Nice to Meet You, Little One

At long last, I feel confident that I can finally say you have decided to say Hello.  Over the past few days I have noticed a strange fluttering feeling in my belly with growing intensity and frequency.  To be honest, I think I have felt this on rare occasion over the past few weeks, but it’s really hard to tell what exactly it is.  My stomach hasn’t felt “normal” in 5 months, so it’s easy to pass it off as a gas bubble or indigestion, but I think at this point I am fairly confident that it is indeed our little girl making herself known.  And that makes me smile.  Thursday was Thanksgiving and it was perhaps the first time I felt that the little flutter was maybe something real, and I’m pretty sure that it was because you were as excited about that pumpkin pie as I was.

I am now 22 weeks pregnant and that means we are over halfway.  I guess it’s kind of scary, but based on how big I am already getting, it’s really more of a relief at this point.  I feel like a dinosaur, lumbering around very slowly and awkward.  I really didn’t expect that to happen until much later in the pregnancy so I can only imagine how uncomfortable things will be a few months from now.

We now have your car seat & stroller here and all put together and I think it looks just great.  I still need to figure out how to actually operate the seat and secure it in the car, but we’re on the right track.  Your father has admitted that while I was gone one day last week he was pushing the stroller around your room, and I just love that.

It’s comforting to me to know that even if we didn’t get any other single baby item we are still equipped to bring you home from the hospital if you were to make an early appearance.  Now that we know you are a girl, we have also accumulated a handful of darling little outfits that I can’t wait to put to use.

Your Daddy and I have also been spending a lot of our time trying to figure out where exactly it is we want to settle as a family.  I know it sounds fabulous to say that our baby will be born in a Beverly Hills hospital and live in Malibu, but when we really get down to it, this isn’t the place we want to raise a child.  We have been doing our research on schools and housing prices and safety ratings and visiting some different areas on the weekends to see if we can find that place that just feels right.  We haven’t found it yet, but I’m not giving up.

We don’t have a name for you yet, but I think we’re on the right track.  Johnathon looked over the list of girl names I’d started and he actually didn’t hate all of them.  In fact, he only crossed off a handful and I think there are quite a few that we really agree on.  He is only now starting to look through names on his own and I want him to have the chance to contribute his own favorites before we really start narrowing it down.  But I am confident we will come to an agreement and find the perfect name for our little peanut.