I have been waiting to write this post for some time now, and I mulled over the headline for a long time.  Ultimately, I decided not to try to get too cute with the title.  Instead, I thought the direct route made more sense for my friends and acquaintances who would be interested to hear this terrific Crouch family news. 

I have been anxious to announce this for awhile, but I wanted to wait until we were a bit further along with the pregnancy.  Pam, my wife, had her second obstetrician appointment today, and the baby is growing normally and doing fine - heartbeat, bloodwork, etc.  We are about 12 and a half weeks along right now, and the due date is April 11th. 2009.  As you already know, the likelihood of the baby being born on that actual day is somewhat slim, although my son was born on his actual due date.  Since we are finishing the first trimester, we both felt comfortable sharing this info with you guys.  I might have done it sooner, but Pam's point (which is valid) has been, "Who do you feel comfortable telling if there is a problem?" 

Thankfully, we have already been blessed with three healthy, fun, smart, awesome kids, and we are excited about our new addition.

I did share this news with a VERY small group of friends from ActiveRain.  I want to thank those of you who have kept this secret for several weeks now.  If I didn't tell you, please don't feel bad, because I tried to limit it to a very select group, both online and locally.  I have to talk to somebody about it, right?

I actually found out on August 12th myself, which was the same day I wrote this review of a local restaurant:

Date Night at Beluga Japanese (Pictures, too!) (LOCALISM FEATURED)

One of the reasons that I wrote that post was to commemorate the date that I found out about our newest baby, along with the location.  Also, the pictures were taken in the seconds after Pam told me.  This was why I switched my profile picture to the one you see now.  Every time I look at it, I know what made me smile in that way.

My wife has a history of letting me know in some very cool ways.  With our first baby, she managed to inform me via fortune cookie by creating a custom "fortune" and getting it into the cookie that she handed me.  It said:

Roses are red, Violets are blue   I'm gonna be a parent, and so are you!

I still get a little misty-eyed about that day just over ten years later.  This time, she brought her camera so that "you can write a review and we can take some pictures for your blog" (she knows me too well).  After she took a couple, we reviewed them, and she started scrolling through some other pictures of our kids.  I started looking, too, then I saw a picture that looked oddly familiar: a positive pregnancy test. 

"What is that?", she calmly asked.

"It's a pregnancy test.  When was this taken?", I asked.

PAUSE.

"Are you pregnant?!"

No words needed - just a nod and a smile from my beautiful wife.

Pam and I are both only children, having been largely raised by our moms, so the second, and third, and (now) fourth child are foreign ground for us, but we are thankful to God for another rich blessing.

On another note, PLEASE pray for my wife, who feels miserably sick and tired much of the time. 

She has notoriously bad morning sickness, which is really more like "all the time sickness" in her case.  Obviously, we are hoping for a reprieve this time around, but (her words today, not mine) if the only result is her own suffering, it could be worse.  At least the baby is okay, and the end really does justify the means in this case.  Nevertheless, I would love for her to feel better.  She is taking an anti-nausea medication for the first time, and it seems to help some days, but not always.

In case you were wondering, both of our older kids (9 and 7) want a baby brother to even things out around the house (two boys, two girls), plus they only have a little sister (2 and a half), so they don't know what a boy would be like yet.  Since this post could be read for years to come by my family, I will not state a preference for gender here.  Instead, I will lean on the more traditional statement that as long as the baby's healthy, I don't really care either way. 

For those of you who are wondering why we could possibly want another baby, here are my best reasons:

Thanks for taking the time to read my exciting news!  I will, of course, continue to keep everyone posted (pun totally intended).