Shannon decided the nursery should be yellow. I was unconvinced, but I didn’t appear to have a say.

Mike and Michelle came over last weekend to do the painting (that’s Mike on the right there). Now that it’s finished, I’m starting to come around. It’s a nice gender-neutral color, and it is kind of pretty.

We’ve started to move things into the room. We bought the crib and the changing table this week (more on that later), and my parents will be in town this weekend to help us put it all together.

This is what the world looked like this morning when we had to leave to get to our second in-office appointment. I was worried that the roads would be terrible and nigh undrivable, as they were last night. As it turned out, it wasn’t too bad. The roads were a bit icy and traffic a bit slow, and there were a few cars (mostly overconfident SUVs) that had slid off the road, but nothing I couldn’t handle. That, by the way, is what the driveway looked like after the snowblower we got last year was done with it – thanks Mom!

Today being Valentine’s Day, it’s fitting that this be the day we first hear the baby’s heartbeat. It’s currently running at 156 beats per minute (I toyed with the idea of titling this post, “It’s a Hummingbird!”). We’re entering the second trimester this week, which is supposed to be much easier to handle. That’ll be nice. I’ll never understand why early pregnancy is all about vomit. Seems counterproductive, somehow. Depending on what she’s wearing, Shannon is either slightly pudgier than usual or obviously well into her pregnancy. In today’s dress, she was the latter, and she got compliments and well-wishes all day long.

For our Valentine’s dinner, we went to our favorite Chinese restaurant. We hadn’t been there since we got pregnant, and the cute couple that owns the place were very excited to have a new customer on the way (we’re regulars, and they know us when they see us). Shannon’s fortune, oddly, was this set of SAT answers. We’ll be sure to put them away in a safe place for later use by the little one.

It’s a Blob!

All these years, I’ve been deceived. Did you know that weeks and days are units which measure, not time, but length? According to the OBGYN at our first visit this morning, the little blob pictured here is roughly 9 weeks, 3 days long as measured from the top of its head to the bottom of its butt.

They call this, I kid you not, the “crown-to-rump length.” Now, don’t get me wrong. If they’d asked me what to call the distance from something’s head to the bottom of its butt, be it a baby or a hippopotamus, it wouldn’t have taken me long to come up with, “crown-to-rump length.” But these are doctors, people. They’re supposed to be sober scientists and professionals whose job it is to heal the sick and save lives. At least they could’ve said it in Latin. (Loginquitas ex flos ut rump, if you’re wondering; they probably would’ve called it the LEFUR.)

So the kid currently has a LEFUR of 9 weeks 3 days, putting us around a week and a half behind where we thought we were. The old due date was August 9, giving us a comfortable buffer between the birth and my brother Michael’s wedding on the 25th. It also left little chance of the baby sharing a birthday with my other brother, Matt, whose birthday is on August 18, and who is stark raving bonkers. Sweet, but bonkers.

We’re now due on August 19. Buffers are overrated, right? And I can work with sweet. I think.

Either this sonogram is really clear, or I’m getting better at reading these things. The baby, for those of you who have trouble, is the little gray blob inside the bigger dark blob in the middle of the picture. Its head is up, its legs are down and off to the left, and you can see the left arm. Imagine Fred Astaire from one of those old movie musicals with his back to you, jumping in the air and clicking his heels together (am I the only one who sees this?).

No other news, really. The OBGYN (a fine medical acronym if ever there was one) was very pleasant in a perky sort of way, and they shoveled more pieces of information on us than when we bought the house (in a nutshell: the obvious things are probably bad for you, most other things probably aren’t, unless they are). All seems well thus far, knock on wood. We go back in a month.

Shannon had her phone consultation this morning. No big deal. Mostly about things she can’t eat (lunch meats, fish, caffeine), things she should avoid (strenuous exercize, cat litter), and she needs to get a flu shot.

Everything else seems fine. Her first face-to-face is January 17.

So I guess I’m on cat box duty for the next nine months. Lucky me.

Here are the details, as far as we know them right now.

• The tentative due date is August 9.
• Shannon has yet to have a face-to-face meeting with a doctor. She has a phone consultation on Wednesday morning.
• Shannon’s feeling fine, except her skin is breaking out.
• We’ll be finding out the gender ahead of time, though the nursery will be pale yellow in any case, no matter what I say.

And that’s really all the news that’s fit to print right now. Watch this space for future updates.

Well, according to two pregnancy tests, we’re pregnant! Shannon took the first one yesterday morning and, lo and behold, there was a second line. Faint, but a second line nonetheless.

So she had me go out to the store and buy another one. It agreed. So I guess it’s official.

We are slightly overwhelmed, but calm. We’ve both been waiting for this to happen for a while now, and I think we’re ready.