Hill St.

 

Ta-da! 

Our new place downtown is so great! No, we don't have a dishwasher, and yes the kitchen floor is disgusting, but we love it! There are beautiful original hardwood floors that our landlord redid before we moved in, and the walls and windows have so much character. The rent is lower, we spend less on utilities AND it's right in the middle of Pullman, so our commutes are shorter. Plus, the landlord is wonderful, and he really likes us, probably because we're responsible adults who can keep a place clean! 

We had help moving everything in, and settled in about two days after. My dad had the brilliant idea to put a carpet remnant in the bathroom (because the floor was gross) and it's seriously the nicest thing to clean the bathroom now. I don't have to mop it! And Andrew's favorite thing is the shower caddy. He says it makes it feel like a home.

As you can see our kitties love it here. They got a new toy basket : )

Oh and they're aren't any stairs! Going up and down has grown a little more difficult for Andrew, so we made sure to find a place that 1) allowed all three cats 2) didn't charge like $900 a month and 3) didn't have any stairs. I can't believe we got this unit! It's in an eighty-year old building and the washer and dryer are just next to us. We don't have to cross a major highway to get to our mailbox like when we lived outside of town, and our landlord doesn't live nextdoor. (BONUS)

Andrew flew to Columbus, Ohio yesterday for screening to participate in a clinical trial for patients with BMD (Becker Muscular Dystrophy). If they accept him, he has to have a muscle biopsy, twelve injections at one time into his quadriceps, months of blood and urine tests, and a second biopsy to determine the effects of the injections. They'll be injecting a virus that will deliver follistatin to the quads and hopefully grow stronger, bigger muscles. This has the potential to change his life for years to come. We're praying that they want him, both legs get injected, and there are positive results. It feels like a miracle, I know God answered our prayers. Even if the trial doesn't work, the medical advance is amazing. (And by the way, this science is very similar to what Andrew has been working on in the lab for the last two summers - interesting.)

The only concern I really have with the trial is that follistatin injections could potentially present fertility-related side effects. We're not ready to have kids just yet, with Andrew still being a vet student, but eventually we want to start a family. So we had to figure out a gameplan. 

There were three options:

• do nothing, get injected and hope there are no side effects
• get pregnant now even though it's really financially infeasible 
• or freeze his sperm and store it for future use

Of course I was thinking about all this at like eleven at night and Andrew was sleeping, so in the morning when I brought up my concern about having children I thought he would think I was overreacting. 

Like I normally do. 

But he just agreed that saving his pre-injection sperm was a good idea. The next day I spoke with three cryobanks and learned about the process, how we get started, costs, and Andrew scheduled an appointment.

It feels kind of silly to be worried about fertility struggles when we haven't even tried conceiving, but I feel like we have to be proactive. Knowing Andrew's genetic luck, it's best not to assume anything will be normal. I was all for trying now for a baby, but thankfully I listened again to my husband's voice of reason and we decided to defer. *Sigh

I know I'm still young and we have years and years ahead of us to start a family, but I feel like my body clock is tick-ticking away. So many couples already have careers, bought houses, had babies... Marrying a grad-student pushes the whole timeline out another four years! I know that you can't really plan when children come, and everything is in God's control.

I just need to trust that everything will work out the way it was designed to. 

Guess that's life : )