Cycle Days 10 &11: There’s Life Outside of Fertility Treatments!?

Cycle Days 10 & 11 – Thursday and Friday, February 10 & 11

So it turns out there is life outside of fertility treatment – who knew? Jobs, craft deadlines, housework, and family/friend events march on despite the inconvenience it causes me – the nerve! Actually, being busy is good. Any amount of time I’m thinking about something OTHER than follicles, eggs, embryos, hormone levels, pregnancy symptoms, injections, ultrasounds, etc. is vital to my sanity right now. So after a very brief treatment update (not much new to report) I am going to actually post about the other stuff going on these days!

TODAY’S IVF FUN FACT

Once your follicles and hormone levels progress to a certain point, you have to keep a tight reign on them, because they just may go rogue and decide to mature TOO fast. Enter Ganirelix – another nightly injection that keeps me from ovulating too soon (remember this in a few days when I talk about the injection I will take to induce ovulation). I added Ganirelix to my nightly cocktail Thursday – and other than itchiness at the injection site it doesn’t change much about the routine. I will be taking Ganirelix every night until its time for the ovulation induction.

 

Okay – on to regular life!

I finished the Cookie Monster hat I custom made for Tricia and I LOVE it!

 

Randy and I started a low carb, high lean protien, low fat diet and pictured above is my first ever Chipotle order that wasn’t of the burrito persuasion. My order: salad with grilled chicken, onions, and peppers, corn and tomato salsa, and a sprinkling of cheese. I brought Greek yogurt with me to sub for the sour cream. Although it was no burrito, it was much better than what I had been eating this week. Upon reflection, Randy and I have decided that life without bread is not worth living. That particular diet lives no more under our roof.

 

We started our program at another school this week – a school housed in an amazing old building that I hope to document through many more photos of over the coming weeks. I will leave you with my new favorite quote – overheard in the 4th/5th grade group this week:

Girl A: I can’t believe he kicked you in the knee!

Girl B: I know. But the next time I see him I’m gonna kick him right in the peeny-wacker!

I worked on a custom hat for a friend this weekend. and had a photo shoot. and played around with iPhoto. The results are below.

The Elephant’s Progress Report

Now that the Christmas rush is over, the Elephant has a bit of a break. Kind of. Actually, he has more work coming in than he expected – which is awesome!

• Hats – we’ve shipped off 6 sock monkey hats  and one cupcake hat so far this year, are working on 2 more monkeys, and a cozy, brown ear-flap hat for my friend Emily. And we just got an order  from my friend Tricia that I’m super excited about: a cookie monster hat! We plan to start working on that this weekend – I actually can’t wait.
• Quilts – we have a couple of custom quilts for coworkers waiting in the wings: a photo keepsake quilt for a Father’s Day gift and a t-shirt memory quit for a graduation present.
• On February 1, Crafty Supermarket begins accepting applications – we’re goin’ for it!
• Etsy – our goal is to get some of our remaining inventory into our Etsy shop – I think a photo-shoot is necessary first, though.
• Development – we also want to keep creating new products and try new ideas!

Well – I think we have plenty of goals for now. Plus we need to get the craft room in order. I need a nap.

Christmas Around the (Walt Disney) World

Disney has come and gone and though we’re exhausted, it was just what the doctor ordered. There was so much going on we didn’t have time to think about any of the things that we’d rather not think about during Christmas, and we made great memories to distract us until our next vacation . Some photographic highlights below.

Scenes from our resort, Coronado Springs:

We decorated our room window:

Light fixture in the hall:

The Magic Kingdom:

Me with my first true love:

We couldn’t hide from knitting even in Disney. It was actually a great way to pass time in ride lines:

I made a Kermit hat for myself which Randy is so graciously modeling for me:

Randy had just finished his hat which will become a sock monkey:

Merry Christmas:

Customs

Two custom hats for 8 and 9 year old sisters: DONE! I hope they like them – I do!

Miss Monkey

One of our sock monkey hat orders came from grandmother who was concerned that it didn’t look feminine enough for her granddaughter to wear. We brainstormed with her and came up with the idea to give the monkey a bow instead of pompom. I have to admit, I wasn’t really sold on the idea – I thought it was kind of silly and I’d never have done it on my own. But now that Miss Monkey is here with us, I’m smitten.

Though she was a special order, we took her with us today to display at our last show of the season at Dixie Heights High School. She was a busy little Monkey and inspired four more orders (for after Christmas)! I think we’ll be knitting sock monkey hats for the rest of eternity.

Swatch!

Hello from the Snuggle Factory (that is what we’re calling the house these days since all we do anymore is sit under blankets and knit cozy things)! The great thing about having an embarrassingly large yarn stash is that we can knit up all kinds of hats without having to spend a bunch of money on new yarn. The downside is that sometimes customers really like a hat we made with yarn that is now discontinued and want to order it in a different size. But no challenge is too for the elephant!

Here is the original hat:

 

We found some fuzzy yarn in similar colors:

 

The color and texture are great but the “confetti factor” is missing – and that is half the fun of the hat! So after a little more searching we found some colorful sock yarn to carry along with each color in the new hat. We knitted up a swatch to see what it would look like and we think we got it pretty close, if we do say so ourselves!

 

Pictures of the finished hat whenever its finished!

Motions

Its been a very rough few days. I am going through the motions of life, because life must go on. Jobs must be kept, money must be made, and bills must be paid, even though these things seem so trivial when it feels like my future is imploding. At least knitting is somewhat therapeutic.

Nervous

We’re getting closer and closer to judgment day for this IVF cycle. So far during this wait I’ve been completely peaceful and positive, which is a first for me. I have been celebrating each day as another day pregnant, just waiting to see how long I would stay that way. Today is 3 weeks 5 days gestation. If it lasts, I have less than 37 weeks left until I meet my baby or babies. I have loved seeing things from this perspective. But over the last couple days a tiny seed of doubt has crept in and began to grow. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is, but I just don’t feel pregnant anymore. I’ve lived so happily in my fantasy world of positive thinking that I’m worried the crash will be much harder when and if it happens. Until then, I’ll keep my hands busy knit-knit-kniting.

Knit 2 Together

We’re doing a lot of knitting around here. It’s the perfect activity for when you have to take it easy like I do right now. We transferred two embryos today – our 5th round of IVF – and I’m trying to blanket them in relaxed, zen vibes. Maybe I’ll finally get to start knitting for my own little guys soon.