Joey's First Photo Shoot

After attempting to hold in the secret for two painfully long weeks, I finally had my first sonogram. I tried SOOOOO hard to make it a surprise for everybody but failed miserably. I can't keep my own secrets from Tom to save my life. I was, however, still able to keep my mouth shut to my family which is quite the feat.

So the verdict is...



BOY! We're very excited to have little Joseph Steffen enter our lives in 5 months. Don't worry, though. Friends and family have made it very clear to us that sonographers are not 100% accurate with their interpretations of the gender. I think the most blunt way I've heard it so far was when we told my sister, Sarah, that we were having a boy and she said, "you're 17 weeks right? That's when I had a my 'it's a boy' sonogram too!!" (For those of you who don't know my sister, she ended up having a girl). So though we are fully prepared to find out that what we thought was a boy part was actually a different angle of the umbilical cord or that his finger was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, we are in the mean time preparing and excited to welcome our little Joey into the world.

15 down, 25 to go

Well, I suppose I have no excuse to NOT be updating my blog (thanks for the kick in the pants, Lindsay). Life is rolling along as usual. I am getting rounder by the day but not seeming to gain any weight. Is that normal? We’ve got almost 15 weeks down, 25 to go. I’m slowly starting to feel like I’m really in my second trimester: my energy is slowly coming back up, I’m not sick nearly as much, and I only cried perhaps two tears while watching Life Is Beautiful last night (does that make me heartless? I feel like I’ve switched to the opposite end of the spectrum).


Like I said, I'm round. Slowly emerging from the fat phase to the toss-up phase. At this point, if I'm wearing tight enough clothes (as opposed to the t-shirt tents I've been regularly wearing for comfort) onlookers are at the point where they still think I might just be fat, but now I also COULD be pregnant. It's a toss up, hence the name of the phase. Thus, I have yet to have any strangers/people who don't know yet approach me about looking pregnant: when it's still a toss up, the last thing you want is to be wrong.


This past week we celebrated Tom’s birthday. Wednesdays, the day his birthday fell on this year, are one of his busiest days because he has work all day and then goes straight to one of his graduate classes from 5:30-8:30. Thereby, we decided to celebrate on Labor Day, just two days before his real birthday. We went out to dinner and dessert and then we spontaneously decided to go paddleboating on Lake Jacomo, conveniently located about 5 minutes from our house. I’ve decided that I like paddleboating MUCH better than canoe/kayaking. SO much easier to steer and power comes from your legs, not your arms. It was fun. Definitely a nice, relaxing, evening-time activity.