Team BLUE.

It's a boy!

Sorry for making so many of you wait so long... Dave thought we should celebrate by having dinner at a sports bar and watching the All-Star baseball game.

The ultrasound director was quick to squelch the two students' excitement to claim boy, telling us when you can REALLY see, the boy parts look like a turtle. A little while later, we were getting another look at the bladder and kidneys and David says "well, that looks like a turtle to me!" And there it was, plain as day.

Snips, snails and puppy dog tails in our future! Baby BOY Scott is still measuring right on for an early October arrival, somewhere between the 5th and the 11th according to the three ultrasound techs that scanned my uterus for the better part of 2.5 hours. I'm pretty confident we can order the baby blue rug from the JC Penney baby catalogue. :)

Princess Flakes.

I love cereal. Namely--kid cereal. Cocoa puffs, corn pops, cinnamon toast crunch, cookie crisp, lucky charms, golden grahams. I'm typically pretty traditional in my choices and stick with my favorites. David is not a cereal fan and doesn't understand A) Why I must have 3-5 cereal choices at any point in time and B) Why I am 26 years old and refuse to eat grown-up cereal. During a recent half-price cereal sale at Meijer, I decided to go out on a limb and try something new. No, not a grown-up cereal, but Disney Princess Cereal. It didn't look that bad, kinda like frosted flakes, but pink. So I poured myself some cereal yesterday morning only to discover the actual name of the cereal was Disney Princess Fantasy Flakes. Who at Kellogg is snickering right now that they got "Princess Flakes" all the way to grocery store shelves? They weren't that good, but they did turn my milk a delightfully nuclear shade of neon pink, which I enjoyed drinking like strawberry quik.

Today I'm having corn chex.

Baby Cute is having a very active morning. I've said it before, and I'll say it again--Pregnancy is WEIRD. Weird in a miraculous, cosmic, amazing way, but WEIRD nonetheless. Baby Cute isn't big enough for me to know for sure what body part I am feeling, but I definitely felt a shoulder, knee or some other large part this morning a couple of times. I think Baby Cute can sense how excited I am about our ultrasound this afternoon. I hope he/she is excited to show us his/her genitals. I can assure you that this will be the only time I will encourage my first-born to flash strangers.

Baby Cute is still pretty fickle and makes me sit still and put my hand on my belly for "false alarms" pretty often. As he/she gets bigger, I am feeling movement more often, but feeling it from the outside is still the most amazing thing to me. It makes me cry--happy tears, but tears nonetheless. My co-workers must think I am so weird. :)

Everyone keeps asking me how I am doing with the heat. I'm doing really well! I go from air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned office--so I am coping well. Coming back to work yesterday was actually a relief for me as I am pushing myself pretty hard on weekends and end up exhausted and ready to sit still with my feet up and a fan blowing on me for 8 hours/day. I feel really good--great, even. I feel pregnant, yes, but this is the weirdest, most amazing experience I've ever had. There's plenty of time to be whiny and complain in the next three months or so... For right now, I feel all glowy and preggo and good.

The cosmos work both ways.

So we need a new transmission. I kind of knew that, but it still wasn't easy to swallow and tell Mike the Mechanic to move forward. It's as if someone or something in the cosmos knew that I had just written a check to put into our baby savings account and Mike the Mechanic knew that amount + a rental car for a week would just about eat that up.

So I didn't deposit the check, but we will soon have a new transmission. Yippee.

David is almost more worried about it than I am, which is a delightful role reversal. Hey, I figure if the cosmos can know when I have savings and throw this kind of crap my way, the big guy upstairs will also know when we can't handle anymore financial stressors and cut us a break.

One random break was that someone came and picked up our burned out old water heater from the curbside early this week. That was $33 we didn't have to spend for a special permit for the trashmen to pick it up. Wahoo. Every little bit helps.

So we're fine. We'll be fine. It's just money, and there are many more important things to be concerned with right now. Like what you may ask?

On Tuesday, Baby Cute has another chance to flash us the goods. Yes, ladies and gents, on Tuesday the Great Gender Mystery of 2007 just may be solved! I told my co-workers at the baby store today that if Baby Cute doesn't show us the goods at this ultrasound, then we have another chance on July 16. If we STILL don't know, someone please schedule me an epidural and a C-section for October 10 because this baby has a mind of his/her OWN and labor/delivery is NOT going to go smoothly no matter just how much deep breathing, positioning, chanting or begging I do.

My first day back at the baby store in about a month was today. It was good, great even. People missed me--coworkers and guests alike--which is a nice boost. It was slow, but I saw three of my favorite couples, one of whom has a 16-month-old! They were one of the first couples I helped register, so that just shows you how fast time flies. There were also lots of very hot pregnant women coming in for tank tops and shorts and some coupon savvy folks cashing in on the one-day overlap of the Babies R Us and Toys R Us coupon book sales. Hey, if I didn't need a new transmission I may have indulged myself.

But instead of shopping we registered, adding the baby basic stuff like bottles and bathtubs and breastpumps when I got off at 4pm. David was much better at the big stuff--strollers, carseats, cribs--than he was at the little stuff. He just didn't understand why I couldn't decide between gauze or birdseye cloth diapers for in-the-house burp rags and why we had to register for cute patterned burp rags for being out-and-about. Some things are just unexplainable to my husband. He did personally select the diaper bag and found some Detroit Tigers pacifiers and "Barn Buddy" toys that he felt Baby Cute "needed," so it couldn't have been all bad for him.

Just when I thought David was going to have a meltdown if I didn't pick birdseye vs. gauze in less than 10 seconds Baby Cute got active and gave Daddy Cute's hand a nice kick. This baby is smart, all right. Chanting and deep breathing may just get us through labor after all.

So we're mostly done registering. There are still some boy vs. girl decisions to be made about blankets and a few other little things, but the bulk of stuff is done. It is pretty overwhelming, so I have much more sympathy for the befuddled-looking preggos who just stand and stare at the bottle wall. I was one of them today.

Overall, we had a nice weekend. We worked around the house Saturday morning before it got blazing hot and Dave worked a wedding from 3pm-1am. This gave me plenty of time to shop for some preggo khaki shorts, a bridal shower gift for next weekend and enough Hallmark cards to choke a large horse. I do love shopping, although I pushed it too hard and fell asleep so deeply when I got home that David's 10+ calls to my cell phone went unanswered so he had to bum a ride from the president of the Eagle's Aerie where he was working because I slept through his calls for a ride home. Ooops. At least I left the side door open...

Here is a pic of our hilarious little rental car, the Hyundai Accent. Ours is black. Giggle away--but we actually fit in it quite comfortably. It is zippy and fun to drive and good on gas. It sounds only remotely like a lawn mower. Plus, it goes down the road which is more than I can say for my Beloved Belinda the Bonneville.

Aaaaah, Snack Pack.

Still no official word on the car, but I am feeling better. There is very little in my world that can't be helped by some advice from my Dad and a jello pudding snack (or two).

Baby Cute is also having a very acrobatic afternoon, which makes me stop, put my hand on my baby belly and remember what's really important.

(Perhaps) The sun will come out tomorrow...(maybe)

My car is broken. We had to have it towed this morning and it sounds like the transmission is shot. We had to rent a car. I've had better mornings.

I got to play with my friends Mack and Cat yesterday, it was most excellent. I also got to play with Baby Ally Crankypants. She is 9 months old, and rather tempermental, but absolutely adorable. She reminded me why I love 9-month-old babies in all of their giggly, squirmy, smiley, rolley glory.

Broken car or not, the pregnancy goes on. 26 weeks yesterday. This is the last week of my second trimester.

BabyCenter: Your baby now weighs a little under 2 pounds and measures about 14 inches, from head to heel. The nerve pathways in her ears are developing, which means her response to sounds is growing more consistent. Her lungs are developing now, too, as she continues to take small breaths of amniotic fluid — good practice for when she's born and takes that first breath of air. If you're having a boy, his testicles are beginning to descend into his scrotum — a trip that will take about two to three days.

Baby Gaga: At long last, your little swimmer can see the womb! Your miracle’s little eyelids have finally separated (they were fused closed previously) and they’re probably having their first moments of sight as you read this (or maybe it already happened while you were brushing your teeth or watching Oprah or something). In addition to seeing their little studio in your belly, they’ve recently acquired the ability to say “yes” and “no” in rudimentary sign language as they can now move their head back and forth. This is also the time where your little super star’s head hair is starting to grow! A cute little cowlick or two may be springing into position right now, getting ready for years of cute-but-stubborn bed-head. Also, their toenails have grown in and you little raisin continues to slowly pile up fat beneath their still-loose skin. Most importantly, brain tissue and neurons are all developing at a rapid pace, increasing their (genius-level?) brain activity and will continue to function at accelerated levels for the first seven to eight years of childhood!

My first slideshow attempt...

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One Word at 100 Days To Go: Overwhelming.

Just 100 days until Baby Cute is scheduled to arrive and I feel amazing. David and I are truly blessed with the most generous, wonderful parents. I remember being overwhelmed with gratitude when we moved to Charlotte, when I graduated college and the bleachers came alive as I accepted my diploma, when we got married, when we hit our bumpiest of patches last summer and fall, when we were shopping for houses, when we bought our house, when we moved to Lansing and countless points in between.

This weekend was the exclamation point to a lifetime of love David and I have received from our parents.

I'll do a full update and photos later this week when I have more time to download and fiddle with the pictures, but in short--Oh My God. The nursery floors are a gleaming, vintage yellow pine spectacle of beauty, my neighbors can no longer see in my dining room thanks to classy new roman shades, ALL of my boxes have been unpacked, the man room is rearranged to perfection, the spare room is now a functional office as well as a welcoming guest room, there are TOMATO plants in my newly tilled garden, my gutters are cleaned out, my deck stairs newly functional, my laundry room modified to fit the new chest freezer, I am no longer in danger of being tangled in the climbing rosebush near my deck and I can now SIT on my deck thanks to two lovely hand-me-down chairs. There is even more, but you get the gist--Oh My God!

I feel overwhelmed. I don't know what David and I did in our present or past lives to deserve such generosity of time, talent and treasure, but we fully intend to pass on that intense love and devotion to family to our children.

In other wonderful news, Baby Cute is now a regular Daddy-Kicker! David finally got his first kick on our way home from breakfast on Saturday morning. We were sitting at a stoplight, and when I felt the first kick I grabbed David's hand and put it on my stomach just in time for Baby Cute to give a well-placed thump. Way to go Baby! He felt it again during some late evening acrobatics on Saturday night and during the movie Knocked Up last night.

Knocked Up! Oh my God, it was SO good! It was a perfect movie for David and I to see, period. After such a busy, crazy, wonderful weekend it was the ideal way to end it.

Back to work today--I feel so refreshed and excited about life in general.

Thanks Moms and Dad and Dave. You are the most amazing parents and are well on your way to becoming the most amazing grandparents, too. We love you!