Ultrasound

We had the twenty week ultrasound today.  There were measurements taken, organs evaluated, and blood flow observed.
First off, everything still looks good and is measuring within normal parameters.  The stuff that can be measured that is.
No confirmation on the pasty thing.
The radiologist, or whatever it is that you call the doctor who specializes in reading ultrasounds pretty much sucked.  She had the bedside manner of...
Okay, an effective analogy is eluding me right now, but her bedside manner was completely shitty.  She wasn't rude or anything, she just displayed about as much personality as a room at Holiday Inn (I wonder if those folks use Google Alerts, hey, Michael from Home Depot Customer Care Center, do you know?).  This is the person that is supposed to tell you that everything is alright with the baby.  And she did do that, but she clearly wasn't happy about it.  I know, I know; she's also the one that gets to tell us if there's something drastically wrong with the baby, and doing that job probably wears on you after a while and skews your interactions with people.  Nevertheless, you'd think that she'd be happy to have the opportunity to tell people that there's nothing wrong, and she didn't seem to be.
Up until now, everyone that we've dealt with has asked us if we want information framed in numbers or anecdotes.  In other words, do we want to know that there's a one in x chance of something being horribly wrong, or do we want to know it in terms of likely or unlikely or really unlikely or whatever.  This is an important distinction, because if you're a scientist like Kate is you might fixate on the numbers in a way that's less than productive.  Knowing this, Kate's been asking for information to be framed anecdotaly.  That's better for me too, since, having never gotten past high school geometry, numbers don't really work for me.
Well, Dr. Chuckles didn't get the memo, and just gave us numbers on something that we'd been told before was unlikely.  Without asking.  It's still unlikely, but we didn't have the math that arrived at unlikely before.  Now we do, and it upset Kate.  In case you're wondering, Kate held her shit together very well in exam room, and didn't indicate to anyone including me that she was upset.  So, no, I'm not writing this from a jail cell awaiting arraignment on charges of ripping off Dr. Chuckles's arm and whacking her upside the head with it.  And no, I'm not going to go into more detail about what's unlikely, and what the numbers are.  It's unlikely enough that betting that way would be really stupid if they were odds on something.  All the numbers would do is add stress, and, in spite of what Dr. Chuckles seems to think, we don't need it, and neither do you.
Baby has all it's digits in all the right places.  It's an active little bugger, we got to see it make fists, press it's face up against the ultrasound probe, and stick it's tongue out at us (it really did, the tech was finding the eye sockets, and just as she found them the baby stuck it's tongue out at us).  It has a spine, stomach, heart with the right number of chambers and normal pulse rate, kidneys, and brain.
Okay.  I'm dragging this out for the sake of drama at this point...
It also has a penis.  I won't post the ultrasound image of it's unit, I'm saving that for the pre-prom slide show, but it's very clearly a boy.
I wonder if somebody's Google Alert is going to go off on the word penis.
Penis.
Home Depot (if that's not making sense to you you need to go back a few entries).
Okay, so now that we know this and have announced it, here's a couple of preemptive statements...
We don't know what we're naming him.  It probably won't be Ecclesiastes Marimba in the end (though I'll keep trying to convince Kate on that one, I'm going to lose that fight eventually).  We have some ideas, and we will likely even discuss them in person if you ask, but I won't likely be discussing it here too much or at all.  We'll just announce it when he's here.
Per our agreement, he'll be a Nessel rather than a Washabaugh.
We're not going to do a whole lot of traditional gender role sorts of things.  So, please, no blue stuff.  At least, no blue stuff just because it's blue and that's the color for little boys.  The room is going to be brown, and we're leaning towards earth tones (browns and greens) for furniture and bedding and such.  Kate thinks that this will make the little guy more likely to like nature and camping, and that might work for the non-Jewish half of him, but I'm not going to hold my breath over it.
The kid has a good chance of being an athlete, both sides of the family are athletic, but I intend to encourage him to play with dolls and I will teach him how to cook (a skill that I first learned from my dad).  Kate will teach him to use a hammer and tape measure.
And possibly how to neuter a dog.
Speaking of the Jewish half, we will circumcise him, but Kate wants that done on the first day, not the eighth, and that's okay with me, since by [badly needing to be revised] Jewish law this kid won't be in the club anyways.  Also, evidently there's only one mohel in the entire city.  That's something that I think I'd be more comfortable with if I had more than one choice of service provider.
But if you rub it, you get a valise.
If the above statement doesn't make any sense to you, ask someone you know who's a Jewish man.
Anyhow, Kate is likening that to removing the dew claws from a puppy, and says that it's cruel to wait the eight days, it should be done as early as possible.
I have no opinion on that one.  On the one hand, I don't remember my own, so it couldn't have been that traumatic.  On the other hand, if I was asked do I want the tip of my penis cut off today or eight days from now, I'd probably opt for the latter.  And then get the hell out of town.
I've heard the arguments against it, and for it, by the way.  I'm not interested in debating this one.
To borrow from the pro-choice folks (I feel okay doing that because we are pro-choice folks), you don't like circumcision, don't get one for yourself or your kid.
So, there we go.  It's a boy.  It's healthy and normal, as far as we can tell or test for.