IT'S A GIRL!!!

Well I'm pretty sure this isnt the first time that anyone is hearing....It's a GIRL!! :) Our doctor's visit on Friday was awesome. Seriously....best. day. ever.

My appointment was at 3, so i left the office at 2 and stopped by Starbucks to make sure our little one was awake and ready to spread those little legs (i swear that is the ONE and ONLY time in her life i will make that kind of request!) Well, it worked! But, I think I'm jumping the gun a little bit.....

For those who didnt know, Dan's mom and mine were both at our appointment. We knew that we wanted to share this special day with the two ladies who made all of this possible ;-) First, she took Dan and I in alone and got right to work! I was literally in amazement. The sono tech showed us all of the organs, we even saw the 4 chambers of the heart pumping!! She said all of the limbs were perfectly proportionate to the head and she showed us the brain (which was enormous, of course). Then she went to the spine and of course....the MONEY SHOT! :) I literally burst into tears when I found out we were having a little girl. All of a sudden the little body growing inside of me was not asexual....it was a little girl...our little girl :) I literally don't think I have ever been happier in my whole entire life!

Just after that, we invited the moms in to see what we had just seen. Note to all of those who are now pregnant, the SURE FIRE way to elongate your sono is to INVITE PEOPLE!!! It was probably the most awesome 20 minutes of my life. Now, I'm sure you all expected me to say that, but let me just tell you that when i walked into that room, I was pretty sure I was going to pee my pants....literally.....I had a huge thing of coffee before and that aside, I have to make a trip to the bathroom every 10 minutes regardless of what I've had to drink....When I arrived at the office ready to give my urine sample (REALLY READY) they informed me that I needed a full bladder for this sono. Awesome. Even so, miserable with an almost exploding bladder that was being fondled and pressed on by the tech (thank God for Kegels), I could not have been happier! Back to the moms though.....Neither of our mom's had seen that kind of sono before. You have to remember, they didnt have this kind of technology when we were born (especially when Dan was born ;-)) In fact, neither of our moms even knew what they were having until the day we appeared. Needless to say, we were all in tears. It was truly amazing :)

While i did not get video of the sono, I have attached a few pics of our little Amelia Anne below. I hope you guys enjoy looking at them as much as I do :)

This is her little face and her two hands are doing the 'Home Alone' thing :)

Here, she is showing up her acrobatic skills, with a little leg over the head action. She's also sucking her thumb :) already making our hearts melt

And this one, she finally situated her legs more comfortably and is just relaxing and sucking her thumb again :)

Right after the sono, I had a consulatation with my Doc. They told me to finally give the urine sample, to which i entered the bathroom and completely forgot why I was there, and didnt even attempt to pee in a cup, true story. Then they took my blood pressure. Well, I think its fair to say that I was a little excited. The girl taking it looked at me scared to death that my heart was going to beat out of my chest and just said "I dont think I'm going to write that one down....maybe we should wait a minute." haha, I thought it was kind of funny. I was back down to normal-ish after about 15 minutes. The doctor said that everything looked great and we are on track and growing as we should....both of us :) She told me to brace myself, as the next 4 weeks is going to bring a lot of "growth". I'm pretty sure that translates to, "you only THINK your ass is big now!" And you know what....bring it. Now that my little bump has a name and is constantly moving and reminding me how awesome she is, I hardly care about the weight :)

Well, as you can probably guess.....we have been floating on a cloud since Friday. We now refer to our little angel as 'Baby Mia' and I literally can't write that or think about her for that matter without a huge grin on my face :)

My next Dr. appointment is in June, but I feel the following ones will be constantly trumped by Friday, May 20th....regardless, I'm looking forward to seeing how she's growing! She's already big for her age weighing in at a whopping 10oz last friday!

So, I leave you with the first Mommy and MIA pic :)

19 Weeks and 1 day

I'm too excited to sleep!!! (spoken like the kid from the Disney world commercial)

Well, tomorrow's the day! At 3 PM we will officially not have to stutter over trying to be politically correct with pronouns when referring to MJ. Its a relief too....I, for one, have now wasted countless minutes of my life backtracking and using the word he-she and his-her. Its always awkward, like I am having a little hermaphrodite or something (dear Lord, please don't let that be the case, but if it is, I would not love him-her any less.....)

There is something very surreal about thinking about our baby in terms of gender. Tomorrow, MJ will have a name.....that name may still be MJ, but tomorrow, we will know for sure. I cannot express in words how I feel right now. I am anxious, excited, and in disbelief all at the same time. Well, lookie there....I can express it in words ;-)  Since the very first doctors visit, I have walked out of the office thinking to myself "this was the best day of my life", and if its possible, I've been right every time. I am quite confident that tomorrow will be no different.

Well this is just a brief catch up before the big news.....so I'll keep it short and sweet. I'm 18wks 6 days pregnant today. In other terms, we are 10lbs, 4 waist inches and 2cup sizes into this baby! This trimester is seriously flying by. Everytime I turn around something new and different is happening to my body. For one, I am growing out of clothes at an alarming rate. I bought a pair of workout shorts last week and put them on this week to find out they SHRANK....a whole size (or two)! I blame it on shoddy material....thats the only explanation I can come up with ;-) So, I have decided to skip over my next visit to the atheletic wear department and just wear Dan's shorts, that, at the moment, fit me just fine :-/ I think he is more thrilled about that than I am....regardless, they work. Besides that, I have been able to feel MJ move on a daily basis now! He-she (see what i mean?!) seems to be more active at night. As soon as I lay down though, I can feel where his-her little body is and if you rub on it for a minute, he moves across to the other side......so incredibly amazing. Dan has been able to feel the hard little lump (MJ) when i point it out, and he's even found him on his own a couple times, but he can't really feel any movements yet. I have a feeling those are just around the corner though!! And I am ready and waiting :)

I think thats about it.....I'm sure you will all be getting a message from me tomorrow regarding our news! so.....just hold your breath until then ;-) I know I will be!!

Does this make me look pregnant.....or just fat??

Well, here I am again, folks....and there is more of me by the day. I am now 17 and a half weeks along....we are coming up on the half way mark!! I know that there were a couple of times during the first tri-mester that I wished things would speed up a little and they definitely have!! I think once I started looking pregnant, time definitely started moving along faster.

Well those of you in Texas have noticed that the weather is MUCH warmer now......so for the first time this year, I hit the pool with my pool buddies, Kristin and Cooper. During any other Spring I have always braced myself for the inevitable scary pale and mostly untoned first visit to the pool, but this year is a whole other ball game. I went through my drawers and in my head thought "I haven't really grown that much" so I just tossed on the same swim suit i wore last year and pranced out to the living room to get Dan's approval (or disapproval) to see if it was safe to venture out of the house. Well, poor Dan has been a real trooper when it comes to the inevitable question "How does this look on me?" I think as women, we all know that there is no right answer to that. If they say "Great!" well, they're obviously lying, and if they say "eh....what else do you have?" then they just called us fat. So, Dan took a second and politely asked "Does it feel tight?" To which i took another look in the mirror and realized it look like my bikini was the sausage casing i had just stuffed myself into....awesome. SO.....I quickly changed into a swimsuit which bagged off of me last year, and to my surprised, it fit...barely, but it fit. The one good part of this story is that my bikini top, for the first time EVER did not gap or sag or fill with water when I got into the pool or fall off when I got out of the pool....who knew they were supposed to fit liek that?!? So, made it to the pool and it turns out that when its 90 degrees out, i could really care less what my swimsuit looks like on me, and I think it helps that I have an amazing friend who lies and tells me I looked good regardless ;-) (I heart you Kristin!)

I have been keeping a mental countdown to the BIG DAY (at least for us) that we find out what our little MJ is! We are now down to 9 days....thats practically nothing! In 9 days, I will officially be supporting all of the employees at both Babies R Us and BuyBuyBaby.....you're welcome ;-) We are getting so excited! I'm not sure if i mentioned it, but we did buy our baby furniture a couple of weeks ago. If I used my brain other than between the hours of 8:30-5, I would have taken a picture to post, but that's not the case....so maybe later. Now that we have it all set up though, we're waiting to find out if MJ's a girl or boy so we can start decorating!!

Well, that's about it for now....I really would like to know what you guys think I'm having though!! I, personally have a feeling its a boy, but I think Dan is going the other way.....We're taking votes now, so humor me and comment here....the winner gets to name our child! The only catch is you only have 2 names to choose from, ones a boys name, and one's a girls name ;-)

So, I leave you with this, another pic.....

This is me and MJ at 17 weeks and 1 day :) on our way to brunch for my Birthday/Mother's Day....you should have seen the after pic, scary.... ;-)