Exciting Monday

Well, Monday was a very exciting day. We hung out around the house together and took a walk around the neighborhood with our neighbor, Denise. Denise gave Thumper a present. Its a "My first tools," complete with tool box, hammer, and screwdriver! If Thumper is a boy or a girl, we still want him/her to be able to fix things and use tools, even if it is just to hang curtains! ;) I've refrained from buying much stuff, as sometimes I think its not real still. I did buy Thumper his/her first book about a week ago. Its called, "God Gave Us You." Its a cute book about a mommy polar bear telling her baby polar bear a bedtime story about how they became a family. Its very sweet and cute! Also, I brought some old books of mine home from Nonna's (my mom) house. The list includes: "Goodnight Moon," "The Giving Tree," "There's a Monster at the End of This Book," "Corduroy," and "What God did for Zeke, the Fuzzy Catepillar."

Monday afternoon, we had another OB appt. We got to hear the heartbeat!!! It was such a sweet and exciting sound! I didn't know how important it would be for me to hear it! In addition, the nurse had a hard time finding it and we kept hearing this "swooshing" noise. She said that was the baby moving around. So, not only does Thumper have a strong healthy heartbeat, but he/she is moving all over the place....sounds like Thumper has Daddy's energy! The doctor felt my belly and said, "She's so petite, you can't even tell she's pregnant," then he told Josh to keep telling me that. I can notice a little difference in my belly, and a few other family members have noticed too, but it isn't very noticable yet. We haven't started taking belly pics yet, we've been talking about it for weeks, but haven't gotten around to it. I'm sure I'll regret it, but oh well!

On another note, Josh has raised almost enough money to go to Liberia! He's began looking at flights and is finalizing the final details of his trip. He's planning on going about 2.5-3 weeks. Its still bittersweet for me to talk about and I get teary eyed often. I'm so excited he is going, but I'm going to miss him like crazy! He's promised to try to find a little baby outfit or something bold and bright the baby could wear to bring back for Thumper. He's also agreed to let us go to Build-A-Bear and build a rabbit for Thumper. It will be a small stuffed animal we "made" for our baby. We're going to name it Thumper and I'll sleep with it while Josh is gone. That way it will smell like me and hopefully bring comfort to Thumper when he is born, if we aren't together!