Our next project.

When you're pregnant, the first three months are like a science experiment. Vocabulary words like embryo and DNA and follicle eek out from the recesses of what you learned in biology in the 10th grade. You aren't telling anyone, so it becomes a private research project between you and your husband (and a couple of close friends and family). Every week you get an email newsletter from some site that tells you what is happening in your body at that moment.

You keep track of what you like eating, what makes you tired. You wonder if the pudge around your middle is possibly already a baby bump, somehow produced from an embryo the size of a sesame seed. Sometimes you forget you're pregnant for minutes and hours; entire meetings pass without you thinking "October is coming and so is a big change." But then, inevitably, every single time you have to pee, you remember.

Your husband's step-mom knits you a tiny pumpkin hat for the baby. Your dad saves a toy from a cereal box. Your brother texts you about teaching the baby how to play the guitar. You text your mom and sister constantly about changes happening in your corpus - aching hips or an aversion to chicken or just generally feeling fat.

And all along the way, you keep the secret until the first trimester is over. You don't blog about it, which means you don't write about it, which means you keep your distance from what is really happening to your life. You're on track to become a mom. And the sheer size and breadth and meaning of that? Is way too grand to grasp without writing about it.

We're having a baby. You have no idea how good it feels to type that in a blog post. The news is free! I can come here to think this through, to discover and share and process it all. Come October 11th (10/11/12, anyone??) or thereabouts, the adventure begins.

But, of course, the adventure has already started. The proof is in the pudding:

Tiny Dary, coming soon.

First baby clothes.

Maternity clothes shopping, bump not included.

Future Dad.

Future grandparents.