What a weekend!

It's amazing how you can go from feeling completely depressed and hopeless to feeling so much joy and gratitude in just a few days.

Thank you all so very much for your comforting words and emails, and even chocolate covered strawberries!



It helped more than you'll ever know.

And thank you to my sister-in-law, Tomoko, for taking me out shopping and to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner. I had never been there before, but there was a two hour wait so I thought this place must be good.
It was!
And it made me feel more caucasian than I've ever felt before.

And thank you, thank you, thank you everyone for all your help with the Mother's Day service project.
It turned out fantastic!
Check out what a bunch of bloggers can accomplish.







This is all because of blogging!

Also a big thank you to Bath and Body Works. They were also making gifts for homeless women and gave us all the stuff they weren't using. So we got a bunch of free items and a big discount on the other stuff we bought.

Tomoko and I stayed up pretty late putting these things together. She's so creative and crafty and made everything look so cute.
I was planning on throwing everything into a walmart sack and tying it together with a twisty tie. But she suggested ribbons and colorful Easter grass, and it turned out great.







We were able to make 14 gift baskets, one for every woman living in the Rescue Haven shelter; no one was left out! The Bath and Body Works team donated to the YWCA.

Thank you all so much!

Now I guess I should jot down a few things about my Mother's Day.
It was fabulous.
Z took the kids Mother's Day shopping on Saturday. He let them choose anything in the store they thought I would like. Evan ran straight to the candy section and chose a bag of coconut m&m's for me because of the girl m&m on the front.



Meici had a more difficult time trying to find what I'd like.
Z asked her what she thought I wanted most in the whole world and Meici said, "a new BABY!"
So then he asked what's the second thing mom would like most, and she said, "a real kitty!"
She ended up getting me a cherry sucker.
I also got the food dehydrator I've been wanting.
It's awesome; I've been eating dried apples, kiwis, and mangoes all day.
I love my family and fruit so much!

I still think about the little baby that could have been.
But yesterday when Z told me his work would be having a Lagoon day next month, for a brief second I kind of got a little excited that I wasn't pregnant anymore. The last time I went to Lagoon was seven years ago, the day before I left for China to teach English, I haven't been on a roller coaster since.
I felt completely guilty for feeling that way so I said a little prayer to Heavenly Father and told Him that of course I would rather have another child than a day at an amusement park.
It's the truth, and I hope He believes me.

Anyway, thanks again everybody. I don't know what I'd do without you.

Don't ever come back and read this post, Mary! You're warning you!!!

Yesterday was by far the worst day of my life. My eyes hurt so bad from crying, but I can't close them because the back of my eyelids are playing a horrible movie of what happened, and I hate horrible movies, especially ones that are based on actual events, and ESPECIALLY ones that are based on MY actual events.

I lost my baby.

Here I go again with the crying. And not just your average listening to an on-star commercial crying, this is major looking into the heavens and wailing type crying.
But I just can't help it.
It hurts so bad.

I was 11 weeks along. I thought I was out of the miscarriage woods.
I read somewhere that over 90% of miscarriages happen by week 8. I'M NEVER READING ANYTHING AGAIN!!!
I waited until week 11 to announce it. I went to other blogs and saw people posting belly pictures of week 5.
I thought everything was fine. I've never had any health problems or pregnancy complications. Plus I'm only 26.
I thought I'd for sure be bringing home a baby and nursing it my thanksgiving dinner milk.
I was this close from being done with my first trimester (THE WORST TRIMESTER!).
I was already thinking of names.
This baby was already a part of the family.
I already loved him (we kinda wanted a boy) so much.
The kids were so excited.
Evan would tickle my tummy trying to get the baby to laugh.
And now it's gone.
I went through the sick and nauseating first trimester and then went through, well... labor, I guess, it sure felt like it, but I didn't get a baby.
I had no idea how physically excruciating this could be.
Man, it hurt.
And now that the physical pain is gone there's more room for the emotional pain to roam around. And that's even worse.
For a while I thought I was dreaming, so I tried to fly, but I couldn't, then I knew it was real.
Right now I'm just trying not to think about it.
But little thoughts like, what would he have looked like, or images of Evan and Meici holding and kissing him keep popping into my mind and tormenting me.

While I was lying on my bed squirming in pain and texting my husband to hurry the freak home I noticed the Pollyanna DVD next to the TV. I was at the library the other day and checked it out for some reason, I hadn't seen it since I was a kid. I watched it the day before I miscarried. I remembered Pollyanna's little game she used to play called the glad game. When she was in a negative situation she would always look for something to be glad about. Well, I tried to play along and find the silver lining to what I was going through, but I couldn't.
So I shouted, "The townspeople of Harrington were right about you, Pollyanna! Your little glad game IS stupid! NOW GO AWAY!" and then the DVD hopped off the shelf and shamefully sulked out the door, and I got back to my squirming.

But then Meici came in and asked me what was wrong. I told her everything. I told her the baby died. And then without hesitation she said, "But mom, Jesus died too, and he came back, and the baby will come back too. Jesus is going to find our baby and say, 'Ooooohhh what a BEAUTIFUL baby!' and pick it up and carry it to you and say, 'here's your baby, Mary, he's back!'" She got a huge hug after that. Sometimes I can't believe she's only three years old. But most times I can.

Then my husband came home with the pads I told him to get. Only they weren't really pads, they were XL depends adult diapers. That made me laugh, something I thought I wouldn't be doing for a long time.
Then he held me and we cried together. And I realized what an amazing husband I have, he even offered to cook an eggplant dish for me because he says eggplant helps your body make more blood, and I had lost A LOT of blood, he's so smart (if he's right... I have no idea). It was 10:30 at night and we didn't have any eggplant so I said no. I told him I was going to miss all the special treatment I got while being pregnant, then he told me "You'll always be pregnant to me." If I didn't know him any better I would have been outraged and thought what the...? are you calling me fat?! But I know what he meant.

And then just a few minutes ago (holy smokes it's almost 5 am!) I went to the bathroom to change my diaper and found a big bug. Last week I would have run to my husband to kill it, but tonight I just looked it in its ugly face and said, "You think you can mess with me tonight?! You have NO IDEA what I've been through!!! You think I'm scared of you?! Not any more! I ain't scared of nothin!" Then I got a couple squares of toilet paper, really just a couple, grabbed the bug and threw it in the toilet, I didn't even squish it with a shoe first.

So you can come out now, Pollyanna. I guess you were a little right, it is possible to find some gladness in even the most dismal of situations.
I think I became a stronger person because of all this, at least bug-killing wise. And I love and appreciate my family even more now. I honestly didn't think I could love my children any more than I already did. But I do! I am eternally grateful for them and love them beyond words. This experience has made me want to become a better mother. Life is so precious, and I am not going to waste a minute of it.


P.S.
Remember the Mother's Day service project? You know how it was supposed to be an activity with my church? Well, there has been a separation of church and blog. The church is no longer involved, because of scheduling difficulties only. There were no free Saturdays in May (even though they told me to think of an activity for the first part of May, preferably something to do with Mother's Day) so they offered to move it to June. But I really wanted the women to receive these gifts on the actual Mother's Day holiday. So I told them I'd just do it myself with the money I've raised. So this project is entirely blog sponsored! Isn't it amazing what a bunch of bloggers can accomplish? I'm sure J.P. Blogspot would be proud to see his little business doing so much good.
I'm going shopping on Saturday so there's still time to donate if you want to.
Thanks so much to everyone who has already donated and linked.
They say service is the best cure for depression, so I can't wait to get started.

You Guessed It!

Something weird is happening to me. My mustache is coming in extra thick but there isn't a full moon until the end of the month.
I guess I must be pregnant.

Morning sickness has been really clingy lately and looking at the computer screen seems to make my nausea ten times worse.

We want to move soon, closer to Z's work, so when I do feel well enough to get on the computer, it's usually just to check the classifieds for places to live.
We found the perfect place but the owner doesn't really like renting to Chinese people because the cooking is too smoky. Which was odd because the owner himself is Chinese. Anyway, I told him I do most of the cooking, and being an American my dinners aren't smoky at all, mostly just microwaved or delivered.
We still didn't get the place... bummer.

So that's what's been going on lately. I've been sick in bed while the kids continue to monopoly our walls (getting monopoly money wet and sticking it to the walls) when are they going to stop thinking this is so much fun?

Speaking of the kids, they already love this new baby so much, and are so glad I was outside riding my bike and accidentally swallowed a fairy and that now it's turning into a baby.