Joyful Tidings

My wife has been acting a little strange lately.  She’s been constantly craving chicken wings, and crying for strange reasons.  We’d pretty much decided that she was pregnant.  Saturday night, we went to the store and picked up some pregnancy tests, just to be sure.  At about three thirty in the morning on Sunday, she got up to go to the bathroom, and when she came back to bed, announced that…she…is…pregnant.  As you may surmise, we didn’t get much more sleep that evening.

We weren’t exactly trying to conceive a child, but we weren’t trying too hard to not conceive, either.  That being said, we are totally stoked about being parents!  For many years, I wanted to start having kids around the age of thirty, and now it looks like that might become a reality.  According to our estimation, Brianna is five weeks pregnant, which puts her due date pretty close to my thirtieth birthday on June 30th of next year.

As you may imagine, the pregnancy has brought us a lot of attention.  By noon on Sunday, our facebook friends had posted nearly 100 replies to our statuses (stati?) of parenthood…and the comments keep rolling in.  Our respective coworkers have showered us with congratulatory praises and embraces, and shrieks of joy (mostly Brianna’s friends).  My favorite, however, came from my friend/co-worker/ex-roommate Monica’s daughter, Lana.  When Monica told Lana that I was going to be a father, Lana said, “aww…he’ll be a good dad.”  I shared a house with Monica and Lana for a year, and was blessed to be a part of their life for that time.  Her compliment was my favorite of them all.

Where to go from here?

Several of our friends have recently had children, and several have mentioned that the state of Missouri has excellent pregnancy coverage for families without insurance.  This comes as quite a relief to Brianna and I, as neither of our jobs offer decent insurance plans.

It looks like our plans to move to Florence, Alabama will be pushed back at least a few months as we eagerly await the birth of our child.  We were hoping to buy a house and move southward at the end of next May when the lease on our apartment is up, but the prospect of moving to another state with an extremely pregnant woman sounds rather daunting to me.  We thank the Lord and His great wisdom and provision that we didn’t commit to buying a house already!

Chances are, I’ll be looking for a new job.  Brianna is currently bringing in the bulk of our income, and that can’t last forever.  I’ll need to either find a second part-time job, or another full-time job that pays a lot more than the one I’ve currently got.

Brianna and I ask that we would be in your prayers now more than ever.  We are in very high spirits, and are very gald to have the love and support of so many friends and family members.  We know that the next eight months will be exciting, interesting and challenging, and feel that we have been equipped to handle the rigors and rewards of pregnancy and parenthood as much as any young couple, if not better.  We are thankful to have had wonderfully loving parents, as well as excellent role models for parenthood in our families and spiritual mothers and fathers, and we are looking forward to each and every one of you to join us as we celebrate the life of the newest addition to our family!