Last week, I talked about my thankfulness for my parents and getting to share our special news with them, so this week it only made sense to share how special it was to share our news with Ed's side, even though it was a bit less smooth than we'd envisioned.
We knew from the beginning that we'd wanted to wait and tell Ed's mom on her birthday in mid-September, as Ed had come up with the idea of mailing her a baby themed birthday present to share the news. By happy coincidence, Ed's brother and wife were going to be here visiting, so we thought it would be perfect if she was on speaker phone when she opened her gift, so they could all find out together.
We had a lovely breakfast with Tom and Irma, and then it was time to make the birthday call. We were of course very excited, but were doing our best to play it cool. Below is what the present was supposed to look like. If you can't tell, it spells Oma, which is the German word for grandmother.
I say supposed to, because this is where the wheels fell off of our little reveal. Sabine opened her present and said, "oh...a nice frame! Thank you!" We prompted her to look inside the frame and she let us know that she didn't see anything particular to look at. There was a bit of teasing on Tom's part about her inability to see anything after we told her it was supposed to spell something and she still couldn't. Finally we realized that the pictures had shifted in transit and weren't readable at all.
Obviously this wasn't going well. Tom and Irma were flying to Europe in a few hours, and at this point decided they were going to go and get ready. We somewhat stressfully convinced them to just stay a little longer, hoping we'd eventually successfully reveal the news.
So, we moved onto plan B. Ed explained that the frame said Oma and had 3 spots, one for Matthew, one for Meagan (our new niece and nephew), and one for her newest grandchild. "That's nice," she replied, obviously not getting it. Ed tried again, emphasizing the last part, but still, no realization.
Finally, I blurted out: "Sabine, we're having a baby!"
At this point, Tom and Irma realized the point behind this whole morning and got excited. Sabine however, still feeling the effects of some earlier teasing and all this confusion, responding with, "Just stop. Stop playing around and teasing!" Finally Tom jumped in and told her we really were serious. It took Tom's reassurance, but she finally realized that we weren't just teasing, we were actually telling the truth, and then she got very, very happy.
After a much more confusing reveal than we'd ever thought possible, everyone finally knew our happy news, and Ed's family couldn't have been more thrilled. We called Ed's other brother and his wife later that day, sharing the news by telling them the whole convoluted story of how the rest of the family found out, and finally, all of our family members knew.
So, it wasn't quite the perfect, straightforward news sharing moment we'd pictured, but it was incredibly special nonetheless. Ed's family is so supportive of everything we do, and has been especially sweet about our upcoming little one. They raised a fantastic son and I'm so lucky to have them in our lives.
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