Eric's Birthday Present

I know it's a little early to be working on a birthday present for Eric since his birthday isn't until February, but I actually started on it 10 weeks ago, and he better like it! Seriously, just working on this present has made me so exhausted that I've been falling asleep at 10pm every night. I guess it's been stressing me out too because I've been moody. Poor Eric has had to deal with me laughing hysterically at things that aren't that funny one minute, and crying the next. It's made me really hungry, but I have a really hard time finding food that I feel like I can safely stomach.

So, what is it that I'm working on? Since I've been working this hard on it Eric already knows so I'm not in any danger of spoiling the surprise by posting it here. It'll be about 6 - 10lbs (I'm definitely hoping it will be closer to 6 than 10), about 1.5 - 2 feet long and pinkish. He'll get to cuddle with it a lot, but it will probably be pretty noisy. We'll get to teach it lots of fun tricks like rolling, walking and talking. It will require lots of cleaning up after, feeding and taking care of. It will be very demanding on both of us for about the next 18 years after I give it to Eric (ok, so probably really for the rest of our lives really). And we will love it more than I think we now realize.

For those of you who still haven't figured out what it is... it's a baby! Yup, I'm 10 weeks pregnant with our first child and we're really excited! We went into the doctor's yesterday for the first checkup and were able to hear the baby's heartbeat. That was a really cool experience because up until now we knew I was pregnant but really I've just felt sick and there's no real interaction with the baby at this point. It was the first time we could actually hear the baby itself, so we were really excited. I also got chastised for not getting my bloodwork done yet (for those of you who don't know, I have a SEVERE phobia of needles which has made going in to do bloodwork... challenging... at best). The baby is in fact due February 26th which is Eric's birthday. Yes, we know that the chances of actually delivering on the due date are pretty slim but it's still just cool that it's the same day. :)

I've been reading up a lot on pregnancy and parenting lately which has definitely been helpful. It's nice to be able to say I have an idea of what's happening to me and know what kinds of things are worrisome symptoms and what things are pretty normal. One thing I've learned... just about ANYTHING that seems weird with your body, is probably a normal pregnancy symptom. But I've also learned which things are dangerous for the baby and worth calling the doctor about. I've been pretty lucky so far and haven't had any severe sickness or anything. I've been tired, and had some morning/night sickness, but it's mostly stomach discomfort and not throwing up. God really must love me because I feel the best during the day so the 11 hours that I'm away from home at work/commuting have been ok. Of course, it means that Eric only ever gets to see me when I'm at home and kinda miserable so it sucks for him. But I can't complain too much, I watched my mom's pregnancies which were FAR worse than anything I've been dealing with, so I feel very blessed. Mostly I just have a hard time keeping exactly the right amount of food in my stomach. If I don't eat enough, my stomach gets mad, and if I eat just slightly too much, my stomach gets even madder. Plus, it has to be just enough of exactly the right things. Basically I've been eating a TON of Cheerios, and then other random things like string cheese, popcorn, yogurt, frozen waffles etc have been making up the staples of my diet. I can only eat a very small amount of food at a time (for example, I've been taking yogurt to work for my breakfast and it will take me about 2 hours to finally finish my little 6 ounce carton of yogurt) but I'm eating constantly. I guess that makes sense since I'm eating such small amounts at a time, but it's a weird shift for me. Probably my weirdest symptom has been that I've been burping like a trucker. Seriously huge earth shaking burps. My little sister wishes she could really belch so she's been extremely jealous, and Eric thinks it's really funny to hear.

So, that's it from us. We're super excited and we'll definitely be keeping you all updated on our growing baby in the weeks and months to come :)