Little Baby Lump

Be prepared.  The Web site I’m about to share with you may either crack you up or creep you out, but I’m assuming more often than not it will be the latter.  For me, I think it does both.

So basically, there’s this site called ManBabies.com.  It takes normal pictures of father-son interactions and superimposes their heads on each other’s body.  Case in point:

ManBabies Pool Time

Creepy, right?  How about this one …

Backpacking ManBabies

Pretty funny, I think.  Anyway, I’ll let you decide for yourself.  My sister shared the site with me, and I definitely thought it was worthy enough to be featured on the blog.  Hey, it can’t be any worse than the Baby Shower Cake Wrecks or the Martha Stewart Halloween costumes, can it?  I’m not gonna lie – if Baby Lump turns out to be a boy, I’m kind of looking forward to taking a picture of James and him and making a ManBaby picture out of it.  My new laptop is fully equipped with PhotoShop.  ;o)

In the interim, feel free to check out more ManBabies at ManBabies.com at your leisure.

As for Baby Lump, my last doctor appointment revealed that my baby bump is measuring slightly smaller than it should be for 33 weeks gestation (See, It’s not just me being paranoid that I seem small!).  Based on my too-small belly, our doctor scheduled an ultrasound for this Monday.  A little worrisome to me, but on the bright side, we get more fetal baby pictures!

And there’s no need for James and I to avert our eyes; apparently it’s not possible for the untrained eye to tell the baby’s sex, even this far along.  Another cool thing is we’ll probably be able to find out the exact weight of Baby Lump, along with his/her position in the womb.  Hopefully his/her head is starting to point downward to make for an easy landing.

Oven Timer: 33 weeks, 2 days

Here’s something fun for you to chew on in honor of the upcoming election.  After I posted my call for help in naming Baby Lump last week, one of my twitter pals, @petertdavis made me promise I wouldn’t do something like this …

Can you believe that guy?  What a nimrod!  Let me tell you, if James ever pulled a stunt like that, he’d get a lot more than two weeks in the doghouse.  Let’s see, which name would you give your child – Sarah McCain-Palin or Ava Grace?

By the way, I think I’ve come up with a pretty good boy name for Baby Lump – how about Joe Obama-Biden?

In other news, yesterday I hit a pretty big milestone, at least from my point of view.  It was the first time a person gave up his seat on the T for me on account of my preggo belly.  Hooray, baby bump!  It’s definitely becoming more substantial.  Have you seen this week’s pic compared to last week’s?  There’s definitely a noticeable difference.

So I’m coming up on week 30 – can you believe it?  It’s getting so close!  Baby Lump should now be using all five of his/her senses, his/her toenails are fully formed, and Lump’s noggin is pretty much in proportion to the rest of his/her body.  Baby Lump measures between 15 and 16 inches (think a loaf of bread) and weighs between 3 and 4 pounds (think a Macbook Air).

My Little Lump also seems to be a lot more active lately, as if to say “LET ME OUT!”  Apparently, that’s because of all the energizing fat he/she has been developing.  In fact, if Lump were born sometime this week, he/she would have a 9 out of 10 chance of survival.  Still, I think we’ll keep him/her in there to bake a little while longer …

Oven Timer: 29 weeks, 2 days

Okay – what is with the world’s fetish with the babies-as-food thing?  This is even worse than the baby shower Cake Wrecks because now, actual humans are involved.  Seriously, this makes me want to stop sharing those food analogies the sites I read use to describe my baby’s growing size.  Baby Lump is getting too big to be compared to single servings of food anyway, unless I’m planning on chowing down on a whole meatloaf or something.  Have a look, and see what I mean ….

My friend, Yianni is right – Martha should go back to jail for this one.  Those poor babies.  These are the cruelest baby costumes ever!  There’s no way Baby Lump’s first Halloween will be spent as a lemon meringue pie or a boiled and plated lobster.  That apple pie baby looks like she’s in a food coma.  No wonder “Caesar salad baby” doesn’t want to cooperate …

In weekly updates, Baby Lump now weighs two full pounds and measures about 14 inches long (as long as he/she isn’t gearing up to be a Paul Bunyan-type baby).  He/she has also started working on that birthday hairdo and should be growing some cute little baby fuzz by now.

According to many Web sites, this week marks the last week in my second trimester, so apparently I’m about two-thirds of the way there.  Third trimester, here I come!

Oven Timer: 26 weeks, 1 day

Today’s topic of conversation: leash kids.  This is nothing new – they’ve been around for years.

If you’re not exactly sure you know what I mean, a few seconds of logical thinking will lead you to the right conclusion (or you can just take a look at the image on the right).  That’s right – kids on leashes.  Kind of like dogs on leashes, only instead if K-9s, we’re talking humans here.

The reason I bring this up is because yesterday, as I was on my way to work, I got stuck behind a pack of leash kids.  It was obvious to me they were apart of some kind of daycare program.  There were about eight of them, accompanied by two adults, and some simple arithmetic will prove that some sort of organizational device was needed for this bunch of rugrats.  Two adults means only four hands for eight kids, hence the need for the Jon and Kate Plus Eight hoop-style leash I witnessed.  Now this I find acceptable, particularly because the kids weren’t restrained at all, but were instead holding onto a hoop that guided them along and made them easier to herd.

I understand I’m a little naive here and that there may be a perfectly good explanation for the leash kid phenomenon.  Still, most of time when I see a child strapped up in a fluorescent harness, I feel an overwhelming sense of pity.  Why can’t mom/dad/nanny just hold onto the kid’s hand, particularly if there is only one kid – not eight – to keep track of?  Surely some traditional hand-holding would do the trick, as well as foster that essential, warm and fuzzy caregiver-child bond.  I mean, if you were a kid on leash, would you not feel a little confused/degraded that both you and pet Fido were toted around in the same way?

And leash kids are taken to a whole new level with the advent of Smart Target’s Kiddo Keeper, which is basically the equivalent to those alarms you can buy to locate your keys or TV remote.  The Kiddo Keeper Web site, in fact, also markets the product as a way “to monitor valuable properties or pets” – see? Umm – wow.  Whatever happened to actually paying attention to your little one?  At first I got a little concerned when I read the article that led me to the product, which at one point describes the Kiddo Keeper as akin to an electric dog collar that will shock your kid if he/she wanders too far away.  Then I (once again) realized how gullible I am.

While I doubt any formal studies have been conducted on the outcome of people who were/weren’t raised on leashes, I do have friends of both varieties, and they’ve all turned out well.  Heck, my brother-in-law was a leash kid, and I won’t hesitate to say he’s quite an admirable fellow.

I suppose some kids are just that rampantly wild that they must be restrained somehow.  I’m hoping Baby Lump doesn’t turn out this way.  So help me if I have to resort to treating my kid like an animal, or worse – a set of keys.

Oven Timer: 23 weeks, 1 day

So I literally get the hiccups just about every day now – it’s so odd.  Sometimes I get them multiple times a day, though they usually only last for about two or three hiccups at a time.  Obviously my first thought about it was,

“Well, pregnant ladies must just get hiccups more frequently for some strange reason, probably for the same reason pregnant women get weird cravings for things like pickles and ice cream.”

Honestly, though, I can’t find any explanation on the Internet about being preggers and getting hiccups!  Although, funny enough, there are tons and tons of search results addressing the fact that babies are known to get hiccups in utero (how adorable!).  I must be the only crazy pregnant lady who doesn’t really suffer from the common weird pregnancy side effects (i.e. cravings for pickles and ice cream, morning sickness, etc.) and instead makes up her own quirky ones.

I have a dr. appointment on Monday, so maybe she can shed some light on my hiccuping situation.  I’ll keep you posted.  Until then, I’m off to the Jersey shore this weekend to enjoy some fun in the sun and to model my new maternity bathing suit from Target!

Oven Timer: 19 weeks, 3 days