Living with the Bakers: It's a... BOY!!!!!

I'm almost half way through and must get better at taking pictures. Something you never expected to hear from me, huh? Well even on the days that I feel like I look really good, my face always looks hideous in pictures. So here's my tummy at 18.5 weeks... minus my face.

Valentines Day was extremely busy for us. One of our cars has been giving us problems off and on lately, so we've had to carpool. It's been fun in that we get to wake up together and drive for a little bit together like old times at BYU, but it's also stressful when you're pressed for time.

Blaine's sister Erin was visiting for the long weekend (which was really just a regular weekend for us since our snow days took away our free President's Day), so we dropped him off at his school and then Erin came to school with me on Friday and got to see my day in action. She even got to witness the "bird assembly" where we watched a rat run directly into a wall.

Immediately after school, Erin and I hurried to pick up Blaine and then hurried over to the doctor for my special ultrasound to find out if our baby is a boy or a girl. Good thing we rushed because we only waited in the waiting room for over an hour with some sketchy characters. Blaine only slept an hour and a half the night before and had just got done taking his test, so he was kind of cranky. I was stressed because I had to hurry back to McLoud after my appointment for our last basketball game of the season, so I was not the happiest either. But when the nurse finally came to bring us back to the room, Blaine had just told Erin about one of my embarrassing stories so we were all laughing hysterically, so all of that put together is kind of a funny memory of the big reveal day.

So the nurse did the ultrasound of all of the body parts and pointed out the hands and feet and spine and we found out that HE'S A BOY!!!! Blaine and I had both thought it would be a girl, so we were definitely surprised but definitely excited. It feels more real now to know he's a boy so I can better plan nursery decorations, clothes, names, etc. We have our for sure girl name, but boys names were a little trickier for us to agree on. We bounced around ideas all weekend but finally feel confident in our top 3 choices. Well, my top 3 that Blaine likes as well. He said he'll love them no matter what so I can name our kids whatever I want :) But I really do feel strongly that the winner is in our current top 3. In fact, I wouldn't mind if we had 3 sons and used all the names!

Look at that cute reveal picture? I LOVE IT! I had been thinking about fun ideas to announce whether the babys a boy or girl and I'm happy with the way it turned out. There is a lake around here with a 9 mile path around it and fishing piers and sailboat docks, so Sunday afternoon we went over there and got this picture with the water in the background. It was really windy, so I was scared his little baby shoes were going to blow away. Also, that Jake was going to eat them. What you can't see in this picture is that Blaine has Jake in like a choke hold so he would sit there and take the picture real quick. We never would have been able to take the picture on our own, so we were lucky to have Erin there to take it for us. Can you tell anything else from this picture? Like... Jake being all wet?

Well Blaine let him go swimming in the lake for the first time ever. First he waded in on the boat ramp and loved splashing in the water. Then he jumped in deeper water and doggie paddled. It was a warm day, but the Oklahoma wind always makes it chillier. He eventually dried, though.

The weather has been very nice lately after those horribly cold days, so this was a great Sunday activity! We played fetch and let Jake chase us - so long as he didn't catch us and get us all wet.

While Erin was here, we also went to our first OU basketball game and saw the world record holder for tallest unicycle. It was actually pretty impressive. Before the game we went to Bricktown for some dinner at Fuzzy's.

We also went to the zoo for the first time (even though its 5 minutes from our house) which was especially exciting since it was a warm day and Erin had only been to the zoo like once in her life. Our favorite animal to see was the mommy gorilla with the tiny baby on her back. None of our pictures turned out very good, but it was the sweetest thing.

After the zoo, we went to a local BBQ hole in the wall right by our apartment. Because BBQ is on my list of unappetizing food these days, I did not join in, but Blaine and Erin split "The Roughneck," which is 2 pounds of meat and 3 big sides which is supposed to feed 4.