Because it just won't do to start embarrassing the kid AFTER it comes out of the womb.

There's something immensely gratifying about being in a waiting room for five minutes at the doctor's office, having your name called, and seeing the room full of other patients giving you slightly dirty looks because they had been waiting for half an hour. That being said, today we got our first look at our

beautiful

baby

BOY!

It's good to know that my intuition was right all along... I had a gut feeling that it was a boy since I found out that I was pregnant, and The Boy thought I was a little goofy. I got a good "I told you so" in today at the ultrasound.

Fifteen years down the road my kid's going to pull up mom's old blog on his holographic wristwatch thought-activated I-puter, roll his eyes, sigh, and mutter, "OMG, mom..." except he won't because "OMG" will be tragically 2009 and he would never be caught dead saying anything that uncool. And he will die a little inside at the mortifying fact that his mother put pictures of his boy bits on the internet for the entire world to see. And I will smile in satisfaction, knowing that my age-old right as a mother to humiliate my children has been fulfilled.

I'd like to take this opportunity to introduce our son, Charles Scott. Hey, 15-year-old Charlie... we love you more than you'll ever know. You've already left your footprint on our lives and hearts.

I feel accomplished... not that it takes much these days.

After eighteen weeks of stress and freaking out, we finally made it to the doctor's office today. Can I just say one thing? We have the greatest clinic ever. Why, you ask? Valet Parking. No crap. They have valet parking at the Women and Children's Pavilion of our local hospital, the one that I happen to be going to for all of the prenatal and actual-birthy parts of The Bean's life.

Just let it sink in. Valet Parking. For free.

That was only, like, the third-best part of the day. The second-best part? The nurse that we dealt with was was the sweetest woman on the face of the planet. We only saw her, because it was just a preliminary appointment, but I was completely OK with it. She was knowledgeable, efficient, and the kindest, most generous and funny person I've talked to in a long time. In fact, it was the day of incredibly nice people. Even the people at the grocery store seemed sweeter than usual. Maybe I've just started looking more pregnant, and people like pregnant women more? I'm sure as hell not going to complain. The nurse also managed to get us in for an ultrasound next Tuesday. I had assumed we would have to wait a while longer, but she called them up and sweet-talked them into finding an open spot for a comprehensive scan.

The absolute best part of the day was that the nurse bogarted the Doppler on the sly and let us listen to The Bean's heartbeat. The Boy was a little freaked out at first because it took her a few minutes to find it--apparently my own heartbeat is incredibly loud-- and The Bean kept moving around. But she finally put the monitor in just the right place, and we heard this incredible, insistent thumping. This kid is strong.

It's such a surreal experience... you intellectually know that there's a baby in there: you've peed on the stick a million times, you've peed in the cup (which, by the way, is not really as easy as it sounds after a while... enough said about that. Thank God for paper towels), you've done the blood tests, the doctors' tests have come back positive-- but it doesn't really seem real until you hear the little thump-thump-thump-thump. A startling affirmation that, all of the sudden, you've accomplished something, you're responsible for something-- there's an entire other life hiding out inside of you. Something in you, and of you, but not you.

I've never felt more accomplished and terrified and thrilled in my entire life. I wonder how I'll feel when I actually see The Bean in person next week.

Sleeping? Who actually sleeps these days?

Certainly not me or The Boy, although I'm pretty sure he's at least getting some amusement out of it. A perfect storm of ingredients has combined in a whirling maelstrom over my bedroom to make an Adam Sandler-worthy slapstick routine storm of epic proportions, with, apparently, highly comical results. This all culminated last night with me flailing over the dog, the hubby, the shoe rack and, almost, a fully loaded bookcase at 3 AM. In the dark. While really, really needing to pee.

Fact #1: I can't sleep on my back or stomach, apparently, during this whole preggo thing. So we rearranged the room so that my side of the bed was against a wall. Great for side-sleeping, really-- it gives me something to lean against and prop me up. Unfortunately, this also puts me on the inside of the bed. Ever had to pee while sitting in the window seat of a plane? OK, so I might only have one person to crawl over, but he kicks. The best I can say is that he probably doesn't mean to, since he's at least half asleep. So I usually try to clamber to the foot of the bed and dismount that way. All that gymnastics training from when I was seven is finally kicking back in. We are going to have to change this system very soon, for reasons which will presently be made clear.

Fact # 2: I am pregnant. If you've never had the misfortune of either being pregnant or sleeping with a pregnant person, here's a fact for you. We pee all the time. All the freaking time. Meaning, I might get up four times a night.

Fact# 3: Our dog is needy as heck. Right now, the rest of the family is on vacation, so she refuses to leave our sides. She drags her baby blanket into our room, and usually sleeps on it, but will occasionally sneak up onto the bed when The Boy and I have fallen asleep. The other night I woke up to her actually laying smack in between us, head half on my pillow and half on his. Most nights, though, she's content with sneaking up and laying on the foot of the bed.

Fact #4: Our room is very crowded right now. Basically, we're trying to compress a one-bedroom apartment into... one bedroom. Granted, it's a decently sized room, with a walk in closet and an attached bedroom, but we have lots of stuff. So our shoe rack is at the foot of the bed, and then there's about two feet of space, and then one of our four bookshelves is against the wall facing it. There's enough room to walk....barely.

Can you see where this is heading?


Suffice it to say... at about three AM last night, the kid started dancing on my bladder, so I pulled myself into a half-crawling position.. and into a minefield. I managed to step on the dog's tail, trip onto the shoe-rack while aiming for the floor, and barely catch myself on the bookshelf, which has a rather alarming top-heavy wobble.

Did I mention that my ligaments are loose, so sometimes when I stand up, my hip pops and it takes me a minute to get my balance? Yeah, both hips decided this would make a perfect time to try to get me to waddle like a duck.

I have never been more grateful for the...extra padding... I carry around on my backside. There might have been some cursing involved. I certainly startled both the dog and The Boy out of a sound sleep. The former started barking her head off, and the latter, after flipping on the light and making sure I wasn't bleeding or concussed and hadn't fallen on the bean, started laughing his head off. Apparently, he finds something about his wife sitting on the floor, blinking against the super-bright energy efficient halogen light-bulb with a four inch heel that had tried to impale her in one hand funny. Jerk.

(At this point The Boy would like you to know that he is, indeed, a wonderful, loving, caring sensitive husband who regularly loads and unloads the dishwasher and promptly gets anything smelly out of range of his very sensitive wife, and kisses the preggo belly and talks to it. Sigh. Fine. He's right. He also made the bookshelf less top heavy so it wouldn't fall on me. Sigh.)

I still had to pee.

Crazy ninja cat-dog

This is Chloe.





Note the aloof bearing, the noble set of the ears, the haughty look in her eyes that tells you she knows you know she's in charge here, even though you pretend to be. Yeah, that's right. See that green leather? That's the couch. The one you spend most of the time telling her to get off of... see how effective it is? She's stealthy though... it starts with a head laid harmlessly on your knee. You have to pet it. Chloe is one of those weird dogs whose fur never really lost the puppy softness, so petting her ears is like jumping into a pile of clean laundry heaped on your bed that still smells like fabric softener...irresistible.





*cough...cough*





Oh, shut up. You know you do it too. Don't be such a snob.





*anyways.*





Net thing you know, she's managed to work a paw up on to the couch beside you. This inevitably gives you a better shot at her head. Then, before you know it, she's got both front legs and her torso splayed out next to you.





Pet, pet, pet.





Somehow, when you're not looking, she's managed to squinch her entire body up onto the couch beside you, flop over on her back, and wiggle around until she's in the perfect position for a tummy rub. She's a freaking ninja dog. And she gets around it by being so damn adorable. I mean, for goodness' sake, she carries around her sleeping blanket in her mouth like a baby blanket.

Ridiculous, isn't it? This picture is kind of old; her new blanket is black and white spotted. She lies on the stairs on top of her blanket, and blends in. She likes sitting on the top step of the stairs leading down to the den, where nobody can ignore her.

I don't know how we got such a neurotic dog. She acts like a cat more than anything else. But she knows how damn cute she is, so she milks it. Today, she crawled up on bed with me (another place she knows she's not supposed to be. My belly is finally starting to pop, and I was rubbing cocoa butter on it in the ridiculously vain hope that maybe I won't get stretch marks (I can hear all you moms out there laughing your post-natal butts off me. Leave me the hack alone). The dog crawled up next to me, stretched out beside me, and flopped her head onto my belly. Awww. Of course you can stay on the bed with me. I'll even pet you and snuggle you up in the blanket. I don't mind that you stretch your legs out so much you nearly push me off the bed.


I'm going to be such a pushover... my kid's going to look at me with big toddler eyes and that will be all it takes. All it takes. That kid will be rolling in toys. I can just imagine trips to the grocery store now if I don't get this under control. Start praying for me now.