{with only sort-of related pictures}

Firstly, thank you for all of the warm congratulations in response to our baby news. We have been hoping for baby number two for a while, and are thrilled that God has deemed the time to be now! We feel blessed as we sense the excitement pour in from our community, as well. The official due date is June 28 - a summer babe!

Secondly, I promise growing belly shots this time around (to myself, and to you)! I had almost no pictures taken during my pregnancy with Indy because I felt sort of lame about it and thought that a) I wouldn't want them or care about having them after she was born and b) other people don't care either. That is something I really regret, because I failed to capture memories from a really special time in my life, and I would love to be able to look back and see the progression. I also realized that I love to see my friends post pictures of their growing bellies, so I'm guessing the feeling is mutual. I think that I was ashamed/embarassed to be boldly and outwardly excited about being pregnant (channeling the world's attitude about children), and my desire to be cool as a cucumber was overshadowing what should have been a beautiful/holy/exciting time of expectant waiting (God's attitude about children).

Thirdly, the holidays! They're over, which means now I'm ready for spring, right? Haha. I hope everybody had a wonderful holiday. Feeling nauseous took some of the charm out of things, but it was still great. Indy enjoyed opening her presents and received lots of wonderful things (including one of her presents from us - the mama-made doll above). We ate so much delicious food that we were basically perpetually full. There wasn't really any snow for Christmas, unfortunately, but it did finally snow yesterday: big puffy flakes, so beautiful that I was tempted to wake Indy up from her nap just so that she could see it.

Everything else is status quo. Morning (er, all day) sickness has zapped my blogging energy (hence why this space has been pretty quiet for a few months), but I'm just now finally starting to feel more normal, and things should pick up around here again. It's good to be back!