Surrender the Gender!

Other titles I considered using tonight: "Mission:Cognoscible" (which means 'knowable', which also doesn't really make sense), and the ultrasound tech was not impressed with my saying to Peanut, "Show Us Your Crotch!", so that probably wouldn't have worked either.

It also occurred to me, after reading a magazine article, that a peanut might not actually be a legume, which would be totally embarrassing, a permanent symbol of my literary brashness!
But Merriam-Webster saves me with this: "A low-branching widely cultivated annual herb (Arachis hypogaea) of the legume family."
Phew!

I know I've been kind of slacking on the blog (sorry, Summer!), but I have an excuse. For a while there, between OB appointments and no new developments, it was the only boring period. I considered writing an update called "The Seventeenth-Inning Stretch" (She was in her 17th week; catchy, right?) but procrastinating won out.

Anyway. We are now moving into Week 19, which What to Expect When You're Expecting tells me is the fifth month. Excitement ahoy: we get to see the baby's sex on the ultrasound! Since my dad was driving, we were late (for the record, if Erin "Leadfoot" Heinl was driving, we probably would be dead right now, because I can neither drive nor pay attention to how my actions will affect others on the road).

When we got there, everything was already going: Mom had goo on her tummy, the room was dark and, oh!--two chairs!--for us to sit and patiently watch the screen. After listening to the heartbeat and watching Peanut squirm around, the tech blurts, "Are you ready?"

I don't even have time to get excited. We all say yes. With a few seconds of twisting the handset around, she says:
"It's a girl!"

"It's a Hadley!" My mom says, twisting around and beaming at us. Hadley Joy for the win! Kevin celebrates by remarking how special he is now, being the only dude; Dad celebrates by looking mistily at the screen (which he will probably later deny); and Mom and I celebrate by buying Hadley a huge girl-themed onesie wardrobe.

And if you were wondering, yes, we still sometimes call her Peanut.