And yet another box to check on the health history form...

It all started about 9 weeks ago...

Some of you have had the symptoms I'm sure. Lower abdominal cramps accompanied by some weird tugging sensations, nausea, moodiness, sleeplessness followed by periods of sleeping for 12 hours straight, extreme exhaustion despite that sleep, feeling like the room is 100 degrees when in fact it's 72, extreme food aversions to vegetables or salads...and ranch dressing...and chocolate...in fact anything that isn't meat or starch, uncontrollable fits of crying followed by laughter...

and all within the first 7 weeks!!!

Well, needless to say, I'm pregnant. 13 weeks to be exact. And glad as can be that the first miserable trimester is over! Finally! I mean, who does this more than once? And don't tell me that you forget all about it. Bull! I'll never be able to eat a salad again for the rest of my life! In fact, just thinking of it makes my mouth salivate (in a bad way). And poor Chris, he doesn't know what's going on. One minute he's running to get a Whopper (which I never ate before pregnancy) and the next minute he finds me on the couch crying over Grey's Anatomy. (By crying I mean can't catch my breath because I'm so upset crying.) Your condolences will be much appreciated by him I'm sure. Our projected due date at this time is December 31st. Good for the tax deduction, bad because we already have enough holidays in December.

But despite the exhaustion (on both our parts because of my tossing and turning) we're more than excited to share in this experience together and to know that our first baby can be born here in Iowa (a true "Hawkeye"). Also, it will be nice for our families to share in that as well. We're blessed that we've had no complications, but may not be feeling so blessed when this projected "Heifer" comes out. (We were both more than 9lbs ourselves, with Chris nearly topping 10). Chris likes to refer to it as the "heifer" due to all the red meat I can't seem to get enough of.

As of now we're not planning on finding out the sex of the baby. Maybe we'll change our minds, but how often in life can you truly be surprised? We know this will make it harder to plan (and you all know how we're such planners) but hey, we're hoping this baby will teach us to go with the flow more in life instead of planning everything to the last detail.

So for now, we'll utilize this site (hey, we figured we needed to do something brash to increase our readership) to update you on the progress and any new developments. We're moving July 2nd to a larger abode to accomodate our expanding family. The next few months should be exciting!

"Flip" at 12 weeks