and the neurosis sets in

It's true - I am pregnant. I found out Sunday morning. And though I am so excited, I am also so paranoid I can barely breathe. Yesterday, I felt I would be able to handle this. I know that it either will or won't be a healthy pregnancy. I know my body is capable of carrying a baby to term. I know that I am really fertile, and get pregnant very easily. I know if it doesn't happen this time that we can try again.

I just can't stop obsessing about whether or not I will stay pregnant. This time is so much different that the other times. I knew I was pregnant a week or so before I took the test. And I took the test on the absolute earliest day you can detect anything. My boobs are huge (well, huge for me - which wouldn't be huge on anyone else's body) and sore, and I am lightheaded and dizzy and I have been a little bit more nauseas every day. I never had morning sickness with Hayden, or the other two pregnancies before I miscarried. All of these signs should be making me feel better, that something is still happening. But, instead I am so, so worried. Am I nauseas, or is that cramping? Am I bleeding? Are my boobs as sore as they were yesterday? I can't stop freaking out.

I called my doctor yesterday, and though my activity isn't limited like it was with my pregnancy with Hayden, I do have to be monitored closely. I have to get my blood drawn this afternoon to check my progesterone and HCG levels, then again in 48 hours, then again in 48 more. I also have to have an ultrasound sometime in the next week. Hopefully, these things will help to ease my mind.

But, right now, I just feel like I can't take this anxiety for another two months before I can feel secure in the pregnancy. I hope I can find some sense of calm.

Look closer....

Disneyland

The Scholar

Today was Hayden's first day of preschool.

It felt so strange to walk out the door. The last three and a half years of his life flashed through my mind as I drove away. It is still incomprehensible to me that he is really this big already.

When we visited the school initially over the summer, the director suggested we place him in with kids a year older because she thought that curriculum might be more appropriate. When I went to pick him up, I was told by several different teachers there that they have never had a child who could read even close to that level at that school. Not in his class, but in the school. And they have kids who are five years old. They told me he read all the kids' name badges, and they couldn't believe it when he read"Cheyenne." And he read the names of all the games on the shelves, and the titles of the books. She did mention that she was aware of him being so much younger when it came to his attention span. I knew that would be a potential problem. He is so smart, but he is still only three, and acts like a three year old a lot of the time. A three year old who can read and do math and tell time and is basically smarter than me already.

So, I am hopeful that he will mellow out and go with the flow, but that isn't always his nature. He gets very fixated on things, and doesn't like to be pulled away from his current task. It was only the first day, and the teacher was very, very positive. I just know him well enough to know that if he was doing something and it was circle time, he probably didn't willingly go and sit down.

I am finally starting to really believe that regular schools are just not going to work for him. I am doing some preliminary research to see about getting Hayden tested and possibly putting him in a private school's Kindergarten next year at the age of four, because public schools can't take kids under five - no exceptions. He has already been reading for a year, and he has to wait two more years before he is old enough for traditional kindergarten. I can't imagine what level he will be reading by then, and the other kids will just be starting to learn phonics. Once you know how to read, you only get better. And he's reading at like a 2nd or 3rd grade level now. So, we're definitely looking at alternative programs, and gifted schools. None are close by, and none are even remotely affordable.

I think we'll find the right place for him - it just seems like the perfect situation may be to find a school with other advanced kids his own age rather than having him skip grades, and always be the youngest and the smallest.

Hayden: When I'm 16, I want a silver Honda Odyssey. I will buy it for $2.00.
Me: What year? A 2003 like our old one?
Hayden: Maybe like 2004.
Me: Deal.