So, I hope you’ve figured out by now why I haven’t blogged very much lately. I just have not had the energy! Plus, how could I blog about anything without you knowing that I’m pregnant. It has just affected my life too much to be able to write here and ignore it!

A few of you have asked my due date which made me realize I forgot to tell you all. Ready? It’s December 4th. Jack’s birthday. I thought it was December 2nd (and still kind of do) since that’s what babycenter.com said, but my midwife says December 4 so we’re going with that. At first I was disappointed that our kids will have their birthdays so close together (if not on the same day!), but the same weekend I found out I was pregnant, my friend Kelsey gave birth to her second born son and celebrated her firstborn’s second birthday two days in a row! I figured, well if they can do it we’ll be just fine!

When I was pregnant with Jack, my friend Jess loaned me her book, A Child is Born which has amazing photographyfrom within the womb, by Lennart Nilsson and Lars Hamberger. During those first few months I loved looking at the pictures and reading about Jack’s development (though the name Jack hadn’t even entered my mind yet). I was in awe at the way every part of the body came together, every finger, toe, organ, and bone in its place. My midwife gave me a magazine that has some of the same pictures and it says this, “Despite all the advances in biology and genetics, no one can explain how every cell in the embryo knows what to do and what part of the body to become; that remains one of the many mysteries of how human life develops.” (As Your Baby Grows: from conception to birth; American Baby, 2009, p10)

Wow.

(I just showed Jack this picture. He smiled and said, “a baby!” I love that at such an early stage the baby is already recognizable – well, when it is magnified a couple times its size!)

I am thankful for this inexplicable, miraculous life and am enjoying my pregnancy so much more since I told everyone! It is so great to celebrate with others. Thanks for loving me!

For you created my inmost being; 
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 
   your works are wonderful, 
   I know that full well. 
My frame was not hidden from you 
   when I was made in the secret place, 
   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; 
   all the days ordained for me were written in your book
   before one of them came to be. 
How precious to me are your thoughts,God! 
   How vast is the sum of them! 
Were I to count them, 
   they would outnumber the grains of sand— 
   when I awake, I am still with you.