It's a....

If you can't tell what it is from that shot I'll end your suffering. We're having a boy!! He will be Michael John Chynoweth. He'll be the 4th generation of Michaels in the family (his father, grandfather and great grandfather are all Michael - or Larry, Curly and Moe as we call them) and John is his other grandfather's name. It seemed fitting for a good family name. From what we can tell and what we are told, he's doing well. We had a little bit of a scare a few weeks ago. Results from all our tests came back normal, but they told us they found a small cyst in his brain. Anytime someone says the word cyst, particularly in relation to your child's brain, it is unnerving. They said that it most likely was nothing but that we could schedule with a perinatologist to make sure. The earliest appointment we could get was two weeks later and we anxiously watched them take many more measurements. The nice part was watching little Michael do end-over-end flips and grab his toes to pull them up next to his ears. Finally the doctor came in and explained that the cyst is perfectly harmless. It's a choroid plexus cyst and is about 5mmx8mm. That's about the size of a pencil eraser. He said it was not on both sides of the brain, which is a good sign, that all the other organs were perfectly normal, which would not be the case if this were a problem, and that my quad screen was normal, which would typically be abnormal if this were an issue. All those things combined to mean that this should disappear on its own in a few more weeks. We'll go back in one more time to make sure that everything is fine with it, but we don't have any reason to worry (I think it's really funny for them to say that to first time parents!! If it's not this, we're gonna find something else to freak us out!).

So here we are now at 24 weeks. Things are moving along much faster now. We're doing more work on little Michael's room and we ordered his baby furniture this weekend. We also had the opportunity to go on a camping trip this weekend. Apparently people think it's crazy to go camping 6 months pregnant, but we had a blast!! Mike and our friends took very good care of me and we had a wonderful time. This is me camping and pregnant. There's also a belly by week sequence of shots in the photo album on the side as well as ultrasound pictures of Michael. We started the belly pictures at week nine when my pants started getting a little tight.

In other news Mike's brother, sister-in-law and our niece moved back from Columbia and were in town for a while, which gave crazy Uncle Mike time to get his niece all riled up. They're heading up to Jacksonville where she's from to continue the job hunt, but we're hoping to be seeing more of them now.

Things with Mike's mom's breast cancer treatment are looking promising, yet still tiring. The cancer has responded very well to the chemo and all of her tests so far have indicated that there's no sign of spread and small chance of recurrence. She finished her 4th round of chemo a few weeks ago, which was supposed to be her last and a nice mental barrier to reach. However her doctor came back with some research and indicated that he thought that 2 more rounds would be very beneficial. She had her 5th round last week and has had a rough week since. She'll finish up in July and should be able to move on to surgery in August. Please continue to pray for her mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. And pray for the rest of the family to be able to minister to her in the best ways possible.

We know so many of you are praying for us, little Michael and our family and we so greatly appreciate it! We'll continue to keep you updated as we go along.