Halfway There!

We have officially reached 20 weeks! It is pretty surreal to the both of us how the last 20 weeks have flown by and how often it doesn't even seem real. I have a little bit of a belly but not too much going on:

In celebration of our 20 week mark, and the fact that this was the ONLY free weekend we have until January 14th, Rusty and I went ahead and worked on our registry. We drove out to a huge Babies R' Us in Memorial City to do the majority of our "shopping." I had made a nice long list of all of the things I had been told to register for. I highly recommend a little preparation before dragging your husband in a baby superstore! I armed Rusty with the scanner, which of course he loved, and we got started. About 2 hours later we had worked through almost everything on my list.

After a well deserved lunch at Freebirds, we headed to Target to start a registry there. Even though I despise Target's return policy I decided I really wanted to have a second option for folks. Since the Babies R' Us near us closed, it is somewhat of a pain to get shower gifts if there isn't a second store to shop at. Luckily, having already done the bulk of decision making registering at Target was a breeze.

Once we got home and rested for a little bit we started cleaning out the soon to be nursery. Seeing as we are not going to have much time at home this fall I really wanted to get a jump on cleaning everything out. As no surprise to many of y'all I already have a pretty strong "nesting" instinct. I have found bedding that I love and am now working on getting all of the other decor together. I am trying not to worry too much about the final product, but that is easier said than done. Luckily, I have Rusty to bring me back to Earth and remind me that we still have 20 weeks :)

The next update will be after my 24 week appointment in November. If we do anything major to the nursery, of course we will post that too!

The Big Appointment!

This morning Rusty and I arrived at our doctor's office bright and early. The first appointment was our anatomy scan and then we were scheduled to meet with my doc. Valerie, our ultrasound tech, walked us back to her cozy ultrasound room. With all of the reading I have been doing to prepare, I had come across some advice to have a nice full bladder for an optimal scan. I am very glad I double checked this advice with Valerie. Luckily she told us it wouldn't make any difference because the way our scan went I would have been running to the bathroom in the first few minutes!!!

Once we got settled Valerie walked us through everything we were seeing. It was amazing to see how much our little one had gone from a little bean with toothpick arms to what actually looked like a miniature baby! Here is one of our ultrasound pictures, a nice profile!

Turns out our little one was quite a mover and a shaker. I think it got my dance skills :) After a lot of pushing around to check the organs, vessels and bones, Valerie got down to business! Of course we were dying to know the sex of the baby. After a little more pushing around she got a great picture...

It's A Boy!!!! We could not be more excited about the news. We were both really hoping for a boy first and we are both so thankful to be blessed with a baby boy first!

At the end of our scan the tech started taking "4D" pictures. Thankfully she warned us that they were not going to be very pretty. At this stage the baby is more or less a skeleton with skin, not very cute without any fat. We figured we would at least post one of the pictures, our favorite, our little one just relaxing!

After our scan we had a chance to spread the good news to our parents and they were so thrilled to hear the news. When we made it in to see our doctor we got the green light that everything looked great on the scan.

Now the fun begins with picking a name, a nursery design and shopping :) Our next appointment will be around 21 weeks in early November. Unless anything happens between now and then we will be sure to update the blog!