And the judges say....

It's a girl!

We opened the sealed envelope with gender photos inside yesterday before serving Thanksgiving dinner to twenty-odd ravenous friends and family members. Kelly had purchased one blue bubble gum cigar and one pink bubble gum cigar the day before and when he opened the envelope and we peeked inside, he pulled out the pink one and tossed it to Denisha, who was the only person who didn't think we were having a boy. Then we pulled out the pictures and passed them around and hugged a bunch of people who were telling us congratulations and then we ate.

I'm not going to lie - the girl business comes to us both as quite a surprise. We were convinced - as were many, many other people - that we were having a boy. I think that Kelly and I had both sort of started planning mentally for a son...and now we're shifting that thought pattern a little. We aren't changing nursery colors - we're still going for neutral, earthy colors - or theme - we still don't want anything overly cutesy or anything with kid-standard cartoon characters - but it is a little bit of a mind shift to think about the different things that come with raising a girl over what you plan for with raising a boy.

Needless to say, however, we're both super thrilled and ecstatic about everything and look forward to meeting our daughter in four months. She's a little more real to me now, knowing that she's a she and not having to refer to her as "it" any more.

And by the way, for all the people who are asking already, no, we have no names picked out just yet. She's only been a "she" to us for 24 hours now. Names will come, I'm sure, a little more down the road, once we think about it some. It's a big deal, coming up with the name for another human being. Give us time.