Half Way

Check out that belly! I am a good bit bigger than I was when I was pregnant with Keziah - I wasn't even really showing at this point last time. I am officially 20 weeks pregnant today. Which is supposedly the half way point, but I doubt I am really halfway as I fully expect to go past my due date. I have actually been feeling great and those wonderful nesting instincts have kicked in full swing. I just finished unpacking my last box of baby stuff today and putting things away.

Speaking of unpacking baby stuff, I am pleasantly surprised with how much gender neutral stuff I have. I somehow remembered having mostly girl stuff, even though we didn't find out the gender. In actuality I did receive a lot of gender neutral stuff as shower gifts and hand-me-downs before little Keziah came. But as soon as she popped out, I was flooded with more hand-me-downs and gifts of girl stuff and I had so many clothes that I really just kept her in the girl stuff. I found a ton of gender neutral stuff that had never even been worn! So I think I am pretty much set. And in case you are wondering , no we are not finding out the gender this time either. I expect to start getting that question a lot. I don't really mind the question though. In fact, I love it when people ask, "what are you having?" because then I can answer, "a human." hahaha!

Michael Paul is preparing in his own way. He bought another umbilical cord knife. Keziah has a special knife that he bought to cut the cord with and he is going to give it to her when she is older. So he is going to do the same thing this time around as well. Michael Paul is also really hoping to catch this baby. He didn't get to last time because Keziah had two nuchal arms so my midwife had to give a little help in order for Keziah to be born safely. He expressed his desire to catch this baby at my last appointment and my new midwife is totally supportive. So we are hopeful for that.

Keziah seems to be grasping the concept rather quickly. I talk to her a lot about what's going on with mommy and why my belly is getting bigger. She points to my belly and says "baby" and has even done the same to other pregnant women. So she does seem to get that a big belly means a baby is growing inside. She has been extra interested in her baby dolls lately and we've been practicing 'gentle touches' and 'being sweet' on her baby dolls. I'm hoping all our practice will pay off. Yesterday Keziah had lifted my shirt and was patting my belly when Michael Paul said, "do you want to hug the baby?" and she put her cheek on my belly and her arms around me. It was so cute.

I'm not really having any inklings or gut feelings about the gender of this baby. We are pretty decided on a girl name but have yet to find a boy name we agree on. I wouldn't be surprised if we still didn't have a boy name when the baby came. Hopefully if that is the case, we will have a girl! Well, we are going to have the guess the birthdate, weight, and gender game again. Last time we played this at all my baby showers and some of my students at the time joined in as well. I had close to 100 entries and would you believe the winner was Michael Paul's mom! Seeing as how I probably won't have showers this time around I thought I'd let the fun happen on the blog here. So all you have to do is leave a comment here or you can email me your guess. Guess gender, weight, and birthdate. Children are welcome to play to, so if my nieces, nephew, cousins want to guess, go ahead. Just list off each person in your family's guess. And just in case you think past history is a good predictor, Keziah was at least a week late and weighed 7 lbs, 10 oz. Oh and my due date is supposedly February 17. Michael Paul is pulling for February 29th because he thinks a leap year baby would be awesome. OK, have fun guessing!