Gender Reveal Party: It's A...

Yesterday was my 20 week ultrasound.  LL was able to go with me to the appointment, and my parents and grandpa stayed here with Collette. :) The appointment went well, and everything looks normal with Baby #2; we are so thankful!! Baby was NOT altogether co-operative; he/she was lengthwise across me, facing my back, and did NOT want to flip over to my our Ultrasound Technician's job any easier!! Luckily, he is very experienced, and he was able to see everything he needed to see to make sure Baby is growing properly.  However, we didn't get any great ultrasound pictures, since Baby decided to not give us a good face view.  Here are the best we got:

Baby's head and spine (facing away):

4D image-- kind of hard to see, but if you look closely you can see Baby's head, including an eye, nose, and and ear, with two little hands up by his/her face.

Despite Baby's evasive maneuvers, we were able to determine Baby's gender! :)

Since both of our families were available, we had decided a week or so ago not to tell them as soon as we found out, and instead do a Gender Reveal Party that evening. So, I dropped LL off at work, and then came home to make a cake! If you aren't familiar with the idea of Gender Reveal parties, the color of the cake is used to symbolize the gender of the baby, and it is then iced in a neutral color, so when the cake is cut, everyone sees together whether the cake is pink or blue inside. Because we were going to have a fairly large group of people, I decided to do a layer cake, with the bottom layer chocolate and the top layer a yellow cake dyed the appropriate color.

Here is our finished cake:

(Yes, I stole Collette's ducks for decoration. Ha!)

Our entire family and a few friends gathered in our yard for our The Big Reveal.

LL and the cake:

Our growing family!

Collette is a big fan of cake icing, can you tell? :)

And...

IT'S A BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy family and friends:

We even got a few family pictures.

My entire family (minus my brother in S.C.):

LL's entire family:

Just a small difference in the size! LOL

A few of our friends, and LL's coworkers, Dr. Kate (with hubby Matt), and Dr. Anna joined us, too.

It was soooo fun, and we really had a great time sharing our news with everyone.

Truly, I think I was more surprised than anyone when I found out.  Because we have a girl,  throughout this pregnancy I have found myself thinking of Baby as a girl-- probably because that my primary experience. I kept thinking "Well, Collette may not get to wear this outfit that much, but the next one will..." or thinking about the baby wearing the same dress home from the hospital that Collette wore (that was once mine), etc.  And my pregnancy has been quite similar to my last pregnancy, so I thought that may be an indication, too.  But, I was wrong! It's a little boy cooking away in there!

We have been asked a lot already about names.  LL and I decided this time around we would find out the gender before starting the name discussion (unlike with Collette, when we discussed both boy and girl names as soon as we found out we were pregnant, and still didn't decide until at least 34 weeks!), so we haven't really started talking about names seriously yet.  Many of you may know that LL is named after his father, and is a "Junior", so there is a LOT of speculation about whether Baby Boy Reitz will be "The Third." :) I think we are going to keep the name a secret, at least for a while.  We know Baby's gender, and we will know his exact birthday, since I'm having a scheduled c-section, so we are thinking it would be nice for something to be a surprise at his birth.  No matter what his name ends up being, we are so excited to meet him in just a few short months! :)