Didn't think we had it in us

So they say it's a girl. I believe it . . . mostly. Sitting at the ultrasound was surreal. She checked the gender first thing, and when she said girl I immediately started crying. But I've been crying at EVERYTHING this pregnancy. It was a weird feeling to be so excited about a girl, and yet to mourn my all-boy family. And then I decided it couldn't really be true. I made her check about eight times and she kept saying, "Yep, it's still a girl." She was absolutely 100% sure. I told her I'd believe it when I saw it and she made me promise to at least take something pink to the hospital with me.

We stopped at the craft store and bought pink balloons to bring home to the boys. We let Charlie and Peter take the morning off school because they were so excited. It turns out that Peter thought we were bringing the baby home, but he figured it out quickly. Because we were so sure it was a boy, my mom had the boys get everything blue they could find and decorated the living room with it. There were blankets, bowls, spoons, toys, tissue boxes strewn all over the room when we came home. They saw us getting out of the car with the pink balloons and totally freaked out. My mom was sure that there was a blue one in the middle and we were just tricking them. Charlie is a little disappointed, but mostly just astonished that he is going to have a sister. Peter doesn't really care as long as he doesn't have to share a room with it. And Squish . . . well he'll figure out that there is a baby coming. For now, he is just loving having the balloons to play with.

I gotta say that as surprised as I am, I'm glad to finally have an answer as to why this pregnancy is so different. I've been way overly emotional, crying at stupid movies, Disneyland commercials, while singing at church, and even just dropping the kids off at school. And I'm still sick, mostly in the evenings. I'm so done with all of it, but I'm trying to enjoy it since, barring an act of God, this is my last time doing this.

In an attempt to avoid the whole, "we can't leave the hospital until we pick out a name" situation (which we've done three times), we've tentatively decided to name her Caroline. We're about 90% set on it. Mike has always wanted a Katie because it sounds to cute with our last name, but I'm not a huge fan of Kaitlyn or Katherine. So I figured as long as it starts with the same sound, Mike can call her whatever he wants. It could change and maybe we'll just name her Katie, but it feels nice to have something mostly decided.

My mom took me shopping on ultrasound day to buy something to help it sink in. It was so much fun to sift through all the cute girl stuff, but I'll admit, even in the girl section I was drawn to mostly blue and green.