17/18 weeks

I just hit week 18 today! Hard to believe I'm this far along! We had a big appointent with the doctor yesterday where they measured the baby's progress and could tell what the gender was....and for those of you who don't already know...

That's right! We have a Harper girl coming! We were actually afraid that we weren't going to find out the gender because she had her legs together and her feet were hiding it. But finally she started moving around and kicked her legs long enough to see that it was a girl!! She was also facing my back so we didn't get a profile view but we got a full face view. The main thing about the appointment was that the doctor said she was very healthy and measuring really good. She was measuring exactly on the date and was a good size. She commented that the "anatomy looked good" and that all fingers and toes were there! She also had a really strong heartbeat. We were able to get a DVD of the entire appointment so we can watch it. We were thrilled to get such a good report. I've definitely had to get used to saying "she" and "her" when talking about the baby. I told Marshall that it was also an old wives tale (that's right Brooke- WIVES) that girls steal the mother's beauty when in the womb, so I'm thinking I should have known all along because my face has been so broken out! My doctor also said that I've only gained 1 pound in the past 2 weeks and only about 3 pounds overall, so I could stand to eat a little more- sounds good to me!

I do feel like my belly is starting to shoot out and people can finally tell I'm pregnant. But I'm still feeling great minus the hip pain at night that I've had since the FIRST trimester. We are still working on names too and haven't decided yet but I'm very into originality. Continue praying for us to have wisdom as parents and to be prepared with a newborn! Still no news on the hospital yet, we still haven't toured them. But I'm kind of leaning toward the smaller hospital but I'll let you know once we tour them. We also close on our house on Thursday and I'm super pumped to move and decorate! More pics of the house to come! And P.S. I'm super excited to have had Adam and Ashley come and visit us and now in the next few weeks Chad and Christy! What a great month!