The Gender Reveal!

Hello again! The day we have all been waiting for (well, at least Derek and I have) has finally arrived! On Tuesday of this past week we went to my monthly check-up and we had our first ultra-sound of little baby Clarke :) This was also when we found out the gender, and if you haven't already seen the little video I put on Facebook, I'll talk about it more here.

A little side story first, a girl named Haley was at my Dr's office for an ultra sound appointment at 9, and we had our appointment at 8:30. So when they said my name, she went in and the tech didn't realize until they were already situated, making us wait over 30 minutes, and making me much later to work than needed. So PSA to everyone, check to make sure it was your name that was called before following the nurse back into a room! Okay, back to fun baby stuff.

Here is our little thumb-sucker, being all cute :) 

Everything looked really good, there were no abnormalities and baby is growing and developing well and at the right pace :) It was really fun to finally see our little person, and it was really fun for me to watch Derek's reactions. I get to feel all the little wiggles and kicks, but it's only when we can hear the heartbeat (and now see) that it's more real for him.

So for our gender reveal, I wanted to try and do something different and fun, I'm not claiming that this hasn't been done before, but I hadn't seen anyone do it. We went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of silly string, and then took the caps off so that no one would know what color it was. Then after getting a solid tally of what everyone thought it was first, we gathered in the grass of the park, counted down from 3, and everyone sprayed their can at each other! Watching the video includes a clip of this :) But pictures below will reveal...

We're having a girl! And now that we know, I feel less bad about admitting how much I wanted a girl. I still would've been very happy and excited if it were a boy, but I've always wanted to have a girl first. So I'm super excited, and the Lord can give us 5 boys now and I won't mind haha. Derek is also very happy, and has admitted that he, too, wanted a girl. He's been saying "Oh, it's gonna be a boy" ever since we found out I was expecting, and I think it was just so that he wouldn't be or seem disappointed ;) And just to clear things up (in case anyone was worried), we picked up the silly string and threw it away, we didn't leave it all over the grass at the park.

Now that we know, I can start getting things ready and preparing! I think I've mentioned it in every blog post, but I really like to have things prepared far in advance. Other than Derek getting to feel her kick (I feel her pretty often), we're basically done waiting on milestones until labor and birth, so it'll be nice to start getting the nursery put together, and figuring out her name to pass the time.

Pregnancy update: 19 weeks along and feeling pretty good! I'm finally starting to get more sleep, and morning sickness only hits very randomly every so often, so big improvements there. But a new pregnancy visitor (an unwanted one) is round ligament pain, and that crap HURTS. It feels like I'm being stabbed or ripped in my stomach when it hits. And while it only lasts a couple seconds, I then stay immobile in fear that if I barely move the pain will come back. All it takes to trigger it is standing up, so I'm almost living in constant fear. The hormones are continuing to mess with me as well. It's odd, because I've always been sensitive to my and other's emotions, but since being pregnant, the typical things I think will get me crying don't, and other things will. Being pregnant is weird.

In other news, I get to talk to Taylor (Armour Shimai) today because of Mother's Day! I'll be excited to share the news with her and hear her voice for 5 minutes until the wait for Christmas. Our move went well, and once we have some of the finishing touches done, I'll share more on that and our new place. The move probably went so easy because of our awesome friends and family. I couldn't do much more than pack and do some of the easy cleaning, so we had great friends that came and helped us move out into a storage unit, and then a couple days later help us move into our new place. My mom is also super awesome and she came up for 1 day only to help us unpack and get things put away so I didn't feel so overwhelmed. Derek was the real MVP who did a lot of the moving from our old place, he also did all of the cleaning and most of the moving into our new place as well. He planned and handled most of it because we moved in the middle of the week and I had to work still. We just felt very supported and I especially felt very loved and cared for, so thanks everyone :)

I think that covers everything since our last update. But things are going well still at work and at school, and we're enjoying this journey into parenthood. I'm excited to share the experience as we learn and do more, so thanks for reading and expect more in a few more weeks! :)