Update

So, yep, I'm still alive. Just not getting around to blogging much. Let me see. . . the last year. How to summarize:

Hans is growing and SO much fun. He's busy trying to repeat lots and lots of words and catching on quickly to pronunciation. Still hasn't tried the novelty of sentences, though. He wants to spend every possible moment outside, and thinks it's downright cruel of me to say "no" on rainy days. He'll be 2 in 2 months. *sniff* My baby is growing up!

I spent most of last year trying to fix some health problems I was having, as I mentioned briefly in a post back last spring. I ended up on a restrictive diet for about 6 months, as I tested intolerant for about 40 food items. It turns out that the antibiotics I was flushed through with in labor with Hans (since my water broke early) had pretty much depleted my good bacteria from my intestines -very necessary for digestion! My intestinal problems were causing a psoriasis-like rash that wasn't itchy, but just annoying, because I didn't want it to get worse, and because I knew it signaled a deeper problem. After 2 naturopaths and a lot of reading, I finally cultured some sauerkraut and ate that 3x/day for a few months, and felt much better! Sauerkraut is awesome that way, even if I'm still not a taste fan :-P. I do have some deeper issues that I will have to eventually solve along the same lines, but my worst issues were fixed with the sauerkraut. So yay! I will definitely not be accepting more prophylactic antibiotics for a very weak reason next labor :-P. (It's not like I'd had my water broken for days or anything!)

We also became debt free last fall! Yay! We'd been working to paying off a student loan since we got married, and we finally were able to, by God's grace. Let me tell you, that is an awesome feeling. We are hoping to keep that status until we buy a house at some point down the road, but we'll take what the Lord throws our way :-). We probably won't buy a house for several more years, until Adrian goes into teaching (which is a while off), for various reasons that make good sense but I won't expend your time on here ;-). So now with no more debt, we're focusing more on saving for a hefty downpayment and such.

I had an early miscarriage in December, the week of Christmas. My hormones were not registering as strong to begin with, so I was prepared and was really fine with it, though of course with a little sadness. We had a fabulous time in Minnesota for a week following Christmas, and it was really a great time of family and celebration.

Then we got pregnant again in January! Everything is looking good so far with this pregnancy. I'm 14 weeks along now, and we've heard the heartbeat twice. I'm finally over the hump of nausea, just some occasional flare-ups, but mild. Actually my nausea/exhaustion this pregnancy has definitely been better than with Hans' pregnancy, for which I'm grateful. And Adrian was awesome and took over the cooking and dishes for me while I felt really bad :-). I'd prepared and frozen lots of cooked and cut-up meat, which helped a lot. We hardly had to look at raw meat for 2 solid months!

I have my mid-pregnancy ultrasound scheduled for 3 weeks from now, and we're hoping everything is moving along fine :-). I'm due the beginning of October, Lord willing. I'm actually going out-of-state for care this time. There is a CNM group just north of us in MA that is closer than my previous midwife group, so I'm going to try out their practice this time around. It would be so nice to someday be under the care of midwives less than half an hour away, but for now. . . ah well ;-). I'd rather drive and be comfortable with the care :-). I'm excited to be due within a few days of 3 other friends! Fun times :-)