Thursday, December 13, 2012

Gratitude

I follow a Queer Parents group online, I joined the TTC when we started trying last year, and have stepped back from actively participating in the past several months when we put everything on hold, but it's been fun watching my fellow TTCers conceive and go on to have healthy babies.

There is much more acknowledgment of non-gestional parents now than there was previously.  I feel deeply grateful that I don't have to justify being called "mama", that no one's given me a weird look at being a mother, no one asks if I'm "the father" or anything equally silly.

I am so grateful.  My role as the future mother of our kids is not up for debate, I can simply relax and ENJOY IT and not have to worry about explaining it all the time.

In other words, I'm feeling excessively cranky today, which means it's time for real pants and a walk.  In the freezing cold and pouring rain.  Ahhhh the west coast....

Friday, November 2, 2012

The Price of Love is Grief

The title of this post came from my favourite podcast, The Savage Lovecast (with Dan Savage).  I suppose a better line would be that the price of love is to risk grief.

I love being a primary nurse.  I love having the same babies, getting to know the parents, working towards getting them home.  I love watching them grow, and try to keep in touch when they go home.

My very first primary was a baby girl named Erin.  She was born with only a 10% chance of survival from a left sided congenital diaphramatic hernia.  She fought, she lived.  She was still struggling with some fairly serious medical issues when she suddenly died last night.

I stayed in touch with her mom thanks to the wonders of social media.  I saw them every time they were in my 'hood for check-ups and follow-ups.  I watched Erin grow and become this funny, mischievous and resourceful toddler.

We have babies who die at work, it's always like a punch in the gut, but I don't KNOW the families and I don't know the babies, so I am removed.  By being a NICU nurse, I have accepted the inevitability that some babies WILL die, and that sometimes it's better if they do (when they're option is to live in agony for the rest of their lives).  This is an entirely new level of grief.  I was at work while all of this happened, surrounded by people who understood my tears and gave me the space I needed to just have a moment, who don't think it's weird for "getting attached", who would have taken over my assignment if I had needed to go away for a bit.  My BFF happened to be working too, which helped tremendously.

I feel like it's just a terrible nightmare, that this cannot have possibly happened, that this (rather large) baby I cradled in my arms to soothe her cries is no longer here.  That this baby with the biggest and most beautiful eyes you've ever seen on a baby has closed those eyes forever.

I feel absolutely heartsick for her truly amazing and wonderful mother, her dad and her siblings, especially her big sister who just doted on Erin and loved her with every fibre of her being.

 Blessed be, little one.  May your wings carry you high and onto your next adventure.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Thanksgiving

It's interesting that this blog has become the emotional dumping ground for whatever I don't want to carry with me through my days, or whatever I don't want to dwell on.  It makes me sound like a rather miserable human being, and I'm sorry for that!  In real life I'm smiley and giggly and sort of ridiculous.

Like every other Canadian, I thought about all the things I am thankful for this past weekend.  We had dinner with very close family friends (we jokingly call them my "other" set of parents, and their two kids are as close to us as siblings.  Their oldest is 9 days younger than me, our parents met in prenatal class).  It's a tradition that we have stuck to, despite the fact that we really don't see each other much.  I consider them family and are thus invited to all family gatherings.  I am deeply thankful for them, as I had a house and people who welcomed me with open arms at all times.  It also filled the hole that I had growing up, without any biological family around me.  I didn't have cousins to play with (my 2 cousins are 8 and 10 years older than me and live on the other side of the country).  My parents filled their lack-of-family hole with this other family, and there is an intimacy built on 28 years of family dinners, shared vacation, sleepovers, hiking, biking and general outdoorness.

I am incredibly thankful for my wife, as I look at her just about every day with the stupid expression that belays how amazing I think she is.  She is my favourite person, I rarely get tired of her (could be because we also have different interests).  I have learned so much about myself because she has helped me to look deeper.  She has so much time and love invested in me, and likewise.  We have given each other space to grow, and support to grow together.  It's been a fantastic five and a half years, which blows both of our minds!!  In a way I am also thankful for our infertility issues, because it's reinforced how much of a priority we need to make US, and how we need to have other things to do than just be mommies.  One day our kids will be grown and neither of us want to stare at each other going "ok, so now what?"

I am thankful for our privilege, that we have money and food, we are safe.  Nobody's shooting at us, I can go to work without being raped or kidnapped or enslaved.  My problems are generally first world problems.  My complaints revolve around why my internet or iPhone are working so slowly, not whether I will survive another day or how to feed my family.  I have a job I love doing something that makes me feel GOOD about my contribution to society, that pays me enough that I can do things I enjoy, for my benefits, my sick and vacation time and for the incredible education opportunities.

I am thankful for my future children, who are already giving me grey hairs.  ;)

I am also thankful that the people around me have had generally a good year, with lots of exciting things that have happened (one friend got married, another adopted a little guy who is ADORABLE, another got through a rough spot in her life).  I am thankful that my mom's retirement in December will find her still well in mind and body, and that I will have many more years with her!

I am thankful for pumpkins.  Omg pumpkin.  The sugar pumpkins are so late this year that this completely bypassed thanksgiving... but oh lordy am I going to stock up and make lots of pumpkin puree!!


Peace out!


Monday, October 1, 2012

Goal setting

According to someone famous, all the overachievers in our culture are goal setters.  I set goals, usually, but I'm not known to write them down. DW has been in a transition state, and very unsure of where she's going and has thus been reluctant to make goals. We made a goal together: have a baby.

That goal is something that isn't working. It's more of it 3 year goal now. DW has gone back to school in an effort to get something out of her massive amounts of student loans.

I have also started (back) watching "Till Debt Do Us Part", with the ever wonderful Gail, who herds migrant finances back into well contained pens.  She did a series about babies, 3 in particular involved fertility treatments. It kept coming up loud and clear: your debt should be paid off as much as humanely possible before your jump into fertility baby making. Now I understand why our baby has not yet materialized, it's waiting for its parents to get their act together.

We are not in terrible shape by any stretch of the imagination, however our high cost of living (thanks, Vancouver) means that we need to work extra hard to clear up any stray bits.  This is totally do able, and it's do able and worth doing for everyone. Paying off debt is not something to be done later, Gail repeatedly shows math that clearly demonstrates that not dealing with the issue now means you will spend double in interest.

So, our challenge now is to get our financial house in order (and no more procrastinating) and get DW healthy and well, and to get her through school, and also to save for baby.

Monday, September 10, 2012

What to say?

I have tried blogging over the past month, it just feels like an exhausting exercise rather than a release of words.

We had our appointment with the gyne surgeon, and she laid everything out, everything looked to be OK.  We got our pre-op list and everything in the mail, including a date for her surgery.  We stopped looking at donor profiles (clearly TOO early), and started focusing on getting ready for her surgery (October).

And then on my last set, I got home in the morning from my very last shift and J was in agony and throwing up.  Thinking it was just her biliary tree spasming, she took her drugs and tried to wait.  3 hours later, nothing had changed, so off to the ER we went.

J had appendicitis and required emergency surgery to remove her appendix.  Fortunately it didn't rupture, and her healing time was pretty quick (except for getting a really yucky sore throat 3 days post-op).  However, it has completely destroyed our plans.  Set them on fire, throw them under the bus, completely crush them under your feet destroy.  Clearly J won't be having a fibroid removal in 5 weeks, clearly there is SOMETHING ELSE much more sinister going on that we need to address post-haste.

J has also gone back to school, which is a huge financial commitment for the next 2 years.  For me it means working OT to help her pay for school (since I make too much money for her to qualify for student loans, which she has quite enough of already).  I feel like I'm drowning in financial obligations, leaving almost no room to do anything else, which is really scary when I think about adding a baby.

I'm suddenly not coping well with this either. I feel so incredibly disheartened and sad and bitter, to the point where I feel like I just spend every day covering how sad I am.

Some small nice things have come from it though, I'm learning to really appreciate each day (even though I'm crushed inside), to appreciate spending time with my wife, just the two of us, and to focus on each moment, because that's the only thing that's getting me through.  I'm trying to get a life outside of home and work, trying to read more, eat more leafy green vegetables.  Can't say it's a bad thing...

However it's like a sharp stabbing sensation when well meaning strangers ask a very simple question "so are you guys planning to have kids?".


Thursday, July 12, 2012

Slow movement forward

DW's hysteroscopy went... well... not exactly as expected.  She has a rather large fibroid on the back wall of her uterus, right where the nice little embryos like to implant the most often.

So.  Now there's surgery in our future.

Picking the donor, however, has proved to be that much more hysterical than I could have ever imagined.  It's just SO funny.  Also, we're so un-picky that we are overwhelmed with choices.  Do we pick a donor with blue eyes?  Do we pick one who is Chinese and have one kid that is 3/4 Chinese and the other 1/2 (and then include a good dosing of Asian culture in their upbringing, which I think they'll get anyways, irregardless of their DNA origins).

I have an interesting view on our choice of possibly using an Asian donor.  DW is 1/2 Chinese, I am not.  I feel that if we choose this route, we have a responsibility to ensure that they are well immersed in their ethnic origins, despite the fact that their donor is American (the Canadian sperm bank sucks.  No, seriously.  It's terrible) and most of the American Chinese donors have barely a trace of an accent.  Our kids will be Canadian, and living on the west coast, that Canadian identity isn't really based on the amount of melatonin in your skin or the shape of your eyes.  I'm enjoying the project of deconstructing what I *think* is important to a child's racial identity, despite the fact that I have no ability to ask our kids about this.

The blue eyed donor choice is simply that we figure both of us carry a recessive blue eyed gene, and that it would be a fun game to try to "customize" our kids.

Oohhhh the customizing of children, that's another blog post entirely...

Sunday, July 1, 2012

More prepping

So DW had her HSG, in which all looks well except for a tiny blip on the side of her uterus.  Now she gets to go for a hysteroscopy, in which they will thread a camera into her uterus to look at it.

We rebooked our donor orientation as there was too much going on that day, it's next week!  And then we have to pick a donor and figure out how we're going to pay for sperm.  Huzzah!

I'm so much more apprehensive this time around, last year we were full of hope and ambition and being confident that I would be holding a baby by this time instead of still struggling through this.  I suppose it's because forking out $1K/month to do this is a bit terrifying.  I suppose also that it's because I'm just used to disappointment.  If this doesn't work, it's going to be so much more disappointing.  We're giving this one shot, and then throwing in the towel for a couple of months and taking a looonngg break, which makes me really really sad.  But such is life.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Donor Picking

I haven't really written about the process of donor picking yet.  I joke in RL that this it's "flipping through the Ikea catalogue" (even though it's all done online).  We've only just begun to look at donors, and it's surprising, or rather unsurprising, what's important to us and what is kind of unimportant.

Generally, sperm banks only accept donors over a certain height.  They are generally all post-secondary, with good family histories (it goes back 2 generations on maternal and paternal sides).  ALL of them seem to be incredibly remarkable people with big hearts (in Canada you don't get paid to donate sperm).  The sperm is quarantined for 6 months and retested to ensure it's clean, it's screened and DNA tested for things like CF and other "big" diseases.  The morphology (what the sperm look like) is closely inspected, and donors have to have a good sperm-thaw count (i.e., even of the donor has a great sperm count to begin with, it may not defrost well).

All of them have at least one post-sec degree (most of them seem to have at least a Masters).  They're either incredibly talented athletes or musicians or artists or SOMETHING.  It makes me feel like I've been wasting my talents!  A lot of them want to become parents.  We are looking for an ID release donor, as I don't feel that completely cutting off my kids' ability to find their donor later is something that I am comfortable doing.

In any case, soon the great sperm hunt will begin.  Oh the hysteria...


Repose

I had a big cry a week ago, I just sobbed and sobbed because I was so resentful and bitter and hating myself for being this way.  J brought me back to earth, reminded me of what we're doing, where we're going, and why we're still at this.

And then I found peace.  I realized that I'm not spending enough time in the NOW, that I keep looking at what I don't have instead of what I do have.  I know we will have kids, but I just had to work through this.  I'm finally truly happy for all my friends who do have babies or are pregnant, not just full of bitter seething resentful jealousy.  I am finally enjoying my days with my wife, taking full advantage with the (hopeful) thought that this will be our last solo summer ever.

We had our Provincial health mandated counselling appointment (to use a fertility clinic, you have to see a counsellor as part of the screening process.  It's great, they should make any potential parents do it!!).  DW has another pelvic exam type thing, we have our donor insemination appointment on my birthday, and then we get to order sperm!  The plan is to order it in time for August, although we may not even BE here, in which case we'll insem in September.  DW is planning to go back to school in September, so we'll have a lot to work through.

In the meantime, I'm going to thoroughly enjoy my "champagne birthday" (I turn 28 on the 28th next week!), spend time with my lovely wife and do lots of yoga.

Tonight I'm heading up to camp for a night, as it's our Guide retreat (Girl Guides, it's all the adults, our end of year hooray/dinner/extravaganza), so it will be fantastic on all accounts!

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Waiting and Waiting

This afternoon I called to book our Donor Sperm Orientation appointment at our RE's office.  I mentioned that we didn't want to leave it too late, as DW ovulates sometime in early July, to which the absolutely lovely woman on the other end of the line informed me that they don't get their sperm in time.

What???

Turns out, because this clinic does SO many donor sperm insems per year, they get all their shipments packaged once a month and shipped, thereby eliminating shipping fees for patients (WHICH IS AWESOME).  However, we'll have missed the deadline for our ordering by the time our appointment rolls around (which coincides with my birthday).  Which means, we'll be missing July (WHICH SUCKS).  We will most likely be in Calgary for the August ovulation, so we're looking at September.  Which makes my heart hurt.  Like.... hard.

But, I guess it's not all bad, especially since my last post whining about whether this was even an ethical choice for us for financial reasons... One of my things will be paid off by then, and thus I can get my CC under control a little better.  We can save up.  DW has more time to find a job.

But it still sucks.  September... so we're looking at a June 2013 baby at the very earliest (well... it could be earlier but let's not go there).  I know it's only a couple of months, but it's heart breaking.  But we'll have a good solid summer off, regroup, re-sort, finish the house, spend some serious QT with each other, maybe do a little bit of traveling to my family's cabin and just hang out.

Just keep swimming...

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Feeling whiney

I shouldn't whine, I know I shouldn't.  DW and I are *so* lucky to live in an incredible condo in a gorgeous city, close to our incredibly supportive parents.  We just bought a brand new car, we have money in the bank (although right at this moment there's not a lot of it!), food in the fridge, I have a job (DW is currently searching for a job).  I have so much to be thankful for.

But I still feel lost, because we aren't parents yet.  I just ovulated today, so I'm extra moody and whiney about this currently.  It's been a year.  That ticker I installed on the sidebar has reset the bunnies back to the front.  UGH.

There's a rather large and ever growing list of people around me who are happily pregnant, and for the most part blissfully unaware of how lucky they are that it didn't take a ton of trying (some of these people I'm assuming, since they were either recently married or told me not that long ago that they weren't planning to start trying for kids yet).  Our last round was in March/April since we found out KD had abnormal sperm morphology, so we've been on a break for a good long while.  DW has pretty much stopped temping, and she's even stopped her prenatal vitamins.  I'm sure there's a deeper reason for this, but we haven't really unpacked it yet since we're busy unpacking our house.  We're eating decently, but not getting enough physical activity, which has consequently made me feel rather disgusting.

It's weird that I've amassed this sort of... I don't know what you would call it... ability? to decide what I want, and then simply work towards it single mindedly until I get it.  And usually it appears quickly.  I hoped that TTC would go this fast, but it just didn't.... and hasn't.

Case in point: we decided to buy a place in January.  We found a real-estate agent, but then went on vacation.  Came back mid-February.  Saw 6 places, loved the 3rd one we saw, put an offer in that night, was accepted, deposit paid and paperwork signed on DW's birthday (Feb 22nd), closed April 3rd, moved April 27th.  Done done done.

Next case: we desperately needed a new car (our 1996 Subaru wagon was going to cost us nearly $4K in repairs, plus it needed new tires and sucked gas like you wouldn't believe).  Find car.  Test drive it once.  Don't even bother to shop around.  Buy it the next day.  Done.

So, spending a year trying for something we want SO BADLY has been difficult.  Surprisingly not difficult on our marriage, but difficult on our ability to get anything else done.  I feel as though I'm on the precipice of the next round though, even if we don't know when that next round will be.

Since we're purposefully TTC, I worry that bringing a child into a slightly tenuous financial situation isn't necessarily fair, that we should be extra responsible and pre-plan everything BECAUSE WE CAN.  TTC with KD wasn't really an issue, because we didn't yet have a mortgage and a car payment, but now we do, and now we have to pay for sperm...  It makes me feel like I'm not really a grown up, like I'm just playing at life.  I feel like being responsible means having a child when all your consumer debt is paid off ("you can go outside to play when your room is clean").  It's a fine line between the ticking clock and paying off my credit card...  However, as my lovely DW keeps pointing out, it's just money and there will never be enough of it, but there is always more.

Babies, however, don't last forever.  Eggs have a shelf life.  Time to go.


Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Starting Over

We had our consult with one of the local fertility clinics, which was great!  I'm a little terrified of the expense, since we have a greatly reduced financial cushion... but at the end of the day, it's only money, and having kids running around is WAY more important.

Our new place is great!!  My only slight annoyance is that it's kind of far from everyone, but I somehow seem to be more willing to drive than I used to be.  Weird.  I love our neighbourhood and our own space, and everything.  We're still finishing off projects and planning new ones (3 weeks after we moved in, the front of the cutlery drawer came off, and that's when I realized that it's only held on with ONE screw into compressed wood chip board.  There is no other options for a second screw, short of drilling through metal...  Oh well.  Thus is homeownership!  But I love it!

Now we're onto looking through the "ikea catalogue" for donors.  And buying a new car, since ours has awful gas mileage!  Exciting!

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Well, at least we had a plan B....

After not getting pregnant month after month, we asked our KD to go get his swim team checked again, just to see what was up.

Count: AMAZING.
Motility: PHENOMENAL.
Morphology: absolute crap.  Totally abnormal.

Needless to say we are heartbroken, heartbroken for not having kids who could grow up with a relationship with their biological father and heartbroken that we've wasted SO MUCH TIME trying and trying and trying and nothing after month of nothing.  The abnormal sperm morphology freaks me out, because I see the really crazy super rare genetic abnormalities at work and they're never good things (they look relatively  normal, but their insides never work properly, and a lot of them die before they're two).

Needless to say, this was the first month I was relieved that we weren't pregnant.

We now have an appointment next week with a local fertility clinic, I'm not sure what they'll have us do, but J has a ton of bloodwork to get done before then, I believe there's a mandatory counselling session we have to do, and of course the Ikea Catalogue picking of donors.

It's totally crazy to think of all the things we could have done/should have done, that we would have had a baby by now.  Or maybe not.  Clearly our baby is not ready to show up yet, so I can only cling to that.

I'm waffling on starting to take a prenatal, since switching uterii is Plan C.

Also, since we bought a condo, we move in two days, so everything is packed and a complete disaster right now.

It'll all sort itself out in good time!!

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Just keep swimming...

I'm not finding the blog as cathartic as I thought it would... I guess that I spend so much time just trying to move forward and not keep dwelling on things, and explaining where we're at to people CONSTANTLY, that it seems redundant.

The questions of "so hows the baby making thing going" are starting to blindside me. It's just such a sad, heartbreaking, sad thing we're in the middle of at the moment, that it's hard to not be upset.

J got another BFN this month, even when her luteal phase went on an extra THREE DAYS.

Needless to say we were sad, angry and frustrated. Deeply deeply frustrated. So, we're switching it up. J got her requisition for one of the fertility clinics and so we're headed in that direction. Bye bye to known donor and hello to drugs and the wonderful world of frozen spunk and IUIs.

Our house is mostly packed, J has done a phenomenal job. I am working a ton, we are trying to pay a mortgage and rent (augh!)... fun times.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Haitus, and other things

Well life has certainly picked up a pace. We're still not pregnant, but it's been a good lesson in patience. February definitely didn't work, J knew right away that it hadn't worked. I feel good for March though, but we'll see.

So we are moving! We bought a condo 45 mins from where we are now! I'll have to start commuting to work, but I can live with that. We'll have space for our kids and we're close to parks and trails and all kinds of outdoor stuff. We're so excited, since neither of us have owned before! It's also a welcome distraction from our lack-of-pregnancy, which is getting harder and harder to cope with each month. J is taking longer and longer to swing back from a BFN, and I'm getting more and more frustrated and discouraged.

The most UNHELPFUL thing people keep saying is "you have to stop stressing, it'll happen". It sounds like "we're tired of talking about this, you should just shut up about it and get over it". My allopathic doctor actually said the most helpful thing: "you just have to keep at it, keep trying". That was much more supportive and much less dismissive than "it'll happen". I want to throttle all the nice, well meaning people who keep saying that.

In the meantime, everyone around me is pregnant. And it's annoying, because most of them were not pre-planned. But I'm learning to get over it, to be at peace and work through what WE have to work through, that our baby is holding out for the right moment.

I find it harder when I perceive someone as flaunting their pregnancy/easily acquired child. I had someone complain that their doctor told them they had to wait to start trying for another child, and I was SO upset by that. Deeply deeply hurt, especially since this person knows how badly we want a baby. They've apologized and tried to mend the fence, but the cow's already escaped. I can't be supportive, it makes me too angry. I just have to walk away. Maybe when we have a little one I'll be able to be friends again, but for now the divide is just this gaping hole and I have absolutely no desire to cross it. It also really hurts when I feel completely blindsided by someone's pregnancy announcement, especially when I thought that they would tell me sooner. Maybe I expect too much? I've had to defriend people on FB because all they do is talk about how wonderful their pregnancy is and blah blah blah and I feel like it's just making me miserable, so I take myself out of the situation. My actual friends who are pregnant I'm happy for, but I'm sad for us, sad that it's not our time yet. So it's extremely bittersweet. As someone in the forum I frequent says "it's not the baby lottery. Each person has their own odds. Someone getting pregnant before you is not stealing YOUR baby". Although I've never felt like that, so it's still ruminating.

J's BFF had her beautiful baby boy last week, I had 35 weeks to get used to that, as did she, so it wasn't a completely horrible experience. It helped tremendously that when we went over to hold/clean/cook/do laundry/force Dad to have a nap/etc that I felt useful. I'm super confident when it comes to babies, because that's my job. The baby smiled while J was holding him (in his sleep, gas related) so I think that helped TREMENDOUSLY.

Another hard piece of news I've had to swallow is that I'm being tested for PCOS. I have multiple symptoms of it, so I get to have a whole boatload of bloodwork done on Monday. I'm also being tested to see exactly HOW sensitive I am to gluten, so I've been gluten loading for almost 2 weeks now. It's been kinda fun, I kinda backed off on it for a couple of days because I was working and I get really gassy. I've realized that my gluten intake mostly centres around dessert, but I think I knew that already!!

So. Packing. Hoping. Praying. Inseminating! We don't refer to the 2nd bedroom as the baby's room, I feel too much like it's jinxing it! We're planning on just storing stuff in it. It's not like the baby needs much when it's first born either, especially since we plan to breastfeed, baby wear, co-sleep and give elimination communication a shot (if not, we have a stash of cloth diapers, since the smell of disposable diapers grosses me out!). I might sit on my hands and not immediately buy a stroller, either!

And now since I'm post-nights, I'm off to bed.

Friday, January 27, 2012

Skipping a month

We skipped January, mostly to give J's body a chance to heal, and because we were in Mexico for 2 weeks, and we would have spent almost the ENTIRE trip waiting for a positive or negative. We were in Puerto Vallarta, which is perfectly safe in terms of water and food, but I always worry about picking up a bug. I didn't want to have to worry about potential fetus friend while we were on vacation, so we just skipped it. A great decision. We lost a month (which also came with the pregnancy announcement for a friend, which resulted in J being in tears because she's getting frustrated), but we're back on and ready to start up again next week.

Andddd the fun begins again!

Monday, January 2, 2012

Happy New Year!

My ringing in the new year consisted of wearing scrubs, cuddling an adorable (and very happy) NICU baby, while wearing a party had and drinking bubbly apple juice. I called J at midnight. Wasn't particularly exciting, but I was happy to do it.

2011 has been a lovely year for us! We got married, made big plans, are started TTC. We don't have a baby quite yet, but I feel that it is near, very much on the horizon. I am learning to be patient, that it will come.

In the meantime I'm making myself a post-night shift sleep dinner (consisting of rice, lentils and squash! I might even make a salad, I'm so decadent!).

We've been working on ripping all of our CD's onto an external HD so that we aren't hauling them around with us when we move. This means when I hit "play" and "shuffle" on iTunes, the resulting mix is *extremely* eclectic. It's rather entertaining.

2012 promises to be even bigger, since we will hopefully have our first little one, and we're definitely moving in a couple of months. We're adults now and got ourself pre-approved for a mortgage (it's a little one, comparatively, since I have no desire to waste my baby's newborn period working OT to pay for the mortgage).