Merry Christmas!

Greetings from Buffalo! We are having a nice time visiting with family and celebrating the season. We spent Christmas Eve at the Howlett's with Nancy and Kenny. On Christmas we spent some time at home and then went to see Dad and Grandma before going to Aunt Rowie's for dinner.

Besides holiday activities, Patrick has been keeping busy going through Michalovic geneology and I have spent more time than I should admit looking up baby stuff on the internet.

For some reason that I have yet to discover, Patrick has started calling the baby "Lollipop". It will do until we can settle on something better. I am definitely feeling her move around now; every once and a while there is a distinct kick.

I think the Christmas cookies are catching up with me as I seem to be getting bigger and bigger. I was planning to get a scale to continue to track my weight, but I think I may hold off until getting back to Minnesota. Sometimes ignorance is bliss!

The photo above is from New Year's eve, and the photo below is from Christmas day.

It's (going to be) a girl!

Today we found out that our little froggy is actually a frogette.  Photos above and below are from the ultrasound - above is a profile of the face and below is a profile of the torso and head.  Everything looks good and so far all the pieces are in the right places.

This is the first girl on my side of the family in this generation!  Mimi will finally have a great grand-daughter!

We leave this weekend for the holidays in Buffalo.  I will be there for about two weeks and Patrick will be there a little over a week.  We are excited to see family and friends, but will miss the NC contingency!

First Baby Gifts

Shortly after returning from the cruise, I came home to a fun surprise... a gift package from Jen!!

It had everything needed for "Mommy Pampering":

- fluffy towels

- books

- belly lotion

- chocolate

- massage oil

- and two adorable onesies!  One perfect for a girl; one perfect for a boy!

Froggy

The Monday we returned from the cruise, I had the First Trimester Screening appointment. Unfortunately, Patrick had jury duty so he couldn't join me. The appointment consisted of an ultrasound, blood draw and genetic counseling.

It was amazing to see how big the baby had grown. And it was active! I couldn't feel it, but I could see it moving around. At one point we could see that its arms were crossed. At another point it did a complete somersault!

The ultrasounds above and below are from November 5. The one below is why we have taken to calling the littlest Tarry "froggy".

Telling the Families

We had planned a cruise with my mom and sister for the last week of October and it turned out to be a great opportunity to give them the news in person. We arrived in Florida on Oct 27 and told them right away.

Interestingly, my mom had told my sister about a dream she had the night before: She dreamed that we were shopping and I told her I was 11 months pregnant. This was confusing to my mom (in the dream) because I wasn't showing. I assured her that everything was going just fine, but it was still unsettling.

To tell my mom (for real), I gave her a framed photo of the ultrasound from the beginning of the month. And when I gave it to her, I was 11 weeks pregnant.

After telling Mom and Tara, we got on the phone and called Patrick's parents, Dad and the rest of the family. It was fun to hear everyone's different reactions -- Jen almost drove off the road, Ross took a minute to process and then said "yeah, that's news!", and I think Christopher was jumping up and down.

The cruise and the rest of the week were wonderful. No, I couldn't zipwire through the jungle in Belize, but I could lazily float down a river through a series of ancient Mayan caves. Photos above and below are from the trip. Both are from Guatemala - also where Tara bought the baby its first toy, an elephant named "Jorge".

First Photo

The month of September passed quickly and on Sept 25 (4 1/2 weeks from conception, 6 1/2 weeks as the doctors count pregnancy) we had our first ultrasound. Good news was there was a tiny baby in there... bad news was that the heart beat was on the slow side.

We made another appointment to do a second ultrasound. After a very stressful drive to the clinic in the pouring rain and traffic that friday morning, we had good news! Heart beat was strong and baby had grown a few more centimeters.

The ultrasound above is from the October 5th appointment. That was also the appointment when we waved good bye to Dr. Nagel and the staff and the University of Minnesota Reproductive Medicine Center, and walked downstairs to the University Specialists in Women's Health Center. We had officially graduated!

Labor Day Houseboating Trip

This is the first posting on the Tarry family blog. The photos above and below are from our Labor Day 2007 houseboating trip in Voyager National Park. We didn't know it at the time, but there are actually three of us in the photos!

Little Tarry will make his/her debut in May 2008. Our wedding anniversary is Sept 3 and we got the good news on Sept 6. What a great way to start year three of marriage!