Photocopied Finger

Regina and I went to the doctor's last week for our second sonogram (which is just the technical term for an ultrasound -- we asked -- and is not to be confused with a Sonicare or a mammogram, unless the technician is extra-thorough). After they dumped half a bottle of green slime on Regina's belly, the technician measured just about everything on our squirmy baby. (We remembered that Dylan, too, was a wiggly baby. I think Regina and I are in for it.)

The coolest thing about our tech was her "working voice." While she looked and clicked and measured, she told us exactly what she was doing in a lilting voice that was like a soft, pleasant song, like something from Sara McLachlan or The Cranberries. "Now I'm measuring baby's kidneys," she'd sing. "Encore!" Regina and would shout as we waved our arms and held up our lighters.

As we neared the end of our concert, I mean appointment, the technician asked if we still wanted to know the gender of our baby. Regina and I aren't into surprises, and we'd already made up our minds that we wanted to know as much as possible about the new roommate we were getting. I looked up at the monitor to see if I could tell before she told us. Every image she'd captured up until then looked nothing like a baby to me. "See the baby's nose," she'd point. "There?" "No, that's MY nose, but nice try," she'd reply. Other, more plausible, options that I saw on the ultrasound's screen were 1) the surface of the moon, or 2) leftover casserole. But a baby? No.

But this time, when she asked the gender question, I glanced up at the screen and saw something that looked like a photocopied finger. I'm no doctor, but I was pretty certain Baby Turtle was a boy. I was right.

With Dylan, we had decided on a boy's name (or, rather, a different name for a boy, since, let's face it, Dylan is kind of a boy's name), but were uncertain about a girl's names. For Turtle, the opposite is true. This means either giving our son a girl's name or that we have only four months to come up with a boy's name. The name negotiations will probably take longer than California budget negotiations, and ours involve thumb wrestling and Google searches.

Dylan, we think, will be happy to have a little brother. After all, there aren't too many girls who are her age around here, so she's used to boys. And, as Maddock pointed out, a little brother will come in handy for deterring young grinders when high school dances roll around (and I won't have to chaperone).

Until then, we'll keep our image of the photocopied finger on the refrigerator and try to convince Dylan that Mommy doesn't have a full tummy, rather, she's having a boieeeee.