Baby Number Two

Much to my horror, I realized that I haven't bothered to post an announcement that Kate and I are expecting a second child! I did throw a post and some ultrasound pictures up on Facebook, which means that anyone who follows this blog (both of you) probably already knows this bit of news. But just for completeness sake I'm going to post a quick note here as well!

Yes, our family is going to be expanding by one very soon. Kate is due in late February. We're going to wait until the baby arrives to find out its gender and we (finally) have some names picked out. The boy names were the hardest for some reason. Fair warning, we're keeping our name ideas to ourselves as well.

Here's an ultrasound picture of our soon-to-arrive bundle of joy, taken in early October:



We're both very excited by this new member of the family. Tessa is aware that there is a baby in Mommy's belly, but that's about it so far. She's been practicing swaddling and rocking a baby by using her dolls, but she still tends to carry her dolls by the hair or shake a doll out of its swaddling...so I'm thinking she won't be helping with little sibling real soon. :-) She does plant kisses and hugs on Mommy's belly, all intended for the baby.

Kate is far enough along that we can all feel the baby move pretty easily. The other night Kate was a little worried because she couldn't remember feeling the baby move most of the day. On a lark (since I was playing music for Tessa already), I turned on some rock music (it might have been Queen) on my iPod and placed it against Kate's belly. Almost immediately, baby started dancing around! :-D

Kate had the same nausea and lack of appetite during the first trimester that she did with Tessa. By a couple weeks into the second, though, she was largely over it. She still isn't always real motivated to eat things, especially (paradoxically enough) when she's really hungry. But as long as she nibbles here and there, she's been able to stay interested in eating most things.

(She did go through about a two week period between first and second trimesters where all she wanted was pizza. This is not as much fun as one would think.) ;-)

Anyway, as I said, we're really looking forward to expanding our family. Tessa is a joy to have -- at least 90% of the time. Kate is a wonderful mother. And I find that being a father feels both natural and amazing at the same time.

That's it for now. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you're having a great day.