18 weeks

Yesterday was easily in the top five favorite days of my life! Let me start from the beginning. We have a supporter who volunteers at a crisis pregnancy center called New Life Family Services. When we told her we were expecting, she mentioned that they were training several new ultrasound technicians and they needed pregnant "models". Not that I'm feeling particularly "model"-like these days, but I called and made an appointment because we couldn't wait to see our baby. Our "real" ultrasound is performed at our OB office next week. So we considered this a sneak preview! Brian and I had a little breakfast coffee date and we talked about how crazy it will be to see our baby and how real it will all become. We laughed and flirted and had fun. Even though the minutes seemed to drag on in anticipation, we finally arrived at the clinic for our appointment. As we waiting in the waiting room, we had a surprise! One of my favorite brides from last year was training in as an ultrasound tech! She was going to leave for the day, but when she saw my name on the schedule, she decided to stay. So fun! Talk about role reversal. I took precious pictures for her on one of her favorite days. And now she has returned the favor. We ended up with 13 perfect pictures of our guppy :)

Seeing our baby on the big screen was like nothing I could ever have imagined! I am so in love with Baby Bird! I was up every few hours last night (to pee and also drink water to "trick" my stomach into believing I wasn't really hungry, which only led to more peeing) and also looking at pictures of the baby while thanking God for such a miracle! I'm more emotional about it now than I was during the ultrasound. I've been feeling our little guppy squirming around for a few weeks now. Apparently, I was able to feel it earlier because of how my placenta is positioned? All I know is that our baby was definitely showing off for the camera with all sorts of fun dance moves. It was almost hard to get a good 3d shot of baby's face because he/she was moving so much. But we got to see ten tiny fingers on two little hands. How cool is that??? Baby also crossed his/her arms to tell us that he/she loves us already. Yeah, I'm a cheeseball. Brian and I couldn't be more proud. We were flying high all night long. And to think, next week we get to do it all again! Yay! Another reason why yesterday was so fun: we got to see the first pictures of our baby AND we got to see the first snowflakes of the winter! I was ecstatic! Nothing stuck, but just to see those big fat snowflakes falling was icing on the cake of an already perfect day.

And since I've already been asked a few times- No, we didn't find out the gender. And no, we won't find out next week either. It's funny because I was the kid who looked for my Christmas presents every year because I hated surprises, and now we are purposefully choosing to have the biggest surprise of our lives!

In other baby news, some friends of ours had been storing the cradle that me and my siblings used as babies in the basement. This week we went to retrieve it. It needs some TLC, so we are hoping to get it painted this week. I also got some fun yellow and grey fabrics to redo the bedding. That was my job today while Brian was deer hunting, but he just texted me that he got a deer this morning! He's happy. I don't know how much I like venison meat, but I know baby and I LOVE venison jerky! He says if baby is a boy, he's buying a tiny blaze orange fleece for hunting next year. And if it's a girl, she and mommy can have craft weekend while he's off doing the manly hunting and providing for his family haha.

Hard to believe we're almost half way done! Can't wait to meet you, Baby Bird!