Los Porchs

I am feeling the stress of the holidays in such a weird way this year.  All of the gifts are wrapped (mostly, except one... and the one I got for Porch... and one that I bought for someone special), the house is "decorated" and we have been doing the traditional things like St. Nick, cutting down & decorating our tree, baking cookies, etc.  I am functioning like a normal, adult human being. But I am also feeling this feel. This hope. This joy. This concept that the best is yet to come, that perhaps there's more to be excited about in 2017.  Charlotte is an amazing kid who challenges me daily and is the perfect mix of passionate and compassionate.  She asked me today where my heartbeat was and I nearly responded that she was my heartbeat but paused for fear that our very concrete thinker would take that as fact.  2017 will (hopefully) be the year that we get to experience life as a family of 4.  And even if it's not, the hope for future attempts and knowing

I have been spending more and more time in our infant rooms at work and find that it's not painful anymore.  In fact, it's been encouraging to me and reinforcing how much I love young infants and miss the baby stages now that Charlotte is CLEARLY not a baby.  "My do MYself."  (Excuse me .) That being said, we're moving forward.  We made an appointment with an RE here in Milwaukee to figure out our next step with regards to getting our 4 embabies in Chicago here in Wisconsin with us and hope to do a transfer some time in the coming months.  Sadly, the first available appointment isn't until February so we have lots of time to reflect and get excited before we dive right back into the world of hormones, anxiety, and battles with insurance. We are embracing change and taking the leap.  :) I'm not sure how much or when we'll post updates about the process, but I hope to share our story openly.  I know I'll never have the surprise pregnancy and

I know I say every age is my "favorite age."  But I really love the 2's.  Sure, this girl is spirited (beyond all belief) but she is also experiencing explosions of language development, social emotional understanding, and cognitive gains.  Daily she throws several new words into the mix and is exploring with sentence structure.  I am in awe of how much learning and development happens in the first three years; sure, I went to school specifically to study this, but seeing it play out in real life is fascinating. A personal favorites? "Where my Danie?" "My Ryan pooping." "My need 'dis fruit snack." "My Papa Nana go to zooooooooo." "Where my Oompa?" It's all about "my" and "needing" things.  Every time she sees something and we label, she demands to know where hers is; this includes but is not limited to siblings ("where my sister?"), all kinds of food, lip gloss, bronzer, cont