{Dada foot, Mama foot, Cora foot (or as close to one as can be expected for a thoroughly confused toddler), and now our family is growing by two feet! 🙂 )

About the middle of June this year, I started to have a sneaking suspicion that my usual craziness might have been elevated a smidge.  Sort of like my, I don’t know, hormones were perhaps out of whack.  Sort of how, you know, I was when I was pregnant with Cora.  We were definitely trying for baby numero dos (sorry to weird you out Dad), but hadn’t really gotten our hopes up too much yet.  On a weekend anniversary trip to Houston though, I felt like Orlando and I should run to Walgreens and take a pregnancy test, JUST to be sure that sipping some wine and bubbly that weekend wouldn’t be doing any unknown harm.  There’s no way we’re actually pregnant though, we both thought.  It was too soon, we hadn’t been trying that long, and to be honest, I think we were a little scared of what it would mean if we were.

As we headed back to the hotel, I ventured into the bathroom to do my thing and then waited for the results to magically appear.  If you’ve never taken a pregnancy test before, they usually tell you to wait five or so minutes before checking for the PREGNANT or NOT PREGNANT sign, whether it be digital words or two little lines.  In our case those two little lines popped up almost INSTANTLY.  Cue me walking in to the bedroom of the hotel room with a stupid grin on my face and Orlando immediately understanding what that meant. 🙂

Which brings us to today, the day we finally get to tell ALL of you! The secret has been bubbling inside me for what seems like forever now, but we wanted to be extra extra careful this go around due to our miscarriage back in January.  As I suspected even back then, this pregnancy has been forever changed by what took place almost six months ago.  The anxiety comes and goes, but now that I’m 16 weeks I 1) can’t hold in the excitement any longer and 2) can’t hold my growing belly in much longer.

I know I won’t feel a sense of relief until I have a healthy, beautiful newborn in my arms, but I’m trying my best to leave my worries and fears with God.  I heard or read a quote from Dan Zadra the other day that “worry is a misuse of imagination.”  That truly spoke to me in a way that only a few inspirational thoughts in life ever do.  Why spend my time daydreaming about what could go wrong when my energy is much better spent imagining how wonderful it will be when everything turns out just the way God has planned?

Anyways, enough of the sad stuff, let’s get back to the good news! Our midwife says everything looks perfect thus far and I’ve been blessed with a healthy and happy pregnancy.  We’ve heard the heartbeat twice, and each time I can’t get enough of that sweet, sweet sound.  Cora seems to understand that there’s a baby in mommy’s tummy, although she also thinks daddy has one too.  If you see her in the next few months and she asks you if you have a baby in your tummy, please know that she’s not calling you fat.

I scoured Pinterest for ideas (thank goodness for secret boards) on how to officially announce baby number two, and found a version of the photo below that we thought would be perfect to incorporate our trip to Spain.  I had to do some cropping to cut out a random fisherman so the fourth person mentioned wouldn’t be called in to question, but isn’t Gran Canaria beautiful?! More on that trip later, but today we just wanted to tell all our friends and family that we love them and we hope you’ll love baby number two just as much as we will! We can’t wait for you to meet him or her in late February. 🙂

photo 2

XO,

A