Oh Baby!

Katy's Grocery List:

Tortilla chips and salsa
Cereal
Strawberries, bananas, and cantaloupe
Frozen waffles and strawberry jam
English muffins and peanut butter
Sour Patch Kids candies
Another jar of salsa (make that two)

For the last three months, while I've inexplicably gone missing from the blog, this is what I've been subsiding on. While I used to love to cook and try new recipes, poor Ben has been left to fend for himself on the dinner front. We've had way too many "DIY" dinner nights.

"Why", you ask?

"This doesn't seem like the kind of diet a mature young lady would have," you say?

Well, after much thought and consideration, and after almost five years of marriage, I'm happy to announce that Ben and I are becoming parents and that my tummy is growing fast. After all these years of having to awkwardly dodge the question "When are you having kids?"...here we go! Usually we'd shrug the question off (Ben's cricket inducing response of "I'm sterile" was a one-time thing) or quickly change the subject ("Look! Is that a bald eagle?"), and happily go about our somewhat self-centered life in Chicago; going to movies on weeknights, ordering takeout food twice a week, spending late Saturday nights in bad karaoke bars and lazy Sundays lounging on the beach (if you're a regular reader you've read all about it with bated breath)...but after a lot of thought, it just felt "right". Cheesy, huh?

Here's the deets:

Our little person is set to arrive around December 27th, so we're lookin' at a Christmas baby or maybe a New Years baby. Either way, it will be something to celebrate in style. Here's to hoping that the kiddo will be the first New Years baby in Chicago on the morning of January 1st (aside from the tax benefit that I keep hearing about that we'd miss out on).

In mid-August we *hopefully* get to find out if it's a little chick or a crazy dude; that is, if it's behaving for the big ultrasound and showing us what's it's got. We thought about letting it be a surprise, but that notion lasted about a day until we both decided the suspense would kill us in the meantime! And, just so you know, we'll tell everyone what kind of little one it is (guy, girl or alien), but nope, we're keeping the name under lock and key until the big day comes.

This kid is going to be something else. Between Ben and I, we both have an odd mixture of a wacky sense humor and silliness, along with a quiet shyness, so I can only imagine how this little one will turn out. As I imagine all parents-to-be wish, I hope he/she has all of our good qualities and none of our bad. I'm already waking up at 5:30am each morning worrying about how I can do my best not to screw it up in any way.

Anyway, I'm very happy to be sharing the news with everyone. Please keep in touch with us as we go through this happy, exciting, and scary journey. Also, be sure to check back this fall, as Ben documents his experience growing a "dad beard". I'm sure it will be no less entertaining as the great "Mustache Month" experiment of January '08. As long as our baby doesn't come out with one.

Katy Coral

Benjamin John