Our Baby's First Baby Shower

On June 9th our baby boy had his first baby shower! It was a very special time full of re-connecting with family friends and I felt very blessed by the occasion. About 40 women were at my sister's house to share in the festivities. We had a delicious brunch with yummy treats including tiropites (Greek cheese pies), Chicken Melonball Pasta Salad, chocolate-covered strawberries and Baklava.

After eating and visiting, we opened gifts. People were so generous in their gift-giving that it took a full hour to open everything! Even friends and family who weren't able to come sent gifts for me to open, which was so thoughtful. We received the rest of our nursery set (which is a Safari Animal theme) and many, many other useful items. Our little one has some VERY adorable things to wear and he'll be looking very cute in them, I'm sure. :-)

Another special part of the weekend was that my friend Catherine (whom I met in Geneva, but now lives in Kansas with her husband) flew in for the weekend to participate in the shower. It was so lovely to see her and we had a wonderful time visiting together and catching up on the big news in our lives.

I leave Colorado tomorrow to fly back to Geneva. The next few weeks and weekends will be filled with the final preparations for the baby. Olli plans to paint the nursery and then we'll build our baby's furniture and I'll finally get to put out all of our Safari-animal-themed stuff! I plan to send pictures when the nursery is finished.

Olli and I will begin taking pre-natal classes on July 5th and will continue every Thursday night until August 2nd so that will be helpful as well.

I tried scanning our latest ultrasound photos, but my parent's computer doesn't have the proper software installed for that so I'll have to do that at Olli's work when I get back to Geneva. I'll upload some pictures of the baby shower then too.

The Latest News on Our Growing Baby

Sorry for the LONG delay between posts! I've been meaning to update our blog for several weeks now, but I'm just getting around to it now. There's so much to share, but I'll just try to highlight the main points of interest.

First off, it was confirmed at our 20 week appointment that we are indeed having a baby boy! The doctors continue to state that they have no doubt about this fact. :-) Since that appointment, Olli and I have begun a list of boy names that are recognizable and easily pronounced in both English and German. Maybe we'll share the names on our short-list on this blog at some point, but you'll have to wait until our little one has actually arrived to know what name he will actually receive.

Since our 20 week appointment, we've had a few more and the most exciting one was the appointment that we had on my birthday when we saw our little boy opening and closing his mouth to drink in the amniotic fluid. We also had the privilege to see him in 4D! (We have some great pictures to share, but I'll need to upload those on a different post since I'm not as technologically savvy as Olli and will need him to instruct me.) Anyway, in the 4D setting we saw his features more clearly (not just in profile) and he had his hand up by his mouth--maybe trying to get a finger inside to suck on. After seeing him in 4D, I was convinced that our baby has his father's nose. However, studying his image in 2D and in profile makes me question my assumption. I guess we'll just have to wait until he arrives to determine this little fact. :-)

It occurred to me the other day that our little one has now met both sets of grandparents as well as his aunts and uncles in-utero. I was in Germany for two weeks in May studying and speaking German with Olli's family and I am now in Colorado and will spend a total of three weeks with my family. He's been moving around and kicking up a storm in order to impress his family members with his strength. Not everyone has been lucky enough to feel (or see) his activities, but it's been fun to try to share that with our family members. One time Olli was able to feel him pushing simultaneously on both sides of his round home, which was definitely an interesting sensation (for Mommy too)!

We've purchased our stroller, car seat and nursery furniture already, but our little one will have his first baby shower this coming weekend so we're waiting to put together his room until I return from CO with things to put in his nursery. :-)

I'll try to write more soon along with our upload of latest baby pictures.