01/02/13

So much has happened in the last few weeks! I've been under the weather with my annual Christmas plague, so now that I'm starting to get out of the vicious DayQuil/NyQuil cycle, I felt like I could write some more.

Let's start with the ultrasound and gender reveal. Our appointment with the doctor was the week after Thanksgiving, and I was able to sneak out of work(!) early that Friday and drive like a madman to Fort Wayne to meet Carrie at the doctor's office. We didn't have to wait long before we were escorted into a small,dark room with a giant crazy ultrasound machine. The techinician slopped on some weird jelly on Carrie's belly and we were off.

The ultrasound was a really interesting experience. They put a magic wand on mommy's belly and you see a crazy swirly black and white x-ray whatsit and then poof! The shape of your baby starts to appear. The machine allows you to essentially see the baby and also see through the baby, depending on how they move it. There were moments where it almost made the baby look like one of the xenomorphs from Alien. A cute xenomorph, though.

Carrie and I held hands while we watched the screen, and I must admit that we both got a little misty. It was my first chance to see the baby move. It was an immense rush of amazing, unmitigated happiness. I don't think I've felt that giddy since we got married. The technician counted limbs and made measurements, then said it looked like a healthy baby.

Then came the moment we were waiting for. We didn't want to wait to find out the gender, partly because we're horrible at waiting and partly because it makes preparation a lot easier when you know what colors and types of things to buy. It's really difficult to shop for gender neutral baby stuff. Fortunately, our Little Turnip was very cooperative and we were able to get a very clear view. No wiener! It's a girl!

We had our name picked out already. We actually had it squared away for a long time before we'd even gotten pregnant (because we're nerds like that). Sylvia Grace Mikaloff. We'll call her Sylvie for short, though. It's a familiar enough name that most people should be able to recognize and spell it, but not so common that there will be six or seven other girls in her class with the same name. I like it because it relates to the forest and trees, and Sylvia (or Rhea Silvia) was the nature goddess and mother of Romulus and Remus, founders of Rome. We didn't want to go with one of those strange postmodern names or the baffling names for girls which are actually last names or the name of spokesdogs for beer companies (sorry everyone who named their daughter Mackenzie, I think about Spuds every time I hear it).

That Sunday we had Carrie's parents and her brother over for lunch and to announce the gender to them. Carrie's dad was so anxious to find out that he kept trying to trick us into slipping up and letting the cat out of the bag by asking us leading questions. We held out, though, and waited until dessert, much to his chagrin. I baked some dark chocolate cupcakes with a strawberry buttercream filling and chocolate ganache on top with a yellow question mark decoration.