What Kind of Fig?

Here's a more current image of our little fig than the 11-week ultrasound I showed you a while back. It's what we got to see back in November, just past the halfway point.

It was a thrill to see how our baby was growing and rounding, looking less and less like a gummy bear, more and more like an infant. Even at this early stage, we saw a big yawn and some finger-sucking. Amazing. But when it came time to aim the camera at the revealing parts, we opted to look away. We weren't ready yet to give up the expansive, anything-is-possible feeling that came with imagining all the ways our new family might take shape. But knowing that March was still a long way off and we might change our minds before then, we asked the technician to seal the details in a secret envelope. We went home with a strip of photos, a few in-action videos...and a manila envelope that contained within the news of whether we'd be adding a boy or a girl to the family. We stashed it on a shelf and thought of it with anticipation now and then, but we didn't peek.

Then, six weeks out from the due date, on a sunny Superbowl Sunday, we headed off to Empire Bluffs for a hike. Nick had his paraglider on his back, hoping for just the right weather conditions for a flight. (A January trip to California sealed the deal on his love for this new sport.) And in the pocket of his glider's pack, he had tucked the secret envelope.

Sure enough, it was a grand day to fly.

He cruised back and forth along the ridge a few times while I snapped photos and Bella wore herself out trying to catch up with him. Then he signaled that he'd meet us down at Empire's public beach.

The dogs and I hiked back down to the car and drove to the beach, stopping by Grocer's Daughter to pick up a cup of rich hot chocolate. Nick was waiting at the beach, paraglider all packed back into its bag, exhilarated from his thrilling glide. With hot chocolate in one hand and the envelope in another, we carefully made our way out onto the ice. We climbed over jagged chunks of frozen lake and looked out onto the white horizon. We looked at each other. "Are we really ready?" "There's no going back. Once we know, we know." "Let's do it!" Nick tore open the envelope and pulled out a photo. Text had been added, pointing to a significant bit of the black-and-white image and congratulating us with an exclamation.

I was going to share the results with you here, but I waited too long to post this and have even bigger news to share now. So for now we'll just say that we both grinned and jumped around a bit, delighted with the news we'd received about the flavor of our little fig.