The Boxcar Children

When I was a child, I loved The Boxcar Children book (not bookS). In the first book, the children find a deserted boxcar and make a home out of it. I was fascinated by their creativity and ingenuity. In the subsequent books they no longer lived in a boxcar hence my reasoning for only liking the first book. I also loved Hatchet and Swiss Family Robinson for the same reason: it's fun to see people change their surroundings to match their needs and literally make the most of everything they have. Now it's our turn to write our own survival tale.

I bought my house three years ago and while it has suited us pretty well so far, we have definitely been feeling cramped. Because we didn't pick this home together, it has always felt a bit temporary to us. Every closet and bit of attic/cabinet space is occupied. When I moved from my mom's large home, we kept a lot of things "just in case" we needed it later. When we found out we were expecting, my first instinct was "We can't possibly stay in this house." However, the fact that houses aren't selling combined with the fact that our monthly expresses are going to be stretched thinner with a baby, has caused me to rethink.

Now that I've gotten used to the idea, I'm actually looking forward to pulling a "Boxcar Children" and making this house work in the way we need it to. In reality the only thing we need to do to make things more comfortable is clean out. I've got to shed my hoarding ways and realize that we no longer need to keep things on the off chance that we will need them when we get a bigger house one day. I can't wait to clean out and make room for baby! There's no doubt in my mind that my dream house is right in front of me, if I will quit thinking of it as a temporary means of housing and truly embrace it for what it is :)

The Sound of Joy

One of the most exciting things about being pregnant is telling your friends and family. Moments after I'd taken my third pregnancy test, Brandon called my sister, Kara, on the phone and told her to come over (it didn't take her long considering there's only one wall separating us in our section of town homes). Kara came in with a look of dread thinking that we'd just had a really big fight or something. I blurted out, "We're going to have a baby," and I heard "the sound of joy."

There's a book I read to my students (The Christmas Tapestry) about two Holocaust victims that are reunited some fifty years after they both assumed their spouse had perished in a concentration camp. The moment when they're finally reunited, the author says can only be described as "the sound of joy." It's an incredibly sweet moment and my students and I are always teary eyed when we reach that page. I know that being pregnant cannot be compared to being reunited with a spouse you assumed was dead, but when I heard Kara make that sound the first thing that came to my mind was, "That is the sound of joy." It was like shrill shriek escaping from a mouth that doesn't know whether to laugh or to cry - completely uncontainable.

Today I heard that sound of joy again when I told my work colleagues (or "work family"). Instead of just blurting it out like I had to Kara, I decided to be a little more creative. I had been working on typing up some multiplication quizzes for our grade level to use and they knew I was going to "unveil" them at our summer grade level meeting. I stapled the quizzes in packets and attached a sheet to the back with a picture of the sonogram and a note that said "Baby Jones: Arriving March 2013." I explained the contents of the packet to my colleagues and as I passed them out I said, "But the most exciting part is on the last page." Before I even sat back down a sound erupted in the room that, again, can only be described as the sound of joy. Considering it was 9 people, it was a little louder than Kara's reaction...but not by much, haha.

We are still in the process of deciding how to release the news on Facebook and to our friends. I think the only thing more exciting than this will be revealing the gender (girl, of course)!

214 Days To Go

It may be a little early to be counting down the days already. I guess I'm really more interested in how many days left in the first trimester (about 3 more weeks). It's been quite an adjustment mentally and physically. I've been struggling with some sinus and stomach issues as well as being tired, but from everything I've read that's perfectly normal. I am grateful that nausea hasn't been too much of an issue. I've heard from many moms that it gets easier, so I'm ready to be a little further along!