Ups and Downs

Last week, I had lunch with my good friend Jolene. As we don’t see each other all that often, I thought I’d send a text to see if we could meet up over the lunch hour so I could share the baby news with her. It was a great lunch and it’s always great to see Jo-Jo. She was of course super excited and her and her fiancé Paul then sent Brandon and me a very cute, hand made baby card! Way to be crafty Paul! :)

Last Thursday night Neighbor Meg came over and helped me bake Baby Cookies. We had fun, chatting, baking and decorating in pink and blue frosting with sprinkles and candy pacifiers. Meg found the candies – she’s so creative! I brought the cookies to work on Friday to break the news to my coworkers – that was a lot of fun. They knew instantly! I got some hugs and lots of congrats.

This week the baby has been very naughty! Starting with Tuesday morning. I woke up CRABBY! And lucky for me, we were still in the middle of a snow storm that was making the commute to work just lovely. So I’d gotten up early (first alarm vs. 5th snooze like normal) to get a head start on the road. But by the time I left the house, for no good reason, I was so on edge that my jaw hurt. On my way in to work, the roads were awful. And there was this one guy that I swear really, really wanted to buy a new back end for our car. I made it in to work, on time and in one piece but… I was still waaaaay crabby.

My mood, ah.. didn’t necessarily get better but sort of leveled out about mid day, but as I came down from the angry state, I fell into a sad state. Mind you, nothing happened to cause any of this. By the time I was driving home I was in tears. I called my mom and she was kind enough to talk me down and distract me the whole way home so I could drive with clear vision.

But as soon as I walked in the door my poor unsuspecting husband asked how I was doing… oh boy. I fell apart. He came up to me and embraced me, patted my back, let me ball my eyes out, and told me it was going to be okay. Neither of us knows what “it” is, but I believe him. He instructs me to go upstairs and get my jammies on and once I did, I felt so much better. He’d ordered pizza and we ate and watched tv. The world was a better place, finally. Brandon then asked me “what’s my son up to today?” it took me a minute to get it… but I told him “reeking havoc”.

The following day I was all good…. Until I ate lunch. I had a chicken sandwich, baked potato, and milk. Some part of that the baby did NOT like. I struggled thru most of the remaining work day and ended up leaving a little early. I took an hour and a half nap when I got home and felt better afterwards. I love naps. Brandon and I went to poker and our friend Jodi made a very nice toast in which she announced to all our poker friends that in 18 years they can look forward to taking our kid’s money too! I’m thinking he/she is going to take theirs!!! Ha!

Today is a good day. I have a roast cooking in the crock pot at home so dinner will be done already. I think the crock pot is my new best friend, sorry Leslie. And we have no obligations or plans for the evening. Just jammies. Tomorrow night we’re having a valentines dinner with our good friends Josh and Linnea and then Saturday night we are meeting our good friends Red and Marci for Red’s birthday. None of which know our news yet, so that will be awesome! Saturday morning I'm meeting my mom, gramma and sister Angie for breakfast which will be very nice. Sunday we have a couples poker game – love’em / hate’em – at Gene and Jodi’s. busy busy

So much joy

It's amazing to me the amount of joy our baby news is bringing to people. It surprises us both. We thought everyone would be happy, but we didn't expect such overwhelming excitement. Well, we knew Grampa Vern would be super excited, he's been wanted great-grand-babies since before we were married. When we announced our engagement, he said "I expect some babies pretty soon". We said "well how about we get married first" and he replied "well I suppose it's appropriate but you know it's not necessary!" :) so much for being old fashioned! Grampa never gave up hope. When we called he yelled in the background "I bet I know what it is!!!" Gramma Adele wasn't so sure as she, along with my mom and Brandon's mom, had figured we weren't going to have kids. Surprise!!! Like my dad said "I knew never would eventually come" as we'd always said never to kids.

So Sunday started out with brunch with my Dad and Laurie. I waited until my dad said "what's new" and then showed him the ultrasound and said "we're pregnant". The looks on their faces were priceless. they were stunned. there was a moment of silence as they stared at us until finally Laurie said "YOU are?" LOL I replied "well, mostly me, but yes, WE are". When the waiter came by Laurie announced that we're having a baby. And then the questions followed and my dad was continually smiling at me and nodding. Proud Grampa. :) He gave me a nice long hug at the door and said he was happy for us. We had also called Jackie, my stepsister, and announced it to her. She squeeled.

Next stop, my mom's. My mom is a bit more dramatic in nature, so her response is quite animated. Her and Don have recently begun building hillbilly photo frames out of trees that they cut... so we show up, unannounced... but I honked the horn profusely - as always (need to make sure people are decent). We walk in and she takes us around the house proudly showing us her recently completed hillbilly frames and clocks. We end up in the living room and I tell her that we have a photo she can frame, but it's just little. I hand it to her, she takes it and turns around to go into the dining room light but only gets a few steps away before she screams "oh Amy!" and comes running back and hugs me and Brandon. She's instantly shaking and crying and says she's nervous for some reason. Monday when we emailed she'd said she started knitting an outfit for the baby to come home in. And she printed a copy of the ultrasound and wrote on it and hung it in her cubicle for all to see. Proud Gramma. :)

At this point I'm absolutely exhausted and we decide to head home. We called my Gramma Bernie and Sister, Angie, on our way home and made our announcement. Angie squeeled and was very excited, Gramma too. I know they were dissapointed that we didn't stop by and I feel bad, but I was toast. My sister wrote me a nice email expressing her excitement and support.

We had a 2 hour nap when we got home. I'm a huge fan of naps now! When we woke up we called neighbors Meg and Joe to see if they wanted to have dinner for "Brandon's birthday". His birthday has served as an excellent cover. hehe. So, again we make our announcement. Meg got all teary eyed and Joe was absolutely surprised. He said "That's the last thing I expected to hear" Brandon said "me too!" too funny. Meg is going to be a blessing as a neighbor and auntie to this baby. And, she's going to be great at teaching me what the heck it is I'm supposed to do.

We called my Grampa Vern and Gramma Adele that night too. I can't wait for them to come back to MN. It'll be nice that the shower and the birth will be in the summer/early fall as they'll still be in MN. They did say that if our baby is anything like me, then I'm getting payback!

Today is Brandon's actual birthday. So again we used it as a cover up to get our good friends and poker buddies Gene, Jodi, Brad and Jill to go out to dinner with us. Jodi shared something and then Jill took out a magazine and was showing it so Brandon decided since it was show and tell time that he'd pull out the ultrasound photo. It has seriously come in handy. So he holds it out and Jodi is the first to recognize what it is and she covers her face with her hands and starts to cry and everyone catches on and congrats and oh my's go around. When the waitress comes around someone told her that there's a new baby in the family. We had some really hillarious chats about babies and pregnancy. I laughed so hard. Brandon actually said "So when they poop do you rub their nose in it and tell them NO!" LOL and then later I made a comment about a "baby baister" vs. a turkey baister... LOL good times!

All in all everyone was very supportive and very excited. We have several more good friends and coworkers yet to tell. It's so difficult to get together with everyone. Many of our long time friends don't live near us &/or we are not exactly running in the same circle anymore. I can't wait to share our news with them and I hope we get to soon.

We have a wonderful family and group of friends. We're very fortunate and our baby is going to be insanely spoiled.