Thursday! Thursday! THURSDAY!!!

So once again our shared life is in a holding pattern with everything hinging on a specific event. There seems to be once such event every year or so, at least for us. Two years ago, it was "Once we get married, we can do X, Y and Z". Last year, it was "Well, once we buy a house...".

This year, everything seems to be contingent on how things go on Thursday.

More about that in a minute. First off, I'd like to apologize for my long absence from this blog. I've had a few ideas brewing in my head since the loss of baby 1.0, but haven't been able to successfully birth any of them (no pun intended). Many of Kathy's blog entries have come about, at least in part due to conversations she and I have had, so rest assured I've been here in spirit, as much of a cop-out as that may be. Hopefully Thursday will bring with it a marked return to blogging for me.

Ahh, Thusday. Thursday will be, for all intents and purposes, our 12 week checkup. This will mean several things to us (and some to you as well):

1. 12 weeks will mark the end of the first trimester, and with it, the period of time when spontneous miscarriages (like the one we experienced last time) become significantly less likely to occur. In other words, we're not out of the woods, but we'll be well on our way.

2. This will be the date on which we've already decided that we're going to tell most people we're going to have a baby. So if you're just finding this blog now, congratulations: you have a few dozen entries' worth of backreading ahead of you. If you somehow found the blog ahead of time, like the disclaimer says, try to at least act surprised.

3. I know that hitting the 12 week mark without major incident will go a long way toward improving Kathy's state of emotional well-being. There's nothing like losing a child you didn't even know you could have in the first place that better exemplifies the phrase "all bets are off". Once we get over this hurdle, we can stop holding our collective breath and start getting real with things like preparing a room for the kid and begging for supplies.

Thanks to all those of you who've taken this journey with us so far, and a hearty welcome and preemptive "thank you for your support" to those just joining (or about to).

Who knows what the next year will bring? For now, though, I'll be content just to find out what Thursday has in store for us.

For the record, I'm optomistic.