One year ago today

It’s been a whirlwind couple of days!! I still don’t believe it sometimes. My period would be due today or tomorrow, and I can’t help but be nervous and think “is it going to come?”, but of course I know I’m PREGNANT!!!

We went up to the Outlet Center  on Thursday afternoon, Sept. 30th (very rainy, with continous lightning and thunder, too!) and at Osh Kosh b’Gosh we bought an adorable gender-neutral newborn outfit (pastel and grey stripes on white, with a velvety grey rocking horse on the front, and grey long pants, and and adorable 6 month old size gender-neutral Christmas outfit (our child will be 6mos for their first Christmas!) that has a long-sleeved red and white striped shirt with adorable fleece red overalls with pockets and a Santa head on the leg with the words ho ho ho. Can’t wait to see our child in it!

I hid the newborn outfit in my purse, and we went to Mom and Dad’s house after the outlet center. We had a plan in mind of how we would tell them our wonderful news! Our premise to them was we were going shopping for pillows for our sofas—which we DO need—and when they asked if we had luck shopping, we would say “not with the pillows, but we did find this…” and I would whip out the outfit from my purse! We were caught off guard because I was in a different room, and Mom asked Josh if we had luck! LOL! It was so cute and funny, Josh said “Rachel, did we have luck with the pillows?” LOL!!

So I quickly walked over to my purse, and Mom and Dad and Becky were all near there, and pulled out the outfit and said: “No luck with the pillows, but we did find this, and we couldn’t resist…because…” and here Josh and I said together “WE’RE PREGNANT!!!”

Everyone was so excited! Such a whirl of excitemtent and happy feelings. I will always remember that!! Mom was crying, and so happy, and we were hugging so hard, and Dad was so happy and excited, and said “when I first saw you pull out that outfit, I was thinking Who is that for?” We hugged, and then Becky gave me a hug and told me how happy and excited she was!!! It was so fun!! Then I had Josh go out and bring in the other Christmas outfit from the car so we could show them. Everybody loved it! We all can’t wait to see our Little One!

They were asking if we minded sharing if we had name ideas yet, and we didn’t mind at all! Our top choices for names at this time are:

GIRL: Lillian Eve  (Lily)

BOY: Gabriel Alaric  (Gabe)

Everyone gave a big vote of approval! Dad said that Lillian is very nice and suits us with our house and old-style furniture!

We called siblings from Mom and Dad’s house, too! George was at his home, and he was so excited and congratulatory and happy for us!! He said Deanna was out babysitting with Makayla and Alyssa, so we called her cell and told her, and she was speechless for  minute, then was so super excited and happy!! We heard her tell the girls, and we heard a very sharp, high-pitched, excited gasp from the girls!! Deanna told us they were congratulating each other, LOL! We tried Laura’s and Brett’s house with no answer, then each of their cells with no answer, but Laura called back after a bit, and we told her, and she was sooooooo excited and emotional and happy!!!! We couldn’t understand what she was saying over the phone sometimes, because she was so excited and emotional!! So wonderful and exciting!! Then Brett came on for a bit and congratulated us, and told us how happy he was, too!

Mom had already gotten us some beautiful things for when we were ever successful at getting pregnant! They are so adorable and cute!!! An adorable, most precious little white bunny with chocolate features and pink corduroy feet tips, and a beautiful, plush, pink Care Bears blanket with a satin pink Care Bear head on it, and a pack of three Care Bears receiving blankets!!!!! And the Care Bears things are original 80′s style, too! We love it all!! Also, they gave us a pack of outlet protectors to take home, too!! All such exciting stuff!!

When we were heading home, Laura texted and asked if it would be intruding or if she could come over for a bit! We told her we’d love to have her over, and share our celebratory mood!! So she came right over, and she had some things for us too!! She came in the door and hugged me and we were crying! She gave us an awesome 5-pack with a satin hanger of original 80′s style Strawberry Shortcake blankets (love them!!) and a beautiful painted porcelain statue of a couple holding a baby, saying Bundle of Love – Our Pride and Joy! That teared us up some more!!!

People share our belief that our first baby will be a girl!   We would like a girl first and a boy second, but we’d be SO ABSOLUTELY THRILLED with either gender!!!!! We’re just so blessed to be pregnant, and we pray this is a happy, healthy, perfect baby!!!

We were able to show Laura some of the things I’d been guilty of purchasing over the last year or so (some girl things, a couple boy things, some gender neutral things), and we had fun talking about everything!

We weren’t able to tell Josh’s mom yet, because we wanted to tell her in person, too, like Mom and Dad, so we had to wait till today (Saturday). On Thursday and Friday she’d started (of all things!) a lactation class!! On Friday, we called Grandma and told her the news, and she was so excited for us!! Josh and I both talked on the phone, and she was just so happy, laughing, and exclaiming! Then we called Uncle Kelly and we both talked to him, too, and told him our news, and he was so excited, too! He yelled, and said congratulations, and told us it was the best news he’d had! Everybody was so happy for us, it made us feel so good!!

Today we went and visited Josh’s mom, and we had sort of the same plan: we were going to walk into the condo, and Josh was going to say immediately “Honey, show mom the things we found at the outlet center!” so he did that, and I whipped out the newborn outfit and held it up! She was confused and speechless at first, not wanting to assume anything, but then we said together “WE’RE PREGNANT!!”, and she jumped up and down, and screamed, and hugged me, then Josh and hugged me some more!! She was crying, and so excited!! She asked how far along, and we told her we only found out the day before yesterday! She was so so happy!! This is her first grandchild! We showed her the little Christmas outfit too, and she loved them both, and held them almost all night!

We ordered pizza and got to stay in and have a nice visit. She gave us a little spiral bound laminated booklet she’d made for her work (it’s excellent!) of what to expect at each stage of our child’s development! She also showed us some good websites to go to, I think one was aap.org, and it has healthychildren.org on the sidebar, or something like that, and then there was another one I don’t remember, something like childbirth.org or something.

It’s been a crazy but fun couple of days! The actual day we found out, it was the biggest storm since about a year ago, and thunder so intense it shook the house like an earthquake, really long, too, and continous lightning, and lots of rain! In fact, while we were waiting for my blood to be drawn at the doctor, a lighting bolt illuminated the entire room, then thunder so big and long rumbled the whole building, and it set off so many car alarms in the parking garage next door! It was pandemonium!!

Also, the morning of my test showing “PREGNANT”, we looked out our bedroom window at around 8am, and the wild parrots were all in our yard!!! They didn’t even mind the rain! They were all sitting on our wild sunflowers, and eating the sunflower seeds out of them!! We got some pictures of it. That same day, we were out of Arrowhead water, so after the doctor, we went to Fresh and Easy and shopped a bit, but they didn’t have our water, so we went to Vons to get some. Josh had me stay in the car (it was pouring buckets!) and he went in for it. So sweet! He’s so wonderful, and the best husband ever! We also had to go to our tax preparer’s office to pick up our new corporate binder, and sign some things for the IRS. (I love how idiotic…his secretary wrote out our stock certificates and spelled “thirtieth” wrong TWICE!! On one, she put “thirtith”, and on the other “thirthith”. Wow.)

On Friday afternoon and evening, I was so exhausted and had such bad and terrible body aches that I couldn’t even sit up at my computer (first Friday of every month should be a family tree friday post, and I wasn’t able to do it!), so I had to lay down and relax. Luckily I don’t have the bad body aches today, but I am very tired. Maybe we’ll go up to bed soon!