It's a boy.

We found out yesterday.


I'm just going to write as if you already know that I'm almost half-way done gestating my second child and that I'm trying to defend in October so that I can give birth in November so that I can graduate in December so that I can start my next life in January...

He just kicked me. Well! 


When I got the internship with SEA (see previous post), I was still editing for AJE and TA-ing and researching and writing and, you know, trying to be part of a family, so blogging got kicked off the priority list. And eventually editing had to go, too. Now my internship is over, and I'm still not editing in lieu of trying to get my dissertation chapters published. But I still didn't return to my blog because all I could think of was BABIES! And... BABIES! And who wants to hear about another pregnant woman? It's all gas and crying at commercials and back pain, right?


Until I realized that that's a huge part of why I started writing here! I wanted to write about the grad student/mom combo, and what better time to catalog my adventures than when I'm doubling my mom load and trying to finish? So I'm about to get all BABY up in here. Like BABIES are going out of style, which, of course, they aren't, they're quite stylish these days, so here we go.


It's a boy. I was sitting here trying to grade exams when I considered that I'm already trying to figure out how to raise a woman; now I have to figure out a man, too? I'm supposed to have distilled out the qualities of both sexes that are most important and figured out how to instill them upon new people, lest I add two more cretins to the world? I mean, thank God for my husband, seeing as how I don't even understand how that whole "shaking off" thing works, but I'm pretty sure we're not going to come up with an infallible Perfect Man List in the next 5 months, one that we can confidently proceed with as a template for our son.


I truly thought that by the time I had kids, I'd have it all figured out. It would be just like The Cosby Show. I'd always know the right answer - scratch that, I'd always know exactly how I felt about the issue at hand. And I would explain it in exactly the right amount of words, with just the right amount of humor injected so that they took me seriously but didn't resent me. Newsflash! Your parents, and all parents, we're making it up as we go. I just assume that I'm going to screw up my kids; I'm just trying to minimize the damage.


In addition to the terror of trying to raise wonderful human beings, this baby is already crazy active. The ultrasound tech was quick on the draw with the anatomical measurements, thankfully, as he looked like he had Restless Fetus Syndrome, so she had to chase him all over my uterus. Considering that our current child will sometimes walk into a room reading a book, forget that she's walking, and just stand there reading for a good ten minutes, I'd say we're in for a shock. As a baby, she hit all of the gross motor milestones quite late; even after she was mobile, she never got into much. My husband as a baby, on the other hand, was walking at some ridiculous age, like six months or something, and jumping off the neighbor's roof shortly thereafter. Imagine the possibilities. God help us.