Happy New Year

With our exciting family forecast up ahead, we want to wish everyone a happy new year because we know ours will be wonderful and will have much to look forward.

With that said, I figure it's finally time for a picture. And while it's not much yet, it definitely shows there's much more to come.

I've acutally taken a lot of pictures so far, but this is the most recent, taken this morning at 13 weeks and 1 day. But I promise, there will be much more to come.

In the meantime, have a safe New Year's Eve and a relaxing and peaceful New Year's Day.

-Sam

Victory. 13

With each day that passes, I count down the days left until I can count up another week. And with each week that passes we mark that as a small victory in this long journey we're in. So today we celebrate the victory of week 13. To us this victory means one more uneventful week has passed successfully, the baby has been able to hold on one more week to develop and grow, and that we are one more week closer to welcoming our new addition. With one more week down we pray that the weeks will continue to pass just like they have and that a positive end to the journey remains in our future.

In speaking of victory, I cannot go without mentioning the Ravens exciting victory over the Jaguars landing us the wild card spot in the playoffs. Back in June when tickets went on sale, Justin and I had two computers and probably three phones going trying to score tickets to either the Redskins or Steelers games. We were excited that we were finally able to get tickets about 1/2 hour into the ordeal but we were a little bummed that we had tickets to the last game of the year. Little did we know this would ultimately be the most important game of the season, and now we're glad the way things turned out. Our tickets turned out to be in section 552, which we expected. So, after climbing 5 flights of stairs to the top, we looked at our tickets to find that we were row 32... THE VERY TOP ROW, and another 32+ steps to climb. phew. When we finally made it to the top we had a wonderful view of the stadium and a wonderful view of the city, but a not so great view of the players. But we fought the stairs, and the wind, and the crowd standing up for practically every play, and we had a great time.

I take some things back.

I just thought I should share that I thought about chips and salsa ALL night at work and when i got home, at 3 AM, I finished off the jar of salsa in the fridge (with a little help from Jiff). So filming for Revenge of the Heartburn will probably begin shortly. ( I only mention this because I previously said I only crave crab dip.... oops.)

I also must take back the fact that I said I haven't had to make too many middle of the night potty breaks. In fact, the past THREE nights in a row I've had to get out of bed just around 5 am. ugh. But. I was told by some friends to remember the time you generally wake up to pee because you'll probably be waking up to feed around those same times when the baby is here.... so if that's true, 5 AM I can deal with.

And lastly. I must take back my no longer need for afternoon naps. They have become a necessity again ever since I posted that blog. Foolish me.

-Sam

Christmas and such.

Because of our recent history we made the decision early on not to share any baby news with the families until we were sure everything was okay. Because our second visit to the doctor's was not until December 18th, we figured Christmas would be a great time to spread the news.

After a lot of discussing we decided that we would buy my parents and his parents ornaments. My parents opened theirs on Christmas eve. It was a snowman (with Justin's name on it) and a snowwoman (with my name) that was pregnant. The snowwoman was holding a scroll that said Due 7/7 and the ornament had an attachment that said Great Expectations. It definitely took them a while but eventually my mom started crying and my dad got it shortly later.

After spending Christmas morning with my family at my grandmother's, we headed to Justin's aunt's for Christmas dinner with his family. We weren't exchanging gifts with his parents until this morning (Friday morning) but we gave them one that we said was "special". This ornament had 5 penguins riding a sleigh. In order we had written on them Scott (Justin's dad), Kathy (Justin's mom), Justin, and Sam. A little penguin was between the Justin and Sam penguins so we had Baby Smith written on his had. His mom looked through, made it all the way to sam and then took a double take which is when she figured it out. And then came the hugs and tears.

All in all we found out that the ornaments (that you can get in the mall around Christmas time) turned out to be a great gift to share the news. In fact, I found a couple ornaments for ourselves that made it to our tree this Christmas.

After opening the rest of our gifts with Justin's parents today, we decided to head to Kid's Quarters in Bel Air after hearing that they are having a store closing sale. We saw a crib bedding set in the store in White Marsh that was Noah's Arc and I loved it so I wanted to check it out to see if maybe it would be cheaper here. Turns out, this originally $250.00 bedding set was only $100.00 so we decided to get it since Noah's Arc is pretty gender neutral.

We are super excited about this purchase, especially since Justin's mom can help us a lot with art for the baby's room, and we are a hundred times more excited now that we've shared the news with the family.

-Sam

So the news is...

...We're at 12 weeks, and counting.

And if you still don't get it, we're expecting a new addition to our family (in July).

Here is a picture at eleven weeks and two day. We would have had a better picture but he (or

she) turned at the last minute so this picture is him (or her) facing us. This visit was very exciting because we were actually able to see our baby move. At one point the doctor even said it looked like he (or she) was sucking his thumb, which was also pretty cool.

In this picture you can see the right arm (that I labeled). While the doctor was freezing the image, the baby moved his left arm up above his head (like maybe he was waving to us???). The right leg is hiding somewhere. We got to see the heartbeat during this visit, but the doctor said it was still too early to hear it (I think he has older sonogram equipment than some practices). Regardless, the doctor informed us that everything looks good and that we should have good things to look forward to.

Our next visit isn't until late January (our 16 week visit) and maybe, just maybe we'll get to see whether it will be baby BOY Smith or baby GIRL Smith.

As far as everything else goes, I would say things have gone pretty smooth so far. I don't have too much nausea (mainly only when I'm hungry or eat excessive amounts of cream cheese dips [which is sad because i crave crab dip on a daily basis which drives Justin nuts]) and so far I've had no vomiting spells. Besides my crab dip cravings, I have a handful of olives everyday. I'm suprisingly not too hungry yet, which explains why my weight stayed the same from last month to this month, so this means I cook dinner less which is not so nice for Justin. One thing I have noticed though is that I seem to have an aversion to meats these days and vegetables are not as exciting as they usually are for me. I gravitate mostly towards pasta and potatos which I'm sure is "very healthy," and I'm becoming full more quickly than usual, which isn't great when we go out to eat because I almost never finish my meal. As far as sleep goes, I was napping every afternoon almost in the first two months (and I was crabby if I didn't) but lately I've seemed to trade my afternoon naps in for an earlier bedtime, or at least becoming tired a LOT earlier than usual. I'm thrilled that I'm able to sleep through the night pretty well (considering I usually have a really hard time falling asleep), but these days I occasionally have a potty visit at 3 or 4 am. Justin unfortunately is getting less sleep, but that's mostly due to work and partly due to being sick. I now have to sleep on my side a lot more for comfort and I, for the first time, had to buy pants with the belly band...which might not seem too exciting, but it was (and they're way more comfy than all my jeans that I have to unbutton after I eat). Justin says that there's a baby belly forming, and while I'm starting to agree a tad bit, I'm waiting until it's a little more obvious to share with the world.

Up until now we've been very anxious and walking on eggshells with everything. We were praying that our second visit went well (which is understandable if you know our history) and now that it has, we're becomming very excited. We're still very anxious and constantly wonder if everything's okay, but each day it gets a little better and even more exciting.

We are definitely counting down the days until we get to see our little guy or girl at our next visit but until then, we want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. Enjoy the new year; we sure will!!!!

Our new family blog

Welcome to our blog. We decided to start off with a little about us.

Justin works at Social Security Administration and is a bouncer at Ramshead Live, Mothers in Federal Hill and No Way Jose's in Federal Hill. He went to the Aberdeen High school then Harford Community College and the University of Baltimore as a criminal justice major.

I (Samantha) am a bartender at Ramshead Live. I went to Baltimore Polytechnic Institute and am currently at Towson University with one year left as a nursing major. When i graduate I'd like to be a labor and delivery nurse at one of the surrounding hospitals.

We met at Ramshead LIVE in the spring of 2007 when I was a server in the restaurant they used to have and Justin was as a bouncer. We started dating in June of 07'. I moved in with Justin in August of 07' at his home in the Parkville area. In October 07' Justin's uncle gave us our first dog, Jiff (we also had a cat named Pryor, after comedian Richard Pryor). We got engaged on Valentine's day in 2008 and were married at the courthouse March 7, 2008. We had an official big wedding on June 14, 2008. We were married at my church, Nichols Bethel United Methodist Church in Odenton, MD and had our reception at Windows on the Bay in Pasadena, MD. We had our honeymoon in Disney and we had a blast. Unfortunately our cat Pryor passed away this past summer but we were fortunate enough to adopt another dog, Carlin (named after comedian George Carlin).

Now, in December, we're celebrating six months being married (the June wedding) and looking forward to spending our first Christmas together as Mr. and Mrs. Smith.