May 24, 2013

Holy crap, we are home owners!

That's right, we finally did it!

After actively searching for a place to buy since the end of September, we finally found our humble abode that we are calling home. Everything happened rather quickly once we made the offer, and we were lucky to have found this place before our lease ran out at the end of this month.

We actually closed last week and moved in this past weekend. We are now living out of boxes and diving head first into all the aspects of home ownership (seriously, so many things have happened already, and we haven't even lived in our new place for a week).

More details to come on how we found our place, the crazy Boston area market, what it's like to move while five months pregnant (hint: I don't recommend it), and of course, photos! I made sure to take photos of our new place before we moved in while it was still empty, so that we would capture the true "before" look. Stay tuned!

May 7, 2013

19 to 20 weeks - XX or XY?

I'm writing in real time now! Yay!

First, I just want to acknowledge that I am at 20 weeks now, which means that we have made it half way through this pregnancy, and that seems kind of unbelievable. The second trimester continues to be much better than the first. I feel a hundred times better, the nausea is all gone, my appetite is back, and sometimes I feel so normal that I forget that I'm pregnant. (At least, until the next time my back starts hurting or I can't get myself comfortable in bed despite the fort of pillows I build around myself every night.)

So, early on in this pregnancy, I got it into my head that we are having a girl. I don't know where this "knowledge" came from, but I was just so sure of it. The rational side of me kept saying that it could be a boy, and I would be happy either way, of course. But my intuition told me it was a girl.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, we finally found out the gender of our baby! And what do you know... we are having a GIRL!!! We got to see our baby girl at the fetal anatomy ultrasound, which was an hour long, and we learned that she is very healthy and measuring right on schedule (even a few days ahead). Those were the best words to hear.

We also got to see our little girl in action, and turns out she is quite the kickboxer. I had no idea because I hadn't felt anything other than bubbles for the past several weeks, but she appears to be quite active. I was beginning to worry about the lack of movement at this point in the pregnancy, but turns out I had nothing to worry about. Right on cue, at 20 weeks, I felt the baby kick for the first time. It's the most incredible feeling - a proof of life growing inside.

Here I am at nineteen weeks, sporting a real bump finally:

19 weeks

Now, we can start picking baby names for real!