Starting to feel real!

It's really sinking in that a baby is on the way. I had my first Braxton-Hicks contraction at work on Feb 12. I had another appointment with my doctor on Valentine's Day and everything is perfect. My weight gain is great (hardly gained anything so far!), measurments are good, and the heartbeat is nice and strong. My little guy has learned where my bladder is and kicked me in the ribs for the first time a couple days ago. My dad offered to buy the crib for us, so we went and picked up the one I've had my eye on. My mom bought the bedding from our registry, and my sister bought us the mattress. We put everything together and it's so weird to see a crib set up! We were planning a Disney theme but made a sudden switch to African safari. The colors are browns, tans, golds and greens. I decided I wanted to stay away from the traditional baby boy colors. We still have more decorating plans that we'll have to get around to very soon.

We took our dogs for what was supposed to be a short walk today. Decided to let them off their leashes to run in the tall grass for a few minutes (like we do all the time) and Trooper decided he wanted to go for a swim in the drainage pond. I turned my back for about 4 seconds and he was gone. Even though it's for drainage, it's a pretty nice pond and we know the water is fresh from all the recent rain, so we figured "who cares" and let Raven and Apollo go for a swim too. Trooper was mainly interested in swimming after the geese and I think he was sad when they finally flew away. Apollo has apparently never been swimming before because all he did was splash all over with a panicked look on his face. The whole thing was hilarious and it gave us a good laugh.

Laura was home for 11 days and flew to Tampa on Feb 16 to work for 2 months in the Caribbean. She will be in some of the ports Chris and I have been to (Belize, Grand Cayman, Half Moon Cay). She'll be home again in April in time for the baby's arrival, and she's going to arrange to take a month off, if she can. She seems happy on her new ship.