10 for 2010 The $350.00 Holding Pattern

Crazy productivity while my MIL is in town. Starting with the 24 hour home alone while Bill/Ben drove to pick her up and meet up with his brother. I managed to clean out 2 closets, go through all bins of kids clothes and pack up 4 bags to pass on, purge medicine cabinets, AND go through all of Ben's toys to declutter. I started on the pile o' teaching stuff that is literally taking up 1/4 of the garage but I gave stopped when the garbage can was stuffed FULL.

I rock. And I did all of this with a baby that was needing crazy attention crazy and inconsolable at times due to an ear infection (confirmed Monday.) I literally took him room to room, talking/singing/holding while sorting to keep him happy and me working.

Also, I did this without power for a bulk of the afternoon. It did come back on before it was dark and the house was too cold. We pulled a week without power in this house a few years ago so I know it can be done.

Yesterday Bill and I met with our financial guy to go over our portfolio and set up a 529 education plan for Ian. It was nice to hear that our decision for me to continue to stay home is possible if we continue to live within our means, trimming extra monthly expenses on essentially one salary.

On the way there we stopped at our fertility clinic to pay the 2011 storage fee. I had talked clinic last week about options AND found out that we could use our Flex Med account to pay for the fee. Case closed and alas our 3 frozen babes will be saved another year. Bill and I had agreed not to make a decision about more kids until Ian was at least a year.

But as we have adjusted and settled into life as a family of four, I am almost certain that by next year I am going to let the 3 embryos go. This almost seems like the ultimate no brainer of decisions. I really don't want to be pregnant again at an older age and I want to move ahead with the surgery by the end of 2011.

If I have learned anything in the past 8 months is that the adjustment to 2 kids was harder than I thought. Then there was helping with my friend's twins this summer. It kicked my butt. The idea of even a possibility of multiples as our reality along with my TWO OTHER KIDS all but has helped me make a final call that we are done.

But, for 2011 I'm still leaving the very, very small possibility that something might change. We might decide that we can't live without knowing what became of those three chances at life. I'm donating back all my unused, unexpired meds to the clinic as doing another IVF cycle from square one is definitely off the table. I am happy to know they will be used to hopefully bring someone else a baby.

2010 was such an awesome year to bring sweet Ian into this world. I have to think that there was some divine intervention for only one of the two embryos we put back creating my sweet boy.

So among the awesome is almost a final decision on being a +2.