The Bump

Well, as you might have noticed from the last post, our camera has some issues. It got smooshed a little bit, and we can only see half of the now fuzzy screen. Nevertheless, we try our best to take pictures when we can, so here we go.

This is the 4-month bump (taken sometime in January, don't believe the date it says.) Sure, it may look huge, but please note my bad posture...

I'm almost 6 months pregnant now, and people are still asking me, "where is your baby hiding??" I blame it on what I am wearing when they ask me and how much I've eaten. The ultrasound tech definitely approved that he is growing right on schedule, so it's not the kiddo's fault! Once Garrick gets home from New York, I'll get him to snap one of me now.

CELLO UPDATE!
Speaking of the East Coast, his audition at Yale transpired these past few days, and reportedly went well. Now we just have to wait and find out what the school decides (and who knows, maybe we won't know until April??) Also, the Utah Symphony just invited him to come and audition in May for the Assistant Principal Cello position, so there's a lot of time to get ready for that one! Good job, Garrick!!

Pretzels

The day after we had our first ultrasound, I was at Philharmonic Orchestra rehearsal until about 9:30pm. I came home to Garrick on the floor in his PJ's with a bag of pretzels, and saw this on the floor:




Yes, that's right. Garrick painstakingly chewed the pretzels into letters to form our names. It's little things like this that make me love him so much.

Baby Boy!

We had our first look at James Alexander yesterday, about halfway through my 20th week. We arrived at the doctor's office and were asked to come back right away (what a relief, we had been so jittery and unable to concentrate ALL DAY!)

The ultrasound tech took us through nearly every side of James- from the top of his head to see his brain, to the front of his face to see his eye sockets (which was a little creepy actually...) down to the bottom of his foot and inside his chest to see his little heart beating nice and steadily. He looks healthy and strong and estimated to be about 11 oz. right now (and somewhere in between the size of a large mango/small cantaloupe.)

He was sitting in a breech position with his feet down and his head up near my belly button, but not to worry, it's still very early so he has plenty of time and room to move to a more desirable position...

For almost 10 minutes the tech scanned him from top to bottom, but he managed to curl himself up just right so we couldn't see what we were most anticipating! After much encouragement and a little gentle prodding, we got him to expose just enough to see what we needed!! Although it took a while, there was no question it was James!




Another highlight of the event was seeing him move his arm up towards his face- it looked like he was trying to suck his thumb, and he even stuck out his finger and wrapped it over his nose. Garrick and I were both thumbsuckers, so it was pretty funny to see.



Unless the ultrasound technology is distorting his face, we think he's got my nose! I was a little disappointed, because I was hoping to see how Garrick's nose would have turned out if it hadn't been so maltreated by fate. We can still hope though!

Many may be aware of our personal preference for a girl, but not to worry- as soon as we were able to see him healthy (and pretty cute too ;) we felt such peace and happiness at the thought of just getting to meet him!

It was really fun telling our parents- my mom and dad had a bet going and I guess my mom won the prize, because she voted boy (sorry Dad!) We wanted to do something fun and kinda cheesy for Garrick's parents, because when we told them about the baby in the first place, it was rather abrupt and there were no bells or whistles in sight. We had some cupcakes left over from a fun Valentine's/Chinese New Year party, and we injected one cupcake with pink frosting and one with blue, and then frosted the top so the contents were undetectable. After we found out it was a boy, we grabbed the blue one, and had Garrick's mom take a big bite out of it, exposing the blue frosting!!! Charlie got to be there, and we had Alex on the phone from NYC singing for joy not long afterward.

It is now nearly the end of day one for me to be able to walk around knowing who's living in me, and it really is more fun to know it's James giving me little kicks. We don't anticipate getting another ultrasound unless there is some emergency, because it's been a very low-risk pregnancy so far. So hopefully the next time we see James, he'll be in our arms!!!

A few more pictures- sorry they're kind of upside-down.