And the Votes Are In!

The day finally came to reveal our lil' Peanut's gender. Anthony and I went to the Dr. on Monday morning for the ultrasound. The tech was able to see Peanut's gender right away....definitely not shy. :) We kept it a secret for 3 1/2 days until the families were gathered for Thanksgiving dinner, and asked them to make their guesses for boy or girl. 

Arizona family shows their votes with these cute signs Kelly made. Kelly is taking the picture, which is why she isn't in it. Her guess was for a boy. My mom in TX also guessed for a boy. 

Washington/Armstrong family shows their guesses using pink and blue flowers. 

Lots of guesses for a boy! :)

We made cute shirts to announce our baby gender. It was quite the challenge to watch what we said and not "slip up" by saying gender specific pronouns for 3 1/2 days before our reveal!

And Drumroll.......

IT'S A BOY!!!!!!

We are soooo excited! We are thinking up names that start with a "C" so that our little family can be ABC. :) I have a feeling though that "Peanut" is going to stick as a nick name. A big thank you to our families for their fun participation in our reveal! 

Sick and Waiting

Anthony is on his way home from Washington right now, and wouldn't you know it, I'm sick in bed. :( Just a cold, but still taking me down for the count. My first experience of being sick while pregnant....and hopefully my last. So I'm spending the day resting and drinking lots of fluids and hoping to feel well enough that when Anthony walks in the door late tonight I can greet him with a smile instead of red-nosed and whiny.

This does however, give me a chance to catch up on some reading. I'm working on reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover before Peanut's arrival. I started the beginning of August, after Education Week, and when I found out I was pregnant decided it would be a fun goal and could offer some valuable spiritual insights to read it all while growing this little child of God. It's been difficult some nights though to read more than just a few verses before crashing into bed. So I have some catching up to do if I want to meet my deadline. :)

It's the 5-month countdown da-na-na-na, da-na na-na-na (sung to the tune of Final Countdown).

Peanut is due April 13th, exactly 5 months from today! And exactly one month after my own birthday (March 13th). April 13th is also the anniversary of when I was baptized, the anniversary of the passing of my Grandpa Ray (Dad's dad) and the 103rd day of the year. So lots of things to commemorate that day. :) Anthony also has a spring birthday, April 4th. So we are going to be a March and April family! I was checking the calendar though, and April 13th falls on a Friday next year (dun dun dun). I hope that doesn't turn out to be bad luck for us.

Anthony will be coming home next weekend (Yay!), and will be followed by the rest of his familia later the next week so we can all celebrate Thanksgiving at our house. We are getting really excited because we'll be announcing Peanut's gender on Thanksgiving day! We are also, of course, very excited to stuff our faces with delicious food. :) So I have lots of projects and shopping on my list of things to do this week. There's excitement in the air!!!

Is Peanut a boy or girl??

If you haven't noticed our slide bar yet, here's a head's up. We will be announcing lil' Peanut's gender on Thanksgiving day!!! We are getting super excited and have a few fun things planned out so everyone can get involved. Check back soon for details.

Growing the Incredible Hulk

So at 17 weeks and 4 days I literally woke up to my very own pop-out belly. It was weird, because I woke up at about 4:00am and my tummy felt really tight and hard. I went back to sleep and 3 hours later woke up with a baby bump and 4 beautiful (of course I mean that sarcastically) purple stretch marks. I must have eaten a lot of spinach or something because lil' Peanut grew like magic....or like one of those sponge toys you soak in water and triples in size overnight. :)

I'm hungry a lot these days. Sometimes I even wake up in the middle of the night because I'm STARVING! I learned after a few days that if I eat dinner twice (once at 6pm and then again at 9pm) I can ward off the midnight feedings and catch a few more Zzzz's before getting up for work. I'm also considering purchasing paper plates, which I guess shows how much I hate doing dishes, because I eat more frequently but most definitely don't do the dishes more frequently.

But I do deserve some credit for household chores. The dishes may not be done, but the bathrooms are oh so clean! :) It's been interesting having Anthony gone for the last 3 weeks. I really thought I would have gotten more projects on my to-do list accomplished, but somehow laundry, paying bills, and taking out the trash all by myself don't seem very big or satisfying to cross off my list. Guess I'll need to kick it into high gear this weekend.

October

So much happened in October, it seems the month just flew by in the hurricane of events going on in the Armstrong home.
1. On October 14th we got to hear our little Peanut's heartbeat for the first time. It was so exciting! And a big "thank you" to Kelly, who gave us the idea of audio recording the heartbeat. When I'm having a stressful day I like to listen to it. It makes me smile!
2. Anthony has moved on from his job at Melaleuca. We went through a roller coaster of ups and downs when, after 1 1/2 years of working in our positions, management decided one day that there was a "conflict of interest" and that we could no longer work in the same facility. It was really out of the blue. Anthony was told he does a great job and was one of their best supervisors, but couldn't work in Rexburg. Because it wouldn't work for him to work at their corporate office 40 mins away we decided it was best for Anthony to move on to new things.
3. On October 21st we celebrated our 6 year anniversary!
4. Anthony is now working in Washington at the family orchard. With the change in jobs it opened up a chance for him to go back to his roots and help out for harvest. Ultimately, we'd love to end up in Washington, so this could be a jumping off point for him as he is considering what he wants to do in the future.

As the first trimester drew to a close I started to feel much better. My energy levels came back up and the morning sickness went away....hooray!! I hear the 2nd trimester is the best part of pregnancy, so here's looking forward to enjoyable holidays!

After the Storm...Comes the Sun

September 7th, 2011-
8 and a half weeks along and feeling sick all of the time. We were getting ready for Anthony's synoplasty turbinate reduction surgery at the end of the week (that's a fancy way of saying "break his nose and fix his deviated septum"). On Wednesday morning we were getting ready to go in for Anthony's pre-operative appointments with the Dr. and the hospital. I was nervous. Not just for his surgery though.

The last two days I had woken up feeling fine, no queasy tummy, no sore chest, no running to the bathroom. And it wasn't just the mornings that were different, all day I was feeling better. In a normal mind this would be a good thing, but for me, I was worried. My paranoia had me calling my mom and reading all kinds of things online (FYI- don't read advice online. It's all a bunch of people who don't really know anything and freak you out with their assumptions.) I had read several places that losing preganancy symptoms could be the first sign of a miscarriage. I knew there was no way I could spend the next week taking care of Anthony after his surgery with this kind of looming grey cloud over me. So I set up an appointment with my doctor for later that day.

After Anthony's appointments I told him I could either take him home or he could come with me to my appointment. He immediately got nervous and wondered what was going on. I told him about my worries with losing my symptoms and that since I was already 8 weeks along it was a good time to go to the doctor anyway. We were both scared that we may be getting bad news.

After some tests and measurements the nurse sat both of us down and started going through a checklist of what to expect while we're expecting. The list seemed to go on and on and we were wondering at what point she would get to the part about addressing our concerns we had actually set up the appointment for. She didn't. Instead, the doctor came in next. She was actually the nurse practitioner available that day, not the OB I had seen in that office before. She was very nice and pleasantly reviewed our expected milestones over the next several months. She told us about what our 20 week appointment would cover, tests we need to decide if we want, and if it's a boy, whether or not we would consider circumcision. All the while Anthony and I were giving each other worried glances wondering to ourselves, "does she know why we're really here?" After over an hour of instructions we finally spoke up and asked for the ultrasound to make sure everything is okay now....before we plan too far into the future. The doctor agreed and we started the ultrasound.

You know how in the movies, when the main character is going through a dramatic climax, they slow the shot down and everything goes in slow-motion? Like the moment is so intense each second lasts forever. I can't say for sure, but I think I may have held my breath while the doctor searched through the squiggly blackness on the screen and struggled to find anything. My heart started to race and my palms were sweaty as Anthony griped my hand tighter. Then...there on the screen...was our little peanut and the blip blip of his beating heart.

"Strong heartbeat," said the doctor.

Relief washed over me and I turned to look at Anthony. All the worry, all the emotion couldn't be contained and he started to cry. This of course was more than I could stay composed over and I started to cry too. As we both sobbed out loud and wiped streaming tears from our eyes I asked the doctor, "this is normal right? Couples usually cry when they see this first ultrasound?"

The doctor replied, "it's usually just the mom that cries, but you guys are so sweet I can't help but cry too." And she wiped tears from her own eyes.

We all laughed.  And she printed off the picture of our healthy lil' peanut.