Sweet Sixteen

We are approximately one month away from finding out the gender of the baby. I am not quite sure how we have made it this far without freaking out. We are eager to find out what we are having, but haven't decided exactly when we will tell everyone. We don't want to end up with a bunch of neutral-colored baby clothes, but we were kind of robbed of making our own special pregnancy announcement. We've discussed a gender reveal party, but when we started talking about it, it sounded like a lot of work. 

We have an appointment on Thursday and we are anxious to find out how our little bundle of joy is doing. Mom has had her moments of sickness, but they seem to only be triggered by weird food textures. Grisly chicken, chewy pizza and other random food seem to be the switch. Also the giant horse pills that disguise themselves as prenatal vitamins get her gag reflex going as well. Taking three of them a day is quite the task. She is still pretty tired at this point although it seems to come and go in waves. It could be attributed to the recent heat wave. We did spend most of a 98 degree afternoon at the park near our house, although we were under a shaded tree and had plenty of water to drink.

Also, we discovered that mosquitoes seem to love her pregnant blood. We spent Saturday night over at our friends' house and were outside after dusk. She normally gets more than her fair share of bites when she isn't pregnant, but now the bugs are extra ravenous. She was bitten 17 times on one leg. The bites are contained to a circular area about 6 inches in diameter. I've never seen someone bitten that much in that short a period of time. We may have been outside for 30-45 minutes after dusk and she was attacked!

Hayden has been extra cute during the pregnancy. Whenever Nikki gets sick and has to run to the bathroom, Hayden says something to the effect of, "Uh oh, the baby didn't like that food that mommy ate." He will randomly say he loves his "baby sister" in her tummy. We are confident that he is going to be the best big brother ever.

We are still too early to feel any movement as the baby is about 4-5 inches long and weighs about 3 ounces. She could start feeling things as early as now, but I don't expect her to feel anything for at least a couple of weeks. 

We are still narrowing down a middle name in the event it is a girl. We can't decide if we want to honor someone or come up with something original. If we have another boy (I've been threatened sufficiently that it better not be) the name will be Lucas Michael. A girl will be named Averie. 

Sorry I haven't written here for a couple of weeks. I've been caught up in a bout of laziness and World Cup fever. I will return to weekly Friday entries. The next entry will recap our doctor's visit on Thursday.