well, 142 days into this thing, and we finally know the gender of our baby sparklet … she’s a girl.  and frankly, after 20 weeks of discussions, i am just glad she’s a something.the lady sparkler announced about six weeks into the pregnancy that the baby was going to be a girl.  (she never said how she knew it was a girl, but she just knew.)

i assumed she was just playing the odds based off her ancestry … the lady sparkler is the eldest of three daughters, her mother is the eldest of three daughters, and both her grandmother and great-grandmother were the eldest of three daughters.

that 13 girls in 5 generations.  her maternal line is obviously hostile environment for boy sperm.

anyway, things became unbearable after i let slip that an old-wives-tale predicted that baby-mamas with girls in the pouch craved fruit, while those with boys craved meat. within two days she had “developed” a craving for anything strawberry that she could get her hands on, and it’s still going strong.

of course, i “knew” that — in her fervency — she was dead wrong.  she was so certain it would be a girl, that i knew God would rise up and smite her … if for no other reason than the comedic value.

in fact, she was so certain it would be a girl, that she promised lightingchickknits that if the baby turned out to be a boy, we would name him Aesculapius.

for what it’s worth, i’m guessing that why she’s a girl, because while God likes a bit of Karma … he knew the ramifications of a male heir were truly severe.

but, besides narrowly avoiding destroying the life of our child through name selection, today is a landmark for another reason — it is the launch of our pregnancy’s facebook and twitter strategies.

it seems rediculous, but we actually spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out when it was “appropriate” to social market our little baby sparklet, and few issues sparked as much controversy with our friends to boot.

I’m the end, we decided that it’s been 20 weeks now … which means that we are over halfway to having a real live baby sparklet to mortifyingly embarass.  so why not practice?

with that in mind, here is the pregnancy so far:

• the clothes don’t make the (wo)man — the lady sparkler, and her battles with the maternity-clothing-industrial-complex.
• into the closet, pt 2 — the first true battle with our home renovation / nesting instincts.
• ultrasound — baby sparklet looks great, sounds great, and is already over achieving … and we’ve got proof.
• the longest twelve weeks — i realized early on that i had the potential do a lot of damage in the twelve weeks where i was supposed to avoid talking about the pregnancy.
• yup, we’re pregnant — and yes, we are going to find out the gender, and yes, we are going to pick a boring, anglo-friendly name.
• how i met your mother — the latest in a whole series of posts about how i met and married mama de baby sparklet … preserved for posterity, and mutual embarrassment each major holiday.

and now that we have a gender, i am going to head down to the pub and lift a pint to the fact that there will be no baby Aesculapius asking me what kind of drugs we were on when we picked names.