We have a heartbeat!

Well, about two weeks ago, we got to hear baby's heart beat. I am approaching 14 weeks and it was around 12 that we got to hear our little one's beating heart. It was a little scary at first...Caleb and I were very hopeful that we would hear that unmistakable, wonderful sound immediately. However, it was like a minute in to the nurse's search that she informed us that if we didn't hear it (not to worry!) we'd just go ahead and do an ultrasound again. NOT TO WORRY!? You gotta be kidding me, Lady! Caleb and I both started praying and I for one was thinking "lady, you better find that heartbeat because I don't think my frazzled emotions can take that kind of walk to the ultrasound room". Thankfully within another minute or so (or 2 hours if you were Caleb or me) our wonderful nurse found the little guy hiding down low! Baby's heartbeat was one of the coolest sounds I have ever heard! When she first found it I burst out laughing (all that nervous energy) and she had to find it all over again, except this time without all the dramatics. We had what we needed: confirmation that our child has a heart and it is beating just perfectly. What a wonderful day that was. Last I heard baby's facial features were well underway to forming and he/she was about the size of a peach. On Wednesday I should get all my new email updates (which seems to be all the reading I have time for these days). One of these days I am going to finish all the baby type books that I have started but until then I am very thankful for several very parsimonious paragraphs via email that give me cute little snippets about baby Field's progress without all the details about all the things that could go wrong this week.

Caleb and I are doing well and certainly full of expectation about all that parenting will bring. We have not gotten any farther on the nursery project because we are still using the baby's room as a staging area for all the stuff we plan on getting rid of at this year's church rummage sale...so that we can then fill it back up with other people's old stuff that we acquire from this year's church rummage sale that hopefully will look better and be more useful to our child that our old stuff.

We also have wonderful friend's who have graciously taken Shep for us over the last two weekends that Caleb and I have been out of town. Unfortunately they have noticed some "acting out" behaviors in our dog that seem to symbolize Shep's distaste for our recent life changes. Hopefully he will get used to the idea that he is slipping in the priority scale a wee bit as our attentions are taken away from his every whim. Actually, I am pretty sure that Shep has no idea that I am pregnant (or at least he is not letting on) so he must just hate the fact that we keep going out of town without him. Not to worry, Shep, with a little one on the way, our traveling days may be good and over for a while. I can't help but think how well this baby thing is going to work out for Shep...Caleb and I will both be working more from home and he will have a little buddy to play with...we'll just have to keep a closer eye on all our pillows and valuables until the dog realizes that we are on his side!