21 March 2007

Father Daughter Talks

10:43 p.m., in our darkened bedroom. I am just about to fall asleep when Rodney enters the room, lifts the covers and starts speaking to my belly.

Rodney: Helllooo! Sprout! Sprout!

No answer.

Rodney: Helloo, Niobi! (a name I had rejected about 20 minutes earlier)

No answer.

Me (sleepily): Um, I'm trying to sleep here.

Rodney: Do you mind? I'm having a conversation with my daughter.

16 March 2007

The Name Game

"How about this one?" Rodney asks pointing at the name "Hermione" in the baby name book.

I screw up my face and shake my head. "HER-me-own?" I say incredulously. "Yuck."

"It's Her-my-0h-knee," he says. "I think it's a name from mythology."

Later we learn that it's also the name of the female character in the Harry Potter series, but Rodney and I, being two of perhaps the four people on the planet who haven't read J.K. Rowling's books, don't know this.

Now that we know that we're having a girl, the task of choosing a name is slightly easier, but only slightly. We DO know that her middle name will be Kathryn, after my grandma. That leaves her with the initials _K.Y.

"Well, then "I" names are out," one of my coworkers points out.

I look at her quizzically.

"I.K.Y.? Kids will teaser her mercilessly."

So no "I" names. Isabelle and its varients, while beautiful, are too popular for our tastes. Although R and I both endured a certain amount of teasing because of our names--Hot Rod and the Avon Lady--we both love that our names are unusual without being outlandish.

We're looking everywhere for inspiration, including furniture catalogues. You no longer just buy a sofa; instead, you purchase the Cameron in Paprika. That's not a wingback chair: it's the Avery in Mocha. Looking for a modern bed? Ella in Airbrush may be for you! Finley, Delancey, and Grace can be seating options or your child's name!

Of course, we won't be cracking open the IKEA catalog for ideas. I just can't imagine yelling "Ektorp!" at the playground or scolding little Vreta for flushing her goldfish down the toilet.

01 March 2007

It's a Girl!


Since ultrasound images are notoriously difficult to distinguish, here's a clearer picture of the position she's in:

For the yoga practitioners out there, you'll recognize this as Child's Pose -- how appropriate!

Like her father, Sprout is not a morning person and was very comfortable laying around in the womb with her knees firmly pressed together. Dr. McLaren moved the transducer around my belly pointing out an arm here, a femur there, the four chambers of the heart. In some cases I could pick out the body part he was talking about, but you could've thrown up a radar of a weather system and I wouldn't have known the difference. Finally towards the end of the screening, he focused on a particularly cloudy blob and announced that we were having a girl. Rodney's eyes got that shiny look and we grinned at each other. A girl! And from what he could see, a healthy one, too, Dr. McLaren informed us. Yay!