Baby Babble

So, wow. A few weeks ago, we dropped the Baby bomb and have been so overwhelmed by the amount of excitement, love, and support you all have shown. And questions! So many questions! We figured the best way to answer them all was to, well, answer them all. 🙂 To the best of our ability… so, here we go! The low-down on Baby Thomas… plus, a few baby pictures of Mitch and I to keep things interesting. See if you can guess who is who! I’ll give you a hint… I was born with a FULL head of jet black hair. 😉

What a cute birth announcement picture! Who took it? Thank you! My brother, Beau, took it. He does great work (yes, we’re biased) and was happy to live into his first job as an uncle. We decided to do it down at the bay, as that’s such a special place for us (our Engagement pictures were taken there and we were married there)… plus a little pair of flip flops pretty accurately illustrates a lot of what we love as a family.

We knew it! This is why you moved, right? Wellllll…. not really. We knew that eventually we would want to start a family and that our cozy two-bedroom town home would not lend itself to such an expansion for very long. However, we did not buy the house knowing we were pregnant. In fact, we didn’t even find out until a week after everything was signed and paid for!

When is the baby due? Baby T’s official due date is December 20th… so yes, we may have a Christmas baby on our hands. 🙂 If I’m being honest, I’d love to deliver on the early side and get as far away from the big day as possible, buuuuuuttttt… that’s all up to God.

Will you find out if it’s a boy or a girl? Do you have a preference? We will definitely be finding out! As I’ve told people, I’m not made for that kind of anticipation. 🙂 In terms of preferences, Mitch would love LOVE a little girl. I go back and forth… growing up, I always wanted a big brother, so some days I really want a boy first. But then again, I really want to have a girl at some point, so other days I think I want a girl. The reality of it is, as long as we have a healthy baby, we’ll be tickled pink. Or blue. 🙂

Will you tell people when you find out? Will there be a gender reveal party? We think we’ll tell people either at or after the shower, but definitely before the baby is born. In terms of a gender reveal party… I’m not really sure! We’ll probably want to tell everyone in a fun and clever way and if we do it at the shower, I guess that kind of counts as a “gender reveal party”. I have this wild idea about a baby shower… how fun would it be to have one giant party (almost like a block party) where all of our friends and family are invited- men, women, and children- and it’s just an all-day, come-and-go-as-you-like party? I’m thinking lawn games, tons of food, and maybe even a dance party at night… that just sounds like a blast!

How far along are you? As of this past Tuesday, I am officially 15 weeks. Little Sputnik (as my brother lovingly referred to it tonight) is the size of an orange!

Are you showing yet? Yep! As I’m on the shorter/smaller side, any extra weight is pretty evident and there is definitely a baby bump in the works! Some days, it’s pretty subtle and others I feel like I could explode… which, in all fairness, could also have something to do with what I’ve eaten that day. 😉

Have you had any pregnancy symptoms? Oh goodness, YES. As soon as week 6 hit, so did the morning sickness. Except that my “morning” sickness goes on morning, noon, and night! It’s been really bad. There were some days I couldn’t even make it out of bed and into work and for a few weeks, I was having such a hard time keeping fluids down that my body got really dehydrated and I started getting severe headaches. Thankfully, now that I’m beginning the second trimester, the sickness seems to have subsided and I’m slowly feeling back to normal. I do notice that when I’m over tired or have not eaten properly, I end up getting sick.

In what ways are you tracking the pregnancy? Apps? Bump pictures? We’ve been following two apps each week… Baby Bump and What to Expect. My favorite part about each is that they tell you what size the baby is that particular week and the WTE app has a video filled with pictures and information for each week too. Admittedly, I’ve been pretty awful about taking bump progression photos… we have one back at 4 weeks and another at 14 weeks, but other than that I keep forgetting! I think that because I was so sick for most of the pregnancy so far, I wasn’t really feeling up to doing much of anything.

How did you tell Mitch? I surprised him by making him think we were making a video for our YouTube channel… conveniently, I was able to get it on camera without him suspecting a thing! Stay tuned because we’ll be posting that video on here NEXT WEEK!

How and when did you tell your families? We told our families around week 8, which also happened to be around Mother’s Day. It was so fun and special surprising everyone and we got most of their reactions on film, so at some point we’ll edit it all together and show that to you as well. 🙂

Do you have any name ideas? Will you share the baby’s name before he or she is born? We have a few names we like… girl names are easier for us than boy names for some reason. We will not be sharing the name until the baby is born, so that will be one surprise we’ll keep to ourselves until the very end.

Are you still going to work? That’s the plan!

Is this the reason you haven’t been blogging as much lately? To be honest, yes. It’s been a long haul of getting acclimated to a brand new house that is starting to feel like ours, but still has a long way to go. Just one week after we bought the house, we found out we were pregnant and two weeks after that, I started getting really sick. Pregnancy sickness is no joke. Depending on how bad you get it, it can make you feel like a completely different person. Most days, I could barely find the energy to get up and get myself to work and back, let alone do much else. All progress on the house came to a screeching halt (Mitch’s schedule does not give him much time to be making much headway just on his own) and anything to do with general house maintenance/cooking/cleaning/etc., Mitch took over. I found that I couldn’t even think about blog or channel stuff… it was like my body didn’t even have it in me to do the things I normally really enjoy doing. That was really hard. I am just now feeling like I am slowly getting back to normal… I’m beginning to be interested in house stuff again (just picked a color for the bathroom!), I can do dishes and cook without feeling sick to my stomach, and I’m slowly feeling inspired again to post on the blog and channel. Baby steps (pun intended). 🙂

Have you started the nursery yet? Nope. We’re still trying to make up all of the time we lost during the period of sickness in getting the rest of the house livable. Also, once we know the gender, that’ll make it easier to come up with a clear plan and direction for the nursery. We do know which room it’ll be though… the smallest bedroom off the hallway to the right is the one!

So there you have it! The low-down on all things Baby Thomas… and after looking back through Mitch and my baby pictures, I think the verdict is still out on if the bambino will end up with blonde or black hair! Your guess is as good as ours. 🙂