GENDER REVEAL ANNOUNCEMENT! It's A....

What’s your guess?!

Before we get into our gender reveal announcement, let’s talk bets. My bet was on a girl, and Doug’s was on a boy.

With both girls I was certain it was a boy. With this baby, I felt different than my first two pregnancies and felt like it was a boy, but guessed girl when it came down to it because every person around us guessed it was a boy. I figured we needed someone in the women’s court!

…Which is all very fitting, because every time we’ve been pregnant and have guessed the gender before finding out, I’ve been the one who was wrong. 😉

Yup, you read that right! Baby #3 is a…

BOY!!!!!

Can you believe it?!?!!

We’re absolutely giddy with excitement! Of course, we would have been happy either way. Three little girls would have been incredible. But two girls and a boy?! Now that’s an adventure. It just feels right.

I’m excited to experience what it means to be a “boy mom”.

I hear that phrase all the time, and have heard from countless people that little boys are much different to raise than girls. I can’t wait to see for myself what that truly means! I grew up kind of a tomboy, truth be told. I was obsessed with basketball (Michael Jordan was my idol – ha!), literally only wore jerseys for years, and was always “one of the boys” with my brother and step-brothers. So to be able to experience raising a little boy makes me so excited because I’ve always felt like I jive with them. (As weird as that sounds!)

Hey-yo – Doug has a point on the scoreboard!

He’s such a guy’s guy — this little boy is no doubt going to be his little best friend, just like our little girls are mine. He’s an incredible father to our girls, I can’t wait to see him with a little boy.

It’s funny because he’s so mushy with our girls and I’m often the “tougher” one, but I have a feeling it’ll be the opposite with this baby. I always say with my girls that I feel like it’s my responsibility to “Teach them what it means to be a strong woman.” (Yes, I know they’re toddlers. But you gotta start somewhere!) I wonder, when it’s the opposite gender, if Doug will take more of that direction with our boy? Or will I be the tougher one still?! It’ll be interesting to see how gender plays a role with parenting — in theory all kids will be treated the same but I think we perhaps have some learning curves there? I don’t know! We’ve never had a boy! Time will tell.

Gracie and Josephine get a little brother!!!

It makes me so, so excited for them. They have each other — sisters are so special — but they also will have a little best boy buddy too. That lucky guy. They’ve both been practicing on their baby dolls — helping to rock them, dress them, and feed them — and I know they’ll both do really well with him once he comes. I also feel like little boys with sisters are always so sweet, understanding and well-rounded — I know that they’ll help to show our little guy the ropes!

I seriously get teary eyed just thinking about it all! A BOY!!! Ah!!

OH! I forgot to talk about the actual gender reveal.

It was a total mess and went ALL wrong. But it was also the perfect way for us to find out, when I look back on it all!

The Intent

Have my brother read the gender reveal card (which was in an envelope from my doctor and we hadn’t opened yet), give us the right colored confetti poppers (We bought both blue and pink), and then for us to pop them and be surprised as a family. Perfect, right?

The Reality

When we got the poppers, they were weirdly complicated to open. Grace ended up dropping hers and it exploded everywhere, I kiiind-of-saw-it-but-didn’t-fully-look-and-was-trying-to-pop-mine-at-the-same-time. I ended up just throwing mine randomly in the air and being like, “Yaaay!” Meanwhile Doug was trying to open Joey’s when he saw Grace’s explode and was like, “Oh hey!”, could never really get Joey’s to open, then saw my confetti pop too.

We were all looking at each other like, “Eeeeh?! Did we do that right?! Also, whoa, a boy!” All while a crowd of people were cheering nearby. Joey then started to pick up the confetti, so Doug was trying to help her, and I was dotting on Grace to see if she understood what it all meant, so he and I forgot to give each other a kiss to celebrate the happy news.

Sooo basically we were a jumbled mess. Ha!

These photos for our gender reveal announcement happened after, when we picked up said exploded confetti pieces and grabbed some less jumbled photos. To which we had to re-pick up the confetti pieces all over again. The whole time we were kicking ourselves because we never thought about how annoying confetti was to pick up after. Especially on a sandy beach. And by the way it was 90 degrees out and HOT. By the end we were all dripping sweat and like, “Yay. It’s a boy.”

The excitement came later once we relaxed and had time to process it all, don’t worry.

But it’s all kind of a funny metaphor right life right?!

Nothing goes quite how you’d expect, and even if it’s the most amazing and happy news, you sometimes get caught up dripping sweat while picking up little pieces of sandy confetti. 😉 Take this as a lesson learned for any of you looking to do a reveal in the future! Stick with an easy “Bite into a cupcake” or something, ya?

Check out my Instagram post (swipe all the way right) for a video of the reveal! Hysterical.