February 15, 2007

• Watermelon Baby!

  Those of you who know Johnny well know that he has an alter-ego, Watermelon Man. (Sorry if I'm embarrassing you, sweetie!) There have been entire movie series devoted to Watermelon Man and his buddies. Well, today, I'm proud to introduce to you Watermelon Baby -- at 19 weeks and six inches long, Baby O'Neal is the length of a slice of watermelon, according to my pregnancy countdown book. However, Babycenter.com says it's more like the length of a small zucchini. That seems a bit too phallic to me, though (hey, I'm pregnant, but I'm still depraved!  A big reward goes to the person who can pick my mind up out of the gutter), so I'm going to stick with watermelon slice.

  Edit: Several of you have asked why babies are compared to food in these weekly emails I get from Babycenter (and in the pregnancy countdown books). I think it's probably because that provides an easy reference point for most people -- instead of "the baby's about X millimeters long," it's easier to imagine the size of a grape. Now that it's a measurement in inches, it's also easier to imagine it being as big as a watermelon slice or zucchini (at least for me -- I'm not that great a measurements!). Now, the interesting thing is, did you know that doctors predict the weight of the baby while it's in utero by comparing how your baby feels (when your belly gets big enough) to how a 5-pound sack of flour feels? Crazy, huh?!

  In exciting news, I've continued to feel occasional flutters from Watermelon Baby. Yesterday, I was sitting at work, and there were lots of flutters -- I was so excited! I can't wait for the definite kicks to start. And, it's only eight days until Gender Day! (Yesterday, a coworker asked when I'd find out the sex of the baby, and I blurted out, "Nine days until sex day!" She started laughing, and I realized that that didn't sound so great when shouted out at the office!) Also, baby can hear now -- so we've been talking to it even more. Last night Johnny and I tried our hand at making up a bedtime story to tell our baby. I can't say it was worthy of making into a book, but we had lots of fun making up the story. Besides my conversations with Johnny, I think what the baby hears most during the day is my typing, conversations with my mom (hey, maybe that will give the baby a head start on learning Mandarin!), the Beatles (currently Johnny has a Beatles CD in our RAV4) and the sound of me eating.

  Oh, and a happy belated Valentine's Day to you all! Our Valentine's Day was low-key this year -- we typically don't do it up, since we're pretty cheesy about each other all year round, but Johnny did send me five cards over the course of the day, starting with one on my nightstand when I woke up. I got a single rose, and next week, we are going to dinner at the Melting Pot -- yummy! I got Johnny a small box of See's chocolates and a card. The reason we didn't do our fondue dinner last night was that we had to drop Atari off at my aunt's before leaving for Sequoia with my family. We were going to drop him off tonight, but I had an appointment to have dinner with a client (that ended up being postponed, so instead I have tonight to watch Grey's Anatomy and The Office! And, um, Smallville, a guilty pleasure).

  Tomorrow, we leave for Sequoia with my parents, June and Charles. I have a couple of conference calls to take from home in the morning, but by 10 a.m. I should be free to hit the road! I'll be back next week with some giant tree-hugging pictures.

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