Pop!

Now that we know you're a boy, Batman, I feel a little awkward writing to you about pregnancy-related, womanish stuff. Then again (and I should just come out and own this now before your father tells you and you get ticked off at me), I did post the ultrasound picture verifying the maleness of your junk on Facebook....also here:

 

Look at that adorable little set of boy-parts! Okay, now that you're probably ready to curl up in an angry little ball, I think I've proven my point that neither shame nor gender boundaries really mean a whole hell of a lot to me. Moving on...

Sometime in the last week, I rounded the corner from looking like I might possibly be kind of chubby to pretty much definitely looking pregnant. I still have had no strangers or even relative strangers go for the belly - I'm ready to scream if someone does - but now there is clearly something to go for. This caught me off-guard, I'm not going to lie, but it is pretty damn cool.

Your Dad and I needing something to do last night, seeing as we're finally starting to crawl out from under our "holy crap something is up with our baby and we're processing this shit out" rock, so we opted for dinner at Duckfat (massive pile of amazing fries and paninis...oh yes) and a leisurely wander around the mall. Now, we're definitely not mall people. We've both worked at the mall, your Dad for longer than I, and it is not exactly somewhere we go running when we want relaxation or entertainment. Hell, we tend to do our best to even avoid shopping there when we can. If and when we end up at the mall, it's typically for either a very specific purpose or because we just need somewhere to walk and it's crappy weather outside. 

Last night, it was mostly the latter, but we concocted the former: I need a new phone, so we poked around at phones (which affords your father greater pleasure than your average horny college boy gets at an all-nude nymphomaniacal NFL cheerleader store), then wandered over to Macy's with the intent of buying a meat grinder attachment for my KitchenAid stand mixer. Boy, we know how to have a good time, don't we? The grinder attachment ended up being too pricey, so this glorious perambulation ended with a lengthy ramble through the kitchen section where we made om-nom-nom monsters out of Martha Steward silicone mini-mitts, debated the relative merits of different styles of ice cream scoops, and openly taunted people who require the use of electric knives for anything other than short-range murders of deaf people. 

Right at the edge of the kitchen goods is the children's clothes section. While cautiously assessing some insulated travel mugs, the most marvelous thing caught the corner of my eye. It was a hat. It was a unicorn. It was a UNICORN HAT. I had to put it on my head. There were some other critter hats, too, so naturally your Dad wandered over to try one as well. We ran for the nearest mirrors, and after assessing that yeah, the hat really was just a little bit too silly for me to wear with any regularity, I noticed this obviously pregnant lady in a unicorn hat staring back at me. 

Seriously. That is not fat...that is you, Batman. I've seen plenty of women who are so tiny before they get pregnant that even a few months in, you can see a cute little bump that is clearly a baby. That was never going to be me. There are also those women who just don't really look pregnant at all, either because they're heavy to begin with or because their shapes just sort of make a baby fade in...or disappear. I knew that wouldn't be me, but I didn't expect to make it through a pregnancy without putting on some seriously unsightly weight. Maybe owing to how horrendously sick I was in the beginning, and maybe because I just haven't had THAT much of an appetite lately, but I haven't put on much weight since you came along. 

Suddenly, there you are: pop. Just a little Bat-bulge, clearly and obviously another human being and not too many duckfat-fried potatoes. You've been kicking around like nobody's business, and now you're on display for all to see.