Another season of change.

I remember my friend Keri complaining about people leaving her. How she always felt like the one left behind instead of the one leaving. Lucky for me, I've never really experienced that. We've always been one of the first ones to leave or were waiting to leave when people started PCS-ing. I thought Hawaii was going to be another one of those experiences. I certainly wouldn't choose to leave Hawaii right now but I had mentally prepared myself when we first got here to only stay for 2 years. Although, I miss family and friends from the mainland terribly and wish my baby could grow up surrounded by them...I was happy when I found out there was the possibility of staying. But when I got up for my routine bathroom break at midnight, I realized that soon everyone here will be leaving me!

Everyone knows how hard it is for me to figure things out every time we move. I can't find a place where I belong or true friends to hang out with. It was especially hard this time living so far from post and having Shiggy deploy soon after getting here. My friend Marissa really helped me get out of the house and explore the island. In fact, I probably did 75% of my exploring with her in the first 6 months of living here. She's leaving in 3 weeks! She was one of the first people on the island I told about the baby and she won't be here when the baby's born.

I have another close friend who just found out she also might be leaving soon. I always knew Marissa would leave soon after redeployment, but this other one came as a shock. We thought she was going to be here for another year. No orders have been cut yet but it's looking pretty good that she'll be leaving this summer. Then we thought, at least she'll be here when the baby's born. But now even that might not be a possibility.

At the same time that news came about, another friend told me they might be leaving this fall. This is my core group and they're all leaving me as I start this new chapter in my life. Now I know it's horribly selfish of me to want them all to stay and they have bigger and better things coming up for them but still... I'm just sad.

Luckily I have one friend who said she will be staying here forever, at least that's what they're hoping for. It's hard knowing that in the next 2 years I'll see all the people we moved here with leaving one by one. But it's amazing that I get to meet people from all over the world and although we have to say "see ya later" for now, you know there's always a chance you'll get to see them again at another duty station. Ahh...the army life...

Man I'm gonna have my hands full...

So it's a boy! We're pretty excited. I really would have been happy either way. Shiggy wanted the first one to be a boy but he had already gotten accustomed to the idea that it might be a girl and he'd have to teach her all kinds of martial arts to keep the boys at bay. My dad's excited because it will bring the grandchildren count to 5 girls and 4 boys. But knowing the kind of child Shiggy was scares the crap out of me. It will certainly be interesting. I'm trying to get the dogs prepared.

It looks like we have a really good chance of staying in Hawaii for a little while longer with no deployments. But nothing's official yet so we're just playing the waiting game for now. I know we'll feel blessed enough just having a little boy and having his daddy here for the birth. Anything else would just be extra!

I think I'm going to have to go facebook official soon. I was going to keep this pregnancy off facebook, not because it's a secret or anything, just because I feel weird posting something like this on facebook. But in this day and age when almost all communication with long-distance friends and family are through facebook or blogs, it's hard to keep it off there completely. And of course everyone wants to see the dreaded belly pictures. At least now, it's starting to look more like a pregnant belly and less like I need to stop eating girl scout cookies. It's also weird how much bigger your stomach looks and feels when you're looking down at it rather than in a profile picture.

I've started to feel little baby kicks. I try to agitate him daily for my own peace of mind. It's still only a few times a day and I feel like he's mostly kicking my bladder. Shiggy's only felt it once. I find it really weird that I can feel it from the inside but we can't feel it from the outside.

My friend Jordan is going nuts with baby shower planning. She keeps asking if I've registered, picked out a name or picked a theme yet. She also sends me links about names, strollers, car seats, etc. I'm feeling like I might disappoint her with my sad little list of friends to invite. She's funny. I really appreciate her excitement.

Now that the anatomy scan is over, I feel like there's nothing to look forward to until the actual birth. Which still seems soo far away. It's probably a good thing because the conversion of the office into a nursery has not begun and so far the baby has a winnie the pooh blanket that I bought 4 years ago when it was on clearance at Target...and some clothes I bought for other people's babies but never sent out... I'll get there eventually.

Is everything ok in there?

I have to say I've been getting more and more anxious waiting for the next ultrasound. The "what if's" have been piling on hard. It doesn't help that I've barely felt any movement going on in there. I haven't bought a single baby item and went to Babies R Us once only to run out panic stricken. It's still relatively early so I don't really have to worry about that stuff yet.

I found out yesterday that I have an anterior placenta which explains the lack of movement I'm feeling when in reality the baby likes to tap dance all around. The ultrasound tech kept asking me if I could feel that and acted surprised when I said I couldn't. You just told me I probably wouldn't! Why are you surprised? I don't care. I'm just glad everything looked good. We're up to 12 oz with a heart rate of 150.

We're telling our families the sex today. It's my mom's birthday so I figured it would be a nice present. We discussed it over and over again and decided we could wait a day to tell people. Well imagine my surprise when someone texts me and asks if he can tell one of his friends. I told him absolutely no one was to find out until we talked to our families. This was also our friend who outed the pregnancy in the first place. Wait a second...did he already blab? He had to come clean and give me a list of people whom he already told or might have "overheard" as he was screaming it out. It bothered me because some of these people I don't even know and I had considered talking to him about not telling anyone for just a little while longer. I would have at least like to tell some family and friends before he blabbed to random co-workers. But how can I be mad that my husband is so excited about having a baby that he can't keep his mouth shut. I'm actually surprised now that he was able to keep the pregnancy to himself for 3 months. And in the end, it doesn't matter who found out what first.

Now I have to deal with a dog who's vomiting blood. Poor Denny. Every time he feels sick he'll let me know and try to get outside. Since I don't like to wake up in the middle of the night to let him out, sometimes I ignore him. It's never a good idea. It's also never a good idea to walk around in the dark when there's the possibility that there's vomit on the floor somewhere. Hopefully I can get him to eat in a few hours and all we be good again.

We're halfway there. For now I just have to continue impatiently waiting for both the baby and my Girl Scout cookies to get here.