T-Rex!!!
That's what Jack will say if you ask him. I had a VERY thorough ultrasound on Friday. Baby was doing cartwheels and barrel-rolls, with legs crossed the whole time, so it took them over an hour to get all the measurements they needed. They even made me go empty my bladder, do jumping jacks, and eventually switch to a transvaginal ultrasound when that was the only way to get the right angle for the final head measurements needed. Wow I luv childbearing, gr8 fun. (Don't get me wrong, super grateful to be able to grow this healthy baby, and my OB experience this time around is DRASTICALLY better than it was with Jack's pregnancy. Although they did find a bunch of string of pearls cysts around both of my ovaries during the ultrasound, so that's a fun welcome to my 30s. I am assured that since I was able to get pregnant it's nothing to worry about? Sure, we'll go with that.)
To cut to the chase, she's a girl! We were over the moon to find out. That's the story I'm putting in my memory bank, instead of the one where Jared has always wanted a girl until like a MONTH ago when he got it in his head that this one would be a boy and he got all pumped about that idea and then it was kind of womp-womp on ultrasound day. He's back to excited again, no worries. I read somewhere that gender disappointment is so common because before you find out the gender, you kind of have the idea of your baby being both genders in your head, so when you find out either way you're always going to be losing half of that fantasy. That resonated with me. We're VERY excited to meet baby girl, even though we are obsessed with our current little boy life. Also I'm relieved to be off the hook on deciding a boy name. Jared's had our girl name on lockdown since before we were married, so this girl will be baby Alice. (I'll choose the middle name.) Last year Jack told me out of the blue that he wanted a little sister named Allie, which conveniently works great as a nickname. Although now he's more excited about Alice-saurus (Allosaurus), middle name "T-Rex." I'm not opposed.
After our appointment we drove down the street to Salt & Straw for ice cream (we got lavender honey and gooey brownie), and to choose out a little pink toy of some kind to share the news with Jack. Then we got back in our car, and right there, parked on the side of the road in 2-hour parking in a crowded urban shopping center, our car decided it would rather not start up ever again. In all openness I absolutely saw this coming and have been telling Jared for weeks that it would be cheaper to just take it to a repair shop for its startup issues then to unexpectedly have to get it towed from somewhere inconvenient. (It actually died on me at Jack's preschool this last week and I only got it started again by the miraculous apparition of a retired O'Reilly's worker who lived across the street and tried jumping it like 10 times before it sparked up enough to get going. But it's not a battery issue, it seems to be an ignition issue.) So I was feeling equal parts annoyed and smug as Jared spent an hour frantically flipping through the owners manual as if there would be a button he could press that would magically fix the issue. Eventually his dad came to rescue us, we went back to their house to share the baby news with Jack and Jared's parents, got some Mexican food for dinner, and then Jared and his Dad somehow figured out how to tow our Honda from the crowded street where it was parked to a nearby repair shop using a tow rope and Jared's parents' Suburban. So rocky Friday the 13th for Jared, but I feel pretty good about how everything turned out. No parking tickets or tow truck fees, and hopefully the car will be fixed by tomorrow. In the meantime we're borrowing the old Suburban that Jared grew up driving. Which means for our date this afternoon I will be dragging Jared to all my favorite thrift stores to pick up thrifted furniture for our girl's nursery! Honestly this is my dream date scenario haha.
So that's the story of the eventful Friday the 13th when we found out we'd be having a baby girl. Oh, we ended up telling Jack with a toy dinosaur egg that you squeeze, and out pops a red t-rex (see top picture). The toy store didn't have any pink dinos, so we told him if a green dino popped out it would be a boy, and if a red one popped out it would be a girl. He was into it. Mostly because he got to keep the dino egg toy haha. And then I let him announce to my parents the same way on a video call the next day. It was perfect.
Jared chauffeured his little brother and his prom date around downtown Seattle Saturday night while I watched Mamma Mia and scrolled Pinterest for nursery ideas. The vibe that's speaking to me at the current moment is a light blue and pink nursery with vintage wooden accents and maybe some whimsical wallpaper. Very Alice in Wonderland. Feels on-trend for 2022 (going for equal parts millennial cottage-core and gen z goblin-core), and obviously perfect for a baby Alice with a mom who loves to thrift. Here are some pictures I'm drawing inspiration from:
