It's a girl!

A.R. and I are so happy (and a teeny bit terrified) to become parents of a precious baby girl. It took quite a while for the news to set in and for me (I have trust issues, ok?) to actually believe it. I perused hundreds of gender ultrasound scans online comparing ours to both boy and girl scans before I let it sink in for good. We actually found out that it's a girl a couple of weeks ago at our anatomy scan at 18w4d, but didn't tell our parents until a week and a half later. We were going to try and wait for Thanksgiving, but A.R. was just too excited (and so was I!) to keep it a secret for long. This little lady is the first granddaughter for both sets of our parents and the first girl in Alexi's immediate family for quite some time. His mom had 4 boys and so far she has 4 grandsons so it looks like, to her, the 5th time is the charm. :) I'm the first girl in my Dad's family in 60 years, so it seems fitting that I break the girl cycle for A.R.'s family, too.

I told my family over the phone since they are down in NC by asking my mom to knit a lavendar hat for our little lady's newborn photos. She squealed and my Dad cried :). A.R. told his family at one of our weekly Sunday gatherings. He found some pacifiers in pink and purple that say, "I Love Daddy" and "Daddy's Little Girl" and put them on the counter with some Rice Krispee treats I had made and the Puerto Rican bread we get every Sunday after church. At first nobody noticed them, one of his brothers just pushed them aside without a second glance to grab a Rice Krispee treat. Then, my sister-in-law picked them up and got this really funny look on her face. Our littlest nephew is just 8 weeks old and you could see her just thinking in her head wondering why our other sister-in-law would buy girl pacifiers for him. A minute later she caught my gaze and I smiled and you could just see it click and she screamed, "Oh my gosh, it's a GIRL?!" A.R.'s mom teared up and lots of hugs were exchanged all around. My father-in-law is the only one who thought it was a girl from day 1 and he was beaming. I think we have to watch out for him spoiling our little princess.

I'm now 21w2d along and past the halfway mark already. This pregnancy sure seems to be flying by. We've signed up for some birthing classes and breastfeeding classes in the new year through the hospital where I'll give birth and we've registered as well. Registering was quite eye opening and a bit of a reality check for both of us. There are so many choices and it gets hard to decipher what you really need from the new gadgets and gizmos they have out there for babies that probably won't even come out of the boxes. I turned to one of my sisters-in-law for some advice on the necessities and now the registering is complete. We picked out our nursery furniture and I've actually already ordered the parts to our bedding set and the last of the items arrived today. We have the bumper, quilt, sheet #1, dust ruffle, diaper stacker, and hamper. The mobile is the only thing I missed out on and it's now out of stock. :( The paint colors have been chosen and we finally decided on how we'll be painting the walls. That is A.R's project when he's on break from school next month! LOL We chose Behr Premium Plus ultra paints in Minted Lemon (sage), Jasper Cane (pale orange/peach), Millstream (light blue), Calla (pale yellow), and Mystic Fairy (lavendar).

I must say that choosing a name is a lot harder than I thought. We have a few favorite girl names, but nothing set in stone and I honestly don't think we'll decide for sure on names until we meet our little girl for the first time.