And the winner is...

I was savoring a couple lone hours of being the only possessor of our little news item (while grabbing a tiny nap after an exhausting day before sharing the news with the interested), but one villainous party has jumped the gun and secured the information from my naive family behind my back while I slept!  The CIA may have a new prospect for a spy!  So, I should share promptly now with the less devious.

First, after getting such wonderful sympathy yesterday from my mother-in-law about our grueling week's schedule, I will cruelly make you read through a brief rundown of today before getting to interesting part.  Cousin Laura is my hero!!  My darling hubby neglected to tell me until mere days before that he'd had a meeting come up during the ultrasound (he'd been wanting to come for the event), so I was in a pickle.  2 kids during 2 medical appointments at naptime, following a morning of VBS, were more than I could handle on my own.  Laura came with us the WHOLE DAY!!!!  What a jewel she is.  We left home at 7:30a, and didn't get back home til 4:45p.  Laura came to VBS with us and then entertained the kids nobly while I was prodded. When I went to find them after my first appointment, no one was in the lobby.  I checked the bathroom, and walked in to find Owen playing in a sink, and Asher laying full out on the floor looking under the stall where Laura was I'm sure having her first experience of going to the bathroom with a toddler around :}  Sorry, Laura!  Once we got home, Asher was asleep by 5:30 (no nap!).  Owen=movie; Mom=CRASH til Dad came home.  It was a grueling day somehow and perhaps I should change doctors.  I might be crazy to keep going to the city, I just hate to change Dr.'s when I am having a C-section.  Well, here's how the important part went.  Upon finding everyone in the bathroom:  "Mommy, mommy, is it a boy or a girl??"  Well, I can't tell you 'til I call Daddy first.  "No!  Tell me, tell me!"  [Daddy is unreachable after 2 or 3 tries]  OK, I'll tell you.  What do you think, what is your guess?  "It's a BROTHER!!!!"  Well, you really wanted a brother...but it's a sister!  You get to have a little sister!  "UUUUuuuugh! [large frustrated groan, then resigned]  Mommy, *YOU* were right and *I* was wrong!  I guess I was just wrong!  Sometimes you're just right!"   (I didn't have a prediction at all, actually, but Owen knew Reuel and I had our hope, so that's what he was referring to.  After a bit of talking about how wonderful a sister could be, and how Owen would get to teach things to TWO younger kids now, he was fully on board.  The scale was also tipped for him by realizing that our family would have the same kid distribution and ordering as Ben, Sam and Laura!)  The secondary gender question aside, the baby also appears healthy, super-active, and nothing alarming.  Wonderful!!  It's easy to take these things for granted when you've had healthy kids.  When I delivered the report to my OB, he turned the paper over a couple of times with a quizzical look on his face, and proceeded to say that he hasn't seen a completely normal report--one with no blips, questions or concerns--in quite a while, and it was almost more alarming to him than seeing a problem, because he's had so few normal reports lately!  I told him I was grateful to be the guinea pig for easy reports.  But it did bring to mind how many problems there can be, and though we would endeavor to walk down a harder road with grace, how grateful we are for a seemingly-healthy little one inside.  So there's the news!