The Past Few Months (In Pictures and Words)

You may have noticed a real lack of blogging going on in the past few months. There has been a lot going on in our lives, but not a lot of it has been dog-related. Here's an explanation of what we've been up to these past few months:

September 2, 2009: The story begins...

When you take a pregnancy test and it's positive, isn't it normal to take like 50 more just to be sure?

How Bailey and I broke the news to Brian that he was going to be a dad (to a human baby). Her bandana says "I'm going to be a big sister."

The story of Brian's reaction is worth telling, because it was pretty funny. Brian came home from work and Bailey greeted him at the door wearing her new "big sister" bandana. Here is the conversation that followed:

Brian (reading the bandana aloud): "I'm going to be a big sister..." Then he looked around, looked at me, and said "To WHO?"

Me: "To our baby!"

Brian: "WHOSE baby?"

Me: "OURS. Mine and yours!"

Brian: Nuh-uh. No way. (And this went on for awhile until I convinced him that there was indeed a human baby on the way. It was easier for him to believe once he saw my impressive plethora of pregnancy tests).

The funny part is that the reason he did not understand at first that he was going to be a dad to our human baby is that when he read the bandana, his first thought was that I had adopted a dog. Yes, I have quite the reputation as a crazy dog person.

Bailey wearing her bandana proudly. If the poor baby had any idea what's in store for her, she would probably not look so happy.

Our first pic as a family with kids! Note the baby gate in the background...fostering dogs has at least somewhat prepared us for human babies!

Finding out I was pregnant and getting to tell the happy news to Brian was, at the time, the happiest day of my life. Until...

October 2, 2009

TWO babies and TWO nice, strong heartbeats. The most beautiful (albeit a bit shocking!) sight and sound in the world!

That's right, Bailey is going to be a big sister to not one, but two babies. We are excited, scared, overjoyed, nervous, and pretty much every other emotion you can imagine. But most of all, we feel blessed. Things have been progressing nicely and fairly uneventfully, and we are very thankful for that. This past Friday was a big day for us--we had our "big" ultrasound. The date was especially meaningful as December 18 was the birthday of my late grandfather, who was a twin himself!

The biggest and best news of the day was that both babies look healthy and are growing right on track. In the past, I have heard my pregnant friends say that they don't care if their baby is a boy or a girl, as long as it is healthy. It is hard to comprehend this feeling until you are lying on an exam table waiting to see if all is well with your baby...the absolute very last thing we were concerned about was whether we were having boys or girls. Here are a few pics from that day:

December 18, 2009

Yes, Twin A is a girl! We had all of these grand ideas of having the ultrasound tech write down the sex of the babies in an envelope and opening it at a later time, but it turns out we have zero willpower and we found out as soon as we possibly could! Once the tech said it everything looked good and that the baby was a girl, Brian's face was priceless. He was just beaming. I was torn between looking at the screen and watching the expressions on his face.

Then, it was on to Twin B...

This twin has been the wild one from the start. On every ultrasound he is bouncing around, and this time was no different. He would not hold still for very long, so it took awhile to find out that he is indeed a "he!" We were both a bit shocked as we thought we were having two girls. But we are so excited for this combo!

One last pic. If you look closely you can see both profiles: Twin A (girl) is on the bottom and her brother is on the top. The tech said that all the kicks I have been feeling are from the boy baby...the girl baby is positioned so that when she kicks, her target is her brother! We found this pretty funny...fighting already!

Soooo...that is what we have been up to. Being pregnant with the twins has unfortunately led to a big change in our lives, which is that we are no longer fostering goldens. There were a couple of instances early in the pregnancy in which we still had Brax and he jumped right on my stomach...a bit scary, but not uncommon with a scared foster dog. I am really thankful that we were able to see him through to his adoption to his forever family, but we have been foster-less ever since. I have still been able to stay involved with the rescue group by mailing out tags to foster homes and I have even still been able to do transports. If I'm getting a dog from a shelter, I just make sure someone helps me load the dog into the car, and if I'm getting a dog from someone's house, I try to have someone go with me to help. I love doing transports and I want to keep doing them until I'm too big to fit behind the wheel!

But I do miss having a foster dog in our home, and it has been really hard for me not having one (and knowing that it will probably be a while before we are able to foster again). Fostering was a huge part of my life and I almost feel like I have lost a little piece of my identity. I think the worst part is feeling like I am just not doing enough to help. BUT I know that growing two healthy babies is important work, so I'm giving it my best. And I will also do my best to raise kids who treat animals with kindness and are aware of the vital importance of pet adoption. Hopefully, I will soon have two little helpers to ride along on transports and take care of foster dogs.