by Skype. Also, my Aunt Tina and Paul's mom both called me to wish me a happy birthday. Paul asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said I just wanted cards from the kids, but I guess he didn't have time to do that. In hindsight, I should have asked my mom to do that with them last week while I was in the hospital. Many times growing up I asked for ham for my birthday dinner because it's one of my favorite foods. I would have been perfectly happy with having leftovers tonight, but given the ordeal it was to get Nadia and Ian to eat the meal yesterday, I decided to pick up one large pizza after taking Oliver to the pediatrician earlier today for our dinner tonight. I'm not a big cake person so I didn't mind that we didn't have any cake, but I thought I'd swing by Dunkin Donuts and get myself a brownie batter donut on the way home from the doctor's office as my birthday dessert. They aren't making those any more as they switched to an Easter peep donut. I really think they should sell those year round as they are in my opinion the BEST donut ever. Well not having a dessert is definitely better for my waistline considering I didn't get any exercise last week.

The weather was really pretty the last two days, but I wasn't up to going to the park due to my fever. I was feeling better today so we did get to enjoy the gorgeous weather. I could handle having weather like this ALL year round. Unfortunately it was on said trip that Nadia accidentally ruined my cell phone, but I was able to reactivate my old cell phone so I am not without a phone any longer. Whew. The good news is that Oliver and I are out of the hospital. He got a good report at the doctor today. The pediatrician agrees that Oliver most likely has asthma, and so he wants us to continue giving him breathing treatments every day for at least two more months. He thinks this should help prevent another hospital stay. He thinks we should hold off a bit on seeing a pulmonologist.

Paul has been very busy grading the past few days, so it probably was for the best that we didn't go out on Saturday night. He gave me a card and two books for my Kindle. My parents got me new tires for the stroller and an external flash for my camera. I am SUPER excited about the flash. Paul is hoping this means I won't take so many pictures with the front door open in the dead of winter, ha ha! I can't wait to figure out how to use my new "toy". Except for doing some laundry, I gave myself the day off from cleaning even though the house is really in need of cleaning because the toilets didn't get cleaned (etc.) while I was in the hospital last week. Tomorrow I'll work on getting back on track with that. I had said that we wouldn't do schoolwork on any family member's birthday, but we did some today since they unexpectedly only had one day of school last week. The BEST part of my birthday was that I got to spend the day with ALL three of my children. I am so, so very grateful for them, even when they do things like throw up (which Ian did this evening). I love them dearly!