OFFICIALLY WAITING!!!

We are thrilled to announce that as of today, this family of three is officially waiting to be a family of four (or more)! Thanks to all of you for helping to make this happen. I have been experiencing the full range of emotions this past week: excitement, nervousness, excitement, terror, excitement, worry...and excitement. :) The excitement, terror, and worry revolve around feelings of inadequacy and unpreparedness: are we really ready for another little one, do we have the resources and the space, what about everything else going on in our lives? And I think to some extent, these are all valid concerns. But then I think of the million reasons why we were terrified of starting down this road the first time, and even though it is sometimes very hard, it is absolutely the best thing we have ever done. And that's when the excitement kicks in. And I know that this is the right time to start this process.

It's very important to me that our future child(ren) feel that our journey to her was uniquely hers, not some shadow of her big brother's journey. So I've tried and will continue to try to avoid comparisons. And I already know that this will be extremely difficult to do. But I did want to reflect a bit, just initially, on what I perceive will be a fundamental difference in this next phase of the process between our journey to D and our journey to sprout. When waiting for D, we had nothing to do but wait, wait for each painful step that would bring us closer to parenthood. This time around, we are parents, and our lives are full of...well, parenting. Playing with D, bath-times, books, illnesses, daycare, walks, bottles, diapers. There's really not a lot of time to sit around and wait - for anything. I do think there is more than enough time, though, for joyful anticipation. To me, joyful anticipation is the flipside to "waiting;" and with D here, the coin simply won't have time to flip. I hope this will enable me to approach this wait with a bit more grace and patience.

Oh, yes, and lest I forget to mention: we are still holding off on telling our families, as we would very much like to do it in person. Our current plan is to tell Chris's family at Thanksgiving and my family at Christmas. Thus, it may be awhile before you see an announcement on peep-eye. Until then, we'll keep you posted right here!