Thump thump, bump bump, kabonk, etc.

So I felt the new kid kicking for the first time today. Apparently, s/he has been moving around for a few weeks at this point, but never at a time that I was around. But tonight, s/he was exercising and kicking around a bit. My requests for more movement, spurred by calls of "Hey baby!!" up against Abby's tummy, didn't get any noticeable response.

By the way, we "know" the new kid's gender. Specifically, at the last ultrasound, we were torn about whether or not to learn the gender. On the one hand, knowing the gender would make things much easier - we would only have to decide on one name and would know whether we needed to buy a new wardrobe (although since we didn't know Maggie's gender, we'd be fine for the first few months regardless of the new kid's gender.) And in any case, it can be a surprise now or a suprise later - what's the difference?

But on the other hand, it's kind of exciting to have the doctor yell "We've got a girl!" (or boy!) at the moment of birth. As I may have mentioned in a long ago post, everyone who gave an opinion was convinced that Maggie was a boy. For example, during intermission at a show at the Kennedy Center, a random woman came up and said "Are you having a boy?" When we told her that we didn't know, she said that she was sure our's was a boy since her son "rode" exactly the same way - up high and centered - when she was pregnant. So when Dr. Burke said that she was a girl after pulling her out, my initial reaction was "You must be joking. A girl?" (My follow-up reaction was "Ugh"since as a c-section kid, she was pretty pale and goopy until they suctioned her out at which point she started to wail and pinked up.) All of which was complicated by the fact that, due to our "confidence" about the gender, we had settled on a single boy name, but had (at least) two girl names. At some point while Abby was a bit out of it, I made the executive decision that she was Margaret Claire, and there it was. In any event, it can be exciting to hold off and find out when everything finally happens.

The sense in which we "know" the gender is that we eventually asked the technician to write the gender on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope. I've been carrying around that envelope for the last month or so in a pocket of my gym bag. Abby has said that she would have opened it long ago while my friends at work are stunned that I haven't opened it (and have threatened to steal and open it themselves were it not stored in my gym bag), but I've been able to show an amazing degree of self-restraint. In the end, we may or may not open it, at which point I may or may not post the result on this blog. Stay tuned.