Separation makes the heart grow fonder

So today was the first day in a while that Zion has come to play in the morning. Last week, he was sick with strep the whole week except for one day. Then this week has been Moore County School's spring break until makeup snow days starting today. Ceilidh woke up this morning talking about "funny Zi Zi." ha She was pretty excited that he was coming. When Zion got here this morning, he even seemed excited to be seeing us! woohoo

They played probably the most well-behaved they have EVER played before. We ran around the playground, ate ONE cookie (it was a sugar cookie Lyd.. no Easter candy, wink), and read books all morning. I haven't felt the best this week, so it was definitely a nice welcome back to real life for them to have a good day. I think the separation made them anxious to see each other!

On a slightly different note, but just as exciting, I have started feeling the baby move! I started feeling little "popcorn" like tinglings about a week and a half ago. They have continued to get stronger and more frequent over the last couple of weeks. We literally have about a week and a half and we can know the sex of this baby (if he/she cooperates)!!!! I think I am actually more excited to find out with this baby than I was with either Ceilidh or the anticipation with Kenan. We decided from the beginning we wanted to know, (the other two I wasn't convinced I wanted to know), and I think when you wait that long to find something that life altering out; it is almost unbearable the few days leading up to the big event! ha

As exciting as all this development is: feeling the baby move, wearing maternity clothes, my belly button doing that weird pregnant belly button thing, etc; it is all starting to bring some of my experience with Kenan back to reality. I will be 17 weeks on Monday, and I delivered Kenan at 19 weeks. My midwife believes that Kenan probably died somewhere between 16 and 18 weeks before we found no heartbeat that Saturday morning. It is amazing what you look back and realize after the fact. We had no clue that something was wrong with Kenan. But looking back, I wasn't gaining weight as fast as I have this time, I wasn't feeling him move a lot (chalking it up to it being pretty early to feel movement), my belly button wasn't doing the stretchy thing, yadda yadda. I mean obviously, even if I had been more aware, there is nothing we could have done unfortunately. Maybe the Lord was keeping me "in the dark" so I wouldn't deal with all the anxiety plus the grief... just the grief. Who knows? I just know that I am thankful for every little "popcorn" tingle I have!