Maybe Kick-boxing (Sport of the Future)

I'd been starting to wonder a bit if it was normal that I wasn't feeling the baby move. I had had a couple of moments over the last few weeks (and really just a couple) when I thought maybe I was feeling movement. But when it happens once and then not again for a week, it's really hard to say!

Yesterday, I was working at my computer and, in the back of my mind, I noticed a muscle twitch near my belly button. Then it occurred to me that maybe that wasn't a muscle twitch after all! I looked down, just in time to see a little tiny bit of my sweater jump! Now that I can identify that feeling, that baby's really going to town in there! Mr. X is still on his business trip, so I called and told him, and we're trying to figure out what this baby's up to. He, of course, believes we have a future soccer player on our hands, but I think we may have a swimmer practicing flip turns.

Just a few more days till the ultrasound! Once we know the sex of this baby, I think we'll need to really get serious about names. We've tossed a few around, and we generally have the same sort of taste in names (generally good, solid names with family connections). Mr. X has a lot of great suggestions, and some I'm . . . not as crazy about (Melchizedek? Really?), but I have plenty that he's not crazy about (but, of course, all of my suggestions are lovely and completely reasonable :-> ). We're both fairly convinced that the in-utero baby is a girl. I'm not entirely sure why, but it was confirmed by an expert last week--the saleslady at T.J.M.a.x.x.

So, before I left for my business trip, we made an emergency shopping trip to said store, because I read in Baby Bargains that they're a good choice for maternity clothes. I had exactly one hour to shop, and, never having shopped for maternity clothes before, I never realized that our local T.J.M.a.x.x doesn't have a maternity section. Great. I asked the lady behind the jewelry counter, and she said, no, they didn't carry maternity clothes, but I should be able to find something that works. So. Mr. X and I started looking and found some dresses and tops in styles that might conceivably work. I tried on a cute red knit dress. It fit really well, had an empire waist, and was gathered in the front, so it would have worked . . . except for the plunging neckline that made it totally inappropriate for work or church, the two main places I might need to wear a dress.

I came out of the dressing room to show him anyway (hey, at least my husband can appreciate the low neckline, right?), and ended up standing right in front of the jewelry counter. The same lady was standing there and said she liked the dress. Then, she said "So, you're having a girl." I said "Really." She turned to Mr. X and said, "Oh, yes, because she has a derriere! Look! See how it sticks out?" Uh-huh. OK . . . so, we talked about the dress a little more, and whether we could do anything about the neckline to make it more appropriate. The lady said, "Turn around!" And, silly me, thinking she wanted to see the back of the dress, I did. She pointed. "There! See? See her derriere?" Oh my goodness, lady, this is not how to sell clothes! Don't point at a woman's behind in the middle of T.J.M.a.x.x!

We did not buy the dress, but, just as panic was setting in, Mr. X found me two very nice tops in the blouse section, and I had something decent to wear on my business trip.

(By the way, I haven't been writing about adoption stuff really at all. It's not because I'm not excited about it or because it's not going well. Actually, things are going quite well, but I'm so nervous that it won't work out! I'm writing everything down both so that I can post it here later and so that I can share it with our baby once he's old enough to hear about it, but I just can't bring myself to write about it publicly right now because it feels too risky. So, I decided that, for the time being, I'll write about what's going on with our other baby and anything else I feel the urge to write about! Any further public discussions with strangers regarding my rear end will probably be on that list.)