Friends, on this day of love, I’m so happy to share that our hearts are growing and growing! We are overjoyed that another little baby will be joining our family in August! YAY, indeed!! It seems like it might be easier to take a second baby in stride, but knowing how precious our sweet girl is to us makes me even more grateful for and awestruck by this blessing. It was hard to imagine what our love for a child would feel like before we had June, and certainly how much fun it would be to be a mama — but now I know!! This time around, I’ve loved anticipating all of the good stuff that’s coming (like movement soon!), and it’s been nice to feel a little more prepared for the hard stuff, too. That being said, keeping my expectations low has been my biggest challenge so far with baby number two. Y’all know how I feel about expectations – I live and die by them, as there are few things that more strongly affect my happiness and overall life satisfaction. Last time around, pregnancy and life with a newborn was pretty much a gigantic blank slate. Specifically, I never had illusions about how wonderful the newborn phase would be. In fact, I expected it to be hard, frustrating, and exhausting, with a steep learning curve. I wasn’t depressed about this; I just figured it would be something we’d have to get through, and it would get better every day. And then, we got a dream angel baby who did all the things. And it was SO WONDERFUL! Because I had low expectations, every good thing felt like a revelation. Even the smallest victories and happy moments were a delight. For me, the key to repeat this experience again

I know many of you came here today for the last installment of our France journey, but instead, you’re getting this… That’s right, friends! Come January, these two solid New Englanders will be welcoming a true Southerner to the family! We are very excited!! It’s been so fun to share the news with family and friends (who are also SO EXCITED) over the last few months, and so I wanted to bring you friends up to speed, too! Here are a few of the first questions people have had for us: Are you nervous or excited? Surprisingly, not nervous. Definitely excited. There is a reason for this, and I plan to write a longer post about our path here soon. How do you feel? At this point (17 weeks), I feel great! I had kind of low-grade, all day queasiness from about weeks 7 to 12, but if I ate at regular intervals (lots of oyster crackers!), I felt okay. I was also more tired than usual in the first trimester, but going to bed earlier and resting when I came home from work helped a lot. Are you going to find out whether it’s a boy or a girl? We’re pretty sure we’re going to find out, and pretty sure that if we find out we’ll share the news. Do you plan to write about pregnancy here? Yes. EFM has always been about our adventures and what I find marvelous, and this new development fits squarely into both of those categories. While I don’t plan to write monthly update posts, I definitely have lots of thoughts on certain topics :) More about this later, but I just wanted to end (for now!) by saying that neither John nor I experienced “baby fever;” in fact, I am a bit notorious