Flashback

Ok... one of us has been a bit slack in writing on the blog... but I won't say who.  

Anyways...

We need to take it back a few weeks now... to when we told our parents and family the great news.  Since our now-infamous Baltimore plot didn't work out (for our uninformed readers, we were wrangling to get Mom and Dad Trout to meet us for dinner, upon which we would spring the happy news... but they weren't playing along!).  SO, we cleverly hit the road Saturday morning in a devious plan to show up on their doorstep unannounced and spring the news on them.  

On the way there, I took turns calling my family to fill them in on the news... but again, people weren't cooperating.  I mean, really, it was almost like they didn't want to hear! (j/k)

I called my niece, Taylor, and told her first.  We really wanted to do this because she's been the only grandchild so far and, well, she has a special place with us.  Then, we called my sister, Leslie, with Taylor quietly waiting on the phone.  Needless to say, her response was, well, screamingly overjoyed *smile*.   Now for the final part of our nefarious plan... with both Taylor and Leslie on the phone quietly, we called my mother up.  But wouldn't you know, she wasn't answering!  After some pestering, we disturbed her nap with the news.

"Shut-up, shut-up, shut-up!"  

That's a good sign of surprise :)  But I didn't have to shut up because it was true.  It was awesome to tell my family... it made it seem even more real than before.

Not to be out-done, we arrived in the Ephrata area.  Em called Mom Trout and made chit-chat with her while we bought some flowers.  Then we just popped in.  Another surprise and another happy set of parents.  We told the rest of the family that weekend.

I tell you... there's something special about telling your family that you're pregnant.  It's hard to put your finger on, but it's amazing experience.  There are more details to share that just these few lines can capture, but needless to say, both families are thrilled at the news.

Now we just have to wait! 

Um...Hello, Brain? (THE BABY!)

Wow - I just posted and forgot...we got to see our baby for the first time!! Jon and I drove down from the beach on June 19th to get the first ultrasound. It was obviously great. Jon got to see it first and looked a little stunned (happily). Watching the heart beat was probably the best part - especially since the little guy isn't moving around too much right now. :) Here the one picture that we got to take away.

Looks just like us right? Sarah told us that it has a boy head. Hmmm...she may have a solid career ahead of her if she's right!

The Beach and the Great Sleep

Tired. Apparently the last blog posting was from June 10th. That was 20 days ago. I feel like that was yesterday. Maybe I was asleep the whole time. Yep - I pretty much was. Actually - I felt too sick the week of the 10th. I even felt sick in my sleep.

The week after that we were at the beach with my sister and her family. Here are a couple of pictures from that. The beach was great - super relaxing. I slept a lot which really aided my return to feeling more normal.

Here is the beautiful beach. We were walking on the boardwalk in Ocean City (NJ) in the evening. I thought this was a nice shot of the moon and the beach.

Here we all area at the Wonderland Pier - the amusement end of the boardwalk. Sarah is very kindly sharing her Kohr Bros ice cream with Caleb.

Here's uber-cute Caleb again. Not such a fan of the merry-go-round.

But a BIG fan of the tide pool down near 93rd street. For awhile. And only after a few days of trying. To be fair it was cold. Anyone see a pattern in these pics with Uncle Jon getting quality Caleb time. They were big buds after the week - even did high-fives.

Sarah is practicing her 'diving' skills - known to most of us as pulling-yourself-along-in-calf-deep-water-on-your-stomach skills. Which were pretty killer. She loved the water and would run into it splashing around - even though most of the time it was pretty cold. After awhile her lips would turn blue and she would need some cuddle in a towel on the chair time.

The trip was great. The week after I felt MUCH better. Well, at least through the end of the week. But hey - we're over 9 weeks along!! All downhill from here, right?? :)

Hello Morning Sickness

Yep - I think that I'm officially pregnant. Morning sickness has started - which is a good sign so it's ok. Thursday I called Jon excitedly after a bout of queasiness saying "Guess who just had their first experience with morning sickness!!". Newbies...geeze. It's gotten progressively worse throughout the week and today I was sick pretty much all day. I feel much better right now (9 pm) but I still have that empty feeling in my stomach that is like the pre-sick feeling. We'll see how tomorrow goes. As long as it means that everything is going smoothly it's not too hard to handle.

Here are some pics of what my mom currently calls "the kids". I know that she's overjoyed that they won't be "the kids" for long. :)

Cassie - doesn't he look happy. His full name is Casanova. A fitting name too because he is so the most laid back and loving of the cats. Cassie is a half-outdoors cat now and loves it.

Zoe. It means life. She needs a life. Zoe is the cat that stays in our apartment all day and sleeps and eats. She has that loud, annoying cat meow - the one where she always sounds like she's really mad and dying. But we love her. We just won't love her if she tries to sleep in the crib at any point - out the door.

Bella. Mirabella is a beautiful tortoise-shell calico. She's 100% cat. Loves the outdoors, eating the heads off of things, playing with her tail...and anything else that moves. She spends most of her time upstairs with Joya but comes down for rare moments of love and food.

The honey bee. Not a cat or a pet - but he was trapped on the window as I sat sickly on the sofa today. I hope he found his way out.

Spreading the News

It's been just over one week since we found out that we're pregnant. We just took the first couple days to soak in the news and thank God for bringing us to this point. As Em said, we've been telling a few people and it's slowly becoming more of a reality. There has been so much anticipation about us getting pregnant and everyone has been super excited when we've told them.

The families are this weekend! We wanted to tell both our families in the same time frame and this coming weekend is our first opportunity to go to PA and tell the Trouts. I'll be calling my family on the way. Maybe they thought it was never going to happen (lol!) but it just needed the right timing.

Even though there is no apparent outward sign that things are different, I can really sense that things have shifted for us. Little thoughts are dropping in my head at almost every spare moment about how we need to prepare as well as think about raising the kids. 9 months seems like such a short amount of time to get ready. I'm really glad we've had the last nine months to mentally prepare and rearrange our lives... at least it won't be such a rush.

Totally excited!!!

Looks Good!

I went to my first doctor's appointment yesterday with Dr. Andrea Williams. She is absolutely wonderful. We spoke for over thirty minutes about my history, the pregnancy process, my questions, etc. She said everything looks good so far and scheduled us for an ultrasound in two weeks - actually while we are going to be on vacation. We can't come later than that though because the next week she'll be going to Tanzania for two weeks. I don't think we want to wait until she gets back to see our baby for the first time. :)

We've started to tell a few select people. It's still surreal. Maybe if I didn't feel so normal - but I'm not complaining a bit!