Jocelyn is a big sister!

Yep, we're expecting! This little one will arrive sometime around April 14th. (Lee is convinced that he or she will arrive on April 14th, since Jocelyn arrived on her due date ... we'll see!)

I love ultrasounds. I especially love early ultrasounds, since it's amazing to see the intricacy and detail that our Creator puts into his creation. Our little one is 1cm long in this picture - only one centimeter! Yet we could make out a head, a body, and a visibly and audibly beating heart, all fit in one centimeter. (By the way, the head is at the bottom of this ultrasound. The round part at the top is the sac.) It truly made the two of us awestruck as we looked at this minuscule yet completely alive child!

Jocelyn was there too, but she was mostly interested in the lights on all the equipment and in all the pictures posted in the room. Lee kept pointing at the screen where we could see the baby, but it never held her attention long! Perhaps if the baby resembled Larry the Cucumber a little more ...

So far this pregnancy has been a breeze as compared to my first. I've had waves of nausea here and there, but I'm not violently ill like I was with Jocelyn. We knew when I started my treatment for rheumatoid arthritis that I could be pregnant, so we went with the option that would be safe for that, but I'm praying that we will be able to drop the meds by early in the second trimester since most women with RA go into remission during pregnancy. (Granted, RA usually hits back hard shortly after giving birth, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.) I've been tired, but not too tired to keep up with our high-energy little girl. So all is well!

Also, since we're already referring to the baby by a nickname based on our chosen names, I'll go ahead and share those now too. I know a lot of people hold back on names until later in pregnancy or until the kiddo is born, but we like to call our baby by name as soon as possible. If it's a boy, he will be Robert (Robbie) Stone Dingle, named after my great-grandfather as well as my grandmother's twin brother. Robert means "bright fame," and Stone means, well, "stone;" with those names combined, our prayer is that he will give bright fame and glory to the cornerstone who is Christ (Ephesians 2). If it's a girl, she will be Zoe. Zoe means "life" in Greek and is the Greek word most frequently interpreted as "life" in English versions of the New Testament. We're still working on a middle name and have some ideas, which we hope to narrow down soon! Right now we're considering Arabella (which means "prayerful" or "beautiful lion"), Renee (which means "reborn" and is Lee's mom's middle name, though with a different spelling), and Elizabeth (which means "consecrated to God" or "God's promise" and is my sister's name, though with a different spelling), so a combined name meaning "prayerful life," "reborn life," or "life consecrated to God." And Lee has christened him or her with the nickname Pebble based on Robert Stone since the baby is a little stone right now. I think the nickname will stick even if it ends up being Zoe instead of Robbie! (Or maybe not, considering that Jocelyn's nickname in the womb was Elynac based on our three favorite names then: ELijah, JocelYN, and IsaAC. She was never called Elynac after we knew she was a girl, so perhaps Pebble won't stick either.)

And, if it seems weird to you that the title of this post is "Jocelyn is a big sister" rather than "Jocelyn is going to be a big sister," I do realize that the latter is more common for these circumstances. However, since this child is undoubtedly alive, he or she is already Jocelyn's little sibling. Thus Jocelyn IS a big sister!