ITS A......

Wow - 20 weeks, half way through!!

Hard to believe we are half way on our way to meeting our DAUGHTER....yep  ITS  A GIRL!

I had a whole post written this past Tummy Tuesday and when I went to post it, turns out I wasn't logged in to Blogger and it kicked me out and didn't save any of my changes - grrrrrrrr.  So I am just now mustering up the energy to get at it again...

So this past week has been yet another banner week for us productive gals -

1.  We came home to our stroller and car seat in a box on the porch!  I was helping the boy with his homework upstairs for no more than 30 minutes and came down to find the entire system put together by the mama-to-be, complete with power tools.  She even broke down the box and recycled it?  Anyway, its AWESOME and we love it - its purple and black and we were hoping it would work for either gender since we didn't know at the time we ordered it, but turns out - purple is PERFECT!

2.  Our name changes were APPROVED.  No questions asked - no court date - just the official paperwork from the court stating it was a done deal.  Now THAT was easy.  Next steps are to file for new SS cards and those applications are in the mail.

3.  We (finally) completed a living will for DW.  We have been sitting on this for years but took the agonizing few hours and just DID it.  It's a pretty depressing exercise in itself, never mind when you have NO assets and all DEBT.  But you can't take it with you now can you??  Next legal steps will really not come until after the baby is born.

4.  We completely cleaned out the garage, hung bikes, threw away bulky untouched toys, etc.  The boy had a mini gaming table with different setups for air hockey, pool, and basketball, but he never uses it anymore so we, as usual, decided to put it out on the curb.  I think it may be my favorite thing about this lovely neighborhood.  If you leave anything out front long enough, someone will claim your junk as their newest treasure.  Sure enough, we came home from lacrosse practice around 8pm this week and there was a creepy white kidnap van circling our culdesac...they were at least decent enough to ask (since we were standing outside) if they could take it...its a win win because one of the annoying things about our neighborhood is they only take trash that is IN your trash bin, so if it doesn't fit, they don't take it - same goes with lawn bags - irritating really.

5.  ANATOMY SCAN!  Yesterday finally came - I worked till noon, had lunch with coworkers, picked up the boy from school 30 minutes early and headed to meet DW at the appt.  We were taken in to the ultrasound room right away, so quickly in fact, I didn't have time to be nervous.  The tech asked if we wanted to find out the gender, and off she went.  She started with the head and kind of worked her way down, checking the brain, heart, stomach, arms, fingers, legs and toes.  And everything was right where it should have been and functioning accordingly.  I made DW drink OJ on the way to the appointment because I read that it wakes the baby up and we wanted to make sure we weren't dealing with a sleeping face down uncooperative baby - we could take NO CHANCES.  So no issues there, this baby was moving and grooving in there - the boy kept saying it was "freaky", and I gently corrected him to say that he meant it was "very interesting" and "extraordinarily amazing" (wink) - he was like "um yeah - freaky".  So before long our little one revealed HERSELF, and there they were, those three telltale white lines representing our very definitive DAUGHTER....

Nobody in that room was surprised at that outcome, DW has been calling GIRL since the very beginning, it would have been a shocker if it was a boy.  THE boy was a bit disappointed though because he was hoping for a boy but he was still pretty happy about the whole thing and happy to be there and "in the know".

We had to wait an agonizing 45 minutes to see the doctor after that because she was running behind schedule, but for that whole time, it was only the 3 of us who knew our secret, meanwhile family and friends were literally sitting at the edges of their seat...it was really nice to have that moment to ourselves for that hour - felt special.

After the appointment, we released the hounds so to speak...started with a call to our moms respectively, and then a mass text message to those in our phones, an email to those at work, and then the Facebook post.  All the way home, I had the boy reading all the responses out loud one by one as they came in - we had such a great time.  Ended the night with a trip to Babies R Us and a celebratory dinner at our fave Italian restaurant.

TONS of pictures this week although I apologize in advance because the quality is TERRIBLE on the ultrasound photos...but enjoy.  Captions are below each picture.

 PROFILE SHOT

 PROFILE SHOT WITH LEGS

 HER FEET :)

 GENDER SHOT (arrow pointing to her lady parts and bum)

 The telltale 3 white lines (terrible resolution I know)

 Freaky skeleton shot

ARMS

 SPINE

crossed legs

and finally - 20 week tummy