Goodbye 2012

Every year I tell myself that I'm going to write one of those fabulous newsletters about family happenings and include it with a photo card of our family. Would you care to guess how many times I've actually accomplished that? If you guessed zero, you'd guess correctly. This year, I'm telling myself that I'm taking a step in the right direction and doing a "blogletter".

2012 started off with all sorts of excitement. I was struck with inspiration to compete in the Mrs. California America beauty pageant to raise awareness for Postpartum Depression. As soon as I decided to do this and started getting Facebook and fundraising pages up, I got the surprise of my life in the form of a positive pregnancy test that I had taken on a whim. I canceled my plans to compete in Mrs. California and stopped packing up the maternity clothes I had just been able to stop wearing from when I had a baby 9 months prior. I had no idea when I was due or even whether I was in my first or second trimester due to being on birth control and still nursing my baby. A trip to the doctor said that we'd be welcoming a new member of the family in September. Well, at least I managed to "skip" the first half of the first trimester...

It took quite some time to adjust to the idea that I was having a baby again already. It was quite the emotional roller coaster. In April, while the kids and I were visiting my family, my godmother did an ultrasound at the pregnancy resource center she volunteers at and quite unintentionally we found out that we were expecting a boy. There wasn't really any doubt whatsoever; he wasn't the LEAST bit shy about letting us know. I think if he'd been wearing pants he would have pulled them down and gone "Look look look!!! See that? I'm a boy!!!". Every time my godmother tried to look at his face or his feet or anything, he'd flip over and wiggle his rump at us again. Crazy baby.

Over the summer, we moved to a new house. We live in military housing and the new baby qualified us for a move to a 4-bedroom house. The new house is much nicer and much bigger and as soon as we moved in, Yumyum (at the time the youngest, now the middle baby) started walking without holding on to anything. I'd like to go on record as saying that being stubborn and trying to move by yourself without getting anyone to help you with furniture is a really bad idea, as my husband learned the hard way twice during this process, both times being instances where I was fully justified in saying "I told you so!".

At 35 weeks, we realized that I was showing some symptoms of antenatal depression and I started taking Zoloft in hopes of keeping it from getting bad. The Zoloft did the trick and my mood swings evened out. I didn't really think that I would make it to my due date but Little Mister had other ideas. Not only did I make it to my due date, I went 10 days past! Go figure that my first 2 came on time and my third is the one who dragged things out... good things come to those who wait and as soon as I scheduled an induction for the next week. he decided I meant business and he'd better come on his own. He's worth every day of that pregnancy and I love him to pieces.

I really didn't mean for this to be all about pregnancy and having a new baby but it makes sense that that's how it turned out. It feels like this whole year has revolved around it. In the next year, I have no idea what challenges and happy occasions I'll face but as I face them, I can do so with the knowledge that this year has made me stronger. I survived pregnancy, pregnancy while breastfeeding, moving with small children and pets while pregnant, drug-free childbirth, and the lamest apocalypse ever (good thing I never bought in to the Mayan calendar). I face the new year with friends new and old.

Goodbye 2012. Hello 2013.