It's a, it's a....

…stubborn mule!

Let me tell you, the anticipation was killing us as we sat in the ultrasound room. We were so excited to see whether our baby was going to be a boy or a girl. And as the ultrasound technician zeroed in on the picture, we saw a beautiful…baby. A beautiful baby who was curled tightly into a fetal position. You have got to be kidding me.

When people look ahead to their lives’ most momentous moments, I don’t know that many picture the moment they find out the gender of their second child. But for us, it was huge—even bigger than finding out what Luke was. I guess that’s because we are almost 100% positive we only want two kids. So this moment had a definite air of finality. Would we be a family with two sons, or would we have a boy and a girl? There was definitely a closing of a door with this ultrasound.

Complicating our emotions was the fact that we both wanted a daughter. I don’t know that either of us realized this before getting pregnant. It’s just that mental pictures are very powerful, and we both had always pictured having a daughter. It’s not like we said, “It’s a dream of mine to be the parent of a daughter.” It was more like we just assumed that we one day would be the parent of a daughter. And—like the assumption of getting married or having kids—that’s a big assumption.

Back to the ultrasound room. We saw the head. The hands. The feet, the spinal cord, all four chambers of the heart. And yet, the baby just wouldn’t turn enough to see whether it was a boy or girl. We really started to worry whether we’d find out at all. Did we need to paint another nursery? Order girl bedding and start buying girl clothes? I really wanted to know, daggonnit!

It’s not like having a son would be a bad thing. Far from it. Two boys sounded like a lot of fun. They could be play mates. Plus, so many people had been telling me that I’d be a great “boy mom,” and as Luke and I loaded and reloaded a dump truck with dirt yesterday on the playground, I thought, “I could get used to this.” Playing boy games. Being the queen of the house. It would certainly be more economical. We have a ton of boy clothes and bedding. And we could make good use of hand-me-downs throughout the younger son’s life! No paying for prom dresses or a wedding. No, it definitely wouldn’t be the end of the world.

It was just that darn mental picture. A boy and a girl. Having a daughter. Neither Greg nor I could shake it. As the day to find out grew nearer, Greg remained unabashed in his desire for a girl, though we both became more convinced that it was a boy. The theory among church was that, while most of the teens wanted a girl, most of them (and people in general) thought it would be a boy. I had started out sure it was a girl, but as the second trimester started, I became more and more doubtful.

So there we were, sitting in the ultrasound room. After measuring everything on the baby that could be measured, the technician could offer nothing more than a weak guess as to the gender. And then, just as she was about to pack everything up, she suddenly said,

“Oh! She just moved! It’s a girl.”

Here’s hoping our daughter is always this modest.

The Epic Summer Update

Wow. Where to start. Um, well, while Greg’s brother Ken was composing amazing, informative blogs with clocklike regularity, and while Chris and Jill even managed to put up a slide show in the middle of all the craziness of moving to Indiana with a baby, we have apparently taken a vow of blogging silence. But I guess now that summer’s almost over, I should probably provide some sort of update. I mean, it’s not like we don’t have big news: we’re going to have another baby in January, for pete sakes. But I guess everybody already knows that by now! Still, it seems obligatory that I would formally publish that information in our blog.

In other news, Greg has had a very eventful summer with the youth ministry. Our first big trip was to Impact, which went well. By that, I mean it went well for the kids. For me, after the first night in the dorm with Luke, I was ready to cry “uncle.” For one, I had planned on staying off-campus, but it didn’t work out. One consequence of the housing falling through was that I had no way to bathe Luke. I simply turned on the shower, held him in to get wet, took him out and lathered him up on a chair, and held him back in to rinse off. He loved that, let me tell you! Also, even though he slept fairly well, he woke up a few times at night and then seemed to be up for good at 5 am. (The whole week before, Luke had been sleeping through the night, and when he did wake up, he would simply turn his mobile on and put himself back to sleep without so much as a cry. I snuck in once and watched him curled up on his stomach, his whole body rocking back and forth in a kind of bouncing motion. It was very impressive. So I wasn’t too happy about him waking up again, though it was understandable. Luckily, once we were back home, he resumed his blissful sleeping habits—sleeping until 8 or 9 in the morning!—and has been maintaining that ever since.) Anyway, I was feeling nauseous and worn out from being pregnant and was ready to pack up and head out for Macon then and there, but luckily, Greg called his parents, and they very generously came up early to help take care of Luke. They were a Godsend. For one thing, I was actually able to attend parts of Impact, which up until that point, had not been possible. Plus, they stayed in the dorm room next to us during Jr. Impact and brought their baby monitor, allowing them to listen for Luke at night while we were at the sessions and he was asleep. So Luke and I stayed for almost a week, though we did end up going to Macon on Wednesday—life in a moldy-smelling dorm room having gotten the best of us. Luke officially turned one at Impact, and it was great that he could spend his birthday with his grandparents, Uncle Chris, Aunt Jill, and cousin Jack. We also loved the opportunity to see Jack, since we hadn’t seen him since shortly after his birth.

In July, our church hosted Carolina Work Camp this year, which was quite an undertaking. Greg had to find 14 houses to paint; buy and organize supplies; arrange for food, housing, nightly entertainment, speakers, and worship leaders for 200 teens; and keep on top of 14 work crews spread over Summerville and Ridgeville for a week. Needless to say, he was pretty worn out at the end—especially since he decided to kick the week off by staying up until 5am working on an intro video! But thankfully, it was a smashing success. All the houses got painted, and the kids seemed to have a great time. We had some wonderful worship and some great speakers, if you don’t count the one who articulated his desire to tell churchgoers to “go to hell” from the pulpit. That he was from the Christian church made it even more fun to address with the elders. Though honestly, they didn’t seem to mind so much—as our youth elder put it to a disgruntled church member, “That’s what you get when you’re on a tight budget!”

Also, Greg just got back from a week-long mission trip to Rainbow Omega. I wasn’t sure how far out of our teens’ comfort zones the experience would be, but it turned out that it wasn’t out at all. They LOVED the residents and have announced that they want to go back every year. In fact, most of them thought the residents had it made and wouldn’t mind moving into Rainbow Omega themselves (sometimes, we wonder a little about our kids’ level of awareness…)! So after gifting individual residents with picture frames and t-shirts, and taking a ton of pictures, they are all back home now.

Over all, it seems like the youth group is doing really well right now—low drama, great attitudes—but maybe it’s because I’m a little more out of touch now, so I don’t see the negative as much!

In Luke news, he has had a busy week. He randomly got two new teeth out of nowhere (we’ve decided that teething is a non-issue with him), bringing his grand total to 6! He has two top teeth, and four bottom teeth. It’s about time! The poor thing loves to eat, but at the age of one, he only had two teeth! He’s also discovered his belly button, which has made quite an impression. Plus, he learned to drink from a straw finally. I think we messed him up by feeding him from the other end of the straw when he was younger, but he’s now grasped the concept.

It’s amazing to watch his awareness expand and to see things click with him. Though he’s not much of a talker (“dada” and “mama” are the extent of his repertoire), he understands a good bit of what we tell him, and, among other things, can identify his giraffe, zebra, monkey, lion, elephant, frog, duck, and pig. He also loves balloons, balls, dogs, and cars, and can play with any of those things indefinitely.

One thing he doesn’t have is much of a poker face. When he gets a concept or spots something he’s looking for, his whole body visibly jolts, and he lets out an unearthly scream—his version of “eureka!” And when he’s coming to knock over my block tower, I always know by his series of barely suppressed snickers as he innocently toddles over. Here’s hoping this transparency continues for quite some time!

Well, I still haven’t written about Luke’s first birthday party, our July 4^th trip to Macon, or his getting to see his great-grandmother, great-aunt, and cousins, but this blog is way too long anyway, so it will have to wait!