Halfway there!

Happy holidays everyone! We hope that the family and friends that we did not see had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a whirlwind trip to upstate New York where we were able to see the Ficarettas, Ilnickis, Grandpa Tuman, Grandpa Leonard, and of course a bunch of Engles! It was wonderful to see so much family, and we're getting ready to do it all over again for Christmas.

We've been waiting to update our baby blog until the doctor appointment earlier this week. We are now past 20 weeks into the pregnancy, which means past halfway to the due date - unbelievable! The ultra sound revealed that everything visible looks normal. However, the technician could not get a good enough view of the heart, so we are actually going to have another ultra sound at the next appointment. She emphasized that she did not see any reason for concern, but just needs to be able to get a better view. So our fingers are crossed for good news on that.

We decided to forego our baby's privacy and post some ultra sound pictures for you to see. The face and chest from the front, not sure what the floating thing is:


And from the side, the spinal cord is pretty recognizable, along with the baby's chin:


Apparently the baby kept turning its head away when she was trying to get a good profile picture ("stubborn" was the word she used :) but we were just awed and thrilled to see it moving around so much. They also said that the baby is tall for 20 weeks, and they estimate the fetal weight to be 12 oz (considerably larger than the 5-8 oz that the baby books say it should be!) The official due date is still April 30, but they say he or she may come early. I have my doubts based on my family's long history of gigantic babies arriving late. Time will tell...

And of course a belly pic, taken this morning:


We hope that everyone has a beautiful holiday season and new year if we do not see you!

Breaking down & starting a blog

Hello family and friends! After enjoying friends' blogs and websites, we've decided to jump on the bandwagon with this new-fangled way to keep in touch. We hope to be good about updating it, and that it will limit the quantity of spam emails in your inbox :)

So here's the scoop: We're expecting the little one around April 30, which means that we're past 17 weeks and unbelievably, almost halfway there! At this point, we are not planning to find out whether the baby is a boy or a girl. (Of course there's a chance that curiosity will get the best of us, and we'll keep you posted either way!)

Below are a couple of belly pics, from 14 weeks:


And 17 weeks:


And of course, we couldn't forget the other members of our little family, Cleo and Otis, who are still very adorable and lazy. According to our wonderful puppysitter, they have been acting more excited than usual (although I suspect that has more to do with someone actually playing with them instead of shopping online for baby gear :)