Baby Girl's Details

First of all, thanks for all the congrats and good wishes about our announcement yesterday; I truly appreciate everyone's enthusiasm! It's so much fun to share all of this exciting stuff with you guys.

And yesterday truly was an exciting day. For a couple of reasons:

For one, it was fun to get to find out that the baby will be a girl (they can see the hoo-ha and everything with ultrasounds these days, so yes, we're certain it's a girl). We would have been thrilled with either sex, and we honestly had no preferences, nor did either of us have an inklings or intuition one way or another, but finding out the baby's sex just makes her seem so real now! I mean, she was real before, but now that I can picture a baby girl, she seems more real than ever before, and that is just exciting in a way that's almost indescribable. I can't wait to meet her and see what she's like!

For another reason, it was wonderful just to see her on the ultrasound! This was our first one, so it was our first looksie at her, and to see the baby in there was awesome. The ultrasound office has everything displayed in front of you on a wall-mounted HDTV, so we didn't have to scrunch over the tech's shoulder in order to see what she was seeing. It was all there in front of us on a big, clear TV. And it truly is amazing how much detail they can reveal now: We got to see most of her organs: kidneys, liver, heart, brain (all of which are strong, healthy and without defect) and we could see two arms, two legs, little feet, little hands and fingers and toes! So from everything we saw and from everything the tech saw (she was noting things that we had no clue about), the baby's developing right on schedule and is strong and healthy!

So, in many ways, that was even more exciting than discovering her sex. Plus, it was fun to see her kicking and movin around the entire time during the u/s: She's a mover! And no wonder I have to pee all the time -- she was kicking my bladder the whole time!

On to answering a few of your FAQs:

1. Yes, we already know what we'll name her. We had already discussed names at great length, and had determined both a boy and a girl name. We're gonna name her Norah. We both have always liked the name, so since yesterday afternoon, we've already switched from calling her LBB to calling her Baby Norah.

2. My last name will be her middle name. (And yes, I know my full name was displayed on the pic on yesterday's post. If you're gonna go ahead and stalk me, that's fine.) And she'll have Jerry's last name as her last name.

3. No, I have no idea how we'll decorate the nursery, but no, it won't include a pink explosion. I'm not really that fond of pink, personally, and I'm also not too much of a girly-girl, so while I'm sure her nursery and clothes will all be distinctly feminine, I'm not sure what decorating direction we'll go in.

Okay, that's enough baby talk for now. I have been running this week. Still sticking to my 3 milers and they're still going well. But I think I may bring the Garmin along for this evening's run because I am curious to see just how slow I'm going; I swear, these 3 milers feel good but they feel like they take me forever!