two of the best things you can hear at a prenatal appointment:

of course, the babes heartbeat is number one! it was great to hear it, loud and clear. although, my doctor had a hard time "finding" the baby at first which gave me quite a panic attack. it's right at 160, which is great! such a great feeling when you hear it for the first time, knowing that it is alive.

the second best thing? hearing the nurse tell you you've LOST, yes, l-o-s-t, weight since your last appointment. i've lost 9.3 lbs since last month. at first my doctor was slightly worried, thinking i had insane morning sickness and vomiting frequently... but i'm not. i do have morning sickness and night sickness, and sometimes mid-day sickness, that don't make me want to eat, but i do anyways. i've just been really conscious about what i'm eating.. more fruits, veggies and meats, less snacks and ice cream. which brings me to dan...

dan is such a great husband. he's been so busy working and then working on his LBC projects that sometimes i don't see him until 9 pm- which totally sucks- but each night he calls me and asks if i want a blizzard/shake/anything horrible for me... and each night when i say no he says, yea me either.. but he's totally DYING to eat a shake, but won't in front of me. he's such a sweetie, he comes home sits on the chair and almost always immediately falls asleep. he works SO hard, doing extra jobs here and there so we have a little extra money to do extra things on weekends. and with me done working for the remainder of the summer and only working 30hrs during the summer, i am very grateful for him. i've landed myself a keeper :)

next weekend is dan and celestes wedding and we're heading up to tower a day early to have some "us time" without gavin. we are, however staying with my mom in the cabin she rented on friday night but we plan on going out to a nice dinner and crashing early. saturday morning i'm doing hayleys hair for the wedding and dancing my sober ass off all night long! mike hicks did ask me if there was a way to cut off the baby for a night so i could drink... (he is obviously so worried about my well being and ability to have fun) i think he was kidding... but sometimes with mike i'm not too sure ;)

and another great thing today, as i'm looking out my window i see... a cute blonde, little boy on is bike, with his daddy walking next to him on their way to to the park... guess who it is? ryder and coop! SO cute! can't wait for gav to get a little bit bigger and that can be gav and dan!

well..

okay, so here it goes.

we're pregnant... oofta! it takes a lot out of me to say that out loud---or i mean, type it. as pleased as we are to be expecting again, i hate telling everyone. i mean, when i was engaged i hid my ring under the table until someone actually commented on it, and i told people i was pregnant last time by announcing it on facebook and only telling about five people myself. actually, some rude relatives asked us if we were ashamed of being pregnant, and no, we weren't, i just hate all the attention.

so, it was perfect timing to tell everyone at our party on saturday (come back to that later)... and the word spread quickly :) it was fabulous! i still have to tell my dad and don't want to tell him via the phone, so it might have to wait till this weekend when i can see him face to face.

anyways, we are pregnant. as of now our expectant due date is february 21, so 02-21-12. my doctor so cleverly pointed out that it would be an amazing date, with all twos and ones, haha! we found out right away, because yes, to all of you wondering this question, we were trying. we didn't want to tell people right away to make sure everything was good in there and both of us were healthy. we saw our little peanut (and i mean, peanut because that's what size he/she was when we saw him/her on the screen), about four weeks ago and got the go ahead to announce it to the world that.... GAVIN WILL BE A BIG BROTHER.

we told the grandparents, minus my dad, via gavin wearing a tshirt that says "I'm going to be a BIG brother" and everyone seemed to get a huge kick out of it. there were tears and my mom was shocked, 100% shocked and said "i hope you haven't been drinking"-- it was 8 am and we did wake her up. now, she's so excited and probably more excited to spend more and more time with gavin.

for the most part this pregnancy has been uhhh, well, a rough one. it's totally different than my last. i've been sick at least three days a week after i eat dinner and i have some issues with my ribs hurting (already)... and although i don't necessarily look super pregnant, i feel like i am. my jeans are getting snug at my waistline and baggy around my legs- which has NEVER happened, so that's kind of exciting- my legs are a huge issue for me.

i haven't had any crazy cravings yet, which is great. i actually don't feel like eating too much anymore, it's like my stomach is shrinking... and ice cream seems to not be an issue this time around...yet. just the same old normal eating habits, minus all the delicious coffee- bummer. that's the only thing that i actually miss. freshly brewed dark roast coffee, or a medium iced expresso with one shot of caramel from caribou coffee. oh my gosh i'm SO craving that now.

we are going to find out again this time around what the sex is and our projected date to do that is the first week in october. i'm too much of a planner to not find out, plus if it's a girl there are so many cute outfits to get and if it's a boy we can relax a little and save a bit more money with some of gavins clothes that are still in good condition. we are both hoping for a girl, then we would like to be done. but if it's a boy we would be more than happy. gavin would have a little playmate and dan would have another mini-me. we don't plan on having any more kids after this..... anytime soon. i would love to have another in oh about 5-6 years but dan thinks that's nonsense.

so that's that. i have another doctor appointment on friday to hear the heartbeat and chit chat with the doctor about some issues i've heard about the litchfield hospital (gavin was delievered in edina at southdale hospital... we had ZERO and i mean ZERO issues before, during and after so i'm having huge anxiety about delivering somewhere else). if you are pregnant in the twin cities area and don't have a doctor in mind i HIGHLY suggest dr. amy brown- she's phenomenal and all the nurses at southdale are extremely great as well. i felt like i was kind of on a mini vacation before having gavin.

so now, i think everyone knows about us being pregnant... even if you weren't at our party, or didn't see it on facebook, this blog post should clear things up :)