And we wait

All is well with the Campbell household.  School started in full force on Tuesday, and it seems to be going pretty well.  I'm tired, though!  Wrangling lessons for 2 kids and managing a 3-year-old is a lot of work!  Thomas is so excited to be in Kindergarten, and he is taking to his lessons very well.  I'm realizing that he really did absorb a lot while sitting at the school table last year, because a lot of the early Kindergarten work is actually a review of things he already knows.  Jack is also doing well, although he has more academic work than Thomas (as he's supposed to!) and sometimes the amount of it frustrates him when he'd rather be playing.  I completely understand -- it's hard for me to be a cheerful and patient teacher when I'm tired and feel like my work load is too high, too :).  But he is settling in well and I think it will just take a little time for everyone to get used to the new routine.

I'm so glad we'll have a good couple of months of routine schooling under our belt before the baby arrives.  I know we'll have a chaotic few weeks while we're all adjusting to having a newborn around, but I think (I hope!) we'll hop back into regular life more quickly since it will be habit by then. 

We continue to wait to hear about David's job offers.  Our hope is that we hear something next week and can begin the process of making a decision, but it could push out further than that.  It does appear that all of David's hard work in networking and cultivating excellent offers is just about done.  Now, HR and the various sites have to do paperwork and things on their end, and then we'll hear something.  So, that's a relief.  I'm also glad for the distractions of home schooling and preparing for a new baby because it doesn't give me a whole lot of time to obsess over all the endless possibilities!  I know once we make a decision about where we're going, we'll have a lot of preparations and trickle-down decisions to make, so I'm trying to enjoy this forced lull because the storm is coming :).

I don't think there are necessarily any "easy" scenarios.  If we go back to San Diego, we'll have a cross-country road trip to plan with a newborn, plus a couple of weeks of limbo before our house will be available to live in.  If we don't go back to San Diego, we have to decide if we can afford to keep the house in CA as a rental or if we'll be forced to short sell it (enter possible real estate lawyers, discussions with our mortgage company, etc).  And, at same time, we'll have to find our own housing in whatever city we will be in.  I know we'll make it all work out and we'll be just fine, but I think we're all really looking forward to Thanksgiving this year.  We figure by then, we'll be settled in nicely somewhere, all the uncertainties and decisions that we're facing now will have been dealt with, and we'll be out of the crazy first 6 weeks of newborn babyhood.  We can just sit back and enjoy a our family, a good feast, and be thankful for David's great job and for making it through.

We'll update everyone when we have more news.  We can't tell you how much your prayers mean to us.  I'm about 6 weeks from my due date (how did that happen?!?) and without your prayers I'm sure I wouldn't be nearly as calm and at peace with everything as I am.  Not to say that I don't have my moments (I do!  Sometimes I want to hide and just be pregnant and have nothing else to think about right now!), but I really do feel the grace of God holding us up through this.

Just for fun, here is a picture of my pregnant-tummy buddy:

Vacation photos!

Adjusting expectations

David learned yesterday that we may not actually hear about his various job offers on Aug 15th. His company will have some information on that date, but HR and his program will have some adjustments to do before they can present the offers to David, so it will likely take a bit longer for us to actually hear anything. How much longer? We don't know! I would think a few days or a week should be enough time, but we really don't know. So, we will continue to be as patient as we can, and we will update everyone when we know something, but it may be a little while yet.

In other news, I had an appointment yesterday that went a little sideways. The baby is doing great and and so am I, thankfully, but the dr and I had an interesting discussion about the delivery.

I've been expecting that I'll be able to try for a VBAC for this delivery, since my OBs have really encouraged it from the beginning, and everything went so well with Peter's, but yesterday my dr laid out the set of conditions that I have to meet in order to even be allowed to attempt a VBAC. Honestly, I'm really not sure I'll meet their criteria. The baby has to be estimated at under 8 lbs, and I have to go into labor on my own by my due date (they might let me go a couple of days overdue, but really would prefer not to). Peter was well over 8 lb and I think 9 days late, and I just don't think my body is designed to make small babies that arrive early!

They're having me get an ultrasound in about 5 weeks to estimate the baby's weight(even though these estimates are notoriously error-prone, even up to a pound or more), and the dr already commented yesterday that I seem to be measuring big. Ay! Her best advice was for me to follow the gestational diabetes diet (no refined sugars, super limited white starches like rice, pasta, bread, potatoes) to help ensure that the baby doesn't get too large. I think this is probably not a bad pregnancy diet anyway, so I'll follow it and add in some extra exercise also, but I really wouldn't be surprised if despite my best efforts, I fail one or more of their required conditions and am scheduled for a c-section. It was a little disappointing to hear all this now, when I'm nearly 8 months pregnant.

The most important thing, of course, is that we do whatever is safest for baby David and for me. This particular OB practice has such strict standards so they can err on the side of safety all around, and I can understand and respect that. Still, our month of October is going to be busy enough as it is and I would love to not have to add recovery from abdominal surgery to it all.

My other choice is to switch to a different doctor now who would not be quite so strict with the conditions (and there is such a dr out here who has great reviews) but his office and hospital are an hour away, on major highways when there is no traffic, and maybe 3 hours away in bad traffic (and let's face it, bad traffic is pretty much a given here). Compare that to my current doctors and hospital, which are 10-15 min away on surface streets, and I'm not sure how comfortable David or I would be with that switch.

Anyway, yesterday was definitely a day of our expectations being "adjusted", and I'm doing my best to hang on for the ride and try and see God's hand in it all. As always, we appreciate your prayers and we will keep you updated!

Baby steps to August 15th

We're closing in on 2 weeks until we have more information about the places where David will be offered work.  Two years of enjoying (and sometimes just plain enduring) this rotational program is coming to an end, and now we have big decisions and planning imminently ahead of us.  These past few weeks (and and the two still to come) are probably one of the most difficult and unsettling waiting periods I've ever experienced.  We've been fortunate so far to have good health in our family, so we've never had to wait for the results of serious medical tests, which I can only imagine is 1,000 times more nerve-wracking than waiting to hear about a job.  Still, this is the most stress we've really ever experienced.  We don't know what part of the country we'll be in, what size house or apartment we'll be able to afford if we don't return to CA, when we're moving out, etc. etc. 

I know that whatever happens and wherever we end up, our little family will be together and we'll be fine.  We'll get settled, find a local Catholic church, make friends, and make a happy home wherever we are.  But we still have a maze of factors to negotiate -- geography, salary, job position, cost of living, our house in CA, etc.  David has worked so hard in this program and he really has done well, and I know his job offers will reflect that, but we ask for your continued prayers as we try to discern the best path for our family! 

In the mean time, we've been keeping busy and have been enjoying our summer.  I've been finding it helpful just to focus on what chores and adventures we have lined up for each day, and to not even think about the "what ifs" and possible planning we have ahead of us.  We had such a wonderful vacation at the beach last month.  It was so great to spend time with Mom and Dad -- I only wish we could have teleported more of our family to come out and be there with us.  We got to go on a boat ride in Maryland this past weekend, courtesy of one of David's co-workers, and that was a blast.  The boys had the wind and sun in their faces and they loved speeding along the river.  Today, I took the boys to an indoor bounce house.  It was very hot and humid again today, and I felt like a change of pace from hanging around the house or visiting the pool.  The boys had a blast!  Jack said "Now we don't have to jump on the beds!".  I do think they got all of the bounces out of their systems pretty well, and it was nicely air-conditioned, which was a bonus!

On August 16th (I'm giving the boys the Feast of the Assumption off!), we'll start in on our next school year.  Thomas is so excited about starting his Kindergarten work!  Jack is also excited about 2nd grade, and Peter says he's ready for pre-school :).  It feels like our summer break was short (and it was, intentionally, so that we can take off some time when the baby is born in a couple of months), but I think it was just about right.  It will be nice to get back into a more regular routine.

Other than that, we're all doing well.  My pregnancy continues to go smoothly.  Baby David is moving a lot, hiccuping a lot, and doing everything he's supposed to be doing.  I'm a little over 31 weeks now!!  It does seem like the weeks are going by more quickly now.  I'm dealing with the heat and humidity OK (mostly just hiding from it inside or going to the pool), so if I can get through August and the first part of September, I think I'll have gotten through the worst of it. 

We won't have any job updates until after the 15th, but I'll see if I can post some of our vacation pictures later this week!