A few questions answered...

Things are moving along here. I am now 20 weeks and 5 days pregnant and I am starting to feel the baby a little bit. Not consistently yet, but still, there was a moment today when I felt something and it was clearly the baby moving for sure... I am a whooping 30 pounds heavier already - that's scary because that means I'm back to my pre-WW weight. And I know that it's more than the recommended weight gain.... more on that in an other post... :)

I wanted to go back to the questions that you asked a while ago. I haven't been blogging very often, but I still had these questions on my radar, I am going to answer a few now. Thank you so much to the readers who submitted questions!!!!! :)

How am I preparing for the baby:

To be perfectly honest, I have not really started to prepare for the baby much yet. Getting the right medical care and figuring out how to handle being pregnant has taken most of my mind until now. We have just started to think about the nursery and the items we will need once the baby arrives. We're going to build a Babies R Us registry soon for our friends and family - we have a really small house and I want to avoid people getting us too much stuff....

I think that it's starting to feel more real now that I have a bigger belly and that I'm starting to feel the baby, and I think that's going to give me that push I need to get things done. I still have some time though! :) I'll definitely post about things I prepare as I prepare them, so keep visiting for updates:) I plan to post a little more often from now on (at least once a week...)

Announcing the news to S:

We were pretty much "actively trying" to conceive, so we were both following the signs closely. I was sad when 'TOM" came, but when it stopped a couple days later (and was very light) I was suspicious (My TOM is usually pretty heavy and lasts forever, 8+ days at times...) So I did a test on a week day morning, before having a shower and heading out to work, and well, it said I was pregnant! I was shocked - I knew how little chance there was that we would be lucky enough to become pregnant on the first try! I wanted to tell S right then and there, but I had to finish with showering and I wanted to come up with a clever way of saying it. When the time came I opened the door and asked him:

"Do you know anyone who's a 'Virgo'?"

He said he didn't. That's when I pulled out the stick and showed him: "Well, you will in September!"
He had a big grin on his face, I think he was really happy. We were both really happy to know that quick that we were successful, we were going to have a baby!
That day was the longest work day ever, I was distracted all day!!! :)

S is English, Cinemarie is french...

S and I always had an understanding that my language is extremely important to me, and that our children would speak french fluently as much as they would speak english. There's no question in my mind - I want them to speak french not as a second language, but as their own language. I want them to think in french. We've been talking about having kids for a long time (I think we were talking about it in the first few weeks of our relationship, almost 8 years ago...) and I've always said that I would speak to our kids ONLY in french, and that he could speak to them ONLY in english. That way they have an easier way separating the languages.

I've read a lot about the subject and it looks like most people say it's the best way to go. I know it's going to be slightly challenging because S doesn't speak french, and also because the world around us is all in english, but I am going to try my hardest to never switch to english.

One thing that is going to help us is that we also plan to sign with our baby. Ever heard of that? When I heard of signing to your baby and saw that very young little girls and boys were signing way before they had the capacity to use words I was fascinated. I bought a book about it last weekend because I want to get a head start in learning the signs. This is the book: Baby Sign Language Basics: Early Communication for Hearing Babies and Toddlers, New & Expanded Edition PLUS DVD! So far it's great. It comes with a DVD where they sign all the signs from the book, so you can clearly see the proper way to do it. I played it once and I already have most of them memorized, well, most of the important ones (I memorized important signs like 'careful' but not all the signs that are less important like the ones about farm animals...) I'm really excited to start signing with our baby!! I can't wait!!! :)

The one good thing about this book is that they use actual ASL signs which are used all over the place. The great thing about ASL and signing in general, in our bilingual family, is going to be that the signs will kind of act as a 'bridge' between the languages. The same sign will be used for both a french word and an english word... I think it'll help S learn a bit of french too!! :)