21 weeks

We're on the downhill slope now, at 21 weeks. You're now about the length of a carrot.

carrots

Sunday was the gender reveal party. Despite exhausting and stressing myself out for the entire weekend just to throw this fete, I'd have to say it was a success! We had a great group of people come to celebrate you, including Nana Shirley, Grandma Joan and Grandpa Rick, Uncle Andy and Aunty Sandra along with Kayla and Lily (who is walking now!!!), Uncle Jason and Aunty Yen, Alicia and Cheyne, Jess & Wes, JT and Aaron and Adam, and Ryan and Crystal.

Since it was the same day as the Oscars, I decided to make that a theme -- we called it the "Anatomy Awards". I put all kinds of tasty foods out for people to enjoy, and made little name labels for each item that had a cheeky name related to an Oscar nominee (things like "Moneyball of Cheese", "Spinach Dip with 'Bread' Pitt", "Kung Fu Panda Orange Chicken", "The Lemon-Ides of March", and "George Clooney Macarooni Balls", among others).

We played a little game just before the reveal, where we passed out slips of paper with various old wives tales about determining the sex of the baby, and had everyone pick one and read it aloud. Then we decided what it indicated and marked it on a chart. In the end, the results were 8 tallies for "girl" and 7 tallies for "boy". So... while the correct option technically won, it just goes to show that you have a 50/50 shot of getting it right with an old wives tale (just like you have a 50/50 shot of actually being pregnant with either sex).

After the game, we headed out to the front yard, where daddy had hung a series of 7 paper lanterns. I had spent way too much time over the previous few days engineering and constructing these cheap paper lanterns into little surprise vessels, which would drop a letter (or colored tassels) out of the bottom when a string was pulled (thus yanking off a piece of paper that closed up the hole, and allowing the goods to drop out). We selected 7 people to each man a string, and at the count of three had them all pull. While we had a couple of minor snafus (the "G" didn't drop out right... but I think it's because something got messed up when we had to hastily put it back back together when a piece fell off while daddy was hanging it; and the string on the "I" slid down the wire support beam inside the lantern, causing the letter to drop lower than the others). But, it got the point across and (I think, at least) was cute and different!

In other news, you and I played a fun new game today! I was standing in the copy room at work and you were kicking me, so I decided to press on my belly where you had kicked, and you kicked back. Then, I tried pressing on the opposite side of my belly, and you kicked me in that spot! I moved my hand to a different area, pressed, and you kicked me right there! This only went on for a few tries, and then you got bored and went to sleep or something. But it was a fun moment of connecting and playing with you. Now, if only you'd let daddy feel you kick so he could play along too.