Guess what?

We had a special family night at the beginning of November.  I had a photo album with two pictures of each child as a baby.  We looked at Cat's pictures, Jack's pictures, then Eliza's pictures.

After we admired all of the kids' baby pictures, there was one more photo in the album.  It looked like this:

It took them a few minutes to figure out what this meant, but once they understood that we would be having child #4 in the next 6 months, they were absolutely thrilled.  Then Jack named the baby David, which quickly became what everybody calls the baby.

(Several weeks later when we found out the baby really IS a boy, Jack offered another option: Jack.  Jack hasn't stuck as a name for the baby, though.  The kids, a few extended family members, and even Ben are calling the baby David.  I try to remind them that David isn't the baby's name.  It's not an impossibility, but it's definitely not a certainty.  They aren't listening to me, though.)

Sometimes when you use the timer option on your camera and someone
has to run into the shot, a person's head gets cut off...

We had fun sharing the news about the baby with the kids in this way, so we decided to take a similar approach with our immediate family members.  We mailed each of them this:

We loved receiving everyone's phone calls or texts as they opened their mail and figured out our announcement.  So fun!

This pregnancy has been pretty similar to the others, as far as I can remember.  I started feeling queasy shortly after we moved back into the house in Orem, which is my excuse for the fact that two rooms in the house still aren't really unpacked.  I had the typical first trimester symptoms: nauseousness, fatigue, difficulty finding things I wanted to eat, etc.  And I started showing so quickly that I wore baggy tops for over a month before I was ready to share the news, i.e., once I'd seen a doctor, which took longer than usual.

Almost as soon as the first trimester was over I began feeling much better.  I wasn't nauseous all the time, I didn't gag my way through the grocery store, and I had a lot more energy.  Thank goodness!  It has taken a little longer for me to get a taste for fruits and vegetables back, but I'm just about back to my normal appetite.  I only have 3 1/2 more months left now, so I feel like we're in the home stretch!

The kids are still really excited, and talk often about their baby brother.  Jack seems the most excited and the most interested.  I've been told it has to do with his age, but I like to think that he's looking forward to having a brother to teach about all of the boy things he's so passionate about - Thomas the Tank Engine, monster trucks, and racing cars.  He and Eliza both want to touch my tummy and feel the baby, and sometimes they talk to the baby, too.  

Eliza tells me she has a baby in her tummy, too, as she pokes out her belly as big as she can.  We talk about her baby for a minute, then I make sure to interject the word "pretend" when I refer to her baby, which she doesn't object to.  So hopefully she won't be too disappointed to find out that I get a real live baby and she doesn't.  At least, not on her own.

My sister (Suz), her husband (also Ben), and 5-month-old baby (Whit) came to our house for 12 days over Christmas.  I loved having them here, and it was really cool to see the way my kids interacted with their baby cousin, whom they'd never met.  They absolutely adored him.  They flocked to him when he was around, they wanted to play with him, they wanted to help take care of him, and by the time Suz and her family left, Eliza began referring to my sister as "Whit's Mom," instead of "Aunt Suz."

So hopefully all of that is a good sign.  Hopefully the excitement will continue, and I'll keep feeling well, and the smooth sailing will take us all the way to D-Day.  We'll see!