Guess what?

Guess what?

......

Did you guess it?  Need a hint?  Here's an outtake from some family pics we took two weeks ago.

Need me to spell it out further?  You need glasses.  Or spelling lessons.

WE'RE EXPECTING!!!!

OK I am just a little bit excited about this news.  And by a little bit I mean REALLY REALLY A LOT VERY MUCH EXCITED!  Thanks to many months off from the blog, there are a few questions I'd like to address...

Q1: How far along are you?
A1: Just over 21 weeks.

Q2: When are you due?
A2: March 21, which means probably late April... (just keeping expectations realistic here)

Q3: Why wait til now to share?
A3: We did wait quite a while to share.  We're over halfway there!!  This is not a simple answer, so saving for perhaps another time.  Suffice for now to say that this past year has been interesting and stretching and hard and full of tears and lessons and more tears and surprises. 

Q4: Do you know what it is?
A4: Here's one I can answer now... YES!

Since our 20 week ultrasound fell around the same time as Addison's birthday, we decided to combine the two events and do a gender reveal cake... inside her birthday cake!  We had to wait 8 whole days from the ultrasound to cake-day to find out (people who wait 9 months? crazy. CRAZY!), which was agony but also so much fun.   The anticipation made me even more excited (which I didn't know was possible), and it was also great fun to share with Addie, friends, and family as we cut into the cake containing our big news.

I'll let the pictures and video do the rest of the talking...

I had everyone at Addie's party guess the gender (and going with her "Crayon" theme) by coloring in an "ounce" of the bottles either pink or blue.  As you can see, the vote was really close!

Suddenly it was time to cut the cake!!  And I got so nervous!  The anticipatory week was so much fun that I wasn't sure I was ready for it to be over!

yikes.

do I have to?!

 Here we go...

Now watch this!!  It'll be like you were really there being deafened by me!

Did you watch it?? If so you're probably reacting like one of our friends did when he saw the video and said, "Wow, Meredith is a little bit crazy..."


I think it goes without saying - we were REALLY REALLY surprised.  I was 90% certain I knew it was a girl, and look how wrong I was!  In case you couldn't see the video, here are some pics which do almost as good a job catching our excitement.  Not pictured is the room full of children crying because I scared them half to death.

I HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO RAISE A BOY!!!!!  I'm still in shock!!!!  But we are soooo thrilled God chose to add to our little family with a son for us and brother for Addie.  Thanks goes to Him alone for this miracle.

For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him.

1 Samuel 1:27