Surprises in the Gray Home

Well, the last couple months have been exciting and quite a whirlwind, to say the least.   Ryker is growing like crazy.  He is smiling and babbling all the time.  When he sees new people he takes time to study them, but it's not long before he's smiling and giggling for them!  

He is absolutely the joy of our lives!  His personality is showing more and more each day.  No matter where we go or what we do he always goes with the flow, but he wants to be moving all the time.  He'll usually start fussing the moment we try to sit down with him, so I have a feeling we're going to have our hands full once he starts crawling and walking.  We're trying to get everything finished up for finalization of our adoption (this is when he'll receive his birth certificate with our names and his name on there, as well as we officially become his parents - not just his legal guardians).  This day could not come sooner!  We are very anxious to have everything official, although in our eyes he was our son long before he was even conceived.   It's been so apparent throughout this that God had such a special plan for our family long before we could even dream of it.  What a perfect blessing God's given us in Ryker.

Our big surprise:
We're Pregnant!
That's right, we learned some very unexpected news recently.   About three weeks ago I was not feeling well and after running through every option in my brain and trying everything to feel better, I decided to take a pregnancy test and then I made Tyler go buy two more just to be sure- ya know the ones that clearly define "pregnant" or "not pregnant"instead of those silly lines that are hard to interpret!  Needless to say we were in shock.  While I was having a bit of a "freak out" moment my husband's words were, "Well, here we go!"  That's why I love him so much.  He takes everything in stride and is able to completely let go and allow God to take control.   Since this wasn't planned we had no idea how far along I was.  I went to the doctor and learned I was already 9 weeks.  Today, I am 12 weeks 4 days.  Our baby's due date.....December 18...2 days before Ryker's birthday.  Boy, does God have a sense of humor.   We certainly never would have planned on having our kids barely a year a part, but I know he's got something amazing in store for us.  We don't have any ultrasound pictures yet because of how everything has worked out.   I wish I did though, but baby is healthy and that's all that matters.
I will be honest, I had some difficulty with this news at first.   Here we are just beginning to enjoy our son and I'm loving every minute with him and I want to focus all my attention on him.   I felt bad at first because I didn't want anything to be taken away from him and I was worried I wouldn't be able to fully enjoy every single stage.  I also started worrying about the reality of how difficult it will be to have to kids so young.   I had a moment in the grocery store where I looked at Ryker in his car seat, sitting on top of the shopping cart, then I looked at Tyler and said, "Where will the next one sit?  Ryker won't be old enough to walk and the other one won't be old enough to sit up on their own in a shopping cart!"  Thankfully, my fears are fading and I'm getting more excited about how fun it will be for our kids to be so close and be able to play together.   I know Ryker is going to be such a good big brother.  This will be an adventure, but I count my blessings and they are far more than I deserve.