11 Week Picture

Here's your Mom at 11 weeks with Aidan:

And now with you!
We started shooting at 8 weeks with Aidan, but this pregnancy's been a bit rougher on your Mom than Aidan's. Which is another reason why I'm predicting you're a girl! So, Little one, I finally got your Mom to take a her first belly picture with you!

Actually, you helped too! Your Mom is finally starting to feel a little better, and was up for being photographed. In fact, today, she said she was upstairs painting for the first time in 6 weeks...the first tri-mester had previously made painting into a potential puking; but now she's up and at 'em!

So here you are, a little belly bump goes a long way toward showing how far we've all come in these 11 weeks!

Oh, that little ragamuffin by your Mommy's feet in both pictures is Toby. He'll be one of your dogs...and he'll always be by your side.

How you got here!

Well, buddy, you are 11 weeks old now, and it's high time you saw the whole truth about how you got here. Well maybe not that whole truth...but I mean the nine month journey of how you grew from a few cells big to our big baby boy!

During our pregnancy with you your Mom and I took a picture of her belly from week 8 all the way to week 39... the last picture we took was on the Friday night that your Mom was having contractions with you! We were running around trying to get everything ready to roll to go to the hospital, and we had the peace of mind to grab one final belly shot before you made your debut!

I finally finished putting this animation together. Here's the bare bones version:


And Here's the cinematic piece de resistance!

So, sit back and relax and watch how you grew from a belly to a baby, condensed down into 16 seconds! (The video's a bit too big to fit here on our tiny blog, so I recommend double clicking on it again and viewing it in its big time full size glory on you tube!)




It's hard to believe that you were even ever inside your Mommy. 11 weeks later and pregnancy seems like a distant memory for your Mom and Me. She misses being pregnant, she says, but having you here with is by far the much cooler, more exciting and incredible adventure!

So, no matter where you go in life, you can look at this video and see how grew! You'll know that for 9 months it was just the two of you, your Mommy and you! But now that you're out here for good, we are a family! I can't wait for the times when the "Two of us" can do all those fun things the Beatles sings about, but I also love every minute of it being the three of us, or the five of us, if you count the mutts.

(And..don't forget...one day you'll hopefully have a sibling or two too!)

We love you and we can't imagine our home or our lives without you. It's hard to remember a time when "the two of us" was just your Mom and Me. And though those times were fun, we wouldn't trade you for the world, young man!

Music to your Ears

Yesterday I told you that your Mom's sense of hearing is heightened.

Well, last night, while reading "What to Expect when you're Expecting," I learned something else pretty interesting about ears:

In this, the 11th week of your development, your ears are supposedly fully formed and look just like regular human ears. The book said something about your ears not necessarily being on the right place of your head quite yet, but at least you have ears!

The timing is perfect because tonight, we're going to your first real concert. Sadly, it's your mother's and my first real concert too. Sure, we've been to symphonies, outdoor concerts, washed-up rock star concerts at food festivals and smaller who-are-they? concerts. But tonight is the real deal, and you get to be there in utero!

So, for your first entree into live music, we present: Paul McCartney!

Now, Paul McCartney was 1/4 of a really famous rock group called the Beatles, who were broken up long before your mother or I were born. In fact, John Lennon (another Beatle) was murdered the year we were born. But, the Beatles' music transcends time and eras, and your mother and I are both HUGE Beatles fans.

The Beatles! Paul isn't wearing any shoes...just like you!

We're such huge Beatles fans that we have several names we're considering for you that actually come from Beatles music! So it's pretty fitting that this will be your first concert!

Don't worry-- I did some checking online and you will be perfectly safe inside your Mom's tummy. There's enough cushioning in there that the loud noises and vibrations won't even budge you! But, hopefully you'll be able to hear some beautiful music! And maybe he'll play one of the songs that inspired your potential name!

Afterall, you just got those new ears in (even if they're not in the right location yet). You might as well put them to good use!

Now's as good of a time as any to start playing you some music. There are lots of songs that come on our iTunes that make me think of you and, surprise surprise, a lot of these songs are by the Beatles or their members (post break-up).

Here's one that makes me think of how much fun we're going to have together once you come out!




Here's another one that always makes me think of your beautiful mother, even if she can't stand to be near me for too long because of my scent(yeah, we're still dealing with that).




Hopefully Paul McCartney will play both of these songs tonight-- if he does, it was my plan all along to have him serenade the both of you!

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!