Though I resolved to update the interested few much more frequently about my life in late 2023, here we are seven months and sixteen days since my last post. To keep my apologies brief I will simply say 2024 was a lot of heavy emotional processing for my parenting and fertility journeys. Several friends, acquaintances, and nearly newlywed neighbors either announced or had a baby in 2024 or in the first few months of 2025. These women fall into the categories of those who have struggled (first and secondary fertility) and those who seemingly have not struggled to become and stay pregnant. I also apologize that today is not Wednesday, as Wednesdays are for fertility! (If you’ve read previous posts).
Like young Mr. Bueller, who took a day to go on his many adventures, I have been much the absentee blogger over the past many months. So, rather than go into all the details of our fertility journey this week, this will be an update post of where we’ve been the past seven months. Next week’s post will be where we’re headed next in our fertility journey.
Back in July of 2024, we welcomed our first long-term foster placement, which I discussed in my last post in September 2024. Many things have changed on that front over the past nearly eight months. When I last posted, we had only been initiated into the parenting club by J eight weeks before, but now she has been in our home for over nine months. To say we will be devastated if the end result is not J staying with us permanently doesn’t begin to cover the extreme emotional trauma headed our way should she end up elsewhere.
Last August, my best high school friend turned 35, approximately 2 weeks before my 35th birthday. Additionally, we celebrated 20 years of friendship. I sent her a belated box of goodies in mid-September, including an incredible shirt made by a friend in my neighborhood, and a necklace with our birth flowers and the flower representing 20th anniversaries.
September – My birthday and a birthday tea party.
October – Decorated the house in the theme of the year. Harry Potter, here our home exterior looks like book 2.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince-themed Halloween costumes, specifically Aragog’s funeral. Brent as Slughorn, J as Hagrid, Me as dead Aragog, and Muffler as Harry Potter, not pictured in the first picture of our Instagram post.
October/November – Planned and then subsequently cancelled a trip to Austin. Celebrating all of the November birthdays, including J’s late November birthday.
December – Harry Potter birthday party (Held December 7th), and decorating the house for Harry Potter Christmas. All the Christmas things, including our first Christmas with J., and hosting our annual Hanukkah party.
January, February, March – Lots of Thanksgiving point adventures, some grad school work, lots of fighting naps, nearly daily walks with J and the guau-guau (Muffler), J finding her love of swings and only swings when we go to playgrounds, lots and lots of ms. Rachel, tons of vocabulary growth both in Spanish and English. Several foster events and trainings. For us (Brent and I), the first quarter of 2025 was a general continuing to settle into the day-to-day of parenthood.
April – Tulip festival at Thanksgiving Point (Today, May 9th, is the last day of this year’s festival). Brent and I celebrated our twelfth wedding anniversary. Traditional and Modern gifts for year twelve include: Linen, Satin, Jade, and the color green. For my gift to Brent, I spent a lot of green to purchase tickets to a Weird Al Yankovic concert, which we will attend later in the summer around Brent’s birthday. Brent’s gift to me, as requested, was an adorable bee necklace, a jade bracelet, and a dress.
May – This past week, the three of us (Brent, J, and I) have spent a blissful seven days in the Pacific Northwest in the oh so beautiful Vancouver, Washington, to visit Brent’s brother and family. The week’s adventures started at the Vancouver Summers family’s homestead for a belated Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning. Everyone (neighbors, Brent’s brother’s family, and other extended family) experienced the cuteness overload of meeting J for the first time.
On Sunday, we travelled over two hours to watch the oldest niece (age 14) and the oldest nephew (age 17) march in a veterans’ parade with at least 30 other middle and high school bands. It was the longest J had been in the car for one stretch of time, and by the time we arrived at the parade, she was OVER IT! The parade was great, J loved it, especially the “BIG Caballos” (horses). Afterwards we drove a few minutes to the nearby beach for a picnic and play. J dug in the wet sand, ate mostly chips and Cheetos for lunch and kept talking about the “Mucho Agua” (aka. the ocean). No nap on the way there, and surprisingly no nap on the way home. We were all exhausted by the time we reached the homestead.
During the day Brent worked and the rest of the time we have played board games, J has taken no naps, taken our required trip into Portland to visit Powell a giant bookstore, obtained and devoured Voodoo doughnuts, a little antiquing at our favorite antique store nearby, took some family photos, walked a beautiful historic lilac garden, ate Costco PIZZA…PIZZA…PIZZA (J’s Pizza chant) for lunch, treated ourselves (just my sister-in-law and I) to some boba tea, enjoyed a campfire where we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and relaxed.
Let my toddler sleep…
In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, he goes to his best friend’s house, and he is out of school, actually sick, unlike Mr. I’m skipping school today Bueller. Cameron is lying in bed singing “Let my Cameron go,” a spoof on the song “Go down Moses” by Louis Armstrong, with the original lyrics of “Now when Israel was in Egypt land, let my people go” which Cameron replaced Israel and people with his own name. I am now suggesting that the lyrics should be again changed to be “Now when J was in Washington, let my toddler sleep…”
We quickly learned our toddler has not been sleeping enough, as she has been in our room with us during the trip and waking up between 5 and 6:30 every morning since we arrived. We have been trying the normal after lunch nap, but it has been far to late, so she has not been sleeping during naps, just playing.
Yesterday she fought naps so much that her mischief toddler gene kicked in and she ruined a tube of mascara and painted her face, arms, legs, bed sheets, and blankets in E.L.F. big mood waterproof black. Luckily only my nearly time to throw away anyway mascara was ruined. I sadly am not allowed to post a picture of her in all her mascara art glory.
Today, around 10:15AM, after a couple of hours of a rather grumpy toddler, Brent decided to put her down for a nap, so we took all of the things to play with or ruin out of the room and she slept for a solid three hours, waking only about 10 minutes ago. We’re glad we learned this on the last day of our trip, but I guess we live and learn.
Tomorrow, we sadly must return home, but we have loved every day of our visit.
Well now it’s time to…
Shake it up, baby, now (shake it up baby)
Twist and shout (twist and shout)
Come on, come on, come, come on, baby, now (come on baby)
Come on and work it on out (work it on out) [Ferris Bueller’s fitting parade song]
For a final shake-up, I will tease the current stage of our fertility journey, with: I am feeling a little crummy this week (no, I’m not pregnant), just on some nasty meds at the moment.
This week, infertility feels like a bad word, several actually! Even still, I have no choice but to take several deep breaths and start where I am now.
Diana Goddess of the Hunt 