Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice? Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails?

Ever since Madelyn astutely reasoned the truth about my growing tummy, she has confidently stated that our baby is a little boy. She says this very matter-of-factly -- like it's not her preference to have a little brother; it simply is a little brother. We've asked her on several occasions under several different sets of circumstances just to test her, and her answer is always the same: boy. Our 20-week ultrasound was scheduled for today, and given her "boy" fixation, we figured we'd better find out our baby's sex lest our little girl end up quite disappointed with a little sister come January (we didn't learn of Maddie's sex until she was born -- which was super fun -- so this was new territory for us).

Evidently, our little girl has a sixth sense about these things, smart little rascal! We are utterly delighted to announce that HENRY FINN OLMSTED will be joining our family in January 2011. Little brother indeed :)

Little Henry was quite the ham during the hour-long ultrasound. He was twisting and kicking and punching all over the place such that the tech had to try repeatedly to get the measurements that she needed. At one point while we were looking at his darling profile, something kept sneaking into the frame toward his forehead. She pulled the frame back and we saw -- clear as day -- that he had kicked both of his little feet way up over his head and was using his fingers to play with his little toes. Just amazing. I certainly respect anyone's right to believe what they want about God, but I just don't know how you look at something like that and not believe in a Divine Creator...

Anyway, we had the tech turn our monitor off when she got to the baby's bits and print off the identifying photo in secret and put it in a sealed envelope. We then went out for dinner just the two of us at our favorite restaurant (Andina) and fervently opened the envelope after our order had been placed. I think we both yelled "It's a boy!" and our server ended up bringing us a delicious dessert as congratulations. All in all, a pretty fine day.

We can't wait to meet our Henry Finn, and we will be so excited to introduce him to all of you come January!