Matt loves houses, house hunting, pouring over house plans...he even likes to watch HGTV (but really mostly the boy shows on there). Anyone who knows Matt knows that he likes things to be neat and organized and matching. What people probably don't know is that he can spend a lot of time doing things like making paper furniture to scale to fit on a house plan or tape the outline of furniture on the floor to get a better idea of how to organize a room and make sure that everything is juuuuust right.
So since our "guest" bedroom would soon be occupied by a new little member of our family, I thought we might need to rethink our plans for furniture there. This was the perfect opportunity to sneak in some news that Matt wouldn't be expecting. I took our house plan and drew little furniture drawings in all the rooms upstairs (complete with a crib and changing table in the "guest room") so that I could, um..."get his thoughts on furniture placement" for the new house. Once I got everything just right, I watched the clock tick the minutes by until it was finally time for Matt to arrive home.
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| The plan that I used to share the big news with Matt...see the baby furniture in Bedroom 4? |
While the boys were outside playing, I casually greeted Matt..."Hi honey! Glad you're home! Hey, why don't you take a look at these plans? I drew the furniture in each room but I'm not sure about all the placements...thought you might have some thoughts..." and just like that he took the plans and began studying over them. Luckily, Matt is typically oblivious to any cues I might have been giving off that anything was out of the norm, and any excitement he might have sensed would have easily been attributed to excitement over the new house. He took what felt like forever, studying each room carefully...asking me questions about this bed and that dresser. He finally got to THE room and chuckled to himself, and said, "A crib...you're silly." To which I responded, "Well, we are going to need it!" And Matt responds, "Yeah, someday..." (See? Oblivious!). Then I said, "Umm...in about 9 months!" I so wish I had recorded the moment somehow. He just looked at me with this look of disbelief. I think he actually had to sit down. He did lots of big breaths and stared at the table with big eyes and said. "Wow." Something resembling a smile seemed to appear across his face as he was hit with all the thoughts and emotions that I had already felt earlier...He didn't think it was going to happen...And now with the new house....and of course, thinking of the impact financially (as dads tend to do...).
I was thrilled that I was able to surprise him and once the shock wore off, he was excited, too. Nervous, but excited. We decided to wait a while to tell the boys (and everyone else) for a few weeks until we heard the heartbeat and felt more confident sharing the news. Boy was that hard!
Three weeks later came Easter. I had just had an ultrasound and heard the heartbeat and we decided to surprise the boys with the news. We did a scavenger hunt for them and I hid different little baby items in Easter eggs...a pacifier, baby food, baby shampoo, etc...We sent them all over the house with clues and once they found all the eggs, they opened them and had to guess the big surprise. Jack was thrilled, as he has wanted a new baby for a while. Owen was a little more reserved, but he IS my baby now...so I wasn't surprised.
Knowing that this is the last time that we will get to share news like this, it was extra special and extra sweet. And so we settled into our new chaos of preparing for a baby and for a move...of course, there was one small detail. We still needed to sell our house that was now definitely feeling crowded with one more on the way...
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