At last...

...my love has come along
My lonely days are over
And life is like a song
-Etta James, At Last

(Yes, I realize the pink bow is as big as her head.  It is as absolutely 

tiny as my swollen fingers could make it!)

Yes, my friends, it's true.  The Foster Four is about to become the Foster Five.  And not only that, this household is going to have a little less testosterone-overload...

IT'S A GIRL!

I have never made any secret of my desire for a girl.  Since I got my first Cabbage Patch Dolls (one boy, one girl, of course) I have imagined having a daughter.  And when I learned that this little one is a girl, I squealed like a 4 year old girl myself.  Truly, y'all, it is a dream come true.  We had decided with great certainty that we were done after 3 kids.  And while I would have been happy to have the 3 Musketeers running around and would have truly loved a little boy too, I am just over the moon happy to have a daughter.

So, to answer the questions that everyone asks as soon as they learn the news:

1 - How have you been feeling?
Like total and complete crap.  I feel like I have had the flu for 3 months, and it is not getting better.  Everyone says you start to turn the corner around 13 weeks.  I'm at almost 16, and I see no corners in sight. I am so exhausted by 4 p.m. that I can do nothing but stumble home and collapse.  Derek has been awesome with fixing dinner, keeping the boys out of trouble, getting them to bed - all the the daily-ness.  He is ready for me to move past the useless stage.

But I have felt like crap emotionally, too.  I am no stranger to the wake-you-up-at-3-a.m.-panic-attack.  I have battled a serious case of the worries for the better part of the last 20 years.  But this is like nothing I've ever been through.  I am waking up with nightmares every night, freaking out about one awful thing and another.  In my mind, I have been through colon cancer, breast cancer, and this poor child has had every single horrible genetic condition and syndrome known to medicine.  And some that medicine has yet to discover.

This is especially unpleasant because I LOVED being pregnant the past 2 times.  They were the only times in my life when I didn't feel the constant presence of worry-wart-ism.  I had even considered being a surrogate because I felt so damn good (once I got past the first 10-ish weeks, and before I got to the huge last few weeks).  I do not love being pregnant at the moment.

2 - When is the big arrival date?
Jan 28th is the official date.  Torquil arrived a week and a half late; CheezeDoodle arrived 2 weeks early.  So this time, it's really anyone's guess.  While I hesitate to wish lateness, February has a nice birthstone for the little lady (and she'd share the month with my mom and with Luke).  But it would be cool to spread out the kids - we could have one in January, one in Feb, and one in March.  And by Christmas, I'm pretty sure I'll be begging her to arrive early.

3 - What are you calling her?
Y'all know how we are about in utero names - the blog name comes from the entertaining names we used while we couldn't come up with actual kid names.  The food craving thing worked well for #2, so baby has been known to this point as "Guacamole" or just "Guac."  It seemed entertaining enough, and was working for us.  Derek offered me all kinds of incentives to use the "Guacamole Song," as my intro, but I'm sorry.  I just couldn't do it.  As a small concession to the one who has done ALL the dishes for the past several nausea-focused weeks, I will embed it here.  True love, people.  TRUE LOVE.

(Apparently there is a Reckless Kelly version of this song, which is somewhat less awful.)

But today, my future daughter-in-law declared that she should be called "Pom-Pom."  I had originally pegged said daughter-in-law to Luke, but now I'm thinking she and Jay might be more well-suited ... but I digress.  I'm liking Pom-Pom.  We'll have to see whether Guac or Pom-pom sticks.

Because we found out so early that she's a girl, and I have had my girl name picked out since I was mothering Cabbage Patch Kids, now we are starting to call her by her real name a bit.  (No, I am not going to disclose the name yet - I already surprised you with the news that we're having kid #3 AND the fact that it's a girl ... isn't that enough excitement for one blog post?!)