My dad calls it "getting your neffers checked"

I had my first appointment with the nephrologist yesterday. (That's the kidney doctor) I liked him a lot. He put me on some blood pressure medication, which already seems to be working, and let me ask all my questions about polycystic kidney disease. I am in the very, very early stages of the disease and am overall very healthy. We talked about ways I can adjust my diet to help slow the progression of the disease and I got to ask my million-dollar question--will I be able to have another baby? I was expecting a hearty "NO!" but was told that it wasn't out of the question! :) Obviously, I would be a high-risk pregnancy, especially since I've had pre-eclampsia before, and my blood pressure would have to be very stable because you can't take BP medicine while you're pregnant. There are a lot of other factors Marcus and I will have to consider before we make the decision whether or not to expand our family in a few years, like can I handle having pre-eclampsia again, what will I do if I have to go on bed rest (especially since Dean would be 2 or 3 at the time we had another one), is it worth the strain it may put on my body to go through another pregnancy and is it worth potentially spreading this disease to a child. These are all huge things to think about, things that may very well lead us to the decision that Dean will be our only child, but hearing that having more kids is not totally out of the question made me feel really good. See, it's Dean's fault--if he wasn't so sweet and cute, I wouldn't want another one! haha

I've been thinking about taking this blog in a different direction and I'd like to hear your thoughts. Originally, we started it to keep a lot of people updated while we were out of town for the summer. While I was pregnant, though, I started reading some blogs on parents.com, which led me to a couple of other blogs, and now they are some of my favorite things to read. My absolute favorite blogger is taking some much-needed and deserved time away from her blog to devote to her darling daughter, who was born a couple of weeks before Dean. Her blog is so much fun and is like having a conversation, and it inspired me to start learning more about blogging. It's something I really enjoy doing, so I'm thinking of making this one more my own than just an "adventures of Marcus and Jen" kind of thing. I'd like to talk about some issues that are important to me and my family (which I already do to an extent) and get you, the readers, more involved in the way of comments and links. That said, I'm thinking of changing the name of the blog. Suggestions?