Merry Christmas! Pink or Blue?

Merry Christmas, everybody! This is the post I'm sure a lot of you have been waiting for....

IT'S A GIRL!!! On or about May 13th, 2013, we'll welcome sweet little Elizabeth Johannah Crombie into our family!

We are so excited! I wish the tech had let me use the video camera so I could capture Robert's enormous grin when we were told what we were having. Our "big gift" to our families was our gender reveal! We filled boxes with pink balloons, and tied little individual notes to some of them. They read, "Ellie Jo," "It's a girl!" "Princess" and "Sugar & Spice," and all had the female gender symbol on them. :)

The schedule of the day was: My mom & Perry's house with all my parents, my younger brother (Michael is in Switzerland this year for Christmas), and Auntie Karen. Then, Grandpa & Grandma Byers' with that whole side of the family. Naptime. Then, my mom's house again with some of my cousins, aunts and Uncle George.

Here's my mom, stepdad, dad, brother and Auntie Karen opening the gender-revealing package!

Also took a few still pictures.....

From left to right: Auntie Karen, Perry, Mom, Tristan, Sarge and Dad

Sargee usually gets to open the first presents.... so he naturally thought this was for him.

Anticipation....

Everyone's opening at a different pace

Mom finally got theirs opened, and Dad and Sarge are still getting the paper off Dad's

Ready to reveal!

You know what that means - IT'S A GIRL! :)

Getting all those balloons out...

Little tags on all of them (see pictures of that later in this post)

Reading every tag...

I'm pretty sure Auntie Karen was super excited!

My brother really wanted a boy, but you can't hide the excitement in his face!

Still looking at it all :)

I only thought it was fair that Auntie Karen had her own special box
to open, since she's been so close to me for my whole life!

Sarge - popping the balloons was the best part for him!

Here's Robert's parents opening their gift at Grandpa & Grandma Byers' this morning!

 Also got some still pictures there:

Mom & Dad ready to find out what it is!

Anticipation was immense!

Here it comes....

IT'S A GIRL!!!!

Pulling out all the balloons :)

Everyone was watching them fly out of the box!

Yay!

Reading all the tags was fun :)

Tossing them around for everyone to see.

Grandpa Crombie reading all of the tags :)

Grandpa & Grandma Crombie all excited :)


Since my mom's family from Vancouver could not come up for Christmas this year, I called all of them this afternoon and told them what we are having. But I thought it would be really special for my Uncle George and Auntie Sue to open one more "gender revealing" gift for the rest of the family that was gathering at my mom's tonight! (Sorry this video is blurry; I don't know what happened!) Hearing Acacia squeal with delight made me laugh so hard!

And we got a couple pictures of that event (although my camera was being temperamental!)

Uncle George & Auntie Sue opening the gift!

"What do you think it is???"

YAY!

It's a girl!!

Look at the joy on Jaden's face!

Acacia kept picking more balloons up, lol

A few minutes after this picture, Shane (striped shirt)
came up to me and said, "Thank you, Kimi for the
balloons!" Melissa (my cousin; Shane's mom) and I
got a good laugh out of that one!

Sheer excitement!

And last but not least, introducing our sweet baby girl - Elizabeth Johannah (Ellie Jo) Crombie! Read below the pictures for the details of the ultrasound appointment (or skip it, if you don't want to hear all about it, lol!) 

Here is her profile - a pretty clear picture!

This is her with her hand in front of her face! I'm pretty sure she's actually rubbing her upper lip with her thumbs like I did (and may or may not still do when I'm tired, lol).

 Here's the front of her face -it looks like an alien! Although this wasn't as freaky as the spine shots - I'm thankful the tech didn't have us take those home!

 Another hand and face pic - this time, the fingers are in her mouth :) It was weird when this picture was taken, because I could feel her moving her little elbows around!

Another picture with her hand in her mouth, lol.

 


DEFINITELY a girl - there is no question about it! Thankfully, she wasn't shy. (The quart of orange juice and constant intake of sugar at work that I had all day probably didn't hurt, lol!)






Right after the tech confirmed the sex of the baby, Ellie Jo decided to kick me repeatedly in the bladder. I was telling the tech I could feel that, and so he rolled the probe over that area in my lower abdomen, and sure enough, her little foot was there, kicking away! He said, "WOW, you have had a lot of water today, haven't you?!" I said, "Yeah, about 40oz. and then a bunch of orange juice...." So he was trying to get specific pictures and views of the baby and me, and because she insisted on jamming her foot into my bladder, and because I was so uncomfortable, the tech told me to get up and go to the restroom so he could try to get the baby to move for him, lol. It worked, though. And I felt so much better! The whole appointment took about an hour and a half, and a doctor came in to tell us that we had a happy, healthy, normal baby, too. :)

After the appointment, I made sure to text and call family and my co-workers to let them all know that we had a good appointment and that we'd tell everyone on Christmas Day what we were having. We headed home so I could eat dinner, and then Robert said we really should go run some errands. We needed to go to Party City (as Dollar Tree had no plain pink balloons that came in a package of just pink), Winco (for the rest of my homemade Christmas gifts), and the outlet mall for a couple of our gift exchange gifts.

While we were in Winco in the checkout line, I was getting kicked (or maybe punched, I couldn't tell) in the ribs and it was uncomfortable. So, I put pressure with my hand on the top of my belly, and was eyeing this lady's shrimp salad and she noticed and said, "Funny thing is....I'm buying that for my daughter, who's pregnant, too!" I laughed, and said that the baby is active at night, and that's when I have most of my cravings. She asked when I was due, and I said, "May 13th." She said, "WOW, same day as my daughter!" THEN, she proceeded to tell me that she was having a girl!

An update on me....
I'm craving things now! A lot! But I'm not giving into them all the time. I got some Cap'n Crunch Berries on Thursday, and I was thrilled, because they haven't been on sale for several weeks (when I started craving them), but we found a good deal on them at Winco. Which brings up a slightly unrelated topic.....Robert has requested that we do weekly shopping at Winco as we are able. It's sincerely cheaper than any other store by a longshot.

I'm feeling very tired, but still trying to do housework/ Christmas prep like usual. Sadly, this year I am so far behind, because my energy was just zapped (thank you, Ellie Jo!) But I'm thrilled with what I've accomplished, anyway!. I keep reminding myself that I'm doing very well, for having made it through the most difficult part of the pregnancy already, and trying to relish in my accomplishments, as opposed to focusing what I haven't gotten done. Plus, this is such a short season of my life, and I'm trying to enjoy it! It's so fun to get plans for homemade baby stuff!

We are so very excited about our baby news, and cannot wait to meet our sweet little Ellie Jo!