We're having a baby!

It's been a quiet few months over here, and for a tiny good reason.

We're having a baby! A sweet, little life that has been hoped for, prayed for, and awaited for some time is now growing and changing and real.

Over the last few months, I've been a bit quieter, and we have been taking our time letting that realization soak in. In part due to how I was feeling physically, and in part due to not seeing social media as important, life naturally got a bit quieter. I took fewer pictures, shared less, but I felt like I was more present in life, along with allowing myself extra time to rest.

There was something especially sweet about anticipating new life in the season of advent and Christmas. A slow anticipation and once-secret joys, now shared. And now that Baby DeVries is no longer a secret, I can share about our Christmas and New Year's plans with more openness, which just seems right. Fifteen weeks is a long time to write about my life without including anything about such a huge life change!

Some details, in case you were wondering:

• Baby DeVries is due in June
• We've known since early October
• Lots of nausea and fatigue from weeks 7-14, but it's improving now
• We first saw the baby's heartbeat at 6 weeks(!) when he or she was only the size of a pencil eraser
• He or she had fingerprints at 13 weeks!
• We're reveling in the miracle that is pregnancy and baby growth
• We frequently refer to the baby as the "brioche bun in the oven"
• We will find out the gender in February, and plan to share that, but plan to keep baby's name a secret until he or she arrives!

And I think I'll leave it there for now. I have so much to say about our life and the baby and what the last few months have meant for me, but I'll let it out and share some, bit by bit. For now, we're very much looking forward to the new year, thankful, thankful, thankful for His blessings and His timing of it all. What I know more than ever is that God is good, and kind, and He cherishes His children. I'm walking into the new year with that truth in my pocket, excited and joyful and with anticipation. Sometimes an advent heart is a good thing in January, too.

P.S. — The items in the picture with the ultrasound (baby at around 9 weeks) were the first two things I bought for the baby. The little t-shirt I bought months and months ago, when we were hoping and trying for a baby, thinking I could always gift it, if I needed to. And the little felted wool sheep was something I bought shortly after finding out I was pregnant, in that very new hopeful-but-scared stage. I'm glad the baby will have a little wooly sheep from that time when he or she was so tiny.