@ 33 Weeks

Monica's friend and former co-worker, Alissa, is about three, maybe four, weeks further along in her pregnancy than Monica is. Their little guy, who you see here--affectionately known as "Buster," I believe--is to arrive on or about March 26, so he's coming...soon. We're not far behind. Alissa had the opportunity to have a 3-d ultrasound on Friday, which is why these images look so much more like regular photographs than do standard ultrasound images. "From my appointment two hours ago.They woke him up to take these pictures. He wasn't happy. It appears he has Jeff's nose and what my mom and dad called my "ashtray lip" when I was not happy as a child," Alissa wrote. What's amazing to me is how well you can see him: his eyes, the umbilical cord on the left, and his little arms scrunched up by his chin and neck.
Peanut continues to indicate acrobatics may be in his future. Each day, we're supposed to keep track of how many minutes it takes for Monica to feel him move ten times. The first day, last Tuesday, it took him not quite nine minutes. We are spending many happy hours "watching the belly"--it's endlessly entertaining, actually. We have no real sense of when or how he'll move, except to suspect that he's about to begin a period of activity, so each movement he makes is a surprise, a gift, which yields the same surprised joy in us each time. We'll be watching the belly, and seeing just small movements--maybe a little wiggle, or nothing at all--and then, suddenly, her stomach changes shape so radically we gasp and laugh, because we'll have seen, just for a moment, his head or his rump push out well beyond her body and return to some other position.