March 4th will be here before we know it!

Hello family and friends!  We started this blog as a way to keep you updated on the newest addition to our family (due March 4th!). 

You may be wondering where the blog title came from...we've decided not to find out the sex of the baby, but have started thinking about names.  If we have a little boy, his name will be James Hardin, after both of his grandfathers.  We're still undecided on a girl's name, but her middle name will be Jane (her mom's, grandma's, great-grandmas' middle names).  Hence, Baby J.  Or J-Bird, as my dad likes to call the baby :)

Be forewarned, this first post has a lot of ultrasound pis.  Probably too many.  Can you tell we're excited?

This is from our first ultrasound on 7/28.  It's hard to see much here, but the faint dotted line is taking the "crown to rump" measurement to estimate a due date.

Also from the 7/28 ultrasound.  The bright white triangle-shaped mark that surrounded by gray on the right side is the baby's heart.

7/28 utrasound.  The lines below are the baby's heartbeat.  Very cool to hear!

8/10 ultrasound.  Matthew wasn't able to be present for the first one, so we did another one on the second visit and got to listen to the heartbeat again.  You can see the umbilical cord, too in this pic.

8/10 ultrasound.  This is a picture of the back of the baby.  The spine is developing nicely!

8/10 ultrasound.  The baby has legs!  I was pretty amazed to see how much had changed since the 7/28 ultrasound.

8/20 ultrasound.  This ultrasound, along with some blood work, was part of our sequential screening to check for abnormalities such as down syndrome and trisomy 21, 13, and 19.  I'm still waiting on results from a second blood draw, but so far everything looks great!  The baby's arms and legs are crossed in this shot.

8/20 ultrasound.  This is one if of the baby's face and body.  I think Baby J looks a bit like an alien in this shot (they tell me he/she will grow out of this stage!)

8/20 ultrasound.  This one's my favorite.  It's a side view of the baby's head - you can see the nose and lips.

For those of you I haven't seen in awhile, here is what I looked like at 12 weeks (currently at 15 weeks).  We plan on taking updated belly shots every 4 weeks or so, so check back to see me (and the baby) grow!