Pure Joy

It's time to share some joy here on my blog! Given that I haven't been doing well with updating my blog lately, and as the weeks are flying by, I am far overdue in sharing our big news that we are expecting our second child!

I actually made this announcement on Facebook almost four weeks ago, and I'm thrilled to share more details here. We couldn't be more excited!

Right now, I am over 17 weeks pregnant and as you can see from the photo above, our little peanut has a due date of April 3, 2016. However, if baby decides to come early {like big sister Makenna}, then we might have a March baby!

I have gotten so many questions over the past weeks as we've shared the news with friends and family, so I thought I'd answer these main questions here, too.

• How are you feeling? Well as of right now, and given that I'm over three weeks into my second trimester, I feel quite well overall. The first trimester did hold its fair share of unpleasant symptoms. I was feeling nauseous, but not anything too horrible. The nausea has been far less with this pregnancy. I never felt constantly nauseous and I've experienced far less food aversions. I dare say I've even been having stronger cravings this time around. I can certainly tell that my hormones are running rampant, so there hasn't been any surprises really with the symptoms I've had.
• Is Makenna excited? That's a bit hard to answer because we don't think Makenna truly grasps the concept of what's happening. We've met a few newborns recently and Makenna was quite excited and interested in them. However, lately when we've asked Makenna if "there's a baby in Mommy's tummy?" she'll answer, "No." Yet she is definitely noticing that my stomach is growing, although she looks down at her own belly and exclaims, "Look! My tummy's bigger!" We expect that she will be excited about a baby at our house, but also have some real struggles with not being the only child anymore.
• Will you find out the gender? Yes! As last time, we plan to find out the gender but keep the name a secret until our little one is born. {And at this time I can tell you that we aren't settled on any names for either gender as of yet.} We are set to find out the gender at our 20 week ultrasound, the week before Thanksgiving.
• What gender do you think it is/are you hoping for? We will be completely thrilled at whatever gender God has gifted us with, although Matt and I have always said we'd love to have one of either gender. I really don't have any maternal instincts about what gender this little one is. I felt really strongly that Makenna was a girl, but this time I haven't felt that way one way or another.
• How far apart in age with Makenna and her sibling be? We are quite pleased with how the age difference will turn out. Makenna will be three in mid-February and her brother or sister should arrive about six to seven weeks later. We were hoping for very close to a three year age gap between the these two, and I'm especially pleased that there should be a good many weeks after Makenna's birthdays pass by each year for me to tackle the planning and execution for the birthday party of her sibling!

I'm really blown away by how fast this pregnancy is flying by. I started feeling baby movements before I turned 16 weeks and I can now feel him/her every day! I can scarcely believe that in about two and a half weeks, I'll hit the halfway mark with this pregnancy. There's so much to do, like choosing a name and the huge process of converting our office/guest room into a nursery and moving the office to the family room in the basement.

This season of life has brought so much joy beyond our imagining and we can't wait to have another little one to cherish and fill our hearts with love.