Team Boy or Team Girl?

Last Saturday, we hosted family and friends for a gender reveal party!  If you haven't heard or been to one, gender reveal parties are the new thing in the baby world.  This was our first party and I had so much fun planning it!  We did a football Team Boy/Team Girl theme.  On Thursday we found out what our baby's gender was and waited till Saturday to find out.  Well, I waited, Ben looked at the card Thursday night and then was in charge of getting the balloon set up and the favors ready.  He did great not telling me though!

For the actual reveal, we ordered a 36" black balloon and I cut up pink & white tissue paper, and blue & white tissue paper.  Ben filled the balloon with the correct tissue paper and took it to our grocery store to have it blown up.

 

The balloon was huge!  It took two balloon weights to hold it down.  For the party we had lots of food and I tried to keep with our Team Boy/Team Girl theme.  The invitation asked guests to wear the color of which team they were on and I made stickers for people to wear too.  I meant to take a picture of each team but forgot! And in case you were wondering, Ben was Team Boy and I was Team Girl.  After eating and leaving some time to build the anticipation, we finally gathered everyone to pop the balloon!  We counted down from 3 and both popped it at the same time!

It's a girl!!!!  It was so much fun to have the confetti fly everywhere and rain down on us!  It also took forever to vacuum up but it was well worth it!  Everyone clapped and cheered!

Little did they know.....we had a SECRET!!!!

On Thursday at our anatomy sonogram, I was sitting in the chair, Ben was sitting next to me, and the technician started the sonogram.  As she started it, my first thought looking at the screen was "Look!  It's our baby!" and my second thought was, "Why does it look like there are two spines?" Right about that time the technician looked at us and said, "Did you know you are having twins??"  I looked right at her and said, "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!"  She replied no, and I looked back at the screen and said again, "Are you kidding me?!"  Ben just sat next to me, silent with his mouth slightly open, haha!  I turned to him and said, "Don't faint!" and then just looked at the screen, saying, "I knew it, I knew it!"

There on the screen, clear as day, were two spines, two skulls, four arms, four legs rolling around!  We were having twins!!!!  And apparently they are already great at hide and seek since they had not been found until almost 20 weeks!  Halfway through the pregnancy!  I had felt this whole time that there were two babies but after having three appointments, two of which were sonograms, and the doctors only finding one baby and one heartbeat, I thought I was just being silly.  Turns out, mama knows best!  The technician told us that the babies are identical twins, meaning they share a placenta but each have their own amniotic sac.

So on Saturday, after we revealed the gender, we quieted everyone down and I said, "We also found out on Thursday that we will not be bringing one baby home but TWO babies home!" and everyone FREAKED out!  The reactions were priceless and I am so happy we thought ahead to video tape them.  We had one video pointing at the crowd and one video pointing at us so we got both angles. (I tried to upload the videos to here but they wouldn't work for some reason.)

We pulled out the pictures and showed everyone our TWO little girls! 

 

They look a little skeleton-ish right now because they don't have much fat on them yet but there they are!  Ben and I are so thrilled to be given two little babies to love and care for!

Thankfully God has been taking care of our little babies (and probably laughing up there at His own little joke of surprising us halfway through) because they both looked great at the sonogram and seem to be right where they should be at this point.  Now that we found twins, I am considered "high-risk" due to the complications that can arise with twins, especially identical twins.  One of the biggest risks is that they could develop Twin to Twin Transfer Syndrome (TTTS) which is where one baby becomes the donor, one becomes the receiver and they don't grow equally.  Right now both babies were around 10oz so that's great that they are the same size.  TTTS only happens in about 15% of identical twins but I have to be monitored more frequently to make sure it isn't happening.  Which means more doctor appointments BUT more sonograms of our beautiful babies!  We go to the hospital in a week and a half to meet with a maternal-fetal-medical doctor, which is fancy speak for a high-risk pregnancy doctor, to have another sonogram and consult.  So prayers please that both babies will continue to grow and share equally in the womb!

It's a BIG day!

Today is a BIG day for us!  We are hosting family and friends tonight for a gender reveal party to see what Baby Alvarez is!  Neither of us know either so it will be fun to find out together if we have a son or daughter hanging out in my belly.  Can't wait for tonight...check back tomorrow (hopefully, haha as we all know how great I am about posting on time) to see what Baby A is!

Family Weekend at Bridgewater

Two weekends ago we traveled to Bridgewater College in Virginia with Ben's family to see Chessie for Family Weekend!  It had been about six weeks since we had seen her and I think we were all excited to spend a weekend together.  After getting home and looking through my phone, I realized that I didn't take quite as many pictures as I thought I did so there's only a few to share!

We arrived Friday afternoon and Chessie took us on a tour of her college campus.  Bridgewater is a really adorable campus with beautiful buildings and open spaces.  It's right in a little town that's really cute as well.  It was drizzling the whole time so we spent most of the tour dashing from building to building.  Ben and I kept giving Chessie a hard time when she would tell us how long it takes her to cross campus, which turned out to be about 7 minutes, and it took us a good 20-25 minutes at Maryland!  After our tour, we ate at a really good Mexican restaurant and just spent time hanging out for awhile.  Then we went to see a dueling piano show!  It was the first time any of us had seen one and it was awesome!  I highly recommend seeing a dueling piano show if you ever get the chance.  I thought the two pianos would sort of battle back and forth with songs, the intensity increasing but it was more of a spontaneous sing-a-long.  The audience requested songs and the musicians took turns playing the songs on the spot as we all sang along to them.  The show lasted three hours and the guys were awesome piano players, singers, and provided comedic relief.  It was great.  They also played the keytar (keyboard that is guitar style) and harmonica.  The only pictures I ended up taking were from the show.  If you ever get a chance to see a dueling piano show, definitely go see it!  During the show, Bridgewater fed us lots of snacks and drinks on the house!  I apologize in advance for the low quality pictures...they were taken with my phone.

 

The Village People stopped by to show us the YMCA.

 

Elvis was there too!

We spent Saturday morning at a huge book fair.  There were three warehouses filled with books.  I scored some great ones for school, two for the baby, and one for me that I am really excited to look through.  It's a huge book all about I Love Lucy, which is my favorite show and it was only $5!  Such a good deal.  After the book fair we went into downtown Bridgewater/Harrisonburg to eat lunch and then went back to the hotel to get ready for the football game.  Once we were back at the hotel, we looked at the weather, saw how cold it was supposed to be that evening (in the 30's!) and decided to skip the football game and just hang out.  So that's what we did!

Sunday was uneventful as we got up, ate breakfast at the hotel, packed up and headed back to Maryland.  It was so much fun getting to see Chessie and to see her college.  Hopefully she will invite us back next year!  And I'll try to take more pictures :)