the creepy man that sneaks into your house at night

As opposed to last year, Lydia decided Santa is The Scary Man Extraordinaire. What a nice set of molars you have there, child!

Sputnik is . . . aptly named?

This past Friday I had an appointment for a screening test. It's basically an ultrasound and bloodwork to check for chromosomal abnormalities. No biggie, we did the same thing with Lydia mainly because, hey!, another ultrasound. Why not.

With Lydia we went downtown but now they're offering the test at our hospital so the drive's a bit easier. So in the ultrasound room we go, the tech gooks up the wand and asks, "If we're able to tell the sex of the baby, do you want to know?"

Uh, okay, sure. But at 12 weeks? Good luck with that, lady.

So off she goes to get her pictures and measurements. Sputnik is just as cooperative as Lydia was in utero. Then she says, "Okay, based on the angle of this here and yada yada yada, it's a boy. Welcome to the world of Star Wars."

A what? For real?

No fooling?

See, Steven and I have been living in the Land of Pink for about two years now, and we've just gotten used to that. So we're kinda floored, actually.

The doctor came in a few minutes later and said that was his guess as well. I asked him how sure he was and without missing a beat he replied, "95% sure." Then Sputnik proceeded to curl up in a ball like a cat while the doctor unsuccessfully tried to get a profile shot of his face for the actual screening test.

So, there you have it. I'm not about to paint the nursery yet or anything, but . . . Star Wars and Pokemon and whatever else it is boys like. God knows I have no clue right now. We have baby dolls and tea sets over here.

christmastime for tacos

At Christmas last year Lydia was not yet mobile so I had no far for all my Christmas trimmings and trappings. This year, however, I had a great anxiety about how the now-running Lydia would behave with the tree. After all, it's practically a toy-laden conifer in the eyes of a toddler.

When the tree went up this year I was very particular about which ornaments went where -- the few non-breakable ornaments went towards the bottom and everything else went higher-up, out of reach. Last year I had even labeled a box of extra-breakable ornaments "Nervous Ornaments 2008" -- they didn't even go on the tree this year.

Surprisingly, except for one backflipping-of-the-couch-into-the-tree incident, Lydia has done very well with the tree. She knows not to mess with it and she mainly gets a kick out of pointing out all the ornaments and naming them to us: 'birr,' 'durr,' 'dada,' 'ca-T,' 'FFFF,' 'OOOH!' (Translation: bird, door, Santa, cat, tree, 'It's all so pretty!')

sputnik likes oreos

I'm eating little mini Oreos this morning because Sputnik apparently likes them. I usually don't, or I at least scrape out the cream filling for disposal. If I gain 80 pounds, it's all Sputnik's fault.

I had a quick little checkup yesterday and everything's peachy. Slowly but surely I think the nausea horribilus is ebbing -- I went all the way from Monday to yesterday afternoon without taking a Pill of Awesome. Twelve pills left.

Looking forward to January and the beginning of the boring second trimester. I like the part where I'm hungry and can stomach water again.