Our 17 week surprise!

Richie and I went today for our first ultrasound for Baby #2. It was a surprise, really, that we got to have one this extensive this early. Doctors usually wait for anatomy-related ultrasounds until 20 weeks. As of today, I am roughly 17 weeks along...almost halfway there! Whoa! After talking with our new (and amazing) nurse-midwife Linda about genetic screening options at our appointment on Wednesday, we decided to skip the blood tests (mainly since the one I would be taking has a 15-20% false positive rate) and wait for an anatomy ultrasound. We were shocked that Linda was going to go ahead and get us scheduled this week for an ultrasound in lieu of the blood tests. We both got our hopes up that, even though it was still a little early, we would be able to find out if Baby #2 is a boy or girl.

I barely slept a wink last night and arrived at the imaging clinic a ball of nerves--not nervous nerves, just really, really excited. We spent about 30 minutes taking an amazing tour of the little area in my belly that our new baby calls home. We were relieved to hear that at this stage, nothing unusual showed up on the ultrasound. And we found out that our little one is a BOY, which I suspected all along! Here are a 2D and 3D shot of our sweet fella. His little body doesn't have any fat on it yet, so he's a bit lanky looking, but we have definitely fallen in love at first sight!

Now...what to name the little guy???

That's just crazy talk!

Owen is in a phase where he has little conversations with himself--it's quite entertaining, really. It happens most often while he's pretend playing. But last night, he started jabbering away at dinner. Not to Richie, Jeremy, or me...just kind of to his plate. It was mostly indecipherable, but we kept hearing him say "eel onion" as he ate. (To assure you that we were not feeding our child eel for dinner, we had a lovely meal of salmon croquettes, boiled cabbage, and squash casserole.) Owen next started referring to the cabbage as eel onion. Richie and I both tried explaining to him that it is called cabbage, cab-bage. Owen said, "Oh, eel onion is just Spanish for 'food'--okay?" at which point we said, "Oooooh, okay!" and finished our eel onion with a smile.

Snow storm and wedding hair

Here in Nashville, the weather man had us all worked up over a massive arctic storm heading our way. It was going to start last night and continue throughout the day today. School was canceled. Roads were brined, salted, and brined again. We made a plan for how we would both work since Owen's preschool would surely be canceled. You don't even want to know about the mayhem that took place at gas stations and grocery stores as the masses prepared for the Great Snow of 2010.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 in a panic. Would I even be able to get out of the driveway??? I nervously peeked through the blinds to survey the beginnings of this terrible blizzard.

Nothing.
No snow.
Not even frost on the windshield.

Don't get me wrong--we eventually got our storm. See below...hopefully you can spot Owen in spite of the massive accumulation of snow in our backyard this evening:

Yeah. In the weather man's defense, getting around this afternoon was a bit dicey. There were random patches of ice on some of the side streets, and, as usual, people were driving like idiots. I saw 5 cars on the side of the road that had either tried to go up or down a steep ice-covered hill. Good grief!

Once we were safe inside our blizzard shelter, Owen decided to make my hair pretty so that I could get married. When I explained to him that I was married to Daddy already, he acted like I had heard him wrong--my hair-do was for my party, not to get married. Sheesh, mama! After about 10 minutes of "styling" I thought it might be best to feel the back of my head to see what exactly this hair-do entailed, other than a lot of very uncomforable hair pulling. Unfortunately, the pain of having small chunks of hair randomly pulled by a 4 year old paled in comparison to the agony of removing the party style from my hair...

That would be one gigantic knot. Ouch. But thanks anyway, buddy! :)

Science Center fun

Owen and I spent the morning today with Holly and Dylan at the Adventure Science Center, one of Owen's very very favorite places in the world! Dylan is a train enthusiast, so he was really excited that the museum has a huge holiday train exhibit:

Owen went the whole way across, but Dylan decided to wait for him on solid ground (I don't blame him!):

Owen spent a lot of time checking out all the buttons and knobs in the ambulance:

It may not look like it, but this was an extremely exhausting 2 hours for this Mama. We both took naps once we got home. Science is really is an adventure!

Hello, 2010!

On our drive back from MS on Tuesday, we had the opportunity to stop in Memphis to see Richie's good friend John O'Bryan, who lives in L.A. and was home to visit family for the holidays. Richie gets to see John maybe once a year, so we were excited to have a chance to see him, his wife Samantha, and their adorable son August. Richie and John have been friends since their days at Mississippi College. Some of the funniest stories I've ever heard are Richie's adventures with John. John stories are legendary, really. We met the O'Bryans, John's sister and her two kids, and his mom at Bosco's in the Cooper-Young neighborhood. It was a very welcome break from our long day in the car and a really delicious meal--gourmet pizza beats a cold Sub anyday! The kids all hit it off so well. I know Owen enjoyed burning some energy with other little people after being strapped into his car seat since 9:30 a.m.

August (2 years old), Owen (4), Dilyn (6), Eli (2)

Big boys, little boys

After dinner, we reluctantly loaded back into the car and finished our long trip home. I don't think I've spent that much time in a car in one day since my youth camp/mission trip days. Whew! The 30th was supposed to be our recovery day. Supposed to be. We took Owen to preschool, as planned. Then Richie made some delicious Cafe duMonde beignets for breakfast. Thennnnn we spent the entire rest of the day car shopping. It's something we've been talking about and looking into for quite a while now. With another baby on the way, we knew we needed a larger vehicle. I think our 14 hours crammed in the car the day before was the clincher. We needed a van. And we got a van! It was an exhausting and slightly stressful process, but we're really excited with what we got. And we got it just in time!

The next day, the O'Bryans decided to come spend New Year's Eve with us here in Nashville! They had mentioned maybe coming over for a night, but we didn't know for sure if or when it would work out. They arrived just in time for a pizza dinner, snacks, and New Year's Rockin Eve. The Conrans came over with Liam, and Tom stopped by for a bit too. It was pretty much the most low-key New Year's Eve ever, but I think that's what we were all hoping for. Funny how things change as you get older!

Friday morning, we loaded everyone (EVERYONE!) into the van and headed to Nashville's legendary Pancake Pantry for a late breakfast/early lunch. We met our great Mississippi friend Alan there. He, Richie, and John were all at MC together, so it was a very rare reunion for these 3 friends.

The O'Bryans went back to Memphis that afternoon and I spent the evening at the movies with my good friend Abra. All in all, it was the perfect start to the new year, spent with old friends, new friends, good food, a minivan, and lots of love and laughter.