Amy's Sleeping Pattern Almost Back to Normal

Since I blogged about how much Amy slept, I thought it only fair to say that she is almost back to her normal sleeping pattern (ie: nine hours a night). And she almost never naps. That means I actually get to see my wife while she's awake!

Now that Amy is sleeping less, we have time to eat together and talk. The other day, she said something that made me so happy. Amy said, "Yuck, Mexican food sounds disgusting!" I never thought I'd hear that come out of her mouth! She normally craves Mexican food while I never want to go (other than Pappasitto's of course). If only she didn't have six jars of pickles in the fridge taunting me with their disgustingness.

Telling My Dad, Peggy, and the Baker Five -- March 14, 2009

On Saturday, we met my dad and his wife, Peggy, for lunch at Picasso’s Pizza. My dad’s sister, Billie, was in town from Alaska and joined us for lunch. We thought they knew something was up because they kept asking if we were in Dallas for anything special. Seriously, they must have asked five times.

Amy and I arrived to Picasso’s first and organized the table so the three of them would be on different sides. However, when they got there, they sat down in different places. They must have been trying to make it difficult on us. :) There was no way my dad and Peggy could see the book at the same time.

At lunch, our anniversary came up so once again, I brought out the book. Peggy was sitting next to Amy and me so I handed the book to her. I knew I had to hand it to Peggy because if I gave it to my dad, he would most likely not have gotten all the way through the book and would have never gotten to the surprise. Peggy, on the other hand, looked at every page and showed my dad pages every once in awhile. I’m not sure how much he could see since the lightly was a little weird and, as Billie pointed out, his glasses were very dirty. Eventually, Peggy saw the last two pages and made sure my dad looked at them. They were very pleased we were having a baby. Yes, I said “a.” We had to make them look at the last page multiple times before they realized we were not having “a” baby but two of them.

After lunch, we headed over to visit Amy’s brother and his family. (The're the "Saturday Morning Donuts" guys.)

They were the last ones we needed to tell. Our plan for them was to get their kids alone and ask them to help us surprise mommy and daddy. We wanted them to take a sonogram to their parents and say, “Surprise! Look at our new cousins!” As it turns out, that was easier said than done.

Normally, I frequently find myself alone with the kiddos whether it be in a cut throat game of hide in seek or just some playing in the front room. However, this time, everyone was hanging out together. While nice, this hindered our plans. Neither Amy nor I were alone with the kids for several hours we had been there. We were about to go to dinner with my mom (who would definitely want to talk about babies) so Amy called Ella and Will into the other room to enlist their help. After a few minutes, Ella came running out without Will holding the picture. She handed it to her mom and just as she had rehearsed said…well, she said nothing! After three kids of her own and a nursing degree, Amy Su can easily read a sonogram. She quickly recognized the two sacks in our tiny little picture and happily said “there’re two in there!” Michael, who was watching basketball on the couch, said “two of what?” Surprisingly, Amy Su teared up slightly. She is normally so stoic. Just as surprisingly, Michael also teared up slightly. Amy Case thought for sure Michael was going to cry when we told him the news. The Baker fam was very happy for us. They were also happy that soon, the Cases will now cause a lot of raucous and not just the Baker Five.

For dinner, the five Bakers and the two point two Cases met my mom at Fuddruckers. While there, clever Will had several name suggestions. If we have two boys, he suggested Cal and Billy. If we have to girls, he likes the names Anna and Kate. Will obviously likes the name Kate. That is the name he gave his now deceased frog (“that didn’t take long”) and also what he named my car because of the talking navigation system. I was a little surprised he didn’t suggest the name Bubba. I know he enjoyed that name two years earlier at our wedding when that was the name he insisted on being called. That's Bubba on the right.

And we are now finished with our round one of telling people. Hopefully, there will still be some people we can tell around Easter (which will be twelve weeks). I’m a little worried my sister will have told everyone by then. She sure does know a lot of people and she is eager to spread the word. :)

Our 2nd Anniversary -- March 11, 2009

On our second anniversary, Amy had another doctor appointment to look at the two little raspberries. (Amy told me she read the babies would be about the size of raspberries at this time. That is way bigger than the half centimeter they were less than a week earlier.) It was going to be hard for me to take off work so Amy invited her mom, Abbie, who still recovering from a very successful surgery the day before to remove her breast cancer. Amy was not sure Abbie would be up for it, but sure enough, she was ready to go and showed up to the doctor, as Amy said, “dressed to the nine.” You would have never known she had undergone surgery the day before. I guess the chance to see (and hear) the two little miracles were too much to pass up.

Even though it was our second anniversary, we didn’t have any big plans. We host a Bible study on Wednesday nights and had people coming over to our house for that. Our small group (who does not yet know we are pregnant), surprised us with a cookie cake, some cut fruit, and a nice little card.

Here is a picture of Amy and I two years ago today. Isn't that a happy couple?

Telling My Mom and Sister -- March 13, 2009

Amy and I finally had a free weekend to head up to Dallas so we could tell the rest of the family. I made a small book on Shutterfly that we planned to use to break the news. It was a 5x7 book of pictures over the last few years of our life. The second to last page had Amy holding a sonogram. The last page had me holding two sonograms with a shocked look on my face.

On Friday night, we were meeting my mom and sister at Papasitto’s for dinner. We started talking about our anniversary from earlier in the week so I told them I made Amy this book. Angela was busy scarfing down chips and guacamole so she was going to look at the book later. My mom flipped through the book and eventually came to the last couple pages. She looked up with a shocked look on her face and didn’t say a word. Angela saw my mom do this and said “Is there a baby?” Before she was able to get the word “baby” out, there were large tears flowing down her face. After several minutes of crying, she composed herself enough to see the book. She then realized we were having twins. Again, the water works came out.

We told them we were only eight weeks along and were not telling people yet and they were going to need to keep it quite. They agreed. Two minutes later, my sister (who knows just about everyone) saw one of her friends at Papasitto’s and called him over. Her first words were, “I’m not suppose to tell you this, but my brother and his wife are pregnant. And they’re having twins.” That had to have been some sort of record for not keeping a secret.

My mom kept the shocked look on her face for most of the night. She kept saying, “I can’t believe you are having twins.” My sister continued crying off and on for most of the night. When we were leaving, she said she was worn out from the crying and needed to go home to rest and have a really good cry. Multiple people had predicted that Angela would have the biggest reaction to us being pregnant and she easily proved us right.

The First Sonogram...Twins!?! -- March 5, 2009

On March 5th, we went to the doctor together to check out our new little baby. During the sonogram, the doctor said, “There’s one sack…and there’s a second sack.” I didn’t figure what that meant quite as fast as Amy. I think someone needed to say the word “twins” before I figured it out. And even then, I think I thought, “Who’s having twins?”

The picture quality on the sonogram was way better than I expected. I clearly saw two babies. One of them clearly had big head and tiny little body. Then I saw that baby’s brain start beating in the middle of their head. At that moment, I realized that the beating brain was actually a heart and the baby didn’t look as much like a baby as I had initially thought. Moments after first seeing our new twins, we were able to hear both heartbeats. Both baby measured in at five millimeters and had heartbeats around 120 beats per minutes (both of which are normal).

The second the doctor left the room, Amy very sweetly yelled at me, “That is why I’ve been sleeping so much more than Jenny…I have two in there!!!” I responded with, “Did you know there were two in there?” thinking Amy might have had some sort of mother’s intuition. She quickly defended herself by saying, “How would I have known there were two?” For the record, I’m not entirely convinced—I think she somehow knew. :)

That night, we went to the Cheesecake Factory with Amy’s parents to tell them about the sonogram. Once again, they were prepared with a gift. (Amy could get used to that.) This time, we got a “silky”—aka, a small, soft baby blanket that is going to be very well loved and look disgusting after just a few years. Abbie had bought us a white one and a yellow one. Amy and I agreed that we were not a fan of the yellow one. We like white or pink/blue once we know the sex of the babies. (My gosh, “babies” is plural. We are having two babies at the same time.) When Amy said the word “twins,” Abbie let out a squeal. I think she was more excited when we told her we were having twins than she was when we told her Amy is pregnant. Gary quickly told us that they do not baby sit…well, at least not for free. We’re pretty sure he’s bluffing.

Sleeping and Peeing -- February 21, 2009

Amy does nothing but sleep and pee. She goes to the bathroom five or six times a night and probably thirty times every day. Amy wakes up after I’ve already left for work. (At least, that’s what she tells me.) When I get home, she is typically resting on the couch ("resting" is what most people would call "sleeping" or "napping"). About every hour, she gets up to pee. At about 6:00pm, Amy will get up and eat a piece of peanut butter toast and then head back to the couch...after making a quick pit stop in the little girl’s room of course. At about 8:30pm, I wake Amy up and tell her it is time for bed. Within ten minutes, she is out for the night. You might think that with all the sleeping, it would be hard for Amy to sleep through the night. You’d be wrong, but you might think that.

Out of love (Amy), I was curious about Amy’s sleeping patterns so I asked my friend Jack (whose wife is also pregnant) about her sleeping patterns. Jack said Jenny did not sleep anywhere near as much as Amy. I reported this to Amy who was not thrilled with me. I tried to explain how I was concerned and wanted to understand but she just thought it was annoying that I would “gossip” about her. :)

Telling Amy's Parents -- February 16, 2009

A few days after learning Amy was pregnant, we went to dinner at Cheddar’s with her parents to let them know the good news. Previously, they had asked for some “letter” pictures from us so we stuck a picture of Amy holding a sonogram (there is no baby in this picture below) into the middle of the stack. When they looked through the pictures, they found surprise picture of pregnant Amy. Immediately, Abbie said, “Gary, go to the car.” One minute later, Gary showed up with our first baby gift. We were given a small “Little Miracle” frame, some kid’s books, and a few other baby themed items. (Who knows how long they had been carrying that gift around in the car.)

Valentines Day -- February 14, 2009

On Valentine’s Day 2009, Amy found out she is pregnant!!! She thought she was pregnant the day before but did not want to take a test and find out one way or the other on Friday the 13th. Her blood work said some count was very high and mentioned that twins were a possibility. I quickly let that thought slip out of my head…Of course there is only one little baby in there. We are very excited.