Hi, I'm Kristie and I'm a Bounce House.

You know those inflatable bounce houses that people rent for their kids' birthday parties and stuff? And the kids get amped up on whatever it is kids eat (yeah, I know, we'll learn...) and drink and then they go inside the bounce house and jump around like this but much much faster (push play):


Yeah. That's me. Oof. During the day, she's either pretty quiet or I'm moving around enough that I'm just not feeling her as much. But when I lay down, or stretch out on the couch and try to relax, this child gets inspired to jump around. A lot. Constantly. She weighs maybe a pound and a half, and she somehow managed to gather up enough velocity to wake me up last night. I am officially nervous about whether she'll be like this once she's on the outside....nice and quiet all day and then she comes to life like a Tasmanian devil once the sun goes down.

This would be a good time for all of our friends who have already done this to tell us their stories about how their active little pre-natal beans got it all out of their systems and were happy little swaddled angels once they came out.

Stalked by the paparazzi

We're starting to realize that Miss Speck is not a fan of having her picture taken. People go to a lot of trouble to record every facet of her development, and she just doesn't cooperate. Like today, for example. Very important milestones needed to be confirmed, and she did her best to make everybody beg for it. She rolled around and flipped and put her arms over what they were trying to look for. But we did get some good shots.

Work with me here...
OK, if you squint a little you can see a big blob that is her head, looking at you (kind of scary, we know). The one little floating circle on the left is her right hand, and her other arm is folded over her chest. She spent most of the exam with her arms up around her head like that, much to the chagrin of the sonographer.

Another head shot. Top of her head is to the right, and the pointy part on the left is her chin. Her nasal cavity has formed, as have her eyelids and ears. Evidently, this is a good picture. We'll take the tech's word for it. She's beautiful :).

Profile! How cool is this!? The white spot above her head is her hand, in a gesture of drama and exasperation (she is my kid, after all...). Look at that little button nose. CUTE.


Another profile, and she's looking away now. You can see more of her torso, and that black spot is her heart. The tech looked at her heart quite a bit, and all four chambers are pumping furiously (136 bpm today...). The sonogram machine has a function that adds color to highlight bloodflow, so this one was all lit up blue and red. Super cool, that.


This is her right foot. The smaller blob behind it is her left foot. She crossed one behind the other like I do. Awww...

So that's where we are today, at 22 weeks. Speck has 10 fingers and 10 toes, and we also got to rule out spina bifida, which is what happens when the skin doesn't cover the spine (there's more to it than that, but visible spine with no skin is a big indicator of Bad Things Happening). Today was also really cool because I could feel her moving around while watching her move on the TV screen. It's just overwhelming. She weighs about 1 pound 1 ounce, and she's about 8 inches long. She's still measuring right where she should. We also re-confirmed in no uncertain terms that she is most assuredly a girl.

I'm back at the perinatalogist in 10 weeks. While I'm bummed that we won't have any new episodes of the Speck Show until November, this means that there's nothing that they're monitoring us for, no issues that we're anticipating, no reason to hurry back. She's healthy and growing, and there's nothing more that we would wish for.

It's Just Rob!

First, a bit of background...

You've all met Rob, a/k/a "Mr Hilarious". Years ago for Halloween, he dressed up as the androgynous character Pat from Saturday Night Live. In case you're not familiar...

The whole premise was that it never was revealed whether Pat was male or female. And it was impossible to guess. Pat's companion was named Kelly, and the sketches were full of clever red herrings. Pat's gender was never revealed.

That is, until now. Yeah, I know. Alarming. Disturbing. Shocking. And, to those who saw it in person, utterly hilarious. Jokes like this don't die in Rob's family. Oh, no; funny once, funny forever. So a few weeks back, before we knew that, unlike Pat, Speck was most assuredly a girl, Aunt Janice, Uncle Ken and Cousin Anna gave us a gift. Rather than tiptoe around the whole "we don't know if it's a boy or a girl" issue, they dove right in.


At that moment, I knew that the in-laws had truly accepted me and were welcoming our child into the hilarious fold that is the Family Berthelotte. Note the authentic wig and glasses. I was, and will forever be, truly touched by the gesture. Naturally, retaliation is both anticipated and expected. We'll get them back in true hilarious fashion.

I'm at the perinatalogist's first thing tomorrow morning, and I should have a slew of cool pictures to post tomorrow night. Check back later!