My Grammie's Piano

I don't post much about my dad. There are a lot of intricacies in our relationship that are best left off the Internet rather than trying to explain them. Gift giving is one of those intricacies. We struggled. I never seemed to get him what he wanted, and he gave me some pretty odd ones. I'll leave it at that. He did have at least one very great success.

When I was about seven, I started trying to teach myself to play the piano. When my parents caught onto my interest, my grandmother very graciously gave us her Wurlitzer upright. I loved that piano. It made me sad when my parents decided to get a baby grand. But that baby grand was pretty awesome, so I didn't dwell on it too much.

My dad, however, didn't want to part with my grammie's piano. He knew that it would be awhile before I'd be able to afford a piano for myself, so he kept it. He put that piano and a few items of furniture in storage until I could use it. When we graduated a few years ago, it was one of the first things he asked. "Can I ship your piano to you now?"

I won't go into detail about the nightmare that was getting our piano up to the second floor apartment so that it could sit there unused for a year (I was so paranoid about bothering the neighbors I only played on Sundays with the damper pedal on). However, it now sits in our house where it's played and loved. It just looks like it's supposed to be there. If my dad hadn't gone to the trouble of storing it all those years (and shipping it all the way to AZ), my precious piano and I would never have been reunited. And the primary would've been without a sub for a few weeks since I would've forgotten how to play.

The Big Announcement

I've struggled with knowing just how to write this post. Once upon a time I thought that I would be typing in all caps and using a zillion explanation points. After all the trouble it has taken us to get here, I feel much more relief and gratitude than I feel excitement. Yes, we are finally expecting.

Because I'm past 12 weeks now, I finally feel confident enough to spread the good news. There is ONE and only ONE little bean in there. No triplets this time, and I can't say that I'm disappointed. The little Black bean is planned to enter this world on December 24th. I'm not kidding. Since we already have Christmas, our anniversary, and my birthday . . . someone must have figured December just wasn't busy enough for us. Yet, I can't help but feel this is how it was meant to be.

In the mean time, Black bean has been sending signals to me that he or she HATES veggies, since I've hardly been able to stomach any for months. I figured this meant that we definitely have Ryan's genes in there, but I've also been anti-sweets. That doesn't sound like either of us. Either way, I seem to be dealing with food better than I was and hope I keep feeling like myself again. Even if it is little by little. While I thought I'd never ever be able to do daily shots (ha! I've been doing two-a-days), I found I'd rather give a shot than vomit. Vomiting is definitely in my top five greatest fears.

My next appointment is in three weeks, and I'm hoping the doctor can determine the gender. Since it will be just shy of 16 weeks, it may be iffy. Now that the news is out, I'll be better at keeping everyone posted. We're so grateful for the support and prayers during this "process," so thank you all!

Bird Feathers

I neglected to inform you all that our sweet baby birds arrived! It was hard to count their little beaks from down here on the ground (okay, who am I kidding? I put a step stool by the front door so I could spy on them from inside but I still couldn't see much) but I do believe I counted four. Four! Sweet baby birds. I was sick last week and worrying only about my own pity party and thus not thinking about the birdies. At some point I finally realized I didn't hear chirping. It's been a few weeks, so I figured they'd flown the nest! It's what birds do. Then our home teacher brought over something. I opened the door and looked down to see.....gasp!! bird feathers. Beneath the soft little gray feathers was residue on the pavement. YUCK!!! We have lots of cats in the neighborhood and I just remembered I saw a calico hovering around the porch when I got back from the pharmacy last week. If only I was so anxious to get inside and start the meds and had realized what was happening! In an attempt to console me, my home teacher said, "Well, maybe they just fell out of the nest." It didn't help.