It's A...

Oh.  Wait, did I forget to mention that I'm pregnant?  Perhaps that's because I've forgotten to blog for the past 3 months or so....

Well, I am pregnant.  Somewhere around 16 weeks or so, due date around the end of September.  I've decided not to put a lot of stock in my due date, considering that babies just don't care about them.  Cyrus thought that 16 days past my due date was the appropriate time to make an appearance.

Anyway, back to being pregnant.  Now, normally, you don't get to find out your baby's gender until somewhere between 18 and 22 weeks when they do the full anatomy ultrasound.  However, there was some concern from my midwives that perhaps I was further along than we all thought.  I can tell you this - I started fighting my non-pregnancy clothes at about 8 weeks.  Yikes!  I was hoping I was further along just for some validation on the oversized belly.  So we had an ultrasound last Thursday.

Alas, no.  I am in fact right about where we all originally thought that I was.  However, on the plus side, I am far enough along that they could tell the baby's sex!  Woohoo!

Before I share the results, I'd like to give a little background.  With Cyrus, both Jason and I suspected we were having a girl, though neither of us felt particularly strongly about it.  Obviously we were wrong.  With this baby, I almost didn't feel the need to find out the sex because I was absolutely, dead certain that it was boy.  Convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Plus, there were several reasons why having a boy the second time around would be absolutely PERFECT!

1.  Every storage space in my house is packed to overflowing with baby boy stuff.  Not one to waste, I saved everything of Cy's, knowing we planned to have a few more kids.  I also hate spending money, and the thought of being able to reuse 99% of what would be needed made me positively giddy.  If this baby was a boy, I would need exactly two items: a crib, and a double stroller.  Perfect!

2.  We have a boy name all picked out.  Easy peasy.  If this baby was a girl, it was going to be all out war.  We had hypothetically talked about girl names, you know, just to be fair, not because we thought we were having one, and we flat out could not agree on a single name.  Not a one!  It had to be boy, just so that the poor thing could have a name!

3.  Cyrus is a boy.  The kiddos will be just over 2 years apart, and having another boy means a best friend and playmate for life.

4.  Most importantly, I feel like I know what I'm doing with boys.  Girls are kind of beyond me.  They confound me to a degree.  To this end, I think I had convinced myself that we would only have boys. Oh sure, the thought of one girl, maybe the last baby, was kind of nice, but really not necessary.  Nope, this one needed to be a boy so that he could have a chance of being somewhat normal.

Are you laughing yet?  Because God was.  Are you seeing where this is going?  Because I did not.

Since Jason couldn't make it to the ultrasound, I asked the ultrasound tech to write the sex of the baby on a piece of paper and fold it up so that we could see it together.  When we opened the envelope, we saw a cute little drawing and the words:

It's a GIRL!

Bring on the naming war and pink frilly dresses!

* As a side note, my brother-in-law and his wife are also having a baby in September, toward the beginning of the month.  They found on the same day as us what they were having.  They were as convinced that their baby was a girl as we were that ours was a boy.  They were wrong too!  It would appear that Wells parents are just terrible at parental instinct when it comes to the gender of our babies!

Baby Down!

Last weekend, Jason, Cy and I drove up to Seattle so that all of our Washington-dwelling family could meet our newest addition. Jason's cousin John and his wife Sandy were kind enough to host us and a little gathering on Saturday. They have two boys, a 5 year old and 2 year old, and twin girls on the way. On two different occassions, John held Cy, and we all got a taste of how his youngest boy would react to new babies - jealous! As soon as John picked up Cy, his little boy began frantically insisting "Baby down, baby down!" until John handed Cy back over to one of us. I suppose the reaction is fairly common for little ones.

Well, last night we encountered the dog version of "Baby down". For the past several weeks, Jager and Cy have pretty much just been co-existing. Jager sometimes tries to lick his feet, and at times even seems a bit protective of him, but really hasn't shown much interest in general. Last night, we decided that maybe they should interact a little more. Afterall, both are part of our family, and we want Cy to be comfortable around dogs. So, put Cy on the floor, and had Jager come over and lie down next to him. That went all right, so we tried propping Cy up on Jager. That seemed ok for a few minutes, until Jager suddenly got up and walked away. Jason was holding Cy on the ground and I was sitting on the couch. Jason tried calling Jager over to lie on the floor next to him, and she promptly turned around, came over to me, and sat down. As Jason kept trying to get her to come over to him, she became more and more insistant on my attention. First she put her head on my lap and nudged my hand. Then put one paw in my lap. Finally, she put both paws in my lap and pulled herself to standing, practically getting in my lap. No matter what Jason said, she would not go to him, and she insisted that I pet her.

I guess this is her way of saying, Enough about the baby, pay attention to ME! She hasn't gotten hostile, for which I am grateful, but I am curious to see if this behavior will subside, or if she will keep insisting "Baby down". Has anyone else had luck getting their pets to interact with a new baby?

Baby Boy's Nursery Part 2

After our marathon nursery set up, we had to wait a while to complete the design. Our friends and family were very generous at our baby shower, and we got all of the remaining elements to complete the look. This is definitely the cutest, most decorated room in our house. In fact, we often hang out in there in the evenings because it is so nice!

This is one of my favorite parts of the room. These are all gifts given to Jason when he was first born. His mom couldn't make it to our shower, but she sent a box of these items for me to open. They include homemade gifts from Jason's grandmother and great-grandmother, the star that stayed with him while he was in the NICU, and gifts from his grandparents' friends.

I have to admit that I am really proud of this dresser. I am not a crafty person, but I managed to paint this dresser and make it look pretty nice. I have had this dresser since I was 12, and it has been many, many different colors over the years. My mom never took the time to sand it, so I am sure that there are layers and layers of paint on it. The best part was that the nobs had been painted on, so in order to paint them brown, I had to do some serious precision work! Not bad, if I do say so myself!

The painting above the crib was done by my step-mom. She is far more talented than I, and I am so impressed by how well it matches!

The nursery kind of doubles as a guest room - hence the twin bed. And, it has come in handy in the last months of pregnancy as I now take up our entire queen bed, and Jason has been relegated to the baby's room. Fortunately, he's a good sport about it!

Baby Boy's Nursery Part 1

I never thought I would be one of those moms who cared about the nursery. I always figured that our baby needed a place to sleep and a place for clothes, and that was about it. We rarely put a lot of energy into decorating any other part of our house, and have always sported "craigslist shic" furniture. I don't know if it was the nesting urge, or the fact that we are finally living in a place where we can paint the walls, but I became mildly obsessed with the nursery. I wanted cute bedding, and matching crib and dresser, paint on the walls, and some kind of decorating scheme. Luckily, places like Babys R Us cater to the decorating challenged like me and have whole sets of coordinating nursery pieces, of which I took full advantage. However, the perfectionist and the cheapskate in me still came out and I agonized first over bedding patterns, then over cribs, and then over paint colors. We finally settled on what I think is cute bedding - fit for a baby but not pastels (not a fan of pastels), and we got our crib and changing table on major clearance, plus a 20% coupon!

Once we finally got the details sorted out, Jason and I kind of went on a marathon nursery weekend. We bought the paint Friday night, and finished the first coat at 2am...

The next day, Jason put on a second coat while I painted an old dresser. For some reason, we couldn't just leave assembling the changing table and crib for the next day, so we did those Saturday night...we finally finished at 3am!

As is usually the case, I am the designated directions reader and parts separator. If left to his own devices, Jason usually just goes for the gusto and ends up putting things together wrong and/or getting frustrated.

While putting together the crib at 2:00 in the morning, we both had the thought that maybe we shouldn't be putting something so necessary for our baby's safety together while in an exhausted and semi-loopy state of mind...however, neither of us said anything until the next day! I think it all turned out all right!