21 week ultrasound pics

Profile of Baby Dworak..... And a itty bitty baby foot.......

I first saw Baby Dworak at 5 weeks when it was a cluster blob of cells with the beginning flashes of a beating heart....

Then I saw Baby Dworak at 8 weeks when it grew into the shape of a plumped kidney bean and had the beginning development of a brain.....

But I am so glad to have now seen Baby Dworak at 21 weeks....to see a skull, brain, heart, two legs, two arms, and see it somersault and flip and move all around......though this all still seems so surreal at times, it seems a little more real now that we have seen its cute little nose and its tiny little foot. :)

Stuff

5 pairs of men's running shoes, 2 pairs of women's dress shoes, 3 bags of clothes, 1 bag of bath towels, 1 bag of sheets, duvet cover, pillow shams, pillows, 1 large red suitcase, lamp, TV, 4 cereal bowls.....

This is everything I am dropping off at Goodwill today.

I know if we were to have a garage sale, we would make some money off of this stuff, but truthfully, I am just glad to be RID of it!

I spent all day yesterday cleaning out our storage room in the basement, organizing it, cleaning out our 2nd bedroom, organizing closets, moving stuff down to storage....all to prepare for the permanent resident who will be moving in with us in October.

I love getting rid of "stuff." It is so freeing. Though I admit, it is way easier for me to part with material items (like shoes, clothes, etc.) then it is for me to part with memories. I have at least 4 large boxes of classnotes and papers from almost two Master's Degrees. All that hardwork...I just can't toss it away quite yet....And then I do hang on to pictures and cards and personal letters and mementos and Christmas cards .....but all in all, I look at our little storage room in our basement and I feel pretty good that all my clothes are in my one closet in the bedroom and all our "stuff" is neatly piled and filed away in an uncluttered fashion.

I believe one of my Marriage and Family Therapy Professors said that cleaning out one's closet can be a spiritual act. I totally agree. Cleaning out our closets forces me to purge things I no longer need...."stuff" that accumulates and clutters the ability to live life more freely....and so it is no surprise that doing so feels so freeing.

So, I begin this Monday morning feeling as though a huge task has been accomplished......a great start to the week!

Half way

20 weeks. I still have a hard time believing that I am pregnant and it is half over already. Crazy!!?!? Seriously, every morning when I wake up and try to turn over to snooze the alarm....(it is becoming difficult to turn over, sit up, hoist myself up).....it's like a new realization every day of ....oh, that's right! I am bigger than my usual self....unable to turn over well....because....there's a baby growing inside me. Still so surreal!

Next week, we will have a scheduled ultrasound. The last one I had was at 8 weeks so I am excited to see what this little baby looks like now that it is no longer resembles a kidney bean. Next week would be the week we could find out if this baby is a boy or a girl...but we will be passing on that option and will choose to wait until October instead.

I confess, however, that I envision having a boy. When I picture this baby, I picture a little boy..... a boy wearing a cute little Cubs baseball cap and toddling around in little khakis and polo shirts one day. So, I realized the other day that I really should begin to envision a little girl, too....because really, it could very well be a little girl! And in all fairness to this baby, I should begin to love it for who he or she may be. :) Seriously, I would love either a boy or a girl....but both our families are not well- populated in the boy department so it would be nice to mix it up a bit. :)


All in all, we are getting more excited at the prospect of meeting this little baby....but it still seems so completely surreal that "this baby" is going to be our son or daughter...and that we will be their mommy and daddy. Surreal and unreal, but I am sure the reality of all this will begin to sink in more in the next 20 weeks. :)