The Happy News

Thank you so much for all of your kind comments on this blog and facebook and e-mails and texts and phone calls. Your love and support mean so much to us! Finally sharing our happiness with people that we care about makes the whole experience so much sweeter.

It took nearly a year and a half to get pregnant with Jake, so we were prepared to wait a bit for baby #2 as well. The plan was to begin trying in December so they'd be at least two years apart, but then fall rolled around and we felt very, very strongly that we were supposed to move up that time frame. When the positive pregnancy test came, I was shocked on one hand -- aren't I supposed to get about 15 negatives first? But on the other, I wasn't surprised at all because it had been so clear that even waiting a couple extra months until December would have been too much and that for whatever reason, this baby was supposed to come right now. And she did! We still have to keep pinching ourselves, we feel so lucky.

Telling Matt

I quickly enlisted Jake's help and made another book to tell Matt about our baby (thank you, Walmart, for your same-day photo books). Thanksgiving was coming up in a couple weeks, so I called it Jake's Thankful Book and filled it with a poem and corresponding pictures of everything Jake is thankful for at this little stage in his life. We drove up to check on our house and I nonchalantly pulled the book from the car, like, "Hey! Look at what I just made for Jake. I saw it on Pinterest, we'll have him make one every Thanksgiving to track what he's interested in and grateful for... yada, yada... Here, read it." And so Matt did:

I'm thankful for my Mommy and I'm thankful for my Dad.
I'm thankful for all the great friends I've ever had.
I'm thankful for puppies, and for kitties, too.
I'm thankful for my houses -- the old and the new.
I'm thankful for the gospel and I'm thankful for good books.
I'm thankful for food, though I could use a better cook.
I'm thankful for football, and for Disneyland.
I'm thankful for Happy Days and the ocean's sand.
I'm thankful for my blessings, but more than any other
Right now, I'm so thankful that...

Matt wasn't expecting it at all, and the Pinterest excuse kept him from being suspicious of the book (which is great, because I was sure it'd be a dead giveaway since that's how I told him the first time around, too). So when he came to that final page, he was genuinely surprised and beyond thrilled. We spent the rest of day laughing and crying and celebrating. It was a happy day!

Telling Family

Living with my family at the time basically erased any chance I had of waiting to tell them in a cute way when I was a little further along. It's sort of impossible to hide those first few weeks of toilet hugging and sheer exhaustion. The sickness hit me like a freight train right before five weeks and was simply brutal for the next month. Then it kindly let up just enough to function like a tired, nauseous human being that usually only threw up at night (up until a week ago, folks. Still not 100% around here). But anyway, yes. Hard to hide. Basically, my mom and siblings above the age of 10 had all guessed it and asked about it before we ever had a chance to bring it up and tell them. Sort of a bummer.

I still got to tell the little boys how I wanted to, though. On Christmas, we had them gather to watch Jake open his final present of the day -- a big brother shirt. They were so shocked ("But you don't look pregnant!" "That's because I'm only 12 weeks along.") and so excited, and it was a fun little Christmas surprise.

We'd planned on Jake showing up in his new shirt at Matt's family party on Christmas night, but our little guy was sick so he didn't go with us. Without Jake, Matt and I weren't sure if we should wait to tell the Davises or not, but ended up deciding while at the party that we wanted everyone to get to be there for the announcement. So we quickly just pulled up an ultrasound picture, sent it to his parents' new digital picture frame, and let it come up during presents. It worked.

Gender Reveal

Since we didn't get to announce the pregnancy the ways we'd wanted, we (okay, I) decided to go all out with a big gender reveal party. We hosted the party on the 9th and had so much fun celebrating this baby girl with our families. I'll post about that later, but here's a little sneak peek in the meantime:

In case you forgot, it's a girl :)