Scotty McCreery and Wife Gabi Expecting First Baby — a Boy!: ‘We Got a Little Man on the Way’

“We’ve gotten to live a lot of life and do some cool things, so seems like now’s a good time to settle down a little and expand the family,” Scotty McCreery tells PEOPLE exclusively

Baby makes three!

Scotty McCreery and his wife Gabi are expecting their first child, a boy, his rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.

“We got a little man on the way,” Scotty, 28, joyfully tells PEOPLE.

Detailing how he and Gabi, also 28, have “always talked about” having children together, Scotty says, “We always knew we wanted kids, but we always knew we wanted the first few years to travel and have time on the road, to see things and experience life.”

“We’ve gotten to live a lot of life and do some cool things, so seems like now’s a good time to settle down a little and expand the family,” adds Scotty, who wed Gabi in June 2018.

Gabi tells PEOPLE she found out she was pregnant earlier this year, and how she told her country music star husband — whose single “Damn Strait” is heading towards the top of the charts following the success of his last four singles — is a “funny story.”

Explaining that her decision to tell Scotty she was pregnant “didn’t quite go as planned,” Gabi says she originally wanted to tell him after picking him up from the airport and before attending a hockey game together.

“Well, his flight got delayed, so that didn’t work out,” she recalls with a laugh, before explaining that she told him the next morning after the sporting event.

“I’m over there drinking beers, having a good time, and she’s like, ‘I think I’ll just lay low tonight,’ so I was like, ‘Okay,’ ” Scotty adds. “I didn’t think anything of it.”

Now, with their baby due in November, Scotty and Gabi are thrilled — and even shocked — they’re having a boy.

“I was the only boy on both sides of my family, the last McCreery boy out there,” Scotty explains. “Gabi’s from two sisters in her family, so I just figured it would be a girl. But we got a surprise of a boy.”

And though the pair would’ve been “stoked” with either a boy or girl, Scotty is looking forward to all the moments he and his son will share together.

“I grew up playing sports, so getting to introduce him to baseball, which was my first love right there with music, and golf are just little things that [will be great].”

Gabi is also looking forward to putting her career as a pediatric nurse to use when her newborn arrives later this year.

Noting that her work “definitely has shown me the ropes a little bit,” Gabi says, “Even just down to changing diapers multiple times in a day, and figuring out how to soothe the baby when they’re upset, for sure has helped.”

“I definitely feel like it’s prepared me in many ways,” she continues, as Scotty adds: “It’ll be great for me because I’ll be so nervous.”

“If the baby coughs, I’ll be like, ‘Hey, Gabi, is this okay? What’s happening here?’ So, knowing that she has that experience, I think will be huge,” the American Idol winner continues.

And although Scotty and Gabi have yet to pick out a name for their son — they say they did have a name picked out for a girl — the pair know one thing for sure: bringing the baby on the road with them is something they want, and hope, to do.

“I think we’ll bring another bus out and try to make a little nursery for him,” Scotty tells PEOPLE.

“It might not be every week, and we’ll see how the baby takes to the road life, but it’d be nice, just selfishly, to have Gabi and the baby out there with me. I don’t want to miss anything with him growing up,” he continues.

“Travel is so much a part of our life that I feel like if we start at a young age, it’ll prepare him a little bit,” Gabi adds.

Scotty also says it is exciting “everything’s happening all together” in his career and personal life, and he notes that he is “very grateful for fans that have been there since day one.” He adds: “[This is] uncharted waters for us, but we can’t wait to dive in and meet the little man.”