Rain, green, and the stuff on my heart

We have had some serious rain lately, like all day today.  When I got home from work Graesen and I did a little rain art project I found here.  I showed Graesen how to make his paint splatter, but he didn't really have to patience for that.  I don't care, it's still cute.

I also took Graesen outside to play in the rain/puddles for a little bit.  He loved it.

We decided to test out green food dye on Graesen again today.  We think that it had no effect on him, although last time the reaction took place a long time later.  We are pretty sure it was not the milk.  He did have a Costco hotdog that day and we are wondering if maybe it could have been that.  Last night Graesen had some fresh pineapple and his cheeks turned very red for about an hour after eating.  He also lost interest in food and would eat very little.  We think that maybe the acid bothers him a little.

* And here is what is on my heart lately:  I want another baby.  Bad.  Giving birth to and raising Graesen has been a blessing beyond what I could have ever imagined.  I want to do it again.  I want to experience labor and the miracle that is delivering a newborn.  I want to love another child.  I want Graesen to have a sibling to love and be loved by.  My sisters have been a huge part of my life and I want that for Graesen.  I do not feel like our family is complete yet.  I feel like there is more love to give.  I, however, am scared that my body will not cooperate.  I have had a lot of issues since having Graesen and my doctor is fairly certain that endometriosis is the culprit.  Today a thought came to me and so I decided to look something up.  I had lyme disease as a kid.  There are not really any long term studies on children who have had lyme disease, so my family (my dad and sisters also got lyme) is not really certain how the disease could affect us in the future.  I decided to see if there has been any relationship seen between lyme and endometriosis yet.  I found that many women who have lyme disease are diagnosed with endometriosis later in life.  More confirmation to me that my pain after having Graesen has been due to endometriosis.  Now I have to say that I was very, very lucky.  While I was one very sick little girl, I was diagnosed after a few months even though we did not live in an area where lyme disease is common.  That is thanks to my mom who researched and then demanded that I be tested for lyme even though she was told it was not possible.  It took a long time for me to heal, but it could have been so much worse.  And, now, looking back I can see that maybe God used my family to help others.  We were the first diagnosed cases in our area of the country and I like to think that our diagnoses helped doctors to look for lyme in other affected people.
Now back to that whole endometriosis thing.  If I want to have more kids (which I really, really do) I need to have kids young and kind of close together before the endometriosis gets too bad.  I am so scared that this won't be possible, that I will need assistance to get pregnant with baby number 2 (the kind of assistance I know we can't afford).  I pray every day that God will bless us with another child.  A Jodi Picoult book that I am reading right now (Vanishing Acts) has a quote that really stood out to me, "Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one."  This is so true.  I always knew I wanted to be a mom, but until I was pregnant with Graesen I did not realize how strong that desire was.  I remember very clearly the moment that it became real to me, the moment I knew that Graesen would always hold my heart.  I was about 22 weeks pregnant and had just had my ultrasound.  I knew that Graesen would be a Graesen and not a Layne, and I had seen his face and little fingers.  My doctor was a member at the gym I worked at.  She came in and told me she had reviewed the ultrasound.  Everything looked good except for one thing.  There was something on Graesen's heart (a cyst-or echogenic foci to be correct).  She told me not to worry and that Graesen would probably be fine, but she wanted to do some more tests.  I pretended I was okay long enough for her to walk away and for me to go into a little back office where I could cry.  In that moment I knew that if Graesen was not okay, if God took him from me, I would never be the same.  I knew that when you become a mom a part of you heart is put into that child, and if you lose them you lose a part of yourself.  That night I became a mom.  I learned about the constant combination of love and fear a mother has for her baby.  I learned that a mother is what I was always meant to be.  I hope God lets me do it again.