Well, we had our ultrasound on Monday and the technician said she was 80% sure and the doctor said he was 90% sure about the gender. So – y’all ready for this? Can you dig it? Are you ready to rumble??

It’s a girl!

I attribute the certainty of that statement to Anne. The ultrasound technician said she was 80% sure it’s a girl and then the doctor said that he was 90% sure. But given Anne’s strong feeling, she feels certain. And hey – I’d be happy with a 90% on a test. So it’s time to get off of team uncertainty and onto team girl.

I must say that we were disappointed with the photos and video we got from this most recent visit – they were both poor and few. The video is a bit wonky, but you get a brief glimpse of our little girl at week 17.

Unfortunately the pictures we got this time were all pretty much without variety and not that great.

Still, that’s our little girl. 🙂

Now that you know the gender, you are obviously disallowed from getting us anything that we can even remotely construe as masculine. Even going gender neutral is pushing it, people. It must be pink, it must frilly, and it must conform to that unique American nostalgia – a nostalgia for a time that never existed. Do you think she’s going to win the baby pageant playing with that truck, or throwing a ball? I don’t think so! Hand be that hairbrush and that Barbie.

Anne and I both agree that we will adhere to strict gender roles in this family. In fact, I refuse to even touch her clothing, for fear of gender contamination. And I always avoid the feminine hygiene products the pharmacy by at least two aisles, just to be safe.

But I kid. The Spicy Peanut is a she. We’re having a daughter. We’re so happy.

Last night Anne experienced a distinct moment of quickening. For you non-parentals out there, this is the term that refers to the sensation of fetal movement. As we saw from ultrasounds very early on, the baby is moving constantly in there, but it takes a while for the mother to actually feel that movement. Anne said it felt like a few gentle pokes. I imagine it felt more like the image below.

I felt the baby move!

You see how that joke worked on multiple levels? I’m like the James Joyce of bloggers.

If you didn’t fully get the image-joke, then you fail at movie trivia. Which means you’ll probably also fail at this very entertaining movie trivia challenge. I got 59 right 39 wrong before I stopped. Beat THAT! (OK, you can sort of get some of them by guessing letters and hypothesizing words identifications.)

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to experience a moment of quickening. It sort of seems like something in between something deeply wonderful and deeply disturbing. The wonderful feeling of your child’s burgeoning awareness, and the growing bond between you. Also a reminder that there is a living thing inside you clawing at you, like in Alien. Wonderfully disturbing. 

So Anne got a doppler for home. You know, the thing that the OB uses to listen to the baby’s heart. We’ve been assiduously monitoring the baby’s heartbeat nearly every day like prenatal cardiologists. Have a listen:
Pretty cool, huh? At our last OB visit on the 5th included one of these but we just talked over it.

We’ve started to confront another one of the risks in pregnancy: mental retardation. Of the mother. Did you know that studies show that women lose brain cell tissue during pregnancy? (In case there are other pregnant women reading this, I thought I’d mention that studies show that women lose brain cell tissue during pregnancy.) Accordingly it’s common in pregnancy for women to feel scattered or forgetful. If Anne buys her own birthday presents now this might make things more exciting for her next month.

The most recent manifestation of Anne’s forgetfulness, though, has been clumsiness. I think Anne may have broken 3 glasses in the past month. If this continues we may have had to have added glassware to our baby registry. Yeah, those highball glasses are for…the baby. For all the…breast milk it will be drinking. Out of a glass. As a newborn.

Did you know, by the way, that women expecting girls have been documented to be MORE forgetful than women expecting boys? Unfortunately, we have no index of comparison. We only have fewer glasses.

Our next ultrasound is March 21. That will be just before week 17 starts. If the baby cooperates, we might be able to determine the gender! Stay tuned – we’ll try to post more often.

One batch of borscht (Lilliputian perspective).

It was frickin’ freezing in the Bay Area this past weekend, so we went utterly soup-crazy. Last weekend we realized that we had about 4 chicken carcasses in the freezer, so we ended up making an enormous pot of chicken stock, using one of Anne’s mom’s recipes. (Great recipe, thanks Bea.) We used some of it in a chicken pot pie that we made earlier in the week (best we ever made), but we still had a ton left over. What better way to use it than soup?

So we ended up making matzo ball soup (we made the balls from a mix) and two different kinds of borscht: one with cabbage and one without (for me and Anne, respectively). 

Now we will never stop eating soup.

I should note that the night we ate some of the matzo ball soup we ended up also making pork meatballs, potato pancakes, and lightly sauteed kale. The meal was a kosher battleground.

We purchased some of our baby furniture last week. You’d think that purchasing something like a crib would be relatively straightforward. Actually, you probably wouldn’t think that. Because you’re probably not an idiot. As you can probably guess, there are particular regulations about the dimensions of a crib, presumably so your baby easily can’t break off pieces and fashion a shiv or something.

You can check out the particular crib we got at this website. The cool thing about this furniture, besides the organic non-toxic finishes, solid wood construction, dovetailed joints, corner blocks, and self-closing drawer glides, is the fact that you buy the toddler front and slats, so it can eventually support a full bed. So hopefully this bed will last the Spicy Peanut until teenagerhoodedness. Or at least until they are physically able to construct it into a shiv. 

(Children have a strong desire to make shivs, from birth. This may be because they are trapped in a room with no discernible exit for nine months.) 

We confess that we’ve also bought a few decorations for the baby’s room. Prepare yourself for “farm chic”:

Look at that beautiful pregnancy glow, btw!

This is one of three paintings we got – we also got one of a sheep and a cow. These approach the hear-tearning level of cuteness. (See our “hear-tearingly” blog post from earlier.) Luckily the baby won’t have much hair when it’s born. 

So the baby room is starting to come together, at least in our imaginations. (For those of you who haven’t heard, our landlord is moving back in and we are moving to a different unit in our condo complex. But that’s another blog post.) The furniture looks great. Well, it looks like it WILL be great based on the catalogue and what we saw in person. The order time kind of varied depending on whom you talked to in the store, so it looks like it’ll take between 10 and 18 weeks. So it will arrive in the spring, maybe the summer. Good thing we’re planning ahead. They’re apparently built to order in Romania and shipped over by cargo ship, NOT speedboat. Hopefully it will arrive it time so our baby isn’t sleeping in a cardboard box when we take it home.

But at least we’ll have a car seat! Did you know that by law in California you’re not allowed to leave the hospital without one? This is what Anne tells me. Perhaps this is part of OB/GYN training. 

This generates a lot of questions. Does this law still apply if you have a home birth? Do they check the brand of car seat? I.e. could I crudely fashion one out of cardboard and construction paper? What if I drove a motorcycle or a go-cart to the hospital?

We will be getting a good car seat, don’t worry. We’ve already done the research. Note: the most important piece of data that came out of that research is the fact that Chicco is pronounced “keeko.” And yes, we want that travel system. See how fancy I’ve gotten, knowing what a “travel system” is? See, I’m becoming a parent.

As is my wont, I will end with a cat anecdote. Filbert got his teeth cleaned today, under general anesthesia. The poor guy lost 6 teeth!

With the puffed cheeks, he kind of looks like a 19th century British banker from this angle. Pish posh!

We went in for our Week 12 ultrasound on Thursday February 17, and we got some more great video and images. Part of the motivation for this particular visit and ultrasound was “nuchal translucency,” a visual examination that examines the amount of fluid in the fetus’s neck. This is basically a pre-screen for Down’s Syndrome. It’s not definitive but it was a good sign that everything was normal!

I should also note that Anne’s blood work came back with great results – extremely low risk of Down’s Syndrome and other trisomy defects.

We got a great close-up of the Spicy Peanut.

See that heartbeat all a-flutter? Actually, it was a bit of a lower heart rate than the last time we visited – 156 bpm vs. about 170 bpm. Then again, last time the little Peanut was dancing around like crazy. Maybe Anne was giving it the equivalent of fetal heart palpitations last time from some jalapenos she ate or something.

There’s an old wives tale that says that a lower heart rate indicates a girl. So maybe our baby went from a boy to a girl. Like in Jurassic Park.

They did some measurements. CRL means “crown rump length.” Right on track. Bit of a buddha belly already, though. Jeez.

They also did more “4D” imagery, again indicating that I have the Midas Bad Touch. (Everything I touch with any body part turns to gold.) Anyway, Anne and I having been throwing around baby names, but based on the image below, I think that “Smeagol Davis” sounds like an appropriate boy’s name.

The precious…the precious…

Regardless of the gender, however, I’m still convinced that I’m eventually going to be outnumbered. Anne and the Spicy Peanut will want to make inedibly spicy foods and I’ll be forced to eat them. My tastebuds will slowly die a horrible death and then they will act as zombie-like husks attached to my tongue, mindlessly transporting food down my gullet, unable to transfer any information about taste to my brain.

Exhibit A: Recipe for Husk Tongue® pizza.

Our next ultrasound appointment is March 21st. We just might be able to learn the gender of the Spicy Peanut at that point. Keep your eyes peeled!

Well, it’s taken 11 weeks, but Anne has finally developed the baby bump.  Check out the photo to the left. Most of you probably haven’t seen Anne in a while so you’re like, hm, baseline photo. THAT IS EXACTLY MY PLAN. [wrings hands] Anne is a thin beautiful woman and she would probably be humiliated by this also-thin beautiful picture that I’m posting. But there is a bump there. The plan is to document the progression of the bump as time goes on.

It happened basically overnight. Which I guess makes sense, given what’s written in What To Expect in the Expectation of Expecting to Expect:

“Week 10 At nearly 1.5 inches long (about the size of a prune), your baby is growing by leaps and bounds.
[…]
Week 11 Your baby is just over 2 inches long now and weighs about a third of an ounce.
[…]
Week 12 Your baby has more than doubled in size during the past three weeks, weighing in now at .5 ounces and measuring (crown to rump) about 2.5 inches. About the size of a large fresh plum, your baby’s body is hard at work in the development department.”

First of all, um, hello? How big is it at week 11? I need fruit metaphors to picture my baby accurately. What’s between a desiccated and a fresh plum? A large walnut? And no, we will not be changing our blog title weekly based on the food metaphor. Partly because at week 15 it would be called “The Spicy Navel Orange.” That sounds stupid.

Also, “crown to rump?” I want my wife to give birth to our baby, not roast it to perfection.

The baby bump happened practically overnight. Anne said that literally one day she noticed that she was having a bit of trouble buttoning her well-fitting jeans. Obviously, it was not something I noticed. For the same reason that a man trains himself not to ask any woman if she’s pregnant, even if she is, at the time, giving birth. It’s too dangerous. Even your pregnant wife might resent your saying, “Hey, is it just me, or are you just a LITTLE fatter than yesterday?” We men have trained ourselves not to notice these things.

But even the small bump has caused some discomfort with Anne’s perfect-fitting jeans. Luckily there’s a product called the Bella Band that you can buy that allows you to unbutton your pants but connect them together at the top so it doesn’t LOOK like your pants are unbuttoned. (I will be shocked if it doesn’t have a “Made in the U.S.A.” tag. Also if its original purpose is maternity-related.) Now Anne can secretly behave like the People of Wal-Mart and no one will know.

We just had another ultrasound on Thursday, so look expect another media-rich post coming soon on The Spicy Peanut.

And finally, a reminder: longcat is long.

With a baby on the way, there is a lot of cuteness going on. Anne bought little onesies in Costa Rica with monkeys on them. Something as mundane as little baby socks can make even a British royal guard on duty cock his head and coo.

Right now we are swimming in a sea of cuteness. Cute fetus images, cute clothes, cute looks, cute thoughts. I MEAN, LOOK AT THIS CUTE LITTLE SPICY PEANUT!

Cuteness can be dangerous. This was evidenced by how exhausted I was after Puppy Bowl VII this past Sunday. (Another game took place that day; can’t remember what.) If you did not watch the Puppy Bowl, you’re helping the terrorists win.

Can you imagine watching this for 2 hours? I needed a lie-down afterwards there was so much cuteness. Luckily there was some sports event afterwards during which I could sleep. It was something somewhat boring and homoerotic, if I remember correctly through my sleepy haze.

Anyway, the physiological effects of cuteness vary based on degree of cuteness. Observe the table below.

I understand that Anne’s mom has been hoarding baby things for some time now. She may not want to present them to us in her own house. At least not all at the same time.

Cuteness kills.

Based on the table above and the inevitable level of cuteness, coming to our baby shower (whenever it will be) should be like a gathering of violent escaped mental patients with Tourette’s playing Finders Keepers.

Our most recent ultrasound largely focused on checking on the Spicy Peanut. These checks were rather on the basic side, though: checking to see if the baby had the right number of things. The number that was targeted tended to be a whole number greater than 1 and no more than 3.

Exhibit A: Arms.

Those are apparently two arms. It looks much more like legs to me. In fact, if I wasn’t present when this image was captured I would assume it was a black and white close-up of an aquarium. Anne reminds me that it made much more sense when we saw it in motion.

Arms also appear to be also known by medical people as “UPPER EXT.” The more you know.

Exhibit L: Legs.

Two legs…that is the best amount of legs. SUCCESS.

The woman running the ultrasound machine was certainly a wizard. She slapped buttons around on that device amazingly fast. Was there a uterus-based video game that she trained on? Anne did have to have a full bladder for the procedure, which made things a bit uncomfortable, from what I hear. Luckily for everyone involved, however, she did not wet herself, either from the pressure of the scanner or joy. Or surprise – probably also good not to be surprised during an ultrasound.

This image indicates that we had the wrong number of three-dimensional photographs taken: more than zero.

It’s like a papier-mache baby genius cast in a carved-out sponge. Is it scheming? I believe it is mid hand-rub. But at least it’s solid gold. In this economy it’s a good investment.

I should note that this is technically labeled as a “4D Realtime” shot. Did that blow your mind? Did the age of Aquarius just dawn within your third eye? (Note: not the best amount of eyes.) But yes, that does remind us that the Spicy Peanut is part of the spacetime continuum. Perhaps even its tiny mass is exhibiting gravitons. Look at the chart below.

A graph of human fetal weight over time. First off, apologies because this graph clearly hates America. (It uses the metric system.) At least age was not listed in the metric system (fortnights). Note the obvious vertical asymptote that the author has HIDDEN FROM VIEW.

Clearly, if the due date of August 30 is not met we can only hope that Anne’s uterus doesn’t become the event horizon for a planet-destroying singularity. Then we’ll have changed around the second bedroom for nothing.

Welcome to The Spicy Peanut. You’re here to find updates on a very special little tyke as it develops, and possibly to learn news about any other news about us. And for those of you who are new to this blog, yes, we are pregnant. We hope that this will prevent us having to write separate emails to family members, and also allow us a convenient place to present images, movies, and other interesting media, and to keep you informed and maybe even entertained.

So I’m sure one of the first things you’ll want to know is why the blog is called The Spicy Peanut.

We had initially taken to calling the developing fetus “the peanut.” Not sure how exactly that came about, but it did have something to do with the size and seeing it for the first time on an ultrasound. Possibly also our current and continued inability to use a gendered pronoun.

Anne also likes spicy foods. We have about 3 containers of red pepper in our spice cabinet. This is just one of those tomato/tomahto points between us. She likes spicy foods, I like things on the milder side. She likes shopping; I like…not shopping. She likes AM radio, I like FM. I mean, how can you like AM radio with all that talk and inferior sound quality? And those weird numbers??? I’ll stick with numbers between 88 and 108, thank you very much!! Those odd-numbered decimals are extremely meaningful!! Every time I get in the car I have to spend ONE WHOLE EXTRA SECOND pushing the “FM” button on the car stereo in order to listen to the good stuff!!! I mean, for Christ’s sake!!!

Phew. Sorry about that. We’re seeing a counselor about this AM/FM issue. (Watching Dr. Phil counts as seeing a counselor, right?)

Anyway, spicy foods. Anne likes them. Despite the pregnancy, she is still dumping red pepper on things. I told her that she was going to make a spicy baby – and because it was half mine, she’d better be careful.

You see, when I have spicy foods of a certain caliber, I hiccup. And hiccuping drives me crazy. It’s like a little kid is punching you in your abdomen every 6-7 seconds. And not one of those cute kids – one of those annoying, poorly-parented kids (i.e. kids parented by anyone else other than us). He probably has a bowl cut. And you can’t insult him about his dumb haircut because he’s a kid.

Everyone has their own little stupid way to make the hiccups stop, and it never works. And they always need to insist that you try their way when it happens to you around them. And then you look like an idiot, trying to drink that glass of water upside down while bending over and rubbing the back of your left knee. And then you hiccup anyway, inhale some water, and start coughing like crazy. I’LL JUST LET THEM RUN THEIR COURSE, THANKS.

So I think you’ll be SIMILARLY DISTURBED to see the video below, the first video we’ve received of the fetus (10 weeks).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66DyBwIGVaQ

Does that look like hiccuping to you?! That baby must be so pissed off right now!

We have created a spicy baby. We’ve created a baby who will spurn the rattle for the sound of red pepper flakes in a half-empty spice jar. We have created The Spicy Peanut.