today we got to hear the turkey’s heartbeat for the first time!  it was so strong and steady (low-mid 160s bpm) and washing-machine-like 🙂  the nurse said that the little bump noises are where s/he is punching/kicking the walls of the womb.  so very cool.  she mentioned that I should be feeling the movements any day now and I said that I thought I had been feeling teeny tiny movements over the last week but that I figured it must just be gas since all the books/sites say that doesn’t happen until 16-20 weeks.  she said since i’m so thin, it’s very probable that i’m already feeling flutters.  so, yay!  I’ve already started to feel the itsy bitsy kicks of my turkey!!!  I wish I could remember the first night I noticed it.  seems like I really only feel them when I lay down at night if I lay on my back and concentrate on my belly.  I hate that it’ll still be several weeks before hubby gets to feel the little tyke but i’m thrilled that I can.

click here for clearer audio than the video clip

yesterday was our friends’ annual mardi gras party extravaganza. always a good time. this year, hubby and I went separately. trainwreck picked him up early to help with setup while I slept in and went over a little later. by the time I got there, around 11:00, the Cheshire cat was already out. I sure do love my husband! as various friends showed up, I was thrilled to see hubby rush up to greet them with exclamations of “i’m going to be a daddy!” it just makes me so happy to see him all excited about our turkey. there were lots of congratulations and there was plenty of advice… and of course food, floats, and beads as well 🙂

hubby and me enjoying mardi gras

Wednesday night, we left Orlando and made the long drive up to Alabama.  Thursday morning, we gave hubby’s parents their “gift”.  it took them a while… his mom knew it was a picture of a baby but she couldn’t connect the dots to us.  after a couple moments, we clarified that they were having a new grandchild.  they were happy for us but I would not say they were really excited like my family.  it was about the reaction I expected actually… they’ve already got a pile of grandkids and two great-grandkids… what’s one more baby?  I don’t mean that to sound callous – like I said, they were happy for us.  I think shocked was the reigning emotion though; I think they had given up hope of their eldest son having a family.

the plan was to get the siblings together for lunch on Saturday and tell them then but hubby went ahead and told his sis and niece when they came over that night.  it turned out to be fine because his sis-n-law’s mom had some health problems so his brother wasn’t able to make it Saturday anyhow.  we told him over the phone and he was super excited.  we also told his aunt when she came over for the lunch and she immediately started planning a shower.  🙂  it was a great family visit and my sis-n-law even gave us some baby stuff that her grandson has outgrown on our way out of town.

tonight will be our last round of private announcements before we make the news public to everyone.  we have our closest friends around here gathering for a belated birthday dinner for me.  we’ll announce it to them and then post it on fb and then I’ve already got an email scheduled to go out to all our co-workers first thing tomorrow morning.  yay for being able to talk about the turkey!!!

the real excitement has finally begun… making the news public!  we started with my family.  we drove down Thursday night (which was dubious to the last minute thanks to many bridges and roads being shut down because of ice… i10 opened literally thirty minutes before we wanted to leave) but didn’t get together with my dad and sissy until Saturday.  we got everyone together under the pretense of doing a family gathering in lieu of our family Disney day since dad wasn’t up to going to the parks.  it turned out to be a nice birthday party for me too when they surprised me with a fabulous carvel cake (is there any other kind?!).  this also presented us with the perfect opportunity for our reveal since the cake was frozen solid and we had to let it thaw a bit before I could cut it.  I told them I had something for them too.  I apologized for being late for Christmas but that it took a really long time to make.  I gave my sissy the announcement card that I had lovingly made and I gave my dad a gift bag with a framed pic of the sonogram.  this is the moment where my sissy has figured it out and my dad is still trying to figure out what the heck that picture is.  the whole family was thrilled and hubby and I were super excited to be making this “real”.  I told my niece that we were going to take her home with us to be our live-in nanny.  she didn’t seem to object.  we’ve got a few more announcements to make while we’re here this week – my cousin and my best friends (I actually ran into one of them today after church while looking at model homes with sissy’s family.  haven’t seen her in six years and in she walks while my sissy and I were testing the sofa in a rather nice living room.)- and then we’ll head to Alabama and go through all the fun again with hubby’s family.

today was our first maternity appointment.  I’ve been an anxious wreck for days… so excited to see proof that this hasn’t all just been a figment of my imagination.

we went in there expecting to see our 6.5 week, blueberry-sized worm.  instead, we found a super active, big-brained humanoid measuring 6.5cm (2.5 inches) – that’s the size of an egg!  so… we’re actually 10.5 weeks, not 6.5 weeks.  holy cats!!! in the blink of an eye, I’ve got four less weeks of pregnancy than I thought.  we made a thanksgiving turkey, not a Christmas elf!  i’m still in a state of shock over this.  I was pregnant when we went on our cruise.  I was pregnant during all of the Christmas festivities.  I was very pregnant when I got my tattoo and when I was downing Nyquil by the bottle-full because I thought I had an after-Christmas flu.  wow.

the bright side of this, aside from having that much less pregnancy to go through, is that I’ve only got 2.5 more weeks until i’m out of the first trimester and, hopefully, done with all this nausea.  this also means that all the cards that I made announcing a September adventure are wrong… our official due date is 23 August.  how nifty would it be if the turkey decides to wait until daddy’s/great-granddaddy’s birthday  😀

my heart was racing and I was crying as I watched this teeny tiny person waving and kicking and turning flips in my belly!  I swear it turned it’s head, looked straight at us, and waved.  the itty bitty heart was flickering like crazy – 184 bpm!  it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.  hubby said it definitely looks like a future ironman.  after seeing the two firing hemispheres of the huge brain, i’m sure it’s a genius.  and either way, it is the most beautiful tiny human I’ve ever seen!

look at the brain on our genius turkey!

TMI below the fold… Read the rest of this entry »

24 Jan 2014

I have more good days now as far as nausea but there are still some days when food just makes me blech and the nights are always the worst.  I’ve had a couple migraines for which I’ve been hesitant to take anything until I ask the dr about it.  i’m still freezing to death most days which is just a crazy feeling for me.  i’m really hoping that the elf will continue to lower my temp and keep me cool through the summer but I have a feeling it is just going to be a super hot one.  It seems like my shoes are tighter so I guess my feet are already starting to swell.  the myriad odors in the elevators is nearly unbearable.  foods that I was handling fine are being rejected now… I was eating spinach omelets like crazy a couple weeks ago because it was about all I could stomach and when I had hubby make me one today, I gagged three times while eating it.  no more of those.  the elf still hates water… I get super queasy every time I drink some but since i’m a huge water drinker and a big fan of properly hydrating, i’m forcing the baby to deal with it.  it’s tough.

hubby actually left town this afternoon to do a mountain bike event with the boys tomorrow.  he’ll be back some time tomorrow night.  I’ve told him to enjoy it since this is likely the last big event he’ll be doing for a long time.  while we’re on our own tomorrow, i’m going to try to get some cleaning done around the house.  one of these days we’ll need to get serious about figuring out the nursery situation and all.  he’d better come home ready to honey-do.