The results are in...

... and they're positive!

We're having a baby. Even though it's been a few weeks since we found, I still can't wrap my brain around it.

I've been meaning to start up some sort of diary/blog/journal about the pregnancy practically since we found out. But, well, I've just been too tired. Driving home from work, changing into sweatpants and grabbing my Slanket from the closet is about all I can handle by the end of the day. But I will prevail!

Hopefully this blog will serve as a way to keep our families feeling connected to our pregnancy, given that we're so far from all of you. It will also be a good way to chronicle (hence the name) our first foray into parenthood, and will be something I hope we can look back on and laugh at years from now.

First of all: The story of finding out.

We'd actually only been trying to get pregnant for a couple of months and didn't expect it to happen so soon. But several days after Christmas, I started feeling different. I don't know how to pinpoint it exactly, but I just felt off. I took a pregnancy test on Dec. 30, and it was negative.

I told Mike how surprised I was. For some reason, my instinct had told me it was going to be positive. Some instinct! He said that strangely enough, he'd felt the same thing. He'd really had a good feeling about it. Oh well, we said. It's another month to save money. There's always next month! Plus, we had plans to drive up to Prescott for New Year's Eve, and there were tons of saloons on Whiskey Row with our names on them! Now we could live it up.

Mike had to work on New Year's Eve, but I was off, so it was my job to make sure we were all packed up and ready to hit the road for Prescott as soon as he got home. I took my time, working out, eating lunch, showering, packing. Around lunchtime, I was getting ready to head out to finish up a couple of errands and on a whim, decided to take a pregnancy test again. The box I bought had two tests, after all, and I thought maybe I'd better make absolutely SURE before I went up to Prescott and downed my share of celebratory drinks.

I stood in the bathroom, filing my nails as I waited for the results (always the multi-tasker). When I was done filing, I glanced at the test, expecting the "Not Pregnant" message again. Instead, I saw "Pregnant."

Every bit of air left my body in that instant. It was the same feeling I had when Mike proposed -- a bubble of complete surreality in the midst of an otherwise entirely ordinary day. The feeling that you just turned a huge life corner without even realizing the road was about to swerve.

And it was THREE AND A HALF HOURS before Mike was going to get home from work. How could I live with this knowledge on my own for three hours?! I got in my brand new CR-V, suddenly very grateful to have a safer, sturdier car. And I drove more cautiously than I ever have, running my ridiculously mundane errands. (Who wants to fill up their gas tank and visit the ATM when they just found out they're pregnant?!)

I still had THREE HOURS to kill, so I headed to the mall. Specifically, the sports stores in the mall, where I have often noticed adorable baby items adorned with various sport team emblems. The first store I came upon had a Cleveland Browns pacifier but nothing Eagles. A sign, perhaps, that our baby would be a Browns fan more than an Philadelphia Eagles fan?! I can only hope. So I bought the pacifier but I thought, out of fairness, that I ought to check the other sports store, too.

Indeed, I found an Eagles bib at that store. I guess the jury is still out on this one.

I came home, put the items (still in the bag) on the kitchen table, and waited another excruciating TWO HOURS for Mike to get home.

When he finally did, I asked him how his day was. He grumbled that it was long, and he had wished he could leave earlier, and he was ready to just hit the road and start our New Year's celebration.

I told him we were all packed and ready to go, but that first, I had killed some time at the mall earlier, and bought him a present. He seemed excited about that, and opened the bag, first pulling out the bib.

"Ohhhh, nice," he said, looking at me with a slightly confused look on his face (as though to say, "Why are you buying bibs when you're not pregnant?").

"Well, since our baby will be born right before football season, I figured we ought to start stockpiling the paraphernalia now."

There was a pause as he took that in, starting at the bib in his hands and the pacifier in the bag, and then he blurted out, "What are you saying?!?" (He says he doesn't even remember saying that, ha!)

I told him I was pregnant, showed him the shockingly clear pregnancy test that proved it, and there was much hugging and general excitement.

Here's a picture I took while I was killing time at home alone:


Just a few minutes later, we left on our road trip, now ready to celebrate something much more exciting than the beginning of a new year. Now we were celebrating the beginning of a new life.