Baby 2 GENDER REVEAL!!

WE KNOW! WE KNOW!! WE KNOW!!!

We were able to go for our gender and anatomy scan at 17w5d (same as with Bryson) to check out our sweet baby 2! First and foremost, all the baby's parts and pieces were accounted for and in working order! Praise the Lord! Secondly, we came prepared with an envelope and a "girl" card and a "boy" card at the ready (we learned from the first time when the Sonographer had to write the gender on a post it!). This time, we had Laura put the correct gender card in the envelope that said "COMING JUNE 28!" so we could open it later when we were alone.

Caleb and I went to the same parking lot we were in when we opened Bryson's gender post it note and opened this baby's envelope! As an aside, we went into the sono convinced baby was a girl, but during the sono I changed my mind to boy. Caleb stuck with girl. We were so anxious to know - SO FUN!!!!

We found out on Thursday, January 23rd, and had a gender reveal party with both of our families at our house on Sunday! Here are a few pics from the party:

Caleb made our new refrigerator box into a fort. The kids LOVED it!

Bryson and his cousin Grayson! With the mamas of course!

The hosts! Family of 4!!! :)

The big girls playing with baby toys - oh the novelty ;)

Bryson loving the heck out of Grayson! Poor kid! lol

Baby 2's stats! Measuring a few days smaller, but probably just caught him between growth spurts. I do not expect anything less than a chubby baby! :)

AND HERE IS THE BIG NEWS!!!!!!!!!
We're having a:

A BOY!!!!! We're so excited!!! Bryson and B2 will only be 19 months apart, so this will work out perfectly! Forever best friends and roommates! :) 

I told Caleb that we should name B2 "Isaac" because it means laughter (as Sarah, in the Bible, laughed when God told her she'd have a baby in her 90's.) Obviously, I'm not in my 90's, but we screamed and laughed when we say the boy card come out!! We were so sure it was a girl for the last 14 weeks! lol We are surprised and totally over the moon!

Right from our ultrasound appointment, we went to JCPenney to get family pictures done. We received the picture package as a Christmas gift, and figured this would be a fun way to reveal the baby's gender! Unfortunately, since the package expired the same day, I had to have both pink and blue props ready! It worked out though - I like how they turned out! I just had a lot of pink returns to make! :) 

As you can see, I used the tag that was put in the envelope by the Sonographer on the ribbon "belt" around my belly. Planning to put it in B2's baby box (once I make one! :)) Also, Bryson's shirt says, "I love my brother"!

Someone asked Caleb if Bryson is excited about having a brother... Caleb laughed and said, "No - he just found out that everything that was once his is now only HALF his! lol Get used to it kid... ;)

If nothing else, this boy is definitely excited about balloons! :) Love those teeth and whole face smile!!

Friends Gender Reveal Party

The day after we announced the gender of our baby to our family, we had a small scale Friend Gender Reveal! Monday, July 2nd, we had 3 couples (and another friend came later) over for the fun!

Crash, Laurel, Neil & I all wore blue - guessing boy
Caleb, Jessy, Emma, Dustin, Erin & Arayah wore pink - guessing girl!

After dinner, we played an old wives tale game. This time everyone had to guess whether each question (tale) meant boy or girl. Then I'd say whether or not I displayed this "symptom" of carrying a boy or a girl and put the pink or blue sticker on the board accordingly. Turns out, there really is a 50/50 chance of being right when you guess the gender of a baby! I had 11 clues pointing to each!  



Board made by Jessy! Isn't it awesome?!
As my grandfather used to say:
"Sugar & Spice & Everything Nice? OR Hammers & Nails & Puppy Dog Tails?"

Here are some pics from the evening:
Guys and dolls:

Neil and his daughter, Emma

Crash and his daughter, Arayah

Moms and Babies:

Me & Jessy (Emma's mom)

Me with Deanna!

Me & Nicole (Deanna's mom)

After we finished the game while eating dessert, Caleb and I decided to have them put together the gender reveal puzzle we made. This time, as opposed to how we did the family gender puzzle, we left a few key pieces out so they wouldn't read the end of the poem before it was all put together.


The beginning of the puzzle!

The final piece goes in!

Jessy told me later that she has never been so frantic to put a puzzle together in her life! Cracked me up!
Everyone was SO excited to find out he's a boy and his name! As you can tell from the above pictures, we are one of the very few of our friends who will have a boy vs. a girl this year! Lots of ladies for Bryson to choose from, I guess! lol I got some interesting faces from some of these dads when I said that, followed by a reminder that they have guns... UHOH! It begins... :)

Family Gender Reveal Party

We decided to do something fun for the gender announcement...

So we sent out invitations to our family members that asked them to wear pink or blue, according to their guess on the baby's gender.



Caleb's whole family and half of mine - missing my sisters and their spouses.



I decorated the house in pink and blue and tried to come up with as many pink and blue foods as I could - we had watermelon, strawberries, blueberries, pink lemonade, blue water (a couple drops of food coloring), strawberry creamcheese pie & blueberry creamcheese pie (which ended up a little purple - I did my best! :)). I even had my nails done in pink and blue the night before the ultrasound.

Almond Joy & Mounds... know the difference? ;)

While everyone was hanging out waiting for dinner to be done, we had them play a little fill-in-the-blank game. We gave each person a printout of 20 or so old wives tales and they had to guess boy or girl for each one. Many of the theories no one had ever heard of before, so it was fun! My sister-in-law, Kristen, got the most right!

  

Boy's room

 (Funny how even in families, the boys go to one room and the girls hang out in the other! See above and below...)

Mostly girls room

Dad Winn & Laci

Emilie & Rylie

Drew & Addie

Mom Farrell & Leah



Crystal admiring the sonogram banner I made



Laci and me!



Though everyone was mad that we didn't announce the gender at the beginning of the night, we had come up with a surprise way to announce after dinner. We made up a poem, wrote it onto thick poster board, and cut it up into puzzle pieces. It was hard to write a poem that wouldn't give away the gender if you just saw one or two pieces, but we wanted to make sure everyone would find out at the same time - at the completion of the puzzle. We should have kept a few key end pieces out even, but oh well! They finished the puzzle and FREAKED OUT!

"DADDY CAN'T WAIT TO SHARE HIS TOYS"

IT'S A BOY!!

As soon as everyone was assured they guessed boy correctly, they wanted to know his name. If you remember back to my 19 week post, I told how Caleb and I hadn't 100% decided on the middle name, because I wanted to use a family name and he wanted "Alexander", just because he likes the name.

So when our family asked, I wasn't sure what to say - Caleb jumped right in and said that we're naming him Bryson Nicholas! I cried. So special to me to use my Grandfather's name.

Everyone was so excited! Hugs all around!

Then I got out the clothes we bought at Kohl's and showed everyone his first outfits!

After we told everyone the baby is a HE, I was able to add the 3rd letter to my "family" necklace! YAY! I love personalized things, so this necklace is one of my favorite possessions.

These pendants have since been discontinued, so it looks like I'll have to give all my kids names that start with a B, C, or N! lol

Overall, one of the most fun & exciting nights of Caleb's and my life!

We are ecstatic to be having a baby BRYSON!

Sisters - Gender Reveal

I'm hoping we are far enough removed from the whole gender reveal process that no one gets mad at me (or Caleb)... but one of my gender-reveal plans changed at the last minute. And I can't keep it to myself - this was so fun, and my sisters are absolutely hilarious. These pictures are them to a T; I have to share!

To back up a little, let me remind everyone that we found out the baby's gender a week before our family gender reveal party, therefore making everyone wait - no fun for them (and let me tell you, I was harassed and analyzed that whole week)! Both of my sisters live out of town (8 hours & 2 hours away), but we were all getting together the weekend of our gender party for my younger sister's bachelorette party in Cleveland. The plan was to tell the girls on Sunday morning before driving home to our family gender party that evening. That way everyone would find out the same day, albeit at different times of the day. But that was as "fair" as we could make it, while still being able to announce to Lindsay and Melissa in person.

Fortunately for my sisters, unfortunately for the rest of our family who had to wait until Sunday evening, Lindsay, Melissa & I went to dinner on Friday night upon arrival into Cleveland, before the rest of the party people came. They begged and pleaded and reasoned with me to tell them while it was just the 3 of us so that we could all talk about it and be excited together, versus waiting until we were running out the door at 7am Sunday morning where I would just have to say it and leave - boring!



Lindsay & Melissa YEARNING to know! Who can say no to these faces?! :)

So I called Caleb to get his input on doing away with the fair plan we had and we decided that we would tell my sisters, but keep the fact that they knew a secret so that THEY COULDN'T SLIP! That way if anyone heard them say "him", others would assume it's just because they've always said they think it's a boy. I know how much every thing I said was analyzed when I knew and others didn't for the week, I couldn't take the chance that someone else would accidently give it away! Especially to friends before family knew!



This is when I said, "OK!! I'll tell you!" They said "YES!!!!!"

So this is what I did:

I wrapped up 2 baby outfits - one blue and one pink.



Like my fancy white tissue paper wrapping?! :)

I told them to unwrap the gifts FULLY - as in, unzip the sleepers until you get to the note inside. But I couldn't say the unzipping part because I didn't want to give away what was in the paper, so they both thought they had the "right" one just by looking at the color. It was so funny! Lindsay screams," IT'S A BOY!" and Melissa says, "IT'S A GIRL!" Then they both look quizicallly at eachother, then the opposite outfit, then me. Melissa said, "It's twins?!" hahha! I said, "No! I told you - unwrap it FULLY - UNZIP THEM!" :)

Once they got to the notes, they started freaking out - I heard plenty of "I KNEW IT!s" hahaha

Those girls crack me up! They are SO excited to be having a nephew!

L & M with the outfits & notes they opened. See how happy they look!?

THE FINAL ANSWER:  BOY!



Aren't they the cutest?! Many conversations about names and plans and pregnancy were had over the course of that weekend. As guilty as I felt at first for not being fair (and basically lying about it! I'm confessing now, does that make it better?! :)), I wouldn't change it! It was one of the most fun things EVER to tell my sisters! They are going to be such great Aunties! Love you girls! Thanks for being so excited - and capturing your emotions in pictures! Now we'll NEVER forget your faces when you found out about Bryson Nicholas, the favorite first nephew! :)