We Are Having A Baby! We Are Having A Baby!

Big news in our house!  Our family is growing by 1 next year.  My official due date is May 6^th but our baby GIRL will be delivered in my 39^th week so really the birth date will be the last week of April.  And YES it’s a GIRL!  I’m in my 17^th week right now, darn near half done with this pregnancy.

This little squirt is sticking her tongue out when I wasn't looking, showing her true colors about not being an only child anymore.

So a little backstory, before we got married, Aaron told me he wanted 4 or 5 kids.  I laughed at him and told him he is with the wrong girl, I liked kids but never really had a motherly instinct that craved to really have any of my own.  My thought was, let my friends have kids and I can just love on them but I don’t have to be responsible for them.  At the time, I told him 2 would be my max.  Then years later, we got married.  We decided to hold off on kids and enjoy the married life.  Well married life got really comfortable, almost too comfortable to the point that I even questioned if I wanted kids at all still.  Once I turned 30, I just started to get set in my ways.  Aaron and I had (and still do!) a really close, strong marriage but we were also at that time very independent of each other.  He worked late or went to work functions in the evening, I worked out, met up with friends at my leisure, and every Wednesday evening I would go to Banana Republic and buy myself a new outfit.  Every.Single.Week!  Aaron and I had nice long meals at nicer restaurants every weekend, date nights were often and plentiful.  Yep, my life was pretty easy peasy, I did what I wanted, when I wanted and had tons of free time on my hands.  Why in the world would I ever trade that in for kids, I thought.  I’m happy and didn’t know the wiser.   Also during this time, Aaron’s opinion on kids changed as well, it all happened when we started vacationing; he loved vacations so much that he was fine with putting off having kids.  I know we sounded totally selfish, didn’t we?!  So we were.

Love how Annie is checking out her little sister here

Fast forward a few years and I realized I wasn’t getting younger and I would never be mentally ready for kids.  I mean, if we loved to vacation, how could we vacation in our retirement years if we still had kids in the house?  We probably needed to have kids soon so it wouldn’t interfere with our retirement {selfish talk again}.  I talked to Aaron and we decided we both felt that same way, we will never mentally be ready for kids so let’s just have one and see what happens.  And that’s just what we did.  And it happened so quickly that we kinda just looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders and thought well no turning back now.  Pregnancy was not as fun as I thought it would be but overall I was pretty healthy and so was Annie so no real complaints.   Then Annie arrived, the first 6 months were a blur and life changed substantially.  The biggest change was never realizing how independent Aaron and I lived our lives, if I needed to leave the house, someone needed to watch Annie.  Coming and going didn’t happen as freely as it did before baby.  Nice dinners out got traded for ordering to go and new outfits every Wednesday was more like buying baby clothes online, shopping for me was a distant thought.  Working out got pushed to the back burner and hanging out with friends just was a little further and fewer between.   And vacations?  Well we were still determined to vacation once in a while.

Once we got into our groove, Annie’s personality bubbled and this girl really stole our hearts.  Badly.  Our Annie is the light of our lives and without her, life was not nearly as full as I thought it was.  Yes I probably would have lived on a happy life, not knowing any different but I’m really, really glad we decided to take the plunge into parenthood.  I would never trade in my life today for my life in the past.  

Tell your Father how you really feel about Baby #2 Annie... 

Since our little Annie is a firecracker, Aaron is now easily convinced that 2 is enough for him.  I’m actually the one that has pressed the topic of 3 over the past year.  The tables have turned.   But 2 is our max.  I don’t know if Aaron and I are truly ready this soon for a second one but our desire is mainly for Annie to have a sibling and preferably one close in age.  So this year I told Aaron, let’s have another and he said okay let’s do this and sure enough, just as quickly as I got pregnant with Annie, so did I with baby #2. 

Not that it was any surprise then to find out I was pregnant with baby #2 but our reaction was far different.  With Annie, I took a test and we were happy but we were also like well no turning back now.  When I told Aaron he in a little awe shock too and then about an hour after I told him I was pregnant with Annie he kinda had a crisis and freaked out on me on finding a new job because I working for a bank that was getting sold and at that time, I didn’t care if I lost my job or not and now with baby on the way, my job situation changed dramatically.  With Baby #2, we walked thru our new house in the framing stage, I took him to Baby #2’s room and told him there and he actually teared up with joy.  I feel like baby #1 was kinda surreal all the time and baby #2 we are really appreciating the news more and it just feels like we are more genuinely joyous.  Don’t get me wrong, we were joyous with Annie but the whole unknowns and questioning if we were ready for parenthood had us a little on edge.  Well good news is, we are ready.  We’ve kept one alive, fed, breathing, beyond loved on, and spoiled for almost 2 years, pretty sure we can add another one to the mix successfully. 

The only thing I can’t fathom is how in the world am I going to share my love that I have for Annie with another one?!  I love her so incredibly much and can’t even imagine loving 2 kids as much as I love her.  Good news is… I do know our hearts will find space to love 2 kids equally as much as we love our one now.  Parenthood is truly amazing and I can’t believe we are blessed enough to be parents to 2 little girls.  My heart is SO incredibly full!  We are having another baby!  We are having another baby!  I can’t stop saying it!  

By the way, when we first saw this commercial, we died laughing, this is Aaron and I to a 'T'!  Never say Never!  Life's NEVER been sooo good with where we are today...