gender ultrasound!

baby ashby #2 is a boy! we are so excited! i think sean and both kind of expected it to be a boy. i had a feeling it would be and sean was sort of up in the air but we were not shocked at all when it was a boy. maybe its just because we already made one boy? so maybe we are just good at making boys? haha who knows. i would have loved to have a girl for a couple of reasons, one of them being that if we had a girl, i feel like we could be done having kids if we wanted to. which i do think we will have at least 3 kids, but its nice to have one of each first, if you know what i mean? also, i struggled a lot when ben was born. i know everyone already knows all about it, the post-partum, ben's allergies and acid reflux, almost always crying in pain, not sleeping ever, and throwing up ALL THE TIME. everyone says baby's spit up a lot, but if you were to spend 5 minutes with ben you would have seen that it was much more than most babies. anyway, i am glad we got that all figured out, but it was a very hard 6 months until we did. i think when i found out it was a boy, i got scared. scared because at this point all i have to compare this baby to is how things went with ben. and in my mind, since ben was a boy, this boy will be the exact same experience. now i don't need anyone to tell me that it is ridiculous to think that. i already know that. i know every baby is totally different and this experience will not be identical to my first. and even if it is similar, i learned a lot through that and would handle it different this time. but its just how i felt at the moment. i was scared. i just had to be honest about how i was feeling. part of me thought that maybe if it were a girl, i wouldn't be as scared, because at least something about the experience would be different, if that makes any sense at all? i know, it's so silly. anyway, once i got over those feelings, the excitement set in. i am so excited for benny to have a little buddy! and there will be 4 grandsons, 2 1/2 years apart on my side! it will be so fun for them.

i feel like i let people down by not having a girl. that is even sillier than my above statement. but sooo many people were hoping for a girl since there haven't been any in quite a while in my extended family. but i know this is going to be so much fun. i think God knew that if i had a girl, i might in my mind feel like we could be done haha. so this is his way of insuring that we have at least one more child :) i am okay with that. i really do love being a mother. i feel like maybe i have not given off that vibe, because i tend to be really honest about the really hard times. that's just how i am though. i have to be honest about the good and the bad. it can be so hard at times. sometimes its harder more often than its amazing. but those amazing times make all the hard time worth it. i wouldn't change anything about this journey. and i do want more than two kids, just for the record haha. i know i say i would be good with two, but i think i just say that because i am scared of the unknown.

anyway, we went in for a gender ultrasound at 15 weeks and 5 days. when we went in for ben, right away i knew it was a boy. i saw that flash on the screen right at the beginning. there was no mistaking it. this baby was definitely not as open and flashy as ben. he was curled up in a ball almost the entire time. it made it really hard for us to really be able to see anything. when she finally got to the legs, to get that gender shot, it took a while. and for a few seconds there, you couldn't see anything in between the legs. that was basically the only moment in this pregnancy so far when i thought "wait, is this a girl??" i even said that. but the tech kept trying and said she thought she saw something in between the legs, and sure enough after some maneuvering she found the boy parts. they weren't the clearest, and she even went back at the end to double check. i mean there is no doubt it's a boy, but she definitely seemed more confident about ben being a boy. she said we would check again at the big 19 week scan. i feel pretty confident that nothing will change though.

it's so cool to me to finally know the gender. it makes it seem that much more real. calling it a he instead of it. i am excited to start feeling this little guy kick. i wonder if he will look like ben? i can't wait to meet him. i am scared to be a mother of two. and to be honest, it's not really even the newborn that scares me, it's just trying to give my attention to a newborn and a very active toddler that scares me. but people have been doing it for years and years and years obviously so i know i will figure it out :)

sorry, this post it all over the place! it's been a crazy week, and i guess i just needed to type it all out in a very chaotic mess of words. please excuse all the grammatical errors. in other news.....

last saturday sean hurt his back really bad. he was helping his brother move a compressor and his back just gave out. he has had back problems for a while, but this just was kind of the last straw. he couldn't move at all and an ambulance had to be called to get him to the hospital. after lots of steroids, pain medication, and muscle relaxers, he was finally able to sit up and go home. the x rays didn't show much so we were told he needed an MRI first thing on monday. that was a nightmare trying to get the insurance to pre-authorize it. i cried all day trying to get that taken care of but finally they pulled through last minute just as we were about to pay cash for it. which we will end up paying anyway, since we have a high deductible no HSA insurance plan. i won't get into that, but long story short, sean has a herniated disc that is pressing on a nerve. he will most likely have to have surgery, but we are waiting on a second opinion. he has basically just been lying in bed most of the week. not able to do much. he did got to work towards the end of the week and he is starting to feel a little better, but still very sore.

anyway. that was our week. very hard and very exciting :) we also celebrated moe's 5th birthday! i can't believe my first little baby is 5. it's so crazy to me how fast that went. i love my moses. even though he can drive me bonkers sometimes when he wakes up ben, i still love him. here are a few cute pictures of him and ben! love my boys!!