R & T + 1

Hello everyone, Ryan here.

So, last Wednesday (January 21, 2009), Tiffany revealed to me she was late. She said this to me in a text message. I replied, "Late for what?" This is my life. Fast forward about eight hours, and my life was forever drastically changed. We spent 20 dollars on an EPT 2-pack or something at CVS...tangent time. Is it weird that you have to pay so much money for something that ends up peed on? Then again, there are cheaper ones out there, but this isn't exactly the time to be cheap. Anywho, so we came home and Tiffany didn't need to pee. Whatever. So I texted Josh and wanted to know if he wanted to play some Gears of War 2. So I'm playing for about twenty minutes or so and I hear, "Ummmm... Ryan... I think... umm... yeah..." I then said into my Xbox Live headset "Hey Josh, sorry, gotta go."

The first test was positive. It took like thirty seconds supposedly for the positive thing to show up. I was pretty shell-shocked. Let me cut in here and explain something. This wasn't an accident. It wasn't entirely planned, but it wasn't an accident either. A few months back we decided to just put this in God's hands. Anywho. I was just shocked. It's such a big deal, and I knew that our entire lives were going to be changing quite a bit. And here's the thing also... I just found out that Tiffany was late that day. She had known for over a week. I know that's still not much time, but it's definitely a lot more time than about eight hours.

From comments that Tiffany made to me through the night, I guess I just had this glazed-over look across my face. Honestly, it wasn't a bad feeling at all, I was just in shock. Tiffany kinda was also. She didn't get very emotional or anything like that, she just didn't say much about it. So later on she took the other test, and just as quickly it came back positive also. I still couldn't believe it. Eventually Tiffany went to bed and I stayed up and decided to play Gears some more--and I was TERRIBLE. Obviously my mind was just in a different place or something. So yeah.

One thing we discussed is when to tell people. We had talked about it well before and discussed telling people immediately or waiting until after the first trimester (much like Ashlee Simpson and little dorky emo "can't-believe-he's-straight" guy from Fallout Boy), because most of the problems in pregnancy happen in the first trimester. Ultimately we decided to wait until we've been to the doctor.

Thursday, I made the appointment with Dr. Fisher. He's been my doctor since April, and --funny story here for people who don't know-- was the doctor who delivered my cousin, Jacob. Back then he was practicing in Tuttle, USA, and he still remembers my aunt and uncle from eleven or twelve years ago or whatever. I told Shawna, my boss, that I needed to be off for a few hours on Monday and asked if I could make up the time later in the week. Since Shawna is the awesomest, she let me do it. The only other people, at the time I'm writing this, that know, are Blake and Christian and Brandi Traina. I have sworn them to secrecy even from their own families (and especially our families), so don't be upset with them for not telling you sooner.

I told Blake because I just wanted to talk to someone about it, and he was very happy for us. That was a funny e-mail conversation. "Hey dude, I have something I want to tell you but you have to promise not to tell anyone--not your parents, not Josh, not Nathan, not Aaron, no one. Is that cool?" The first e-mail I got back from him was "Yeah, what's up?" Then, immediately afterward "You having a kid?" I just replied "Yes." So that was fun. Blake's a great friend to both of us. Then, I wanted to talk to someone who could tell me what I was in for and stuff, so I told Christian, who, when I asked him to not tell anyone, (supposedly) predicted what I was going to tell him correctly. So I talked with him for a little bit and he hasn't gotten back to me lately. Here's hoping he hasn't gone rogue and is telling everyone.

So anyways, our appointment with Dr. Fisher is tomorrow and we're excited. We've decided that we're going to tell our parents and my grandma by giving them Valentine's Day cards to "Grandma & Grandpa" and "Great Grandma." Not sure when exactly we're going to do it. I'm itching to tell people and Tiffany wants to wait until Valentine's Day. We're also trying not to overshadow anyone else's birthday (Nan's) or anything else going on in life (within two days of finding out about Tiffany being pregnant, we have found out about four or five people who have either died or have cancer and it's bad. Sucks).

Okay, so that's all for now.

(Quick wrapup for those of you who don't want to read the whole thing: Tiffany's pregnant. If our calculations, and the calculators we used are correct, the due date should be mid-to-late September, and the baby's first heartbeat would have been on Friday, January 23rd. Crazy!)

-Ryan J. Schwimmer