Baby #2 Gender Reveal

If ever a party was pulled together completely last minute, it was this party. And it wasn’t because we’re just that unprepared or thoughtless (or that this is our second baby), but because it’s simply how it all happened.

We had our 20-week ultrasound this past Friday. However, most of my family was at Father-Daughter Camp for the weekend, so we were planning to gather everyone together either Monday or Tuesday evening to tell everyone the news of whether our baby is a boy or girl. That was all fine & dandy until Derrick realized just how short our week this week is! He wanted to get over to Kennywood (since they opened the new Thomas Town section this past weekend), he wanted to see the new Mission Impossible movie, we already knew Wednesday was going to be spent entirely at Idlewild for the Norwin Community Picnic, and Friday we’ll be going to Knoebels to spend the day with Derrick’s family (meaning, we’ll be traveling on Thursday evening). In order to get everything in, we decided (literally less than 24 hours out) to have our gender reveal party on Sunday night!

Further, we had originally intended to keep the news quiet all this week until we saw Derrick’s family this weekend, in order to tell them in person! But, they decided that they did not want to wait, so we set up a FaceTime call with them so that they could see us shoot off our confetti!

SO! Here we are! It’s Tuesday evening and we’re telling the whole world:

We’re having a BOY!

All of the following images were taken by my amazing sister Ellen! We are so so thankful that she captured these memories for us – you’re the BEST, Ell!

We did get Braelynn’s prediction on camera before we did the reveal. She has been telling us for weeks that she wants the baby to be a girl. She wants a “baby sister”. People would ask her if she thought the baby was a boy or girl, and she would (almost) always respond, “It’s a baby sister!” Further, she’d named her “baby sister” Margaret – which she also proudly told everyone who asked. (Margaret is Daniel Tiger’s baby sister & you all know that Braelynn is pretty obsessed with Daniel Tiger!)

Little Miss Alethea! She isn’t too sure about her status of “baby of the family” being upset so quickly!

Brealynn literally had Emilie wrapped around her finger the entire night – see her own little baby bump? Believe it or not, we’re due just 3 days apart from each other!! I can’t wait to see these two little cousins (actually, they’d be second-cousins, but who’s counting?) grow up so close in age!!

Lest you all think that we just fell into the “easy” “confetti reveal” because it’s our second baby or because we are just lazy – I literally researched “gender reveal ideas” for days. I really did not want to do the generic “cut into a cake & reveal the filling inside” way or the “open a box & let balloons float out” way. I really wanted something unique! Something special to us!

And after researching & Pinteresting & Googling for hours, I came up with exactly: nothing.

In the end, we decided to do confetti “cannons” (more like “poppers”) because it was similar to Braelynn’s gender reveal (we had balloons filled with confetti that we popped for her!), because everyone could participate, and because it’d be photogenic. And because it would be easy to prep for – especially with our plans falling together like they did! (I literally ran to the store an hour before everyone arrived & bought the package of poppers – it was the last blue package on the shelf!!)

Additionally, we knew that Braelynn would enjoy the confetti & that even if the resulting color wasn’t what she was hoping, that she’d still have fun!

So, here we go! Off on a totally different adventure!

Derrick & I really didn’t have a strong feeling one way or another as to whether our baby was a boy or girl. And honestly, we were both just thrilled to have a healthy baby – boy or girl! But, I can’t lie: having a boy is super exciting!! I am so pumped to see a little dude follow Derrick around, to have the opportunity to buy all the cute boy clothes & toys, and to add this new little guy to our family!

And for everyone wondering how Braelynn is taking the news: she’s doing just fine. The confetti did the trick in taking the “edge” off the fact that she wasn’t getting her “baby sister Margaret”. It didn’t take long for her to declare that: “Little brother is not allowed to sleep in my bedroom.” She also told Zeb & Emilie that since we aren’t having a “baby Margaret” – that they could have her instead! (They had their 20-week ultrasound & did not find out their baby’s gender, so we’ll see!!) There have been no meltdowns or temper tantrums – and although I know she’s only 3 years old, and truly doesn’t understand – we keep talking thru the fact that it’s a BOY!