It's Thursday. A Random Post to Finish the Week.

Had a conversation today. Not that I don't have those everyday, but the kind that made me explain things about my dead son that I usually try to avoid with the random folks.

I was making sure a child didn't go nuts observing a child in gym today and another woman was in there with her equally interesting caseload. As we managed to dodge balls being flung at our heads for 20 minutes, we chatted. I asked her if she wanted the rest of my Kit Kat because I have serious issues with eating sweets while pregnant. The scale validated my concern at my last OB appt. Super. Fat Brandy is in full force. Anyway, I asked her if she wanted my chocolate. Nope, she's allergic. Totally unrelated to what I'm getting at here, but it was part of our conversation and I had to feel a little sorry for her inability to consume something that is practically a food group in my house.

I'm definitely showing through my clothes now and it's nearly impossible to hide like I've been doing pretty well for the last 5 months. I've given up and just threw on a maternity shirt today without the added jacket or pullover I usually add to the wardrobe to avert the crisis of having to explain that I am, in fact, pregnant. Like I'm a 16-year old teenager in high school who made a big mistake one evening or something. No, I'm a 29-year old woman who is happily married. In any culture, pregnancy is acceptable and welcomed to someone like me. But instead I've spent 5 months trying to hide myself. Today, I was over it. The game is over and I probably had about 20 kids ask me if I am pregnant today. And to all 20, I replied that I was. They were all excited. It was a weird experience. Of course they are. Why wouldn't they be? The subsequent question is always about the gender and if we've chosen a name. I pretend as though we don't have one chosen. We do... but until we are comfortable speaking it aloud, we aren't sharing.

Back to gym class and the stranger standing next to me. She asked if this was my first. Normally, I say no and just leave it be. What does it matter to explain things further if I'll never see her again? But then, something happened. Her eyes lit up and she grew excited about him and how this will be my second-- a second boy! I couldn't wait for the next, inevitable age question to follow, so I went right ahead and whispered that he died. The usual, "I'm so sorry" remarks ensued as I spent the next minute explaining that my son does not make me sad and that I am comfortable telling her about him. She apologized for assuming that all was well and I had to, once again, explain that it was okay that she asked. It's important people know that although rare, children sometimes don't come home from the hospital.

Otherwise, I've been a cooking machine over here. I recently made a few recipes I pinned on Pinterest. All of them were fantastic! I am finding that a creative outlet is really helping this pregnancy. I need something to take my mind off gestating and all the possibilities of disaster that could occur. I still feel daily movement, so for now, we still have this little guy on board. Thankful. And getting more plump by the second-- partially from my new creative outlet and Halloween candy, but also from this growing little body!

Before sharing my latest recipes, I'll explain Halloween. I spent the afternoon hours driving around to various stores and places I needed to run errands at. But after awhile and two Targets later, I needed to get home and make dinner. I managed to avoid 80% of the trick-or-treaters and definitely avoided the families that normally tote their cute littles around in wagons and drink their beers from coozies. That, I definitely needed to avoid. For all I know, they may very well have avoided me too. Instead, we got the tail-end of jerky high school kids who should really be home doing their homework and not begging adults for trinkets and pieces of candy they don't really need. But anyway... successful, I guess. Links to recipes are below.

Baked, vegetarian spring rolls and Southwestern baked spring rolls

I also made a toasted ancho-chile sauce for enchiladas, homemade tzatziki (incredible), and Lebanese Beef for homemade gyros. I made some falafel from a box and it turned out a bit dry, but otherwise tasty as well.

Random for Thursday, but it's all I could muster up. Sometimes that just has to be good enough.

The Well is Dry

Confession: I don't cry when I read extremely sad stories about baby loss.

I haven't cried for a really long time. Part of me is totally jaded by the reality that babies die and are still dying. I recently came up on a few newbie blogs to the baby loss world. It totally made my stomach churn as I felt the anxiety of earlier days. I read blogs from fellow moms about their struggles or explaining the story etched in their memory of when they lost their babies and yet, I don't shed a tear. For this reason, I've stopped reading Faces of Loss posts because I can no longer handle the sadness properly. I feel like I should be crying. When did babies dying become acceptable to me in such a way that I don't show physical emotion? It's not that I don't welcome these women into my arms with my entire heart, but because I felt it was causing me to become numb and void of sorrow. I felt sorrowful while reading their sad stories, but I was easily able to click away, because to me, that reality is normal. It's everyday. It's something I also live with.

I cry when talking about Andrew and especially when talking about him with people who haven't been down this road. But when talking with friends who are also mourning the loss of their babies, I don't cry. I am free to use sarcasm and dark humor and ask them dark questions about specific details pertaining to the deaths of their children. In some universe, we almost pretend like they're alive by talking about them. We keep their memories alive this way and it doesn't feel sad or upsetting to us.

I think back to January when I returned to work and two women approached me with their stories of stillbirth. They told me their detailed stories and shed no tears. They weren't even really interested in hugging me. They weren't uncomfortable and they weren't afraid to ask questions.

I've never been much of a crier in general. Baby loss definitely changed that. In some ways, though, my well has run dry. At least for this leg of the journey. Maybe this is part of the process of grief-- that I'm not sure. Emotion still fills my blood and soul, but the tears aren't fighting to escape nearly as easily.

Anniversary weekend!

We celebrated our anniversary early since it lands on a Monday this year. Since Elliot had recently been to South Haven, Michigan a few times for work purposes, we decided to head that way so that I could experience the quaint town, too. We left Saturday morning and drove along the coast through Indiana and into Michigan. We stopped off at the visitor's center (we're such tourists-- we did this all the time on our road trip last summer) to grab a map and learn more about the state.

We then headed straight to South Haven and had a late lunch at an awesome restaurant called Clementine's for lunch where we sampled a very tasty sarsparilla with our sandwiches. We walked around the little town, walked through a farmer's market, and then off to the car for more adventures.

Our next stop, blueberry picking. We chose DeGrandchamp Farms for the U-picking and headed out with our bucket. There were some serious pickers out there! I was hearing others say, "We've got two full buckets... I guess that's enough" -- enough for what? A football team? Our intentions were just to experience the picking and to grab enough for a snack. We only picked about a pint and paid our 75 cents before heading on our way. It was just perfect, though, because we were able to pick only what we deemed suitable for our tastes. This meant that no mushy berries were chosen and there were a lot of reddish (under-ripe) berries because I like them sour, as I do most of my fruits. We hadn't been "picking" since we headed out a few years ago in the California fall (feels like summer) to pick apples with our friends Nik & Solange.

Then we were off to South Haven beach. I'm a Southern California beach girl, born and raised. You can see how I might have been apprehensive about this idea of a "beach" in the Midwest. Well, I thought it was wonderful! The sound of the beach that I love so much of crashing waves was present, the sand was soft and not silt-like as it is in the Florida gulf, the water was relatively warm, and the water was fairly clean. Some differences I noticed were that the water is without salt (it's a lake, after all), the sand area is a bit more shallow, and people brought floaties with them! Though there were waves, people still thought that if they blew up a floaty that they'd be able to lay leisurely and float. Not with those waves!

Most importantly, we felt that this is just as good of a "beach" experience (despite it being a lakefront) as it could or would be in Manhattan, Hermosa, or Redondo Beaches. I guess the most important thing was how family-friendly and unpretentious it felt being there. There were just a bunch of families spending the day together. We pictured bringing our own children there and renting out beach condos to stay for the weekend with friends and their kids. It's becoming clear that our lives have just barely scratched the surface of excitement. Soon we'll get to share this gorgeous world with our own little one.

This is the pier at South Haven. There isn't much to it, really.

We're now at the end of the pier for this lighthouse photo. You can find these lighthouses at many popular lakefront "beach" piers in Michigan.

Pretty nice, right?

We walked in the water for a bit and it was so nice!

After leaving South Haven, we got back in our hot car (thank goodness for air conditioning!) and set forth to Holland. We've been to the real Holland, so we weren't expecting to be blown away or to pay for any replica we'd already seen at the real deal! Well, we weren't blow away. It is a relatively large town north of South Haven along the Michigan coast. We did see that they advertised a "windmill island" of which was indeed a... windmill. It was closed and I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay since we'd seen windmills in so many other countries of the world that were authentic and often still used! While we saw some in Germany, most of them were seen in Amsterdam and the surrounding areas and countries. There are many that exist all over the world as well as in the U.S. Here's a photo of the one I took in Holland, Michigan.

I don't have photos to share, but our next stop was to our hotel-- then to Grand Haven. It's a bigger (and less quaint) version of South Haven but in the north. We drove there just to check it out and have dinner in a new city. We parked, walked around the waterfront there, gazed at everyone's ice cream cones in envy, and sat down for dinner at a restaurant overlooking the water. I generally do not believe in having Mexican food at a restaurant that serves all genres of food, simply because it's never as good as a restaurant that specializes in that type of food. Well, this was no different. Mediocre, but filling. I did enjoy drooling over the mojitos at other tables as I drank my club soda with lime. December will come.

We began to walk back to our car at 10 p.m. (they are on eastern time zone-- a bit hard to get used to for only a night's stay) and saw a very large area of bleachers overlooking the waterfront. The bleachers were packed with people! We walked down and read that they had light shows from Memorial Day until Labor Day, ever night. The light shows are done to the sound of popular music and the water fountains change colors and arrangements. I attempted a photo, but I won't bother. I'll just link you to a better place to see the spectacle. We stayed for only one song as we felt that the trillions of mosquitoes were eating our insides. At some point, the bugs do win. 

On a complete side note, I must mention something that disturbed me. For those who have ever experienced a Rite Aid drug store... this is speaking to you. Growing up in So Cal, we called these "Thrifty" stores. Thrifty served ice cream by the scoop in a strange cylinder shape with a tiny hole in the top from where the scoop extracted it onto the cone. My favorite flavors are (in this order): Chocolate Malted Crunch, Mint Chocolate Chip, Pistachio Nut (though I love pistachios, I hate them in ice cream. I pick them out), Chocolate Chip, and Sherbert. Every Thrifty carried this divine ice cream. And when Thrifty was purchased by this strange sounding name of a store called Rite Aid, they carried on the Thrifty ice cream name... as they should. On our recent trip to Cali, I attempted to purchase a lovely scoop of my ice cream delight... but they were all out of the CMC. Though feeling defeated, I opted for my second choice and stuck with the Mint Chocolate Chip. Fine. Well, there are no Rite Aid markets in Illinois. But, as we drove down a street in Michigan, I saw the lovely sign, assuming I was about to indulge in the best ice cream! We walked in. I see the cashier, photo lab, pharmacy, a bunch of overpriced drugstore items down the rows, but no ice cream. Ugh. Fine. I'll just buy some from the freezer section. None. to. be. found. NONE! Isn't that tragic, my dear west coast friends?

Now completely off topic, I'll continue on to what is today, Sunday. We woke up at our hotel in Holland, Michigan and decided what we wanted to do for the day. We decided to check out another beach at St. Joseph. We headed south past South Haven and to this beach town. Much like the others we visited, they all had waves, lots of people...

We walked the beach for a bit and headed back up to the car. Before we got there, I took advantage of what seemed like a good wash facility for my sandals. Kids were playing in this splash park that was entirely funded by the Whirlpool company, whose world headquarters are located in St. Joseph.

Then, off to another place I'd never been-- Notre Dame University. We left Michigan and headed southeast before arriving in South Bend, Indiana. We drove through the sleepy town to check out the campus. Ray had been to Notre Dame during his Air Force Lacrosse days when he flew in on private military jets to play ND. We parked the car and took a walk through some of the campus and on to the Basilica and Admissions building. As we walked, we listened to a few high school juniors being given a prospective student tour of the campus by a current ND student. Since we're joining the parenthood population, it's really wild to think about our future summers and the campus tours we'll take with our own kids when the time is right.

Here's the Basilica.

This fancy building is actually the admissions and main office building for the university.

We had a great weekend. Life couldn't possibly be more exciting than sharing it with my wonderful husband.

Cheers to two years and a lifetime of more!