table for 7.

watch this vid.  real fast.

New Project 1 from ashley Bass on Vimeo.
surprised?

i was. lol i think we're all still kind of in shock.

when i gave birth to miller, a post-partum nurse in the hospital asked "so you think you'll be done? or go for 5?" and i laughed and said "oh who knows!!" and she retorted with "if you don't say no now, i bet you'll have more..."

for a long time i thought "oh cmon... we could do 5. right? wouldn't that be fun!" but a whole other part of me was okay with moving on to the next, non-newborn, part of our lives.

when reese was diagnosed, i thought for sure we were done. and i told almost everyone that when they asked. a lot of our nurses at reese's hospital would ask me if we were having any more children and i thought "how interesting that they'd ask me that -- wouldn't they THINK we were done?!"

then time passed.

i think a lot of people have a perception about my day to day that isn't exactly on par with the truth. my days are often full of things that we do, but not all of it pertains to reese. she has PT/OT on mon and wednesdays and labs on tues. thats it. then chemo is once a month for overnight - about 36 hrs total. is there potential for longer? oh yes. are there other potential stays? of course. like this month we went in bc she had a low grade fever. that resulted in us going home then coming back bc they thought there was bacteria. buuuuut there wasn't. so did we have to stay overnight in the hospital? yes.

does it seem easier, sometimes, because we have amazing support? oh sure. knowing that i have a place for my kids to stay for the night while we are at chemo keeps me calm. knowing that if an emergency happened, we have family and friends to help keeps me sane.

but day to day, things are as if i had non-walking twins, almost. the "hard" (and i realize they arent actually hard) parts of my day with reese/miller are getting them into a store if there are no carts outside, taking one in the house then the other, getting strollers set up to go into places, etc. day to day, i have a normal 2-3 year old who just can't walk and needs oral meds a few times a day. during this past school year, we were barely at home running to extra currics and events and games and things... but it wasn't reese that made it harder. reese makes it better :)

we can go out and do things - splash pad, park, store, etc. most of the time bc i know her ANC counts weekly. kids on chemo, remember, aren't neutropenic 100% of the time. most of the month, her counts are the same as my other children would be (and they can tell if they are trending upwards after a low draw based on levels of other things...)

all this to say that we are excited about #5.

now, do i worry all the time that life may flip on me? most certainly. i worry that when reese has her next MRI (july 17) that somehow my world will come crashing down. i pray it doesn't. i pray that the meds are doing their job, as they have been, and that the doctors are even more amazed with reese ;) but i can't be certain about that.

no one can be certain for what the future holds. so, our job is to be as happy as we can. love each other as fiercely as we can. and thats what we do - whether our day is frustrating and exhausting or filled with mundane errands. and we'll do that with 7 of us.

now to the reactions of the girls -- aidan came with my to my very first appt and then she immediately went to school, told her teachers within 5 mins, and THEN wrote her journal entry for the day about it :) then she went to dance and told the whole studio. she's excited, obviously. she wants another sister.

sawyer gets it, but she is totally ambivalent. except that for a few weeks she only wanted a "brover", but now she doesn't care. i think aidan is getting to her ;)

reese and miller obvs don't know what's going on. all i know is that reese is going to just freak out in love when the new baby comes. she loves babies. miller is her bestest friend in the world. except miller is getting a bit... erm, toddler, for reese. ;) now they fight and are funny to each other.

so nothing really changes for a while - i still go to chemo with reese on those tues, EJ works. there are surprisingly a few "regular" moms of chemo patients who are pregnant and i already asked if there's anything i should not be around, but all is cool. the rest we'll deal with when we have to cross those bridges. i breastfed miller throughout the worst months of my life so i see no reason why i wont be about to BF this baby during more "normal" times. we already have a list of things we can and cannot vax for while reese is doing chemo - so thats easy. and im pretty sure a pack and play will fit cozily in our bedroom with our bed as well as reese's bed ;) then we'll just re-org or something upstairs.

boy or girl, its a win/win, really. id LOVE 5 girls. i can't even explain... on the other hand, a boy would be so fun (i mean, i assume ;)) and something totally different. each has its perks - and as i wrote about, after we found out miller was a girl, we're given what we're supposed to have. every family is how they are supposed to be. 5 girls, 3 boys, one of each.... all different. and all perfect.

so that's that i guess. thanks to Lily Toes Photography for spending a napless late afternoon with me and my kids to get the video done.

i have last day of school (aidan) pics coming soon. summer has officially begun, folks!! dance starts up again next week, maybe some camps, add in some VBS, chemo, therapy, and a walker for reese soon - and we're SET!!

::waves::