16 weeks

Sweet baby,

16 weeks - about 38-40% done. Wow! Tomorrow we have a doctor's appointment, and I'm anxious to hear your heart beat. That's the only affirmation for me that you are real.  So I can't wait to feel you kick. It should start to happen sometime in the next month, and I'm so eager for you to make your presence known.

Mama's nausea is not completely gone yet, but it has gotten better. I've lost some weight (but gained a bigger bump), and the maternity clothes are still a little loose. Overall, everything seems to be going well so far. Hope the doctor's appointment confirms that.

This past weekend your pa painted your room a prairie willow green. It's very soothing. We decided to go with a forest nursery theme, with trees, birds, deer, foxes, critter, owls, etc. Both your parents love the outdoors and nature. Your mama spent a great part of her childhood in her home country playing in the forest. It's a magical place full of wonder. We hope you like it.

Dad doing some touchups

We also filled a few pages of your baby book together. It was fun recording some of the information in there, including some facts about your parents. Somehow, the limited lines and words felt kind of hollow - they couldn't capture all you should know, including the stories and emotions associated with each entry. But I hope this will be a fun small momento for you.

This weekend we also decided to start thinking about names. We bought a baby name book at a book sale, your dad split it in half, we took two different-colored highlighters, and marked the names we liked. Then we exchanged the book halves and hoped we would end up marking at least some of the same names. And we did. There are plenty of great options to start out with, but we won't finalize our decision until you are here. The name should fit you, and we can't quite commit to something until we can try some on for size. It was both fun and stressful, and we also got some great inputs from family and friends. But it's such a major and final decision, baby! We don't want you to hate your name, we don't want anyone to make fun of it, and we also don't want the name to be difficult to prounouce in either one of your cultures. This has been one of the most challenging tasks yet.

Can't wait to hear your reply in the form of a kick.
Until then, lots of love for you, child.

Your mama