And the “baby gender award” goes to . . .

The boys! We opened our envelope on Saturday and we’re going to have a son! The family name lives on for another generation. :)

We had such a good time with our baby party that I think we everyone should do this for all their babies. It’s the cold/flu/icky feeling season unfortunately, so my oldest brother’s wife and second son couldn’t make it, and my other brother and his family couldn’t make it either (mommy, son and twin girls all not feeling well!). So the crowd was smaller than we originally thought, though we still had two uncles, an aunt, a cousin, and the grandparents there (our baby is lucky and has 6 of them).

What a fun time we had! We each had to pick little name tags (blue, pink or yellow) to show what we thought the baby would be – I chose blue for a boy (I’d been telling Jon the last 2 weeks that I thought it was a boy), and Jon chose yellow at first, saying he didn’t have any strong feeling on what sex the baby was, but then switched to blue when he realized that in his explanations of the ultrasound pictures he kept calling the baby a “him.” So his subconscious at least was saying he thought it was a boy! Everyone else was pretty evenly split, with Grandma Sherry wearing one of each (she wants the doctors to be wrong on all the ultrasounds and have us actually have twins hiding in there!), and Jeremy using his patented family birth order method to show that we would have a boy (in Jon’s family tree the firstborn has boys, the middle child has a mix and the youngest child has girls). There was some betting going on between the uncles too. :)

We had a lot of good food as well (a hallmark of any of our family get-togethers and important to the mom-to-be, can you tell?). And the dad-to-be got his appetizer request -- little cheesy weenies wrapped in crescent rolls (turned out to be an omen – little weenies, hehe). While we were eating we went through a book called, “Boy or Girl? Fifty fun ways to find out,” which basically listed different old wives’ tales on how to tell if you were having a boy or girl. Such scientific and rigorous methodology (how you pick up a Kleenex, do you crave sweet or salty foods now, etc.) produced a split, with “girl” holding the slight advantage. I think we could have flipped a coin a few times randomly and come up with about the same result. :)

The moment of truth was upon us though! What was in that envelope?!?! Who would win Uncle Jeremy and Uncle Scott’s bet?! Which of the packages on the table would I, uhm, we that is, get to open – the pink or the blue?!

We called Jeff and Lori and Jill on the phone to make sure they didn’t miss it, and then Jon opened up the envelope (with all the cameras trained on us). :) And the truth-bearing, all-knowing envelope told us we were having a BOY! I started crying, everyone was screaming and happy, and Jon had a grin on his face a mile wide. He didn’t take off his boy pin the rest of the day, and every once in a while I would hear him say, “I’m going to have a son.” How exciting! And we got to open the blue presents. :)

Jon’s mom did something pretty amazing – she wrapped up an outfit that she had knitted for Jon when he was a baby and he wore in some of his first pictures and to his first Thanksgiving. Can you believe she saved it all this time? And it’s in perfect condition. Now it’s Jon’s son's. That’s very special. We also received Jon’s coin bank from when he was little, his baby spoons (one sent from the CEO of IBM at the time Jon was born), a sweater Jon wore that was one of his mom’s favorites, and a little musical pillow that Jon used to fall asleep listening to. Cute little blue onesies and boy outfits too (the clothes look so rough-and-tumble they are adorable). I took the onesies out – they were so little and precious. But then I held them up to my stomach and they suddenly looked VERY VERY big – a baby boy that big inside me eventually and having to come out?! Not thinking about that, not thinking about that. :)

Now I’m getting used to the idea of actually having a son and a little boy. I’m so excited and glad that we found out what we were having! I want to run out to Baby Gap or Old Navy and buy little jeans and oxford shirts and cute little athletic shoes now. :) Here comes the fun part too – picking out the nursery décor (except the crib and dresser decisions, those aren’t so fun ($$$) – but now we can start looking at bedding and themes and all that good stuff). We’re going to have a baby boy! And we better get started on picking out a name. We have one that we are leaning towards right now, but as Jon says, “further discussion is warranted.” Now that we know we’re having a boy the picking out the name stuff is much more real and seems more serious now. I want to decide pretty soon though so that when Jon talks to my stomach (yes, he already does that sometimes) and says, “Hello in there!” he can actually say his son’s name. :)