It’s a…

On Monday we went in for the 22 week ultrasound and found out first and foremost that, to the best of our knowledge, this little one growing inside of me is healthy as a clam. WHEW.

We  told Asher on Sunday that the following day was the big reveal, and come Monday morning, Asher was standing next to our bed whispering to me, “Mama, did you find out? Is it a boy or a girl?” It was such a great way to start the day and is one of the many glimpses that we’ve gotten of Asher as a big brother. Apart from starting super late, (why doctors of the world? Just, why?) the appointment went incredibly smoothly and we loved seeing the baby moving around like crazy in there. It’s so wild to be able to feel the baby move inside while watching it move on the screen, just one more ways that pregnancy is very surreal.

We wanted to make it fun for Asher, but of course I hadn’t really gotten anything together, so we stopped by a bakery on our way to his school and wouldn’t you know it? They happened to have a macaroon with a nicely gender stereotyped filling. Conveniently, they also package their treats in boxes, and so my lack of planning worked out remarkably well. We picked Asher up and told him that the doctor had sent home a special treat to tell us if we were getting a little brother or sister (which I didn’t really think through when I said this…we’ll chock it up to a Santa Myth moment and move on) and so Asher sat at the table and opened up his little box.

He smiled so sweetly at Drew and I and said, “It’s a baby brother!” and then got busy with that cookie. He really liked getting to make the announcement, and frankly, he really liked getting a cookie filled with frosting. I would say that he likes both baby siblings and cookies before dinner equally well.

Without any prompting, he got down out of his chair to give me a hug and then gave my belly a blue frosting laced kiss. Amazingly, my insane pregnancy hormones didn’t cause me to burst into tears as the angel choir struck all of its chords and the kittens and puppies started raining down from Heaven, but we were busy laughing at just how much Asher was digging on that macaroon. Asher has been saying all along that he would be having a baby sister, so we were very relieved that he seemed so stoked about getting a baby brother given that he had once threatened to sell a baby brother. (If you watch the video, listen closely near the end and you’ll hear it.)

So that’s the big news! Two boys, brothers for life, a shared bedroom and hand-me-downs on the horizon. A special thank you to Pearl’s in town for making me appear to have my act together, and thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for this baby’s health. I’ve been saying it all along, but there never seems to be a big enough bucket to capture the gratitude that parents feel for their children’s well being  in all of its iterations. Thank you.