We did our 3D ultrasound today (at Waves 3D in Hiawatha). I’m not convinced by the terminology; it’s still a 2D image, but it does have more contouring and shadowing than a traditional ultrasound.

Unfortunately, our face shots weren’t great, because the umbilical cord kept floating in front of Bisqui’s face. However, we did get excellent angles on some important (yet not very aesthetically interesting) anatomical areas; everything looks great in the spine, kidneys, heart, and brain. Also, I got confirmation that the pressure I keep feeling on the right side of my ribs is, in fact, a little butt.

Here are a few face shots.

The first one is my favorite, because of how his/her hand is up by his/her face.

Some video:

Click image below for a couple of clips. The first is a 2D in which you can see the beating heart, and Bisqui brings a hand up toward his/her face. The second is a 3D without much interesting movement but kind of cool looking.  Sorry for the watermarks; I’m at home and thus using demo versions of video capture software.

Edited to add:  seriously?  These videos don’t work in IE for Windows?  And here I thought Flash video was the gold standard of cross-browser/platform compatibility.  That sucks.  I recommend you get a real browser.

Taking inspiration from Danny’s blog: if I were forced to evacuate my home and had 15 minutes to pack, what would I bring with me?

1. If it seemed at all likely that I would be giving birth while evacuated, I guess I’d bring diapers. The baby won’t need clothes, necessarily; he/she can just hang out in a diaper under my shirt.

2. Shirts, large enough for baby storage. I saw this hilarious ad in a hippie parenting magazine for a tank top that actually contains an inner pouch for a baby, but I’m not finding a picture of it online. I don’t own one, but if I did, I’d bring it.

3. Laptop + charger. I back up most of my stuff online, but I would still want it. Which reminds me, I have some backing up to do.

4. Lip balm. A person’s lips get chapped, and you don’t want to bum that off some stranger you meet in the emergency shelter.

5. Toothbrush, toothpaste, hair comb. No need to have bad breath. The hair comb’s for Denny because he hates having hat head.

6. Blankets and pillows. I like a lot of blankets and pillows, and I’m too picky about them to want to use emergency shelter-issue ones.

7. Scissors. You’d be surprised at how often you need to cut stuff.

8. Comfortable shoes. Any other items of clothing that are durable, practical, and comfortable, like jeans and sweatshirts. This isn’t a fashion show, people.

Apparently the comment spammers have thwarted my filters, because I’ve been getting a lot lately.

In an effort to reduce that, I’m now requiring name and email address for commenting.  Your email won’t be published, but hopefully the spammers won’t get past it.  I don’t want to go to “login required” mode, so we’ll see how long this works.

I keep reading and hearing that you can interact with your baby while it’s still in utero, such as by poking your belly and it might poke back.

This has never worked with Bisqui. I think he/she doesn’t want to play those reindeer games. I imagine him/her sitting in there with a tiny monocle, carefully inspecting the colors and textures of the placenta, finding my prods to be juvenile and irritating.

Last night, however, Bisquito had his/her first obvious response to a stimulus. While we slept, I was cuddled up behind Denny, and he gave a loud cough that made his body jerk. A nanosecond later, Bisqui gave a kick right on the adjacent surface, as if startled.

Denny felt bad when I told him, but I think it’s okay for Bisqui to learn about the fact that people cough. It’s a cruel world.

Apparently Denny and I are the only people enjoying Heroes this season.  It seems to be getting poor reviews, but I don’t care.  I liked the old-timey Japan sub-plot, the new characters, and the fact that just because someone dies, it doesn’t mean you’re never going to see him/her again.

An unrelated-yet-exciting anecdote:

I was sitting in a meeting this morning, and I touched my hair and felt what seemed like a big booger.  Fortunately, it was not.  Denny’s cold has been making him cough a lot at night, so in an effort to avoid sleeping on the couch or guest room (which I have offered to do but he won’t let me) or demoting him to the couch or guest room (which he has done, but I feel bad about it), I decided to try out the ear plugs Denny got for pre-Christmas.

They are squishy silicone things, and as I fiddled with them it crossed my mind that it was sort of like squeezing tiny breast implants.  They worked pretty well, but apparently a glob got stuck in my hair and survived my morning shower and hair-comb.

Wait, maybe this wasn’t exciting.  It was the most exciting thing that happened to me today, except for a prenatal appointment in which I got the results of my gestational diabetes test.  I would like to publicly thank my pancreas for being freaking AWESOME.  You go, little pancreas.  My blood pressure was also fine, Bisquito has a nice heartbeat, and appears to be head-down.  Let’s hope he/she doesn’t get any wacky ideas over the next 10 weeks and we’ll be in business.

Highlights from the weekend:

Good food, and lots of it.  I got to see lots of family, including cute kids (see previous post for photographic evidence of one).  We did an early Christmas gift exchange, because my cousin is due to give birth in January and doesn’t want to be traveling during actual Christmas season.  We had fun and gave/received some cool things, including a diaper bag (from my grandparents) and ear plugs (from my cousin).

We also made a Babies R Us trip with my parents and Denny’s mom, who were kind enough to give us early Christmas gifts of some nice baby gear.

Lowlights:

Holy crap, I am freaking huge.  My ribs are getting kicked, I can only sit in certain positions, getting up out of a chair is hard, and I haven’t even bothered trying to wear shoes that aren’t slip-ons.  And I still have 10 weeks left.  And those are the 10 weeks with the most noticeable size changes in me.  Um…yeah.

Denny got sick.  I’m still healthy thus far, but I’m trying to do a lot of handwashing. He had some really gross phlegm this morning that he was kind enough to show me.  I think he’s on the upswing, though—he was much better today than he was yesterday.

Now it’s back to work.  This is going to be kind of a busy week, lots going on.  Woosh.

I don’t know how he/she did it, but that little fish is ambitious.

Today is slow, with so many people already out for Thanksgiving. We’re heading to Denny’s family’s celebration tomorrow, then to my family’s on Friday, then to an early Christmas on Saturday. We also need to go to Babies R Us on Saturday to pick up some Bisquito-related items. I am looking forward to the cuteness but not the crowds, no way no how.

I hope it’s not all too exhausting. I feel like I get tired moving my arms around these days.

Found in a very little-used cabinet in the office kitchenette.

Click to view full-sized and truly appreciate the grossness of coffeepot.  I’m not a neat-freak, but seriously—have some standards.

Thank you, Internet, for giving me this.  (Warning:  contains some offensive language and multiple unprecedented ethnic/cultural stereotypes.)

On Sunday I did something that is a very rare occurrence in my life:  I attended a Hawkeye sporting event.

Denny got some tickets to the men’s basketball game from his boss, so I went with him.  It was actually pretty fun.  I like basketball as a sport, but I never wanted to go before due to not wanting to support a certain coach and player.  But now both those individuals are gone, so it was safe.

My favorite player was Looby, for these reasons:

1.  His name is fun to say.  LOOOOOOOO-by!

2.  He is from Antigua.  I would like to visit Antigua.  If I were from Antigua I would probably not move to Iowa, so it’s interesting that he made that choice.

3.  He dunked 3 times.

I hope he is a nice person.  I don’t know anything about him except for the aforementioned three facts.  He didn’t seem overly bad-attitudy or foul-y.

Also, my shirt is on backward.  It’s blowing my mind.  Whhhoooao!

My 1000th post, and it’s all about boobs! And not in the way that most of you fellows hope it is; sorry(ish).

So…all you moms out there, how did you know what size nursing bra to get? I want to have at least one before the baby is born, because the idea of going to the mall (which makes me grumpy on a good day) with a newborn (all those germy people!) and little sleep is a horrifying proposition.

Are nursing bras sized such that you buy your normal size, but they’re extra stretchy or something? Or do you have to do an entire size reevaluation? I bet they get dirty faster than regular bras, too, so it would be a good idea to have a fair number of them so they can rotate in and out of the laundry.

I don’t even know what’s going on with this woman. It looks like her chest is wearing Oakleys.

This, my friends, is my 999th post since I moved to WordPress. It’s exciting in the same way it’s fun to watch one’s odometer hit a milestone, or to watch the counter make pretty patterns on the DVD player when the movie is boring.

Whoops, I need to make some copies for my 10:00 meeting. Maybe I’ll see you again on the 1k side.

I ended up making both.

Quick survey:

If you were going to be attending a Project Runway season premiere party with me tonight, with which of the following would you like me to fill mini puff pastry shells?  It’s going to be puff pastry because I’ve already thawed it out.

1.  Lemon curd with a dollop of whipped cream and a raspberry
2.  Some sort of  ganache and/or chocolate mousse situation,  maybe with pecans because I have some (plus for ganache:  super quick and easy)
3.  Some kind of cheesecakey filling (minus:  I’ve never tried to put a cheesecake filling in puff pastry before and I might ruin it)

I’m wearing a snug-fitting top today, and for the first time, I’ve been able to see my abdomen move when Bisquito kicks.

It is trippy as hell, let me tell you.

I think Bisqui may have turned head down, because I’m feeling a lot more movement up around my ribs, which is probably also why I can see it, because there’s less padding there than on my lower belly. It’s cute now, but I could see it getting really uncomfortable when Bisqui weighs another six pounds.

If I can catch him/her in the act tonight, I’ll videotape it with the camera my brother so kindly gave me (thanks, Uncle Tyler!).

Indeed, ever paragraph of this post began with the letter I.

I have a retreat from noon-5 today, so I need to update quickly before I forget.

In this context, a retreat is just a really long meeting. I thought retreats were something like going out into the wilderness with your coworkers and doing trust exercises or something, but that’s not the case here. I think we should at least get pedicures or something, but I’m pretty sure it’s just going to be more of what we usually do in these organizational meetings, but with more time dedicated to doing it.

The weekend was nice. We put together the changing table, so Bisqui’s room now has all the basic furniture. We started to hang up art, but it turns out Denny and I have slightly different approaches to such tasks. Quotations in bold were actually uttered (though I’m probably paraphrasing); the remainder I’ve extrapolated from what I believe we were each thinking.

Aprille: “Let’s just hang it up, and if it looks bad, we’ll change it.”

Denny: “But what if we want to bring in that extra storage unit? That’s going to affect the placement on the wall.”

Aprille: “Yep, sure is.”

Denny: “…”

Aprille: “That’s the case in which we’d change it if it looks bad.”

Denny: “But we just painted these walls. I don’t want to hammer more nail holes in than necessary.”

Aprille: “I promise we’ll use the laser level.”

Denny: “I need to think about it some more.”

Aprille: “If we’re seriously not going to hang up any art, I’m going to go do something else.”

Denny: “Okay.”

So…4 of the 9 art units are on the wall, and the remaining 5 are in the crib. I hope we get them up before Bisqui is born.

I got my first flu shot of my life today. They’re strongly recommended for pregnant women and caregivers of small children, so Denny and I both got them, since it will still be flu season by the time he’s a caregiver of a small child.

Denny got his at work, but I got mine at the clinic. I got a special mercury-free one that’s apparently safer for preggies. That’s cool and all, but another motivator was the fact that I’d be able to get the shot while sitting down and not being rushed. I get all passy-outty in those situations where there’s a giant line of people, and the health people just shoot you in the arm as you walk by.

That’s the kind Denny got, because our job provides them for free. I tried to go a couple of years back, but just seeing the environment made me start to faint, so I turned around and left. Actually I stopped for a few minutes in a nearby chair to get my bearings, and then I left.

Today’s wasn’t so bad, though. The various people who told me you can’t feel the needle going in lied to me, but I survived. The things I do for Bisquito. I don’t want to talk about all the other unpleasant things I plan to do for him/her in about three months’ time.

I also had my gestational diabetes test, which was no biggie. I had to drink a beverage that tasted like extra-sweet Orange Crush. I’d heard horror stories about it making a person feel disgusting, but it didn’t bother me. Then I had to wait around until an hour had passed, after which time I got a blood draw to see how my system responded to the sugar rush. The midwives are going to call me today if I flunked, in which case I’d have to go in for a more robust test (apparently this first one has a high rate of false positives).

I hope I don’t flunk. We passed a coffee stand on the way back to the car that had really good looking cinnamon rolls. The idea of 3 months without those is daunting.

EDITED TO ADD:  It’s 4:59 and no phone call.  They tell me no news is good news.  Let’s hope.

My friend Ben sent this link, which made me feel better.  Also, I didn’t get fired and my boss has forgiven me (I think).

ALSO (and I say this absolutely not in a gift-grubbing spirit, just a “this is cool, check it out” spirit):  Robeez baby shoes, which are about the cutest thing in the whole world, is doing a promotion until November 15 in which you buy a pair of shoes and they donate another pair to a child in need.

If you know of any little feet that could use adorable shoes, now’s the time to buy them.

For what it’s worth, I love these especially:

I have already purchased these:

Pardon me while I die from the cuteness.

Hooooo boy.

Let’s say there’s this pretty prestigious, high-visibility project you’re on, and there’s a listserv for the purpose of communicating with many people all over your organization about the project.

Let’s say you send an email to that list, and you accidentally make an error in it.

Let’s say your colleague notices the error, and he sends a reply correcting that error. He meant to send it privately to you but accidentally sent it to the whole list.

Let’s say you don’t notice and reply with the text “Go**amn stupid everything,” only without asterisks. Your reply also goes to the whole list. Let’s say your boss and your boss’s boss subscribe to that list.

I haven’t had morning sickness at all in this pregnancy, but right now I want to puke.