In case you hadn't heard...

Introducing Lydia Jane. Born March 8 at 1:18pm. She weighed 7 pounds exactly and was 20.25 inches long. Mommy, daddy, baby, and new big sister Lucy are all doing well and adjusting to life as a family of four.

I only took me 6 years and 3 months...

I finally ordered a wedding album for Adam and myself. Check it out here.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Photo Book Tip: Create an adventurous travel photo album at Shutterfly.com.

October photos update 1

Here are some photos of our trip to the Pumpkin Patch with Janessa and her preschool kids.

Honest feelings about having two kids

I really don't know how people do it. 5 kids, 10 kids, multiples... I've been having a hard time imagining how I'll handle things when I just have 2!

Lucy has always been a pretty easy child: relatively compliant, no health problems... When she turned two, I was expecting the worse with the "terrible twos" but she never really entered that stage... until now. I really though that by waiting to have a second baby after Lucy was 3, that I would have perfect timing and I wouldn't have to deal with the terrible twos at the same time as having a newborn. Well, common consensus has been that threes are worse... why didn't anyone tell me this a year ago? Why on God's green earth do they call it the terrible twos, then? *sigh*

Well, Lucy's attitude is what's getting the best of me and I'm struggling to be consistent in the way I handle it. I want to nip it in the bud, but her will is stronger than mine. When I struggle I really wonder "how the h*ll am I going to juggle two kids?" One was SO easy. And in just 18 short weeks, I'll have 2--one three-year-old, flat out telling me no when I ask her to do something, and one newborn, helpless and needy and demanding every ounce of my attention.

I know Adam will be available those first few days as will my mom, and that should help. But I'm freaking out a little realizing that soon, I'll have to do it on my own and I don't know what to expect!

These realizations make me feel horrible. Because deep down, I think, I shouldn't have had another kid. It's not about who my kids are, but more about who I AM and I'm not sure I can do it. I watch mothers who have it all together and their kids are obedient and little joys and while Lucy is a joy, she's not obedient all of the time and I worry that her defiance will become stronger as I need it to be weaker.

Being pregnant with these realizations also make me feel like I'm the only terrible mother who's ever questioned her choice of having another baby. I feel like these are things I should have really thought about and considered BEFORE getting pregnant! Too late. I'm screwed.

October Update

I've been very out of the habit of posting photos and updates on our lives so I'm going to make more of an effort and especially when the new baby gets here.

Which is a great intro into our October Update blog post. I'm 21 weeks now and feeling OH-SO-better. It's amazing what a couple of weeks can do. I just can't believe I have 18 more weeks to go! Seems like forever. BUT I have the holidays to sustain me... Halloween's in a week, Thanksgiving's in a month (it'll be at our house this year, yay!), and we start to decorate for Christmas December 1 (my best friend from grade school's birthday!). After Christmas is Lucy's 3rd birthday, her party will be in the beginning of January and "Princess Pirate" themed (at her request). Then I have a little down time in January and February to nest and settle and spend our last few weeks as a family of three.

I've been meaning to schedule a photo session for just the three of us. We have NEVER had a family photo taken. I know, I'm so bad. Well, I really want one before baby #2 gets here! So hopefully I can get that together in the next week or so.

We've had a lot of fun this month. In the beginning of the month we went to Chico to meet the Bryson's new baby Emilee. So sweet and tiny! She's perfect! We also celebrated Gramma Marian's birthday at the Chinese Buffet which made this pregnant momma VERY happy. I got to go on a women's retreat the next weekend with my friend Janessa and it was a nice time away to reflect on my relationship with Christ and just relax with no whiny kids, no house cleaning, no bills, no cerfew! Last weekend we went to the Pumpkin Patch with our friends from Oroville, Logan and Robin Wilson, and their two precious sons, Cason and Hunter. The kids had so much fun playing and searching for pumpkins and it's always nice to connect with my friend Robin (of over 20 years!).

Amid all the playing we had a couple doctors appointments... one very important Dr. appointment was our ultrasound to find out the gender of our little growing baby. Adam and I had decided from day one that we would be happy with whatever sex the baby ended up being, leaning back and forth between our preference; a girl would be "easy" because we already know what we're doing and we have a ton of girl stuff left over, plus they'd be sharing a room; a boy would be fun because it would be new and exciting and then we'd have one of each. As the weeks went on, Adam was more convinced it was a girl, and I was more convinced it was a boy. I even referred to it as "him." Well, the ultrasound revealed that "he" was a "she." Yes, we are having another girl and are overjoyed! We will name her Lydia Jane.

October is coming to an end and hopefully I'll get some photos up soon of the Pumpkin Patch and a precious photo of our Lydia's profile. Stay tuned!

Untold Story of Ashley Bolger

I'm sitting here (in an open classroom where my student has yet to show up), thinking, "It's time for a new blog post!" and I thought I'd write about some of my thoughts from yesterday.

As I folded laundry while watching Grey's Anatomy, I couldn't help but think how differently my life could have been if it weren't for a turn of events that occurred in 2005. Yes, this is the same year I got married, but my marriage had nothing to do with it...

In Fall of 2004, I attended Humboldt State where I rowed on their NCAA crew team. I was horrible. But I LOVED being out on the water (ironic since I get incredibly sea sick), so I worked really hard to get in shape and be as good as I could be (for a spaz). Rowing crew meant early morning workouts, I had to maintain a grade point average, and early night curfews. Because I was a Junior, I was a couple years older than most of the first year rowers and I was not able to survive on 5 hours of sleep and a RockStar. Because of my 5 am schedule and the fact that I lived in a Freshmen dorm, sleep was hard to come by. I had a perpetual migraine.

Let's skip to more relevant details. By Winter I was off the crew team due to a relentless injury (and to maintain what was left of my dignity), and I was able to resume a normal sleep schedule and give myself time to heal. My injury healed after months of physical therapy, but my headaches didn't go away. After one giant 6-month headache, my mom took me to a neurologist. The neurologist said I had migraine headaches and put me on an anti-seizure medicine. He ordered MRI's to make sure there was nothing else going on. I don't remember exactly what kind of MRI I had, but I had to have it done at UC Davis and they injected some radio active dye into me so they could see where the dye was going in my brain. It may have even been a CAT... either way, I had more tests done.

Spring semester resumed at HSU and I continued my classes and moved out of the Freshmen dorm. Other than my giant headache (which the anti-seizure medicine kept under control), life was pretty good... I was planning our wedding, I was VP of the Resident Programming Board, the "Ashley Bolger" that everyone knew.

Between Spring semester and into the following Fall is when the story gets "untold" or "weird" and even like it happened to another person. I really think the only people who knew were my parents and Adam.

It was April that I got a call from my Neurologists receptionist:
"Hi, Ashley. I want to make you an appointment  with the doctor to talk about treatment for your epilepsy."
"Uh, my what?"
"Your condition, epilepsy?"
"I don't have epilepsy."
"Oh, um... the doctor has notes here that you've been diagnosed from your scans done at UC Davis."
"Well. Ok then. This is the first I'm hearing that I have epilepsy."
"Well, what day works for you?..."

Isn't that a nice way to find out that you have a life-altering condition? Over the phone? From a receptionist? ALONE IN A DORM ROOM WITH YOUR MOMMY 200 MILES AWAY?! To say the least I was shocked and did call my mommy and daddy and I can't remember, but I probably cried a little bit.

My headaches were my only symptom. I'd never had a seizure (that I know of). I'd never had as much as a leg twitch and I was being diagnosed with epilepsy. Good thing I was already on anti-seizure medication, right? We made an appointment that April to see the doctor to follow up and make sure that we were using the correct treatment plan for my case.

The doctor threw so much new information at us it made our heads spin: you have to take your medicine consistently, if you don't take your medicine, you could have a grand mal seizure which could lead to more problems, and if you don't take your medication I'll tell DMV and your license will be suspended, surgery is an option to fix the problem, but you may lose some of your memory... It was like a whirlwind! I remember feeling like everything was upside-down and backwards and inside-out.

Medication for the rest of my life didn't seem like a good option for me considering I couldn't remember to take something as simple as vitamins every day. I panicked at the thought of surgery becuase I didn't want to have a shaved head for wedding photos, but if I had the surgery after the wedding I might not remember it.

In June we decided to see an epilepsy specialist at Stanford. However, on the way, we stopped at UC Davis to pick up copies of my films, and they LOST them. Yea, weird, huh... but somehow it figures. Once we got to Stanford the doc asked some good questions, some were hard to answer, or, it was hard to give the right answer...? Like, have you ever spaced out? Duh, I'm blonde. Have you ever lost track of time? Really? Some of the questions made me wonder, who hasn't? If those were qualifying questions for epilepsy, I wondered, who DIDN'T have it?

More importantly, the doctor asked. "Who diagnosed you? What tests did he do?"
Upon answering this questions the doctor sat back and asked, "He didn't perform a EEG?"
Nope, never.
The words I was longing to hear then came from that wonderful man's mouth: "You can't be diagnosed with epilepsy if you haven't had an EEG."
YES.
There was a catch however. "Your brain does show abnormal activity however," referring to previous MRI's done in Chico, "so let's do an EEG just to make sure."
Sure! One more test to make sure that I'm normal? Why not?

The EEG was not fun, but it wasn't horrible. I had nearly 30 electrodes glued to my head and had to sit in a room with boring old movies for several hours. Once the test was over they didn't even have a shower for me to wash the glue out. My mom and I ended up stopping at a salon on the way home and paid them to wash my hair. The results of that test were "inconclusive." Seriously?! My wedding was just over a month away and we decided to wait until after the wedding to follow up with any more tests.

We were married and went on our honeymoon in August. We moved to our "precious" little apartment in Eureka and within 5 days of moving in, I flew back down to Stanford for a week long EEG. Again, I was bored, under constant surveillance, but at least I had newer movies. Three days in, my mom drove down and kept me company during the day and stayed at a local hotel at night. By day 5, we were prying the doctor for answers. He said that they had not seen any seizure activity but something in my brain activity "was not quite right." Those were his exact words! "Not quite right." That same day, I checked myself out AMA and never looked back.

So, yes, we all know I'm  "not quite right." Haha...

But can you imagine had I not sought a second opinion? Can you imagine if I opted for surgery? I can't imagine if any of it were true! If I were still on medication.

Thank God I am me. And not that breif nightmare of who I could have been...

Two month sabbatical

It's been over two months since my last post. And of course my last post was just a photo to announce that we're expecting again. I've been holding off on writing for a few reasons, none really valid, other than the fact that I've been really tired and this will make my 100th post. I guess I felt like it should hold some significance...

So while there may not be any kind of ultra significance to this post, it's time for an update!
We are expecting Lefebvre #4 in March 2012. This baby is much anticipated as we tried for nearly a year. This is my 4th pregnancy overall (we had two miscarriages before Lucy joined us), so I've been very nervous about this pregnancy and honestly "waiting for the other shoe to drop." We got pregnant at a time when I had almost given up and was rather surprised when we got a positive test. It's almost like I was unprepared--and so I felt pretty out of control. Which I am anyways, right? Who really has control over their unborn child? Ha, even their living breathing children!?

I've felt way more tired with this pregnancy and even had stronger bouts of morning sickness. I don't throw up. I'm my father's daughter and it just doesn't happen unless there's a virus involved. So while I know that makes me automatically luckier than some other women, this has been a difficult pregnancy. I basically sat on the couch for 8 weeks straight unable to eat without feeling sick, and needing to eat because I was so sick. Without throwing up once, I lost 10 pounds.

At 11 weeks, I started spotting. Spotting is a common occurrence for most women in pregnancy, but not me. The only other times I've spotted, I've lost the baby (twice). So you can understand why I ran to the emergency room. There would have been nothing they could do, but I couldn't have slept that night without knowing what was going on. Baby was fine! He was kicking and punching and had a strong heartbeat. That was a relief and it was nice to see my blob of a baby seen at 8 weeks had evolved into a little tiny person just 3 weeks later.

Two weeks later I started spotting again while camping and I felt much more relaxed about it. I had a little more time to feel "prepared" and didn't feel the need for control. I do still worry daily about the baby but what saves my sanity is I can now feel him move. Movement is a good sign! It's just little flutters at this point (nothing like feeling Lucy trying to stand up inside of me while taking a walk at 25 weeks), but it's a relief.

So I'm 15 weeks on Monday, and into my second trimester. I've left the couch and feel much better. I still feel uncomfortably pregnant, but I can eat more than just cereal and I know that I will end up getting more uncomfortable as this pregnancy progresses.

I've always describe pregnancy to my friends like this: your body is a piece of metal, and every pregnancy is a bend in the metal. After pregnancy, your body bends back, and with every pregnancy the metal bends in the same spot--bent metal gets weaker and weaker. Now, I know my body is not "bent" as much as other bodies, but I must just be made of weaker metal than other women! Once my 2nd trimester his with Lucy I was flying high, I felt great. I am still a long way away from feeling the way I did with Lucy.

Explaining this to people has made them smile coyly and snicker "It's a boy!" Honestly, I don't disagree. In the very beginning we were hoping for another girl because Lucy is so easy going, relatively obedient (perfect). But as the weeks go by I've got that "feeling." Mother's intuition is usually right, I think, and I'm expecting (and now hoping for) a boy.