Big Day

To quote the infamous Disney Commercial. Last night I found myself, "too excited to sleep!" So between the wee hours of 3 to 5 I decided to get up and do what else but make a giant pot of slow simmering bean and ham soup! (Can now check that off my list of things to do today!) Don was a little grumpy being awoken by all the sounds of the chopping vegetables but I lulled him back to sleep quickly with the sound of the running dishwasher. To pass the time while the soup simmered, I also watched a touching documentary on Netflix about the puppeteer who plays Elmo on Sesame Street. What a neat life story.

So today of course is the morning of the big ultra sound. In one hour we will be at the lab and seeing Baby Early for the second time. I can't wait to see how things are developing but of course we are mostly excited to find out the gender. Not that we care whether it's a boy or a girl, but knowing one way or another we can really start to imagine this little person and what our family is going to be like. Just having a pronoun to refer to Baby Early will be huge! We'll also be able to narrow down names.

I decided to use a vacation day at work today to be able to enjoy and savor the day. Don has most of the day off too with an appointment in the later afternoon, so we got to sleep in and have a relaxing start to the morning. I'm only a little concerned that Baby Early might be shy and try to hide the goods. I've heard that happens occasionally and would be soooo disappointing to come out of our appointment today and still not know. So I've decided based on my own completely sound (I'm sure) medical assumption that I made up myself, that I'm going to swallow a teaspoon of sugar about 30 minutes before my appointment to make sure he/she is alert and active and moving around -- hopefully giving us lots of vantage points. That's right, I'm going to intentionally sugar rush my baby.

In addition to the ultrasound, today also marks 20 weeks, the halfway point of our pregnancy. Last night I had the first experience of feeling the baby kick in a very distinct and pinpointed way in a specific spot (a few times repeatedly). This is different than the general quickening fluttering I have been feeling up until this point. And it was distinct enough and strong enough that Don was able to feel it too. Pretty cool!

Time to get ready to go. . . . :)