(There was a beautiful bow attached to this gift that was ripped off before the picture was taken)
Byron also lost a couple of teeth in the last week. He is still pretty disappointed in his tooth fairies performance so he once again felt compelled to leave instructions for his fairy.
(Tooth Nice and Fresh for You!)
This note was found outside his door
(Youre Right here! Fresh for the takin)
And this one was over his bed.
Rally to Restore Sanity 10/30/10
We took Byron to our first Rally in DC. It was quite an experience. Unfortunately we were unable to see or hear anything but it was still neat to be part of the event. 
Halloween 2010
If you couldn't tell Byron was Dracula this year. This was one of the only pictures where he wasn't bending his head down. For some reason he thinks Dracula always kept his head bowed. Byron had a great time with all of his friends. He has also somehow managed to memorize every piece of candy he has, and every morning he checks his stash to see if Porter has taken any.
Baby Update
And for those who are interested
Olsen 2.0 is still in production with an expected release date of 5/29/10
Just thought I'd take a break away from discussing my biological processes and show off my new curtains instead! I needed some distraction and my sister in law spoke of a recent trip to Ikea so off I went! Here is the end result.
My dining room is still over crowded with pianos and chairs but at least those annoying plastic vertical blinds are gone
Don't you just love change! It makes me feel like a brand new person!
Well, we did it! or rather the doctors did it. We had 5 mature eggs harvested and 5 successful fertilization's. We are the proud creators of 5 of these little balls of cells. Next step is implantation, which will be Wednesday. I was pretty worried after the retrieval when I learned that we only have 5 eggs, I was afraid we were going to fail at the first stage. I'm prepared to fail at the implantation stage but I wasn't prepared to fail at the first stage. So it was with great relief when I got the call letting us know that we had a 100% success rate. We don't know how many will actually make it to Wednesday but the Dr's seemed pretty confident that there would be at least one strong enough to make the journey. 
Currently I've had more needles stuck in me then fill this sharps container. And there are still more to come. I've been upgrade to 4 shots a day, and let me just tell you it hasn't been fun. Besides the difficulty of trying to find surface area on my stomach that isn't bruised or sporting a needle hole my boys and other dear people around me have had to deal with me either yelling or crying and sometimes both.
Byron has been great. After I snap at him for some ridiculous reason he will say calmly as can be "alright mom, I love you" this is generally when I start crying, and apologizing for being a monster. Then Porter comes down and tells me it's time for more belly shots. I've heard people talk about belly shots but I'm pretty sure they were talking about alcohol, because they didn't get all pale and queasy looking when they were talking about them.
But since I am currently jacked up on untold of amounts of estrogen and who knows what other kind of hormones I'm going to write down some of my current thoughts instead of just posting pictures and commenting on them.
Over the last 10 years I have spent a lot of time in and out of fertility clinics. Especially these last two months. I have to go in to the clinic every other day for blood work and ultrasounds, and no matter how nice the staff is at any facility I still leave the office feeling like a failure because I am one of many women who have been unable to get pregnant at will.
I’ve been very blessed in my life. I have an amazing husband who supports me without reservation and I was able to naturally conceive and deliver my son Byron. My life is pretty much perfect. Throw in a million dollars or no school loans, and it would be perfect but then whose life wouldn’t? While I am deeply saddened that we have not been able to have another child these last 10 years I am also deeply frustrated. There are so many women out there who have never been able to conceive or have a child of their own. And all I can say is that I’m not complaining for what I have, but for what I always imagined I was suppose to have and what my body was supposed to do. I guess mainly what has caused me such frustration is the lack of control I’ve had over my own body.
Coincidentally before we started the IVF process I read a book by Margaret Atwood called “The Handmaids Tale”. In this story, society as we now know it comes to an end and there is a fertility crisis. Only a handful of women still have the ability to become pregnant. Because of this the elite who can no longer conceive force those that can to act as biblical handmaids and conceive on their behalf. If the women do not conceive they are basically condemned to death. There are of course many other themes and ideas in this book but I really related to these women and how their lives became centered on their wombs.
Most of us grow up with an idea of what our lives will be like. Many of us are able to chart a course and take steps to ensure the type of life we want. I have not been able to do this. I remember growing up listening to and singing an old Mormon children’s song, I can’t remember what the title was but I remember the words, “When I grow up I want to be a mother and have a family, one little, two little, three little babies of my own.” The song continues with each verse the number of children increasing. Even though now I can’t imagine my life with 2 children or even 3, I still miss the life that I might have had.
I wanted to be a homemaker, I wanted to stay home with my children and create a wonderful home. I couldn’t make that completely happen. My body would fail me every month, so every time I walk into the clinic I am surrounded by countless other women and their feelings of inadequacy, desperation and failure. The feelings seem to permeate the walls of the waiting room and you can’t block them out because everywhere you look there is another woman who is filled with these same feelings. I try and avoid eye contact with the other women in the waiting room because I am sure if I look into their eyes I will see all my disappointments, failures and inadequacies reflected back at me.
I love being able to talk about this process, and I love when I run across someone else who is going through the same thing, but for some reason the waiting room at the clinic makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong in my life to end up there. Crazy I know
Even though I don’t have complete control of the end result of the IVF I do have control of the process. I like being able to chart the development of my follicles and hormone levels, I love knowing that the doctors are going to take my egg and Porter’s um , "genetic material" and actually make an embryo. Even though getting shots in the belly 4 times a day is not fun and the hormones are making me crazy I know that we will be making the beginnings of a child. Whether or not a pregnancy in achieved this has been the most control I’ve ever had over my fertility. And I am glad that no matter what the outcome is that I’ve been able to have this opportunity to exert a little bit of control over my reproductive life.
Byron's blanket.After an additional month of waiting were finally able to start the hormone regiment for our IVF treatment. After an unexpected internal ultrasound I was told to begin taking the birth control pills. I know it sounds odd to be trying to conceive and taking B.C. pills but that's what i'm doing.
I was pretty leery about the birth control pills because this little box always use to mean I would be spending a lot of mornings hanging over this...
and many nights laying in bed wishing it was morning so I could hang over the toilet. But not this morning, I slept for a solid 9 hours without a queasy thought, and woke up like this...
Not one thought of throwing up. It was glorious! I can only hope that this is a sign of how things are to go from here on out. In two weeks I will start the next hormone, lupron. I will keep my fingers crossed that the next round leaves me with as big a smile.
( In the interest of being completely truthful this isn't what I look like when I wake up. But if you actually saw what I looked like when I did wake up you would not believe that I actually felt good this morning. )
For all you avid fans of Byronopolis you will be pleased to know that his site is up and running again. He will be completing all of his daily writing assignments online. So feel free to stop on by and have a good read.
(To view his site click on "view my complete profile" and click on Byronopolis)
For father's day we had our first nature adventure in Maryland. We drove to a place called Cunningham Falls. As we are waiting for the park to reopen,the State Park was actually filled to capacity and they were not letting anyone else in until more people left. I can honestly say I've never even heard of a State parking being filled to capacity. But I guess that's another post. Anyway as we were killing time we pulled over and the boys started skipping rocks. Byron hit his all time record of 4 skips which was awesome. But once you hit that mark what else is there?
There is this tree, is what there is. If there was a tree just begging to be scaled then this was it. So we told the boy to shimmy on out. He balked and said it wasn't possible, but he gave it a try...
Sadly his attempt didn't go so well, which meant we had to taunt him and tell him how easy it would be. I think Porter even said it's so easy even your mom could do it. And since I am a Hodges, I said no problem, and hopped right on.
This is how far I got. I said that's just because i'm out of shape.
FYI:
My guys still got it! He can still pick this 4ft.11in 80 lb kid up from a couch and carry him up a flight of stairs and deposit him safely in his bed, blanket and all
This act as well as the thousands of others that he performs for us every day is why we made him the below super hero kit.
All these snacks have awesome sayings on them.
My favorite is the x-ray vision drops, find the bomb in half the time.
A few of my friends wanted to be kept informed so here goes. I arrive, I pee in a cup and am told I'm not pregnant (duh) and then head to an exam room. Where I learn that it makes a huge difference who performs the procedure. Last time I had this done I was sent to the hospital to have the x-ray department perform the test. Apparently boy radiologists who work at hospitals have no idea what they are doing so it hurts a lot more. Lesson Learned. Long story short my uterus looks good. It took a few flips of said uterus (ouch) and a balloon inserted to find my tubes but they seem to look good too. And as you can tell from the above picture I was smiling when I came out. So the journey begins.
