Russell Dickerson is going to be a dad!

The 32-year-old country singer reveals exclusively in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, that he’s expecting his first child with wife Kailey.

“I’ve been rocking the dad shoes for a while now. NOW they’re official!” Dickerson jokes.

The couple, who wed in 2013, conceived after nine months of trying — which meant that when the good news did come, the “Love You Like I Used To” crooner was thrown for a loop.

“It just got to the point where we’re like, ‘Well, if it happens, it happens. It’ll happen when it does.’ It’s all God’s timing on that part,” Dickerson says. “So yeah, I was completely surprised.”

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Kailey spilled the good news to her husband on New Year’s Day, telling him that she had one more Christmas present for him after their extended family had left their home following the holiday.

“She put a stocking up on the mantel and I opened it,” the singer tells PEOPLE of the “sweetest” surprise, revealing that his wife had gifted him with “little navy blue slippers with big white letters on them” that read, “Best Dad.”

Kailey has had “zero” morning sickness thus far, but everything “could not look more perfect” in her pregnancy, according to her doctor.

And while the couple don’t yet know the sex of the baby and are holding off on decorating the nursery until they find out, Dickerson says they’re “in the planning stages” while working on their new house.

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They’re also waiting to find out the sex until they settle on a name, but they are bouncing a few family monikers around for both a boy and a girl.

“My family has the tradition of the initials R.E.D.; mine’s Russell Edward Dickerson and my dad is Richard Edward Dickerson. I want to keep that tradition going, if it’s a boy, of our ‘Edward Dickerson’ name,” says the “Yours” singer.

The dad-to-be thinks he will “definitely be the early riser,” between himself and his wife, who’s “the one up cooking breakfast and then running around with the kids all day in the yard.”

“Kailey will be the one that they run to when they get hurt or have to talk about if their feelings got hurt or anything,” he says. “Mama Kailes will definitely help them through that.”

For more from Russell Dickerson, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.



Source: People.com (https://people.com/parents/russell-dickerson-expecting-first-child-wife-kailey-pregnant-exclusive/)