Holding Pattern & Randomness

Surrogacy:      

         This surrogacy journey is moving crazy fast and painfully slow all at the same time! Something my military life has prepared me for..the good ole "hurry up and wait" deal. The good news is that despite my history of an irregular cycle (talking Aunt Flo here people!) I ended up having one, and now am hoping to make the trip out to California for my screening appointments soon after my next cycle that is **fingers crossed** at the end of this month. During that appointment they will make sure my body is prime baby growing real estate, and they will also do a psychological screening. During the psychological screening they want to make sure I have a support system, and that at the end of all of this I will not only give the baby(ies) to the IPs, but be able to cope and continue with life afterwards. The psychological screening will not be something new. I have been through screenings while in the military and when I was an egg donor (I'll get into this in a later post.)

Weight Loss:    

       I am attempting to lose some weight before putting my body through pregnancy. I just started going back to my gym, and have been adjusting my diet over the past couple months. My goal is to lose at least 25 pounds before I go to L.A. to get pregnant! Day one at the gym (today!) was easier than I expected. I have not tried to be within Navy standards for anything since I completed my contract in 2010, but today I hopped on the elliptical wanting to at least achieve a "passing" score according to Navy standards. I was a little surprised that I was able to achieve this on day one, but high-five to me! I went on to do the arms circuit and will be going back tomorrow to do another round on the elliptical and the legs circuit. My gym will record my settings for the circuit and set them up ahead of me as I move through the circuit. This helps make the workout not only flow better, but speeds the workout up significantly which is important since most days I will be hitting the gym after work. Thankfully I have an incredible army of babysitters, and in particular a mother and her two daughters that will be bringing the kiddos home, serving the crock-pot meal, sending them to shower, and starting homework. Doing it this way I will only miss about an hour in the evenings with them, and they will not being getting home any later. On the weekends the kiddos already think it's the coolest thing ever to go hang out at the gym. BONUS! I'm going to add a widget to the blog that counts down the pounds...GULP!

On the home front:
     
        I have been working on our chicken setup ahead of our new baby chicks moving from my parent's farm over to our home. We recently lost our flock of grown Rhode Island Red chickens that had been producing between 4-6 eggs a day so we're eager to have chicks around the yard again! We kinda-sorta-maybe-definitely treat our chickens like pets, and one in particular named Darcy we referred to as a chicken-cat-dog for her uncanny ability to emulate all three at once. With that in mind I picked out the super friendly Speckled Sussex breed, and the Americanas for the variety in their egg color this time around . We're waiting for this cold weather to pass, and the contractors that cut the underground dog fence to fix that before we bring our chicks home!