12 Weeks and Pickles

Well today is a big day for us, the "end" of the first trimester!  What a start to this crazy adventure!  We went to the doctor yesterday and the ultrasound technician was very pleased with how quickly the bleeding around my sac has gone away.  She said it was "remarkable progress in just 4 weeks."  This was such a relief to hear as it was always in the back of my mind as something that was "wrong with me." 

As soon as she put the ultrasound wand to my belly I couldn't believe how much our little monster has grown!  The thing is huge now!  We are calling it a he a lot, I don't know if that is a sign or because it just feels more humane that calling it an it!  :)  We do not know the sex right now and will have to wait until we are about 20 weeks to find out!  Our monster was certainly a mover and a shaker yesterday during our ultrasound.  It was bending it's knees and kicking it's legs and waving it's arms all over the place.  Rolling around in there, not sure how there is enough space for all that movement, but wow!  We clocked in another strong heart rate of 171, which is also great news!  Here are the pictures we got yesterday, a lot of them are blurry because the bugger kept moving around.  (I hope that's not an indication of what it's going to be like to take it's picture in the future, because this mommy is a camera freak!)

 That is the arm and hand waving to us!  Blurry of course because it was flailing around in there like a crazy person!

 3D/4D pictures were pretty cool.  The U/S tech was trying to wait until the little one turned around to get a good picture of the face, but it was moving around too much.  But here you can see the arms and legs really well.

 You can see the knee bent up above the belly and then the leg and foot stretched out!  It's crazy!

 We kept laughing at this pictures because we said it was stretching it's legs out to get more space in there!

Ok, and now I have to confess, I bought my first jar of pregnancy pickles when I was grocery shopping the other day!  This week has been a little stressful and I am finally starting to get my appetite back but I am hungry for very specific things.  For example: colby jack cheese, pickles, fruit punch, oranges, and pop-tarts.  While I have not opened this jar of pickles, because the cheese was more important when I got home from the store, it is reassuring to know that they are chilled and ready to go whenever I need one!  :) 

Still on the car hunt!  And then to top it all off, Joe's company is restructuring.  They are moving to a different model of business so this week a guy from PA came down to work with him and to let him know what his position would look like now.  Everything went really great and Joe felt really good about the outlook of things.  Then... last night his new boss in PA called and offered him a position in the PA office.  We don't really know all the details of it yet, but it is just one more thing to think about.  We have been talking a lot lately about moving back to PA to be closer to family but we were thinking sometime in the next 2 years or so, once baby was here and a little older.  But man, to just go now, would be CRAZY!  There are so many questions and Joe needs to talk more to his boss about everything, but keep us in your prayers as we have some big decisions to make in the near future.