4 months!

As the new year gets closer, May seems like it’s just around the corner. The first of the year always flies by, and I know that 2011 won’t be any different. We went for our monthly check-up on Friday. I went in worried because I had been having severe cramps. I had experienced some growing pains since the beginning of my pregnancy, but this was the first time that it hurt from the front of my stomach all the way around to my back. It even hurt to walk! After some reassurance from a good friend, I realized that this too, was just growing pains. Bruce Banner hurts when he turns into The Hulk, right? With all the stretching that my body is having to do, from the inside, out, it make sense to hurt. I just hope that I don’t turn green! I'm not hurting anymore, so I know that everything is okay.

At our appointment, Baby’s heartbeat was 153. The last time that they listened for the heartbeat, it took awhile to find Little One. But, this time, we heard it the second she put the Doppler on my stomach. What a sweet sweet sound!

We’re excited to have all our Christmas stuff up! We like having it up before Thanksgiving so that we can just sit and enjoy the tree on Nick’s break. It goes by so fast anyways and we want to enjoy it for as long as possible. We also wanted to get it done because our crib arrived yesterday and we wanted to get to work on the nursery! I couldn’t handle the mess of Christmas stuff and nursery stuff, so hopefully this will be a little less overwhelming.

Putting the crib together was an experience. We got all the pieces out of the box and realized that there were no instuctions. So, we searched online and found the manual on the manufacturer's website. We went to print it out and discovered that we were out of paper. We weren't happy. Then I remembered that, for whatever reason, I had some paper in my car, so we printed out the instructions and got started. The instructions were not clear on a lot of steps and that made things hard. On the second to the last step, we found the ACTUAL instructions. Only us! :)

We’re still trying to decide when and how to find out about our little boy or girl, but we think we're going to have the u/s tech write the gender on a piece of paper, seal it in an envelope and we'll open it on Christmas morning. I can’t think of a better Christmas present! Our ultrasound is on the 16th, so we’ll have to practice a great deal of self-control, but luckily, we’ll be visiting my family in Arkansas for most of the week and won’t be back at our house until Christmas Eve, so I think we can pull it off. I know that our life is already changing, just by knowing that we're having a baby, but I know that the minute we see "It's a Girl" or "It's a Boy" on that piece of paper, our lives will change even more as we prepare to raise our son or daughter. The anticipation is killing me!

My belly is growing bigger every day, so I'll have a new picture up soon. I'm already having a hard time standing up after I've been sitting on the floor, so I can't imagine what it will be like in a few months!

I hope that you have a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you find many things to be thankful for. We’re approaching our 3 year anniversary and 6 year dating anniversary and this year I am especially thankful for my best friend and soul mate. I don’t know why God decided to give me Nick, but it was the greatest gift He could give me. (besides Eternal Life of course, because after all, that’s a pretty awesome gift!)