Update

Did You Miss Me?! I’m Back!

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

First of all – hello!!!  I’ve taken many blogging breaks in the past but this by far is the loooongest.  I tried a couple times before now to write a post but major life events kept rolling in and it’s taken me a long time to get back to a place I can write again. In some ways I feel like the current “me” is shaking hands and making acquaintance with the 18 months ago “me” because just so much has changed.

I could write a novel for everything that has gone down the past year and a half, but to speed things up I made bullet points, which sums everything up pretty well. Unfortunately by doing so you miss out on the “touchy, feely” details of all this and I don’t think you can quite grasp the fully understanding of just how deep, agonizing, stressful, yet also joyful and exciting these past months of our life have been.

I’m going to back up where I left off to the summer of 2021. If you had been following along with my blog at that time you knew that Mikey, my husband, had been going back to school. We knew there had been a *slight* chance that we could potentially have to move in order for him to get a job in his field, but with so many hospitals around, we really weren’t expecting that to happen.

Well, God clearly had other plans. Welcome to the summary of the past 18 months…

  • Mikey finished school in June and graduated (yay!!)
  • Mikey got an internship at one of the local hospitals (yay again!)
  • The last month of his internship I found out I was pregnant with baby #2 (yay!)
  • There was only one Bio-Medical position posted at the end of the internship in August…ONE
  • Mikey interviewed, but he did not get the position and was informed he was a close second. Obviously, second is close but not close enough
  • Mikey then applied to multiple places in Washington and Oregon (insert agonizing waiting game here)
  • A hospital in Salem, OR reached out to Mikey and requested an in person interview, which turned into a 3 hour interview and he was offered a job that same afternoon! (skipping a lot of details here, but again, for times sake I’m moving things along)
  • November 1st, he accepted the job (I was now 4 months pregnant)
  • 3 weeks later we listed our house on the market and we accepted an offer the week after Thanksgiving
  • 2 weeks later, in the middle of December, we moved to Oregon – leaving behind family, close friends, a daycare we trusted, the kindergarten I “knew” Gryffin was going to attend the following year, a church that we were finally becoming involved in, and 10 years worth of memories
  • 2 weeks after moving into a townhome in Salem, we found a beautiful home in a city nearby that we fell in love with and put an offer on. We were accepted on Christmas day! Truly a miraculous gift!
  • 2 months later we moved into our new home
  • All while we were adjusting to our new life in Oregon, I was busy still working full-time with my 4 year old at home because there were no openings in any daycares (I was able to keep my job and work remotely for the same company I had been with, which was a huge answer to prayer), and I was also trying to figure out new doctors and insurance because I would soon be approaching my 3rd trimester – talk about majorly stressful. Obviously, this all got worked out.
  • 1 month before the baby was due, we got to finally move into our new home
  • 1 week after moving I was able to get Gryffin into a wonderful preschool in our new city!
  • Our little bundle of joy arrived, unfortunately I had pretty bad complications post birth, but thankfully everything turned out ok in the end. Let’s just say I highly regret not getting the blood transfusion.
  • The next 2 months I mostly spent on the couch or in bed, snuggling and around the clock feeding the baby, of course. I couldn’t be more thankful my mom was there to keep everything afloat!!
  • After 3 months I went back to work with a baby at home because we couldn’t find another daycare for an infant (eek! Probably the most stressful time of my life)
  • Gryffin started Kindergarten in the fall
  • Holiday season (because every knows that’s a hurdle to get through every year)
  • Birthday season (Gryffin’s and our baby’s birthday are only 1 week apart!)
  • Easter
  • Gryffin graduated Kindergarten (how is my first baby a first grader now!)
  • Here we are and Summer has commenced!

A year and a half later and we’re finally coming out of the shell shock of it all. Looking back we can see God’s hand in all the details and we are in awe of all the blessings along the way.

I don’t have a posting schedule yet but I’m glad to be back! It feels good to be here. Posts to come will be a “Currently” life update (which of course will be an appearance of our little miss), and an updated Summer Bucket List, of which I really need to get on since we’re already well on our way into Summer! I’m also happy to take down post requests too!

If you’ve been following along for any amount of time, I’m thankful you’re still here and happy to “see” you again! If you’re newly reading along, welcome!

I hope you are all doing well.

Much Love,

Cami

My Pregnancy – Filling in the Blanks

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

In case you missed it – my husband and I found out we were pregnant back in August of 2016 and had a beautiful baby boy March, 2017.  You can see our baby announcement here.  Since I hadn’t been keeping up with my blog, I’m now playing catch up.

For as much as I had planned on taking weekly baby bump shots, that did not happen.  That is something I definitely regret.  I did manage to take some though, so I will share some of my pregnancy story.

This was my first public bump picture.  It wasn’t until around week 17 – 18 when my baby belly finally popped.  The captions are what I posted on social media. :)

For those who have been curious, here’s my 18 week photo (technically 19 weeks tomorrow)! Boy or girl?!?! We find out on Thursday! :)

It’s a boy!!  This is the day we found out.  We were both SO happy that we were going to have a little boy!  My husband was over the moon!  My husband comes from a large family with a lot of girls, so we were both slightly surprised, but I had had a feeling deep down he was going to be a boy. ;)

It’s a boy!

We also made an announcement with our dog, Kahlua.  She was actually mopey most of my pregnancy.

Week 24!  This was taken on Christmas Eve.  By far the best and most memorable Christmas Eve yet!  I know it’s only going to get better!

Here’s a little Christmas Eve 24 week bump photo! I’ve been terrible at taking photos but try to take one every now and then. :) Random facts: I absolutely love baby kicks and movements 💕. I tend to feel him most at night and when I’m driving. My craving for spinach has now been replaced with hot Cheetos and ice cream (not together😉). I’ve been more tired this trimester than the first, but thankful that I no longer feel sick all the time. I definitely think this little guy is going to take after his daddy. 💙 We are so blessed and excited that this time next year we will be celebrating Christmas with our little one in our arms!

And now we jump into January.  I believe I was about 6 months pregnant here.

Then came my baby shower in February.  I must mention, I don’t typically enjoy baby showers.  I just really don’t do baby shower games…like, at all.  So I was a little nervous about mine, but it turned out awesome!  There were baby shower games, but they were super low key.  This was my outfit.  I will share more about the baby shower in a separate post, but here is what I wore.

Yep – my belly button definitely popped out!

This was also taken in February.  My friend and I were due just 1.5 weeks apart!  So of course we took some pictures together ;)

My pregnancy overall was a healthy one.  At the beginning I felt sick, but I never once threw up (thank you Jesus!), I had one day of extreme dizziness but thankfully that didn’t stick around either (again, thank you Jesus!).

I CRAVED spinach even before I even knew I was pregnant.  Honestly, that should have been my first clue.  Not just any spinach guys.  I wanted spinach from a can with a ton of apple cider vinegar poured over it lol.  This lasted pretty much until mid-second trimester.  Then my craving was replaced with hot cheetos.  There were also definitely a few spontaneous trips to Dairy Queen as well.

I was afraid I had miss carried at the beginning of 14 weeks, but I’m so incredibly thankful that was not the case.  Let me know if you want the whole story on that.  At the end of the pregnancy it did turn out there was a problem with the placenta, but I will get more into that in my labor and delivery story.  But in the end we were/are completely blessed with a beautiful and healthy baby boy. <3

This has been one crazy journey but I love it and wouldn’t want it any other way!

Much love.

~ Cami

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Update and Life News!

/ Cami Grace / Leave a comment

It’s been well over a year since I last wrote a blog post…ouch!  Believe it or not, I tried to write a post multiple times since then, but for some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to post anything…until now.  It’s coming up on a year since our big news…I became pregnant!  So in honor of my one year anniversary of finding out we were going to have a little baby, I thought I would share our story with the world.

THE STORY

My husband and I back in February 2016 had just gotten back from a cruise vacation, which you can read about here if you haven’t already.  Nothing of real interest happened after that, we got settled back into our routines and were just living our lives.  Fast forward a few months and my husband and I were attending my company’s annual Indians baseball game in July.  I remember feeling funny that day and even though I had been starving earlier I just couldn’t bring myself to eat my hamburger.  It looked yummy, but gosh, I just couldn’t eat.

Oddly enough, someone from work asked me a couple days later if I was pregnant.  I laughed and told her that if I looked pregnant it had been because I was bloated.  I then went and sat back down at my desk and got to thinking…and thinking.  After some more thinking I then pulled up my calendar and got to counting, and counting, and recounting the days from the previous month.  I immediately called my sister when I got home so she could double check my counting capabilities.  After she finished counting and calculating she then told me “Ummmm, Cami, you better go get a pregnancy test”.

THE TEST

Trying not to freak out the whole 10 minute drive to Fred Meyer I finally arrived (why Fred Meyer?  Two words – “self checkout”).  I then had to call my sister back because who knew there were so many pregnancy test options?!?!  I went with the Clear Blue box that had 2 tests, you know, just in case the first one was wrong…or in case you accidentally drop it in the toilet or something.

I went home and of course I didn’t have to go to the bathroom regardless of all the water I drank.  So I drank, and drank, and drank some more and FINALLY I was ready.  The test said for best results wait until morning.  Psh, wait until morning?!  Yeah, right!  It also said it could take up to one minute, so I took my time washing my hands, making sure I had the biggest suds I’d ever seen.  I was afraid to look at the test too soon, but I accidentally took the tiniest peak just to see if it was done thinking…I immediately did a double take.  That was no minute you guys, it was MAYBE 20 seconds and it already had a result.  A very, very positive result.

Because of random symptoms and according to my calculation, I knew there was absolutely no point in taking the second test.  I stared at my reflection with a complete look of shock and then starting laughing and freaking out. “Oh my gosh, I’m pregnant!  I’m pregnant!  Oh my gosh…I’m pregnant”.

THE REVEAL

I was dying because my husband, Mikey, was still sleeping (he works graveyard) and I had to figure out how I was going to tell him.  Obviously this pregnancy hadn’t been super planned otherwise I probably would have had this figured out by now.

The day before just so happened to be my birthday and I had a couple gift bags still laying around so after doing some thinking, I emptied the smallest one I could find, put the test in, put all the tissue paper back in and set it on the dining room table.  I finally went to wake him up and got out of the room quickly before I just blurted out the news.

After some time he slowly ambled into the kitchen where I was trying to act as casual as humanly possible and said “oh hey, I got you a little gift too”.  He went to the bag, pulled out the tissue paper and I saw him freeze and said “wait, what?!”  He turned to look at me with a complete look of shock on his face.  “Are you serious?!”.  I had the biggest smile on my face and was nodding my head furiously.  We hugged, we laughed, we then stared at each other with dazed looks on our faces and took turns saying “oh my gosh, we’re going to have a baby”.

We then ate Posole for dinner, still occasionally blurting out “oh my gosh, we’re going to have a baby!”.

THE END

I had a healthy baby boy born on March 24, 2017.  We are incredibly blessed.  I will write out the labor/delivery story at some point.  But for now, this will have to do.

More to come!