Surprises

1. I'm blogging. I'm going to try to do that more this year.

2. I'm pregnant. With a baby girl.

3. A ton of other things have happened in the past 9 months.

Well, I suppose that last point is not too terribly surprising. But in the interest of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, those things will (hopefully) come out over time.

For now, updates on each child.

Daphne, our baby girl still in utero, is due April 26, making her the fourth Angelette birthday within a two week span. I'm 23 weeks along with the easiest pregnancy I've had thus far. At least the easiest for me. I've been horribly moody, so Ben in particular and Jack to a lesser extent may not agree that it's been fabulous, but morning sickness was mild and short lived, and I had very few food aversions. Amazingly enough, both my brother and my sister are due to have their first babies on the same day, 6 weeks after Daphne's due!

Graham is 20 months and at a completely adorable, chattering stage. He loves to talk and is learning what seems like a million words a day. His favorite phrases right now are, "Christmas lights," and "Lego guy." Yesterday morning when I walked in the door with Starbucks for Ben (who had the day off) and me, Graham lit up and came running toward me shouting, "Chocolate milk!"

Jack is reading like a fiend. He started really reading well around his 4th birthday and has improved about a grade level every 2-3 months since then. Right now as best we can tell he's reading at a 3rd-4th grade level. He loves it. Legos were the Christmas theme this year, and we've just started reading Harry Potter together. J.K. Rowling is a genius writer--it's thrilling to see Jack's reactions to hearing the story for the first time. His amazement and excitement are definitely contagious.

Ben's company, Savvis, was sold to telecom giant CenturyLink last summer, so his job responsibilities have been changing significantly and for the better. He's been taking so much vacation that today is only the fourth day of work for him in the past two and a half weeks. I'm missing him a lot today!