My Blogging Return

So under threat from several sources (you know who you are!) I am returning to the world of blogging. I'm not sure why I took such a long hiatus, but in the interim there have been many changes going on around here. The biggest such change is that Patrick and I are expecting our first child in July. We are sooooo excited! My goal is to post a picture and pregnancy update every Friday until our little baby arrives since that is when I officially make it to the next week of pregnancy. This week I'll be posting the 22 week update. Pregnancy so far has been fairly easy on me. I had several days of what I refer to as the "yucks" (all day nausea) early on, but fortunately they didn't happen all in row and seemed to subside around week 10 or so and since then I've been feeling great. I never had any vomiting (and for those of you who know me well, you know my feelings about that one and what a huge blessing missing out on that experience has been!) and since I've been in the second trimester my energy has totally returned. I remember when one of my good friends was pregnant with my adorable goddaughter several years ago and she was fantastic about posting pictures, updates, and everything in between so that even though I was far away I felt like I wasn't missing anything. I have been horrible about returning that favor, and am therefore going to try to keep all of you updated regularly from now on.

That said, here's the exciting news for this post - Patrick and I found out that we're having a boy! Shocker, I know, considering that we both come from families full of women. We had been debating back and forth if we even wanted to find out the gender, and finally I decided out in the parking lot of the doctor's office that I officially did not want to know. Little did I know that this baby had other plans.

Everything went well with the ultrasound, although the baby was extremely uncooperative. All he wanted to do was nap, and the ultrasound tech had a hard time getting all of the measurements that she needed. And let me tell you, there were a million measurements she needed. I had no idea how involved this process was, and was completely unprepared for the fact that we were going to measuring the distance between the eyes, drilling down to examine all chambers of the heart, etc. etc. She had to jiggle my ever expanding belly several times in order to get him to move so that she could get what she needed. That was definitely not my favorite part. I was thinking that by the time she got down to the area that would tell us if our baby was a boy or a girl she would ask if we wanted to find out the gender (since I couldn't tell what was what by looking at the screen - I thought the cord looked like gas bubbles at one point!) I was just watching foreign objects float by on the screen when all of a sudden I saw her type a b and an o. What?! We are really having a little boy!! I was floored, and am definitely nervous about taking on the task of raising a little gentleman. I'm really excited about this too, because growing up with sisters, female cousins, aunts, etc. I was never exposed to the world of trucks and karate and climbing to hide on top of the garage (ask my neighbor about that one!) This is going to be a whole new world for me, and I'm sure we'll have many ridiculous stories of me trying to navigate the world of little boys in the coming years.

Since our little guy was so uncooperative during the ultrasound, we unfortunately do not have very fabulous pictures of him (I was hoping for a cute profile shot or something!) but he may be turning out to be stubborn just like his mother. My mom warned me that one day I would have kids just like me. Yikes!! The clearest pictures are from when we were in 4D mode, although I have to admit they're a little freaky looking. He looked right up when the tech was taking the first picture, which totally scared me. We're naming him Ethan Burgess (Burgess is Patrick's middle name, which was also his mother's maiden name) in honor of her memory.

Our little alien - he's kind of scary looking right now

His daddy sleeps in this exact same pose!

So anyway, I realize that there is a lot to catch up on and I have barely scratched the surface today, but I promise to try to get back into the habit of posting pictures (I have several ready for Friday's 22 week update, including the dreaded bump watch!) updates and keeping everybody up to date on things around here.