Oh Baby….We’re Expecting

We’ve known since mid-August, but we thought it was about time to share the big news on the blog: that we are expecting our first baby in late April.  We are over the moon excited.  And totally freaked out.  All at the same time.  Which is why we waited 13 weeks to tell most of our friends and family and until we hit the halfway mark (20 weeks) to finally share it on the blog.  We’ve been neglecting the blog a little bit as of late, but it has all been due to our impending nugget as we affectionately call him or her.  We’ve actually been busier than ever, but now we can share all of our nursery plans in the upcoming weeks since that has moved to the top of our priority list this winter.  Along with dozens of other things before the nugget arrives of course.

We found out that I am pregnant right before our planned trip to Mount Rainier at the end of the summer.  It threw us for a loop since we learned that high altitude (over 10,000 feet) is not recommended during pregnancy.  Of course we still went to Mount Rainier National Park and Seattle as planned, but we didn’t do the full climb instead opting to do only the training day and head about halfway up.  Our first parenting decision.  We also decided not to tell anyone until after the first trimester with the exception of my mom and my closest friend.  Because as awesome of a husband as Dain is (which he totally is), I needed someone else to talk to about it all since the whole pregnancy thing comes with a lot of new concerns and questions. As in your whole life changes with one $5 test from Target.  Which is obviously why I took about 8 to confirm it my head.  It was a fun secret for a few months, but as soon as we hit the beginning of the second trimester Dain was itching to share the news.  In a cutesy way of course.

We threw around a few ideas for Dain’s parents such as a baby frame with something like “Coming Soon” framed in it, but we settled on the rough idea of a jar of baby food (since it screams itsy bitsy baby) with a cute note on it instead.  I left Dain to his devices one day, and he put the plan into motion.  He started with a jar of baby applesauce.

With the help of his ruler and x-acto knife, he crafted a perfect custom box out of a piece of matte board.

Before wrapping it he added a fun tag with a little more info.

Then he added the requisite gender neutral color assortment, slapped on some glittery wrapping paper from my selection, and sealed the box. 

We were left with a beautiful dainty gift that Dain’s parents loved.  It was a nice way to share the news, especially with first time grandparents like Dain’s parents.  Dain’s sister (who will be a first time aunt) and his parents were thrilled with the news.

It’s not the first grandchild for my parents.  It’s actually the fifth.  Which is not to say they are not excited.  But we didn’t do anything too creative to tell them.  I just blurted it out to my mom in a teary mess back in August thanks to all my newfound hormones.  And then she started crying.  And then Dain was just sitting there like what the heck is going on here ladies? Lucky for Dain, telling my dad was less emotional.  But we did have another group of peeps that we wanted to share the news with in a fun way: our nieces and nephews.

We did a simple card made to fit a sucker stick (because anything involving candy seems to be a hit.)  Really since they are 10, 6, 3 and 1, it was all about the sucker for the youngest three.  But our ten year old niece got it, and she was excited for us.  It’s pretty big time to have your first cousin.

Other than that, we called other close friends and family and emailed everyone else.  It has been a very exciting and incredibly busy time for us.  Becoming parents will no doubt be one of our greatest adventures together.  We had our big ultrasound already, but we chose not to find out the sex of the baby hoping only for a healthy baby.  It’ll be pretty amazing to have that experience in the delivery room.  One of life’s greatest surprises.  Of course that makes it a smidge harder to prepare for the nugget’s arrival because I would already have a hoard of the world’s cutest girly outfits and a pair of pink and purple baby pumas if I knew the nugget is a girl. But no worries as we are planning an awesome nursery that will work for either sex that we can add pops of color to later.  We still have other house projects in the works (like our guest bedroom/office redo), but we’ll be sharing nursery plans/progress in the near future.