Baby News and More!

Looking back over the past few weeks....

first, and most wonderfully, we had our second appointment for the baby on the 9th and we heard the heartbeat! What a wonderful little sound and moment that was! Dinah had to look just a little to find it, so that was concerning, but then, there it was, loud and clear! Praise the Lord. It felt more real (that I was pregnant) after that. The next day I even got a new diaper bag! (from my mom) It's adorable. It's classic pooh, and green. I got rid of our old baby bedding (which was classic pooh) because I wanted something new for this baby's room (but it's nice to have a classic pooh diaper bag still!) We plan to find out the gender, hopefully in just about 2 1/2 weeks! Since we've had the two miscarriages, it seemed like a good idea to make sure everything was ok with the baby - and while we are looking, we might as well find out if it's a boy or girl! (that's the way James prefers to look at it - I wanted to find out what it was even if we didn't "need" a sonogram! :) ) If it's a girl I'll probably make a nice girly pink room, and if it'a boy, I can't decide If I should go with something different (for me) like green, or stay with blues.

Patrick seems to understand a tad bit more about the baby now...in a way. I don't think he really understands, but he's not acting like it's a big joke most of the time anymore :) I see him thinking of it in a more real way, associating things in our home and life with the "new bebe" as he calls it. Things like it's bed, chairs it will sit in someday, going to the doctor for it, etc.Sometimes he talks about "Emma" in reference to the "new bebe." (Emma is one of our names we like - in fact, it's what we were going to name Patrick, had he been a girl!)He likes to idea of someone to play with. He seems to love babies.

I'm close to 18 weeks now! So amazing! I think I started to feel little "flutters" before the 16th week, and It seemed like I might of felt a kick last night! It's so strange and precious to feel this new little person, and think about it's personality, and adding it to our family!

I've been to the doctor three times (for my leg) not including a trip to the sonographer. About two months ago, I had this bump on my leg...which turned into 2, which turned into 4. First I was given antibiotics for an infection, then I had a sonogram, then finally, after this last visit to a different doctor, I got some new information. Dr. Burchfiel thinks it could be erythema nodosum, which can occur during pregnancy. She seemed to think it could last for the duration of my pregnancy. She had some blood taken as well, and everything was pretty normal, except for my white blood count being kind of high. (which is very normal for being pregnant, so we assume it's due to that.)

In other than baby news :)We house-sat for some friends about 2 weeks ago. They have a pool and we were viewing it (especially James) as a mini vacation. Well, it turned out to be a fiasco! Our mini "vacation" included goats breaking out twice, a large snake greeting me upon opening the hen house, Patrick not liking to swim (which we already knew-and we were glad at least he would put his feet in the water while we were there!) scorpions creeping out in the house at night, Patrick having an "accident" in his PJ's in the toy aisle of Wal-Mart, and Patrick breaking out in hives. We ended up coming home early, which meant we had to travel over there twice a day to care for the dogs, cats, goats, chickens, donkeys, frogs and fish. Ah well, there were some fun times, especially the pool party I had with friends.

Just last week, James got a new job! There will be more pay and more training opportunities, so we are excited and grateful to God. We are also grateful to God for James' old job, and all the training he was given there. It was his first full time computer job after he stopped doing violin full time, nearly two years ago. The new job is in Frisco (about an hour away from here) so we are looking for somewhere new to live. The last two moves we made were pretty soon after a pregnancy (both the miscarriages) James doesn't want me to work too hard packing up things this time. Not that packing made me miscarry the last two times, since moves were after I'd lost the babies - but the miscarriages did both happen around times when we moved, and stress could have been higher.

Well, it seems like there was something else I wanted to write, but it's gone, whatever it was. Hope you all are having a happy Thursday. It's almost the weekend :)