It's a...

CARROT!

Well, that's what Tommy said when I showed him the picture and said, "Do you know what this is?"

Apologies and SURPRISE, if this is how you're finding out that we're pregnant. That either means that you're a blog stalker who clicked here from someone else's blog OR we need to talk more.

Today I am 18 weeks and 6 days pregnant and we had our 2nd trimester or "big" ultrasound. We are delighted and blessed to report a very healthy, happy, and active baby. This was our 3rd ultrasound with this pregnancy and it's been so cool to see this kid grow and start to develop physically and personally. The baby is measuring perfectly but had trouble sitting still at times. The ultrasound tech had to take whatever measurements she could whenever she could. We tried to follow on the screen and got to see a lot but it was seriously like, "ok so I'm measuring the femur.... oh... and now that's the brain!"

If you don't spend a lot of time looking at ultrasound photos, don't be shocked by scary shadows or overly lumpy looking body parts. This kid is like skin and bones at this stage so we had some laughs when the kid was caught at a funny angle or something and looked like a Terminator.

Without further ado... Introducing #2 (or "Poo" as we have maturely nicknamed it)

Left profile, you can see the two arm bones above the belly. Don't focus on the facial profile too much, I think there's a hand back there too - that's not all nose.
A 4D (well it was at the time) image of the kid's legs and umbilical cord. Don't go zooming and analyzing the image you crazy/nosy people --- you can't see whether or not there's anything between the legs in this shot. (more on that later) The trademark Cecchin thunder thighs have clearly not grown in yet. Definitely more to come on those later!
Various 4D angles of the face with hands up in front of face so you can see you think the kid looks like.


Right profile with no hand obstruction - kid finally fell asleep.
A foot - I believe.
Here the kid does impressions from some classic movies:

Raiders of the Lost Ark (the face melting scene...)
The Joker, from Batman.
"Hasta la vista" - Terminator baby turns into camera and waves bye bye
(could be Spiderman too....I think)

As for the question you're going to bug me about until mid-December. As most of you know, Tom likes to be surprised on delivery day by the baby's gender and I do not. So once again, the ultrasound tech wrote me a note and when I feel like it, I will look at it and find out the gender of our baby. I am again determined for Tom not to find out and to make sure he is as surprised as he wants to be. It worked ok last time, but there were some close calls and loose lips. So I'm working on my poker face and graciously request that you don't ask, don't over analyze, don't scan this post for slipped pronouns (I didn't read the note yet). I can't even tell Tommy, that kid's a blabbermouth. If you ask him he says he's having a brothersister named TessaAnnie and it's growing in his tummy. While I was typing this post he also though the baby looked like a porcupine and an elephant...so consider your source.

We have a healthy baby and are overjoyed at that. I need your help to make sure Tom gets his surprise in December. Thanks for all your support!