I feel really thankful. Over the past week I've been the beneficiary of some remarkable service. The first is my fabulous sister-in-law Rachael. I hate the term sister-in-law when I describe Rachael because I've known her for 16+ years. She's my sister and I look to her for advice on many levels-- most recently as my source of all things pregnancy, childbirth, and baby.

Rachael did the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. She cleaned our townhouse last week before we moved in. I'm not sure how many hours she spent there. It had to have been at least 10. She cleaned our kitchen, wiped out the cupboards, cleaned all the floors, and the bathrooms. She did everything. Considering she has a full-time gig as a corporate executive, a seven-year old and twins under the age of two, this means a lot to me.

I am also thankful to Mike N., Mike Y., Scott, Paul, Corey, my brother Brandon, and my niece Ellie for all their help with our move last Saturday. They started loading the truck at 10:00 a.m. and had delivered and unloaded everything at our new house by 12:30pm. It was amazingly fast. Brandon and Ellie came early and stayed late to help with organizing and cleaning too.

My thanks also goes out to Holly who threw a fabulous baby shower Wednesday night. The food, especially the cake, was out of this world. I appreciate all her planning, inviting, preparing, and cleaning-up. And thank you to my friends from the Capitol Hill Ward who came to celebrate. It was a perfect night!

Last but not least, thank you to Nathan for putting up with my whining, bending over to pick things up for me and rubbing my back for a few minutes every night now. He is the sweetest and sexiest man on earth!

--Val

Labels: baby, family, house, move, pregnancy, val

Family, friends and random strangers who have accidentally stumbled onto this blog:

Valerie and I have been struggling to keep a dirty dark secret hidden from the world for 12 weeks now.

WE'RE HAVING A BABY IN SEPTEMBER!

Do not adjust the settings on your computer monitor. It's true. As the attached photo shows, we're due around September 20th.

We wanted to keep it a secret until April Fools' Day but that wouldn't be until week 16 and we couldn't hold out that long. But it would have been a great April Fools' Day announcement, most people, especially in our families, would notice that it was April 1st and suspect that since we have been married for 7 years that we were just joking.

Well, we are not.

We started the year with all these resolutions in mind and were looking forward to accomplishing all that we had planned out. Little did we know that when Valerie fell sick with an ear condition following a flight from DC to Florida that our life would change dramtically. In January Valerie was having serious ear pain and demanded that we go to the hospital in Aventura, Florida at 5 a.m. She (and I) both ended up having (OME) otitis media with effusion, which is essentially blockage of the eustachian tubes due to a cold and fluid building up in the middle ear, causing severe pain in the ear when flying.

When we got to the hospital the doctors of course wanted to do a pregnancy test just so they could see what they were able to give and not give her as far as medication. The little Asian nurse called me into the room "just in case." Then after the 2 minutes needed had expired, she looked down at the pregnancy test strip and excitedly wheeled around exclaiming, "IT'S POSITIVE!!" She must have been completely bewildered when she looked at our shocked faces, expecting us to jump up and down or something. Instead we stood there looking at each other and then smiled, trying to take the news that was just dropped on us.

Some of you might have suspected that Valerie was pregnant since I have been saying that she has been "sick and exhausted" for these past few weeks. Valerie has been extremely exhausted with work, traveling and of course having her body overrun by a parasite. In fact, that is currently the name of our baby: Paris Site Coffey (we are suspecting that it is a girl - thanks to the suspect Chinese Baby Gender Chart). Unfortunately her morning sickness has taken over her life, but fortunately, she isn't bed-ridden. We are hoping she is on the up-and-up shortly.

It's not that we didn't ever want to have kids, but like I said earlier, we had just made all these resolutions and were making plans to carry them out. This year our motto was, "Whatever happens, happens." We just never imagined that it would happen this fast! We're excited and have had a hard time keeping this from family and close friends.

We went back to the doctor at week 6, this time an OB/GYN because Valerie wasn't able to keep anything down and had no appettite for over a week and we were a bit concerned about the baby's health due to the possible lack of vitamins. The OB/GYN had us take an ultrasound and I was amazed to see at week 6 that PARIS SITE was the size of a corn kernel and in the middle of this kernel was a tiny little blip, flickering on the screen: the smallest heartbeat that I have ever seen. Later did we learn that everything seems to be okay and the morning sickness and lack of appetitte, etc. points to a healthy pregnancy.

I have never been more nervous, as most dads-to-be must be, praying that everything works out and that the baby is healthy and without any complications of any kind.

We will definitely have updates as we go along all on this website!

Below is an image that I made as more or less an "announcement."

Labels: baby, family, pregnancy, val

You gotta love classic pictures of when you were a kid, if anything just to look back on and laugh at your hairstyles, your missing teeth, or the fact that you are holding a Cabbage Patch Kid.

This is a picture of Valerie (on the left) with three of her cousins. She found a bunch of these pictures one day and scanned them all into her computer and sent a daily "Turn Back the Clock" picture to her brother - who was in a lot of the pictures as well.

Oh to be a kid again.

Labels: val, wife