Gender Reveal Party

After some dear friends of our had a gender reveal party a couple years ago, I'd been thinking about having one for our own little one. So, we had the not-so-friendly ultrasound technician place the gender revealing sonogram picture into an envelope and I delivered it to our dear friend Dorothy who had been planning a gender reveal cake for a couple months. Since we've called the baby Wookiee since the beginning, she created a baby Wookiee cake!

We invited a bunch of friends and families over last Friday night for the big reveal. We had a ton of food.

We asked people to wear pink or blue to show what they thought the baby was. We didn't really know, but felt like we needed to embrace the gender "argument." So, we had shirts made. The backs (not pictured) have Daddy or Mommy and the #1 (like a jersey).

It was a mostly split group. My parents were a split decision (although Daddy wouldn't have worn pink even if he thought it was a girl).  If we had to guess, there were slightly more Team Boy people than Team Girl.

So, after everyone had eaten their fill of the yummy food, it was time to cut the cake and figure out if Baby T is a boy or a girl. (Note the super cute monkey plates & napkins!

There's quite a bit of pressure with everyone watching you do this. But we managed to make it without making too much of a mess. But, there was no doubt in the cake. We will be having a little man next spring-

 

Now it's time for name picking (we don't have any idea yet) and blue outfits. And for the fun of it- here are a couple of pictures from the last ultrasound. The first one is a picture of his full body- his head to the right and his body to the left.

The second one is his face looking at you. A little creepy with the hollow eye sockets, but I'm certain that he is already a beautiful little guy! (SMUG ALERT)

Since I was only 18 weeks along at the ultrasound, and little man wasn't really interested in having his picture taken, we get to have another ultrasound done in January. They weren't able to check his heart and make sure everything was okay with it. But everything they were able to see looks great. So far so good with his development. He was measuring two days bigger than his due date (or however that's supposed to be worded), but two days isn't a big deal.

I have started feeling the little guy moving around. Everyone's description of this feeling is different, which makes it hard to figure out what to expect. For me, it feels kind of like a really strong twitch like you would have in your eye.

I guess that's about it for this update. I'll be 20 weeks on Sunday, which is the "official" halfway point. We will try to get a belly bump pic up soon!

In memory & honor of grandparents

Maybe to my own shame, but I forgot my grandmother's birthday was yesterday. And I forgot that today marks the 15th anniversary of my other grandmother's death. But when I realized these things this morning (thanks, Mom), it put me in a very reflective mood about grandparents. Some background for you about my grandparents:

• My paternal grandfather died in the '70s. My parents were barely dating when he died.
• My maternal grandfather died 6 months and 2 days before I was born. The last thing he and my mother talked about was me- his baby was having a baby.
• My paternal grandmother lived in Rhode Island. She was as involved as she could be from that far away. We were always pretty close to her.
• My maternal grandmother was the grandparent who lived closest to us. But due to a variety of reasons, she never spent much time with us. She was also sick most of my brother's life and most of what I can remember.

Grandparents have such a potential to be positive influences on children. They are the links to the child's past. They are the ones who help establish traditions with kids. It's their job to spoil (along with aunts and uncles). I hate that David and I missed out on those things. Don't get me wrong; we had amazing parents and fantastic aunts and uncles. We were never underloved, and I don't know that I noticed that we were missing anything until I was an adult. As I heard stories of people spending nights and summers with grandparents, I began to realize that we had missed out on some special relationships.

As this was our experience, I decided that it was important to me for my children to know their grandparents. It's why I get so upset when my father-in-law doesn't take his medicine like he's supposed to since his stroke. My grandmother died from a stroke. My grandfathers died from diseases that can now be treated, high blood pressure and heart attacks. I want my parents and in-laws to do what they need to do in order to stay healthy. Not for me but for my kids.

Our little Wookiee will know his/her grandparents, God willing. He or she will get spoiled by grandparents. My parents and in-laws will do things with Wook that will drive me crazy, but at least he/she will have the experience of having grandparents who are involved. I am so incredibly thankful for that blessing in our lives.

Granny and Meme, I miss you both.

Blog Entry #1

Well, everything says that we should start a website to update people about the baby and how things are going. This is my attempt at this. I'm hoping to be able to update regularly about how little one is developing and how we are doing as we go along.

I am almost 15 weeks pregnant. I noticed this week just how pregnant I am starting to look. I have definitely made the almost full transition to maternity pants, and I'm having to sort out some shirts. I had wanted to wait a little while longer to tell my students, but I couldn't have hidden it much longer than I did. (I told them 2 weeks ago) We waited until after telling our TeenWorks kids to make it public knowledge. I'm happy that it's public now! We have been wanting to shout it from the rooftops since we found out in September.

Let's see, answers to the typical questions- yes, we were trying; yes, we're super excited; no, we don't know what it is yet (well...a baby); our ultrasound is December 5; we have not decided on names (although we agree that a junior is out of the question); I have not been sick (thank you, Lord!), just sleepy; I don't feel the little one moving around yet, still a little early for that; our nursery theme is monkeys (Toys R Us registry is already started if you'd like to check it out); yes, our families are excited (excited might be a calm word...thrilled is a good one); while it doesn't really matter to us if it's a girl or boy, we each have our hopes and people in our camp (currently most old wives tales lean boy, heartbeat leans girl...obviously these are not accurate decision making tools, but interesting points).

What did I leave out??

Fun, nerdy fact. The baby is due May 4th, which is commonly known as Star Wars Day in the nerd world (May the 4th--force-- be with you...). In honor of this, we decided the baby would be called Wookiee (the correct spelling, according to Wookieepedia.com) until further notice. Unfortunately, I did have to explain to my students that would not be it's legal name.

My students have been fantastic. Most of them have their own names for it, though lima bean is my favorite. They don't want to let me hand things out, so they are being much more helpful. Now, if only that would translate to them doing their work so that they can pass and not stress me out. 

In non-baby news, I'm going back to school. I am going to get my master's degree in English from ECU, as they have a completely online program. Not sure when I'm going to start at this point, but soon I hope. I decided I was ready for a new challenge; I just didn't realize I would get two new challenges at once.

Looking forward to a long weekend!!!