(Brace yourselves; this is LONG) Ladies & Gentlemen, allow me to introduce . . .

. . our baby girl!

Yeah, yeah. I know that we weren't going to find out, but little Baby G wanted the world to see her lady parts! So, here she is:



I will try to post more ultrasound pictures later but this one was enough trouble. Also, despite what you perverts want, I am not posting pictures to prove that she is, in fact, a girl! Sorry. I figure that I will give her plenty of reasons in the future to be mad at me, so I will avoid this one making the cut. Enjoy!

But, let me back up and fill you in on just how our morning started. Our appointment was at 7:30 this morning. At 7:00am we left the house and Greg says to me, "Babe, why don't you drive. You know where we're going." Surprised, I take the keys. ::For those of you that know my husband, handing the keys over, especially to a woman is much like giving up the remote:: I enter the address into the GPS just in case I am mistaken. But, how could that happen? I have spent the last two days on the phone with this place verifying the time of my appointment, whether or not to bring records with me, if I should have a full or empty bladder, etc.

So, once we have Brock sent down the road with Dave (Greg's dad) we are off to our appointment. Greg and I nervously hold hands. I am nervously chattering away. He is nervously silent. We opted out of all of the early scans for several reasons but the ones that topped our lists were: 1) we are not high risk because of our age, 2) we don't have strong family histories for any major diseases that they test for, & 3) the rate of false positives are alarmingly high and we didn't want to spend 6 out of 9 months worrying if nothing was wrong, & 4) we were planning to keep the baby no matter what the results.

We pull in to the parking lot of Regional Hospital outside the Labor and Delivery entrance at 7:12am. ::I am beaming with pride at how prompt we are:: When we walk into registration, the lovely receptionist directs us down the hall to the ultrasound office. When we walk in, I politely tell that receptionist my name and tell her that I have a 7:30 appointment. She gives me a funny look. Here is where I begin to grow uneasy. I can sense that Greg is doing the same next to me. I have a wave of panic wash over me as she says, in slow motion no less, "We don't schedule appointments for 7:30. Our first appointment is a 8:00 and I don't see your name in our system at all." What. The. Hell. As I flash back to our brisk walk out to the car as we were leaving the house, I remember Greg saying, "Are you SURE you know where this place is." I remember this because I brushed it off by snapping, "Yes. I have talked to them 3 times in 2 days. I filled out the online paperwork. My doctor told me where the office was LAST WEEK. I am not an idiot." Hmmm. Me thinks I am an idiot. So the nice receptionist takes the business card that I am holding in my hand as proof to her, myself, & Greg that I do, in fact, have an appointment and says, "See? It says here on the card that the office you need is on Broadway. I think it's across from Boone Hospital in the first building." Well. Thank you. You have been of no help to me, nor my smirking husband.

Back in the frigid air to the van. As I take a look at the GPS, I see that I did enter Broadway as the address and was just to dense to think that technology was smarter than me. Hmph. But, as I look at the clock (and ignore Greg) I notice that it is only 7:15. Perfect. We have 15 minutes to get there. We have plenty of time. Off we go. This time I KNOW that I am heading in the right direction. I used to work at Boone Hospital for crying out loud and my last OB/GYN was in this building that I was headed to. I again, ignore technology. ::Slaps forehead with palm::

We pull into the parking lot and I am sure of myself. We get on the elevator and take it up to the 3rd floor, suite 300. Hmmmm. Dark office. Office hours signs says they do not open until 8:30. At this point, I am in a full on panic. My palms are sweating, my knees are weak, my mouth is dry. Greg is LOVING this, by the way. So I very calmly say, "Don't' worry. We will go back to the lobby and I will call and find out what is going on." We get to the lobby. It is now 7:29. I call the office number listed on the card. I tell the receptionist the full extent of my stupidity (basically this entire story) and she says, "Oh honey. You are so close! We are in Building #4." Seeing as I have not had the best luck with receptionists today, I do not fully trust her, but what can I do? I only have 1 minute for my appointment and if I am late, I am afraid that they will give my appointment to some lady that doesn't have an appointment and just showed up hoping that 'there would be an opening'. Oh no sister. That is my appointment slot and you are NOT taking it from me! I drag Greg to the car and we haul a$$ down the road to the last building. We dash inside and finally! We found our destination! We got checked in and only waited about 5 minutes until they called our name. (Now, not that I have any room to be snippy about being on time, but come on. My appointment was at 7:30. Who else was there before me that they were tending to that made them make me wait 5 minutes? I'm just saying . . .)

The girl that did our ultrasound was absolutely wonderful! It was such a great experience! She talked to us the entire time and was very animated about the baby and all of the cute things that she was doing. She (the ultrasound tech) has an almost 2-year-old son so she empathized with us about everything that Brock is doing and why we didn't bring him to our appointment.

About 15 minutes in, she said, "So, do you guys want to find out the sex?" Greg and I looked at each other and both said, "Yes." She responded with, "Do you guys want to guess before I tell you?" To which I replied, "Well, this morning we both thought 'boy' but ::interject Greg's comment here--'I think I saw . . . I think it's a girl':: I am pretty sure that I saw the lady parts". She started laughing. "Well", she said, "It is definitely a girl! That is not a shy baby that you have in there!" Which is funny because with Brock we didn't think that we were going to find out because he had his legs crossed almost the entire ultrasound!

Whew. ::Takes deep breath::

As far as the rest of the story, baby looks very healthy! She is 15oz, so she is already almost a full pound! Her head is measuring about 2 days bigger than estimates for the due date but that's okay because babies heads grow before their feet. Her arms, hands, legs, feet, & nose are all measuring perfect. There was no cleft lip. No indication of Down's syndrome (based on facial measurements). No spina bifida. She has two hemispheres in her brain and 4 chambers in her heart (both = perfect!). The only really big measurement was her belly! She was measuring 1 week early for her belly but the ultrasound tech caught me eating a granola bar in the waiting room and said that she could see that the baby's belly was nice and full so maybe she had just gotten a big meal! Her kidneys & bladder are intact, perfect size, & right where they needed to be.

And let me tell you what, this little girl is such a freakin' ham! She was posing for the camera like nobody's business! Everytime the tech would say, "I am going to try to get a finger measurement" the baby would throw up jazz hands. When the ultrasound tech would say, "I'm going to get a profile shot" the baby would turn her head to the side so we could see the profile! She was so cute! She was kicking her feet ALOT and she was even playing peek-a-boo with the camera a few times which was so adorable because we would see her face go from "normal baby front view of face" to "skeletor baby face" (and if you don't know who Skeletor is, google him and see how many hits on He-man you get). But after about 30 minutes she let us know that we were boring her, so she gave us a huge yawn! Good thing we were done!

We are absolutely thrilled that we have another healthy baby! We were both a little surprised that she is a "she" because we were both sure that we were having another boy! But, we are ecstatic. The cutest part about all of this is Greg. I kind of thought that he would be a little disappointed with a daughter but his reactions were so cute! At first he said, "Oh great! Brock and I are going to spend tons of time chasing off guys." And then he said, "Gawd. We are going to have to go out and buy her a ton of dresses. I really want a girly-girl. So, let's go buy her some right now!" and (my favorite!), "Well, time to redecorate the nursery." Whaaaa?! Pump the brakes. The last I heard we were putting the new baby in the existing nursery and giving Brock a new "big boy" room. Apparently not. "It's not fair that we went all out for Brock and she gets stuck with the hand-me-downs." This little girl already has daddy wrapped around her tiny 1-inch long baby finger.

I hope that you made it all the way through my novel and stay tuned because I will be posting pictures of the clothes we bought today (she already has 8--that's right eight!-- outfits) as well as pictures of the bedding set that her daddy bought her. Spoiled much?