Big Announcement!

I know this is the only reason you came back, so I figured I should put it out there already...

That's right, C is going to be a BIG SISTER in March! We're very excited :) And can I just say, it feels good to finally have it out there. The first trimester was not my friend - very different from my pregnancy with C, so it was difficult not to explain why I was so exhausted, didn't feel well, and never had time or felt up to doing pretty much anything. Luckily as the first trimester wore on things did improve. We're in week 15 now [ending 15, starting 16 on Tuesday] and I wouldn't say I feel 100% but I definitely make it through the day much easier than I did from weeks 7-12. 

So the due date is March 26th, just a month before C turns 3. We originally thought we'd want the next baby to arrive closer to C's 2nd birthday or maybe around 2.5, but when it turned out that he or she would be arriving closer to her 3rd birthday that instantly seemed like perfect timing. We'll have a little more time to let the potty training thing happen without a rush or new baby being born right in the middle of it. She'll be a little older and hopefully more able to understand what's going on. Another perk of her being a little older is that she will hopefully be more interested in helping than in reverting back to being a baby herself. I know that age is no guarantee of that, she will have spent more time getting used to being an only child so that could totally backfire. Only time will tell! 

We get asked a lot if C knows and/or if she's excited. We have told her that we're going to get a baby at our house like her tiny, brand-new cousin Sami-Anne. She loves Sami-Anne [8 weeks old], so hopefully she'll feel the same way about a baby living at our house! She will tell people that we're getting a new baby at our house, but I'm sure she is wondering exactly when this is going to happen since we've been talking about it for several weeks now, which is like 6 years in toddler-time, and there's still no baby anywhere. We didn't explain that the baby is in mommy's belly mostly because I think that can be extra weird for kids when they don't understand the whole "where babies come from" thing. Maybe we'll talk about it as the belly gets bigger or when she can feel the baby kicking from the outside, but for now I think it's enough to discuss the fact that there's going to be a new baby. 

Boy or girl? We're finding out on October 31st! Funny that's it's Halloween, I know, but the office only had Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday that week and I am not one to wait. I was honestly hoping to find out the week before that since J's sister's wedding is on the 27th and the whole family [mostly] will be in town. C'est la vie. As for our prediction? We're seriously thinking BOY. Not for any valid reasons, just that this pregnancy has felt totally different than the last one and the baby has been somewhat uncooperative when we had our very first ultrasound and my first regular check up when the midwife tried to listen to the heartbeat. Both appointments when fine, by the way, and everything looked and sounded perfect, but it took a little wiggling to get a good reading both times. With C, she was perfectly cooperative all the time. Her birth was even unusually smooth. She was "sunny side up" [face up] and that usually makes for a very long birth but she was born in 20 minutes/4 pushes. Additionally, girls are super rare in J's family. In fact, C was the first girl born in his family in 21 years. If we were to have a second girl, they would be the first sisters in his family in two generations! [J's grandmother has a sister, but I'm not sure about his grandfather having any/more than one] The two babies of C's generation born after her were both boys, and there is another boy due in December. Of course, this has no scientific bearing on whether or not we would have another girl but I'm just saying it would be totally out-of-pattern for his family. I have also had three separate dreams that the baby is a boy. In one of them we saw it on an ultrasound, and in the other two the baby was born. When I was pregnant with C and I tried to picture myself as a parent, no matter how much I tried my mind always pictured me with a little girl [about C's age now] who looked exactly like I did when I was little. Call it what you want, but that's precisely what I got! My #1 reason for thinking it would be a girl is that we have absolutely zero ideas for a girl's name. It would figure. Thankfully, we'll know in a few weeks and I can stop racking my brain for girl names if the baby is a boy. 

I took one photo of myself last week when we started the 2nd trimester because I was shocked at how much of a bump I have already. It definitely showed up much faster than the first pregnancy. 

[14 Weeks]