My mom’s visiting from North Carolina for 3 weeks… so here’s the short version:
RE advised:
Get blood tested on cd2 or 3 (cd 2 happens to be today, results Tues or Wed maybe?) Test for egg quality (FSH), thyroid and prolactin- all can affect fertility.
Get HSG done (the big yee-ouch!!)- next friday afternoon.
Finish up the 2 more allowable clomid-IUI cycles and then try a femara IUI cycle. I know nothing about femara yet.
Choose another donor (did last night- MUCH easier since they now give you a childhood pic of him… and there ARE more girl kids in his family than boys, teeheehee). Now I just need to order it… and, gulp, find $1,000 for it.
So I start the Clomid again tomorrow!

Coversational-type RE appt Thursday morning. I am guessing another HSG and/or laprascopy is in my near future. My Mom arrives for 3 week visit tomorrow! Wheee!
3/27
Andy says “Pokey-pon” for porcupine
4/3
We played with the new Crayola Surge markers and paper today (really neat!). Brendan wrote me his first love note. Awwww…. sniff, sniff. 🙂 It was a picture of himself and says “You love me mom.”
Andy drew his first circles!
4/6
To Bren, Ifrit = Flirt. LOL!
He also added up piles of gold in his game- 1000 + 1000 + 1000 + 1000 + 1000 + 200 = 5200!
4/7
Homeschool is going great. Bren starts the very last Hooked on Phonics workbook tomorrow. Whee! He is halfway through his math program and has most of the addition facts mastered! Go Bren! He learned to analyze simple pictographs in social studies and is learning about butterflies in science. I can’t wait for our caterpillars to arrive!! Bren is loving Alvin and the Chipmunks and founf a t-shirt featuring them a few days ago. He is loving the tennis we play every Sunday and is improving a lot!
Andy is lovey-duvey lately! I love it! He is also entranced with his Thomas the tank engines. He’ll spend HOURS playing alone with them. Every once in awhile he refuses to sleep in his own bed but often he makes it the whole night. His vocabulary amazes me. He climbed into my bed this morning when he woke up and he heard a dog barking. He told me, “What is that woofing? That dog is too loud. He make too much noise!” LOL! That is rather impressive for a 2 1/2 year old I thik! 😀 Now if I can just peel him out of his new Thomas PJs he’ll be good to go. He’s on day 3 in them. Haha.
4/11 We had a great, great day at Natural Bridge Caverns exploring huge caves with amazing formations and sluicing for gems!
Andy says “onxs” for orange/ Brendan said “toe food” for tofu… lol! Bren also has a hard time saying animal (“aminal”) and Andy’s Kitties somehow come out “titties”- much to Darrell’s amusement.
4/15 Andy spent the day alternating between pretending to be a kitty and bringing me pretend food- something that sounds like turkey but isn’t and muffins- that he shoves in my mouth.
5/17 Yikes! I haven’t written any Bren-bits or Andy-dotes in a month!
Brendan is definitely in a Pokemon phase now. Andy is still doing the train thang.
Me: Did you eat your sandwich all gone Andy?
Andy: Yup! I am a big eater! LOL!
Brendan is finished with simple addition now and flying through subtraction!

A little note to my dear readers who have supported me in the past several months.
Thank you…
Aimee
Erin
Angie
Lizzy
Mert
Joana
Mary
Your comments help me immensely. 😀

This is part of a post I wrote on one of my boards that summarized what we are doing school-wise and what we will be doing soon nicely so I thought I’d copy it here.
I imagine we’ll already own MUS Beta since there is no way Bren will not be long done with Alpha unless subtraction just completely stumps him. So next year might be 1/2 Beta and Gamma (or most of it anyway).
This year we are doing 2 Harcourt-Brace history textbooks- “Our World” & “Meeting Many People” from 1997. The 1st one is so simple that we are already almost done with it so we’ll do the 2nd grade one as well. So NEXT year we’ll start SOTW and the activity guide, which I already own. Looking forward to it myself. 😀
As for Science, I am continuing with the Usborne First Encyclopedias. I own Human Body (mostly done), Animals (done the insects, spiders, butterflies), Seas & Oceans (next), Our World, Dinosaurs, Space, and Science. They are perfectly done in 2 page gorgeous segments. The photos are amazing and every one has internet links to games and movies and fun stuff on the internet. I do want to get into some experiments and may look into some library books about that. Those should last through next year.
In another 3 months or so Bren will finish Hooked on Phonics so I need to figure out where to go from there. Perhaps I’ll let him start reading the Magic Tree House books to me then. 🙂 All the interesting kid series’ seem to start at level 3 and I’m thinking he’ll be close but not quite there. I also have the choice of doing the HOP Master Reader 4 book series… hmm. Not having a formal program kind of bugs me… there aren’t any goals to reach I guess. We also currently do an online phonics program called ClickNKids but we should be done with it by the end of the year too. Will definitely find time for the Boxcar Children and the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
I have a gr 1 grammar workbook that we are going to start soon (Scholastic Success with Grammar) so I probably will buy gr 2 for next year. That and the free online Scott Foresman grammar books at http://www.sfreading.com/resources/ghb.html
He has only 1/4 of his Hooked on Spelling left so I might do an online program or something there. I have a video game I bought that I need to look at still too. I have an activities book but it is generic so I’ll at least need word lists from somewhere.
We’re working on Hooked on Spanish (just finished the yellow level, 2 to go) & The Complete Book of Starter Spanish. I have 2 more Spanish books lined up on Amazon so I’m good there.
For writing (which is Bren’s weak point) we’re doing 2 dollar store handwriting books and he writes a journal entry or two a week. I don’t know if I’ll do a specific handwriting book next year. Probably not but I already have the cursive book for 3rd grade (Daily Handwriting Practice: Contemporary Cursive). It’s a simple no nonsense no unecessary curls and whirls font. aswq I have a 4 book set of books for story writing we’ll start next year… Start Writing Adventure Stories, Start Writing Amazing Stories, Start Writing About People and Places & Start Writing About Things I do.
We also do various worksheets out of the Comprehensive Curriculum Grade 1 workbook which points out some useful things I’ve left out. 😆 I’ll definitely buy Grade 2.
The only new subject I am looking into for next year is a typing program… maybe Jumpstart Typing or Mario Teaches Typing 2.

Darrell just walked in the door with a rose, a card and 2 humongous pieces of cheesecake.
Huh???
I totally missed that it is our 9th anniversary!!! Happy Anniversary Honey!!!

BFN.

I am terrified… so no I haven’t tested. I’m 10 dpIUI today. I am trying not to think of it at all, being only somewhat successful of course.
Why am I terrified now and not in prior cycles…
1. Well, we are nearing the end of our financial ropes. Honestly, we’ve spent way too much already.
2. We are nearing the limit to how many clomid cycles they allow. And my dr doesn’t do injectible IUIs.
3. I am trying to figure out what another baby is WORTH (for lack of a better word) to us… how many more cycles that mess with my head and DH’s work schedule. Worth going further in debt? Maxing out a credit card? Using the boys’ college fund (a little more than $1500)? Using everything we can possibly pull out of every nook, cranny, credit card & 401K? How does someone decide this?
4. I know I won’t be cycling next month… we’ll be away when I’ll need to get prescriptions and such. I loathe waiting.
5. I know that my odds go down with every cycle I am not pregnant. A woman who goes through 4 perfect cycles and doesn’t get pg… chances are something new is wrong. Endometriosis? Fibroids? Blocked tubes? Old eggs? Too many c-sections?
6. I am responding less well every month.
7. This is our last full sibling shot.
8. Every day I don’t know is a day I can still hope.
I really, really want this and I have no control over it. I requires a bit of magic.

We decided to go with the whole vial because half a vial would probably just mean 2 poor IUIs rather than 1 good one. We made the right choice because this was the worst sample yet- only 19 million post-thaw motile. Half would not have been enough. We triggered at 9 pm, which turned out to be about 36 hours prior to this IUI.
So, the smallest amount of eggs AND sperm in the same cycle. Grrreaaaatttt. 🙁
Well, it’s done. Now we just wait some more and hope.
And ouuucchhh, I am so sore right now!

CD #14
Left: 19×21=20, 15×18=16.5
Right: 14X19=16.5
Trigger tommorrow night for a Saturday morning IUI. They are discussing the possibility of using only half of the vial since it is our last one.
The Dr suggested we look into IVF if this cycle doesn’t work. Waaah.

2/18 Andy says “I wub dis!” (I love this!) all the time now. He keeps bringing me a Cookie Monster figurine to take off the cookie in his hand so he can have it. It doesn’t work that way!!! We put together a 24 piece puzzle and Andy seems to show a bit more skill and patience than Bren did at this age. Puzzles never were Bren’s thing.
3/8 Mimi taught Andy to string beads on a wire and he made 2 necklaces. 😀
Current Andy sayings:
“Oh Jinkies! (a la Scooby Doo)
“Dee-Uh-Nee” = Anthony (Bren said “An-ti-tee”)
“No Brendan! That’s mine, not yours!”
“Mom, are you having fun?” (during a stinky diaper change no less)
3/12
While teaching Bren to play “Go Fish” (a card game):
Bren: Mom, do you have an ASS?
Jen: What?? LOL… Do you mean an ACE?
Bren: Yeah!
Mom: Yes… actually, I have both (snicker snicker).
3/19
Andyisms:
“I want a Dr. Pepper soda” (kudos to DH for decoding that one!)
Andy: “Are you Brendan?”
Me: “No, I’m Mama. Are YOU Brendan?”
Andy: “No, I’m ME! I’m An-nee!” (first time he ever said his name)
“Mom! Look! Brendan has BIG eggs and I have SMALL ones. (I had cut his up)
“Are you happy?” If you answer yes, he’ll trill happily and go away. If you answer anything else he’ll ask “Are you mad?” Then he’ll keep pestering you until you answer YES! to the first question.
“I’m very sowwy… it was an axe-ident!” (He spilled a bag of goldfish)
3/20 Tooth #5 gone for Brendan!! The other upper center one (left) so now he has no top teeth!
I caught Andy “playing” a harmonica while humming a perfect rendition of the Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas song. It was so freaking cute- I wish I had caught it on video!
Andy can distinguish betwwen a “soccit” ball & a “ba-kit” ball. LOL. “This soccit ball is perfect! I wub it!”