It's a ...B-O-Y!!!

Finding out we were expecting again has taken a while for both of us to wrap our heads around. I keep trying to picture what our family will look like and I have a hard time not picturing another baby Ryan, or baby Ally. I can only hope and pray this baby will be as easy as baby Ryan. God really allowed us to ease right into parenthood with Ryan. He slept great, ate great and was all around a very compliant baby. Now toddlerhood was a different story and age 5 was terrible, but we're back to the easy life right now and starting over again is just plain scary.

Now baby Ally was completely different than my first. She came three weeks early and she was a terrible eater, didn't sleep through the night for 15 months and a much more difficult baby. We literally tried everything you can imagine including her crying for hours each night and nothing seemed to work with this one. Ally likes to tell everyone that she used to be 'nocturnal' and that's exactly right!! This is what keeps me up at night now because those were some extremely hard days on me, Mark, Ally, and our marriage. But Ally has been THE easiest toddler, and there isn't a sweeter girl on the planet. She's so easy right now and is much more laid back than Ryan. She's my little shadow and we have a blast every afternoon together.

Mark and I couldn't wait to find out what baby #3 was going to be! We were thrilled to find out that we are adding another B-O-Y to our family. We got the privilege of going to Care Net to have a 4D sonogram and see first hand our little miracle. Our wonderful pediatrician set up the appointment so I could be a "sonogram model" since this machine is fairly new and some volunteers still needed some training. We love Care Net and all the amazing things they do for women in crisis. And this new sonogram machine is literally saving babies from abortion. I love how God works!

After the appointment we immediately headed over to Kacey's to reveal the mystery to our family. Mom got Ryan out of school for 30 minutes so we could tell every one at once. Ryan was really hoping for a brother and of course Ally wanted a baby sister. The suspense was killing them!

We had them sit on the couch and told them that we had some jelly beans for them and that if they were blue it meant a baby brother, and if they were pink a baby sister is on the way!

Ready...

Blue!! It's a BOY!!

We were all very excited and it was a wonderful moment for our family to share.

Of course Honey, Aunt Cary, and Aunt Kacey came prepared with baby gifts for their little guy :). Aren't those socks cute??!

Grandbaby #9 coming in April-WOW. (My scanner's not communicating with my computer right now, but we did get some AMAZING pictures at 16 weeks). I am almost 19 weeks now and feeling oh so much better. Praise. the. Lord.

Proud Honey and GP

For some reason I knew this time that we were having a BOY. I have been wrong with the other two but I distinctly remember after taking my pregnancy test in the Walgreen's bathroom(story on that later) the name James immediately popped into my head. Mark's dad's name was James as well as my Gran's so this baby officially has the middle name James. We have a long way to go on the first name but two out of three names isn't bad!

I am so thankful for this surprise and I am feeling baby kicks now all the time. It is truly one of my favorite stages of pregnancy---I'm done getting sick and it doesn't hurt to walk yet:). We are trying to figure out the whole office/nursery and things are slowly coming together. I am so glad I wasn't in control and that God thought we needed another BOY! AMEN.