Limpid Bagel

Wouldn't that be weird, and probably a little gross? Like Crystal Pepsi? Ew. Anyway, disregard the title, I just thought it sounded cool.

So I don't have any major (or minor, really) updates, and obviously you didn't get a song last week. I mean, I'm perfectly comfortable posting The Farmer in The Dell (AGAIN), but as Aunt PittyPat noted, you guys aren't really here for the cartoons, no?

Potty training is going much better; thanks for the suggestions. Turns out bribery does work, we were just doing it wrong. I mean, stickers are nice and all, but she was holding out for chocolate. We've actually noticed that Iris might be saving up trips to the bathroom to ensure more trips to the Potty Candy Stash. Smart kid.

I continue to get huge and FBK continues to kick about. I'm not really sure what's going on in there, but his feet are definitely still firmly planted on my bladder. It's neat.

That's about it for now. Again, name suggestions? Anybody? You know you are just dying to tell me what to do (right? people love telling other people what to do, don't they? that just me, then?).

Things That Go Bump in The Ute

Well, that one thing that goes bump in the ute. That kid is down with the dancey dance time. If you watch the video in that lovely link up there, you will see the exact dance Lil' Ralphie was doing yesterday. Oh, by the way, I decided to start calling FBK Lil' Ralphie, what with all the attempts at making me barf s/he made. It was either that or Chuckie, and Kyle seemed to shudder with disgust a little more when that name came out. I enjoy this so very much.

Anyway, let's just say that Lil' Ralphie is going to have the jazziest of jazz hands. S/he was so flippy and wiggly that it took forever just to get a heart rate. I mean, we did get one - 162, I think - so all healthy and all that. Speaking of pronoun issues (I was - in my head), the crankiest ultrasonographer in the world told us yesterday that if she had to guess, she'd say Lil' Ralphie is a boy. I am only 13 weeks along at this point though, and it really is too soon to tell. From my vast and thorough google education, I have learned that the butt-shot technique of identifying the baby's sex is only accurate after 17 weeks or thereabouts. So when Capt. Crankypants did the butt-shot (for approximately four seconds) and then determined the sex to be male, she was in all probability completely making things up.

Apparently the sex of the baby can sort of be determined as early as 13 weeks (with 80% accuracy!) but only if you look at a side-shot and find the angle of the nub thingy. It's not nearly as precise, but it is definitely done by looking at a side-shot, NOT at butt-shot. I want a recount, Capt. Crankypants. I mean, we will get a recount, just not very soon. I have the morphology scan scheduled for Monday, April 25th. Approximately four weeks from now we will know, almost for sure, what flavor we're getting here.

These are the two photos our Fair Captain left us with. They are a little fuzzy and weirdly similar, but you know, don't poke an angry bear and all that. She had some extremely negative mojo going on, so I think Kyle and I telepathically agreed to just get the bare info and scoot as quickly as possible.

So, assuming we are having a boy, somebody tell me what to name this kid. We have about 20 possible girl names and like, two boy names that we're both kind of "meh" about. Help!

Morning Glory

Well, I have morning something, but I doubt you'd be inclined to call it glory, unless you consider hugging the toilet to be a glorious endeavor. It's a nice image on which to focus (the flower, not the throne hugging) however, when one is attempting to hold onto their cookies in line at the grocery store.

Flowers are pretttyyyyyy

It actually happens at night. Typically I get the first wave around 6pm, and it hums in and out of focus till I go to sleep. There are also the errant sneak attacks that seem to happen for no reason. This morning around 9:30 was particularly bad, but I was also really stressed out, and kind of hungry. What's extra neat about this whole thing (I'm not even sure if I'm being sarcastic here), is that I have yet to actually vomit. I sure would like to. It seems like I might feel better if I could, but no. Just bone tired, achy joints and muscles, and the severe urge to lose my lunch. Don't you worry though, I will be SURE to update everyone the moment I cross that bridge!

I was supposed to have my first ultrasound today. The doctor I see does an early ultrasound, then the regular one at 20 weeks. It had to be rescheduled because the nurse who originally figured out my dates figured them incorrectly. My due date is correct (according to her chart, 10/03/11), but she told me last week that I was almost 6 weeks pregnant. I tried to reason with her, but she wouldn't hear it, so she scheduled the ultrasound for today. I was pleased with that result, since it got me look at the kiddo sooner than I thought I should get one. Turns out that today would have been too early to see anything. Like, ANYthing. A different nurse (I like to think of her as the one with the brain) called me to explain today that, while I was perfectly within my rights to keep my appointment today, it was unlikely that I'd see anything at all; certainly not a heartbeat, and perhaps not even a mushy sac-shaped thing.

So my first ultrasound will, really for real this time, take place on Friday, February 11th at 9:30AM. I'll pop in here afterward to share the first photos of the kiddo. Perhaps by then we can decide on a fun in-utero name. The Whiz is just such a difficult act to follow! Kyle and I had been referring to the baby as FBK (Future Baby Kelley) before it was conceived, and of course there's Iris' idea (Dido/Lola). I guess I've been calling it the kiddo, but that's a little generic, don't you think? I suppose if all of this awesome yakking-esque fun time continues, I might start calling it Captain Gut Muncher or something equally savory.

er. um. woops.

I didn't set out to be intentionally vague on that last post.  I think I was working with the idea that I was maintaining privacy for someone else's baby, but upon further review, I realized there's really no harm in saying that the name in question is August.  The friends who used it actually used Augustus, but the main goal for both of us was to have a kid named Gus, so either way the name is out.  Amos is still in contention, but it rhymes with anus, and I can't decide how much I care about that fact.  Also I don't think Kyle is the biggest fan of it.  He doesn't seem to dislike it, but he doesn't seem to like it, either ya know?  It's the same way I feel about Miles.  It just doesn't really do anything for me...ok maybe it annoys me a little.  Why not name the kid Kilometers?  Are we bound to the English system of measurement?  Just sayin.  

Kyle loves (luuuurves!) the name Guthrie; I can't really move past the "it's not so bad" attitude.  I guess I just can't get over the fact that it already sounds like a nickname without a proper, full name to anchor it.  I like Callum and Calvin, but I would call that child Cal.  I told Kyle that I could see a future in which the two of them are hanging out, I shout one of their names from some other room of the house, and they just stare at each other, trying to figure out if I said Kyle or Cal.  The response would be to blink at one another a couple of times, independently decide that they don't know whose attention I was trying to get, and silently return to whatever it is that they'd been doing before I called out to them, having decided that if I was really serious I'd have shouted louder or something.  Kyle did not disagree with me.  In fact, he might have laughed so hard he turned a little purple while nodding vigorously.  Soooo we're not gonna do that. 

Let's see here - Archer is good but I have this *thing* with names that end in "er."  I actually really like the name Fletcher too, but the "er" thing ruins it for me, which sucks because how cool would it be to have a kid named FLETCH?!?  Answer: very effing cool.  

Finnegan was the first name we ever fell in love with.  The baby name conversation has been ongoing since about five minutes after we started dating, so we've loved that name for a long, long time.  The problem with this now is that there are a large number of kids between the ages of birth and 4 yrs. cropping up with the name Finn.  From what I hear, most of them are named Finley or Finneas (Phinnaeus?), but they're all Finn by the time they're getting involved in social situations and introducing themselves and such.  I think all the Jennifers and Daniels of the world know where I'm going with this.  Even my own name, which was unique when it was given to me, became so popular by the time I was in grade school that I always had to have a modifier in order to be identified.  I was Other Megan, Tall Megan, Weird Megan (for a while, actually...) and Big Megan until I finally just became Muggin, thanks to a set of 3 yr. old twins with interesting speech impediments.  

The only other boy name we're seriously considering is Vincent.  It was my Grandpa's middle name, it's a normal name but it's less common/trendy without being too out there, and its nicknames don't completely repulse me (though please - if we go with this name, no Vince, ok? I hate that name).  So most of its nicknames don't repulse me.  Meh.  

The reason I'm not even bothering with girl names here is that they are just so much easier to come up with.  So far we have discussed Clara, Beatrice, Iris, Elsa, Wren, Nora, Helen, Virginia, ETC!  The list goes on for quite a while and we both like them all.  Kyle's favorites are Iris and Nora and I pretty much like them all equally.  In much the same way that Superman moves so quickly you can't actually see him run, the girl name conversation is so easy to have that we don't even have to have it.