Here Comes...the Son!

Your Mom, Aunt Shamsy and I just got back from your 18 week sonogram and it's 100% positive now: you are a boy!

They even took a nice picture of your "boy parts." Don't worry, I won't embarrass you by displaying this picture at your graduation or anything. But, I am gonna post it right here, right now:

See that arrow? See what it's pointing at? Now stopping looking at it, before you go blind!

Your appointment went perfectly: 8 fingers, 2 thumbs, 10 toes, 4 ventricles in your heart, 4 brain lobes, 1 tail. Everything was just as it should be!

You are a consistent little guy too: your heartbeat was, again, 150 bpm! Way to go!

But, you were sleeping with your hand draped across your face, so we couldn't get a good look at your profile! The nurse even tried to wake you up again by jostling you, but you wouldn't budge!

So, instead of a cute-as-a-button profile pic, we got a series of more "Skeleton Baby" pictures!

The good news is that you've really graduated from looking like an alien child and/or Predator. But, your skeleton REALLY makes you look like Jack the Pumpking King now (which is quite fitting for the upcoming Halloween!).

But, since you do now have a lot more subcutaneous fat, giving your face a little more shape and a little less skeletal appearance, you kind of also look like the ragdolls from "9."

So, you're clearly moving up on the cuteness scale! That's definitely a plus, but it's not like we had any doubts! Take a look for yourself...at yourself!

There you are, in all your glory! I think you're cute! It also looks like you have your mother's eye sockets! But, as we officially learned today, there's one trait for which you're definitely following in your father's biological footsteps!

Prints and Nails

Since we're pretty sure you're a boy, and you had to watch three girly movies (though one was arguably an adventure movie, based on a chick flick premise), it's time to talk super hero powers again.

In your Mom's belly, you are really displaying some mutant powers. This week, your skeleton is hardening changing from some sort of rubbery cartilage into bone. So, apparently you've been very similar to Mr. Fantastic, and now you're actively hardening your skeletal structure. That's pretty much something Colossus would do. No, that's better than what he can do: he can only harden his skin; you're hardening bone! How cool is that?

In another body-altering, mutant power move, you've developped finger prints this week! That's right, your one-of-a-kind bio signature is developped. No two people's fingerprints in the world are ever identical and that means that your mother and I will be able to find you anywhere, so don't get in trouble.

No wait, that's not what it means. It means that you have fingerprints! You're slowly but sure turning into you! Think about how far you've come already. When you were just a sperm you didn't have fingers at all-- now you have fingers with uniquely patterend swirls of raised ridges on them! (but you lost your tail in the process, so that's kind of a tradeoff). So with that superpower of fingerprint creation, plus the ability you possessed to move your ears to their proper positions and shapeshift from a tadpole to a humanoid, you're kind of like Mystique! Except not as blue. But we'd love you anyway if you were.

Interestingly enough, being pregnant with you has given your Mom some more super powers in recent weeks, in addition to the super human hearing and smelling. But, where you got finger prints, your Mom gets finger nails.

That's right, her super-human abilities now include fast-growing nails. I know, pretty lame right? It's not quite as cool as Sabretooth or Wolverine, but they do get so long so quickly that people ask her "are those fake?" The long nails are good for back scratches, though, I gotta admit.

Maybe I should convince your Mom not to cut them for the rest of the pregnancy, to see if they'd look like this:

Yuck...those are creepy, but she kind of looks like Storm, except instead of lightning bolts coming out of her fingers she has disgusting, repulsive growths. Never mind on challenging your Mom to grow them that long. That picture actually makes me kind of sick.

But, neverheless, it's kinda cool that both you and your Mom are getting super powers during this whole adventure, even if some aren't as cool as others. Hey, at least you guys GOT powers, all I'm stuck with is the ability to pop my toe knuckles and ramble on about super heroes an awful lot. I'd take fast-growing nails over that anyday!

Picture Perfect, Part II

Today we went in for our Week 13 sonograms (thanks to Iris and David for convincing us to go)...and they were AMAZING.

We have an early surprise! Well, it's not a surprise to you, as you already know. But, anyone who wants to know our baby's gender should check back tomorrow!

That's right, I'm such a torturer that I'm going to make them all wait til tomorrow to find out, if they don't know already!

But, I don't want the gender news to overshadow all the other awesome things that we saw today.

We saw you kicking your legs like crazy, and we saw a close up of your little foot. (all 5 toes accounted for!)


We saw your heart pumping blood; all four ventricles are working! And we saw your brain!

We saw you scratch your head, stretch down and play with your toes, and scratch your chin.



We heard your heartbeat again- still in a great range: 160 bpm!

It was really amazing. Your Mom and I didn't cry, but we were both just floored at how much you've grown since your last picture session and how human your movements were. Actually, most of your movements were very human, but your legs looked a little bit like when Kermit the Frog rides his bicycle. You know...kind of almost as if they were moving independently of the rest of your body's motions, but this might have been heightened because we couldn't see your arms!


But, Muppet or not, the experience was incredible. And then to make it even more incredible, we discovered your gender (with 90% certainty!)

It was so great to see you again and count your fingers and toes. It was the stuff of dreams to watch you kicking and squirming and moving around.

And, at the very end, you gently fell asleep on your Mom's bladder. Face down. The doctors tried to wake you up by jostling the belly, but you wouldn't wake up for anything! You sound like a Weinstein already!

They even made DVD of the whole sonogram for us, so we can watch you whenever we feel like it! Words aren't doing justice to how jaw-dropping today's sonogram was, so hopefully these pictures below will send the message. And hey, we may even rip the DVD and put it in here too!

Week 11: Lime Time

Wow, we sure are tearing it up on our journey through the produce section.

You are now 11 weeks old and, according to our friends over at the Bump, you are about the size of a lime, or about 1.6 inches long and .25 ounces.

I'm not even going to tempt your Mom with a bag full of limes around the house; she would eat them all. And then bye-bye, enamel.

But, besides your growth from prune to lime, some more really incredible developments have been happening in your Mom's tummy:

1. Added Head Room

No offense, but remember how goofy you looked in your last sonogram because your head was twice the size of your body?

So, the good news is that your body is growing more rapidly now, and instead of a 2:1 ratio from body to head, you now enjoy a 1:1 ratio from body to head! That's right, your head is just as long as your body, at that point. Now, that still looks decidedly goofy, as I will demonstrate below. But the good news is that you're growing in all the right places, and soon you'll be in proportion!

See, those proportions don't really look good on anyone. And don't get me started on the neck-strain!

2. Making First Steps to become a Land-Dweller

Now, I wish we could make the same claim for some of our friends, but you, my child, theoretically no longer have webbed fingers and toes! Granted, this will probably add a minute or two to your 100 Meter Freestyle time, but you're probably gonna spend most of your time on dry land, so webbed fingers and toes aren't really needed anyway.

Plus, having un-webbed digits will greatly increase the selection of gloves you can buy!

Webbed Fingers and toes didn't stop Kermit from being a mean banjo player, though.

3. INVISIBLE BABY



Okay, this probably isn't as cool as it sounds. Sure, you're growing skin as we speak. But right now that skin is, that's right, almost invisible! But, don't get any wise ideas: you're not invisible like Wonder Woman's Jet...and you certainly couldn't strip to your skivvies (which you're currently growing, also) and rob a bank unnoticed.



It seems that having invisible skin isn't really a super-power at this stage.



Your skin is so transparent that your blood vessels are showing right through! Weird!



So, as you can tell, it's an exciting week to be a growing baby! On top of all that, my sources tell me that you're starting to form hair folicles, tooth buds and finger & toe nails!


Keep at it, baby! You're taking giant steps forward-- but don't get a big head about it!