The new baby's name

When I was preggers with the Isaac, it really didn't take us too long to figure out what his name should be. For those of you not in the know, "Isaac" was Michael's great-grandfather on his dad's side, whom he actually knew quite well, while "Thomas" is a popular boy name on my dad's side (i.e., my dad, my bro both have it as their middle name, though it goes even farther than that). No brainer. The trouble was that Isaac kept his little "package" cleverly hidden from view on each and every ultrasound we had, so we were constantly guessing. "Oh, oh, I think I see a boy pa....oh wait, that's the umbilical cord." We heard that more than once from a "trained" ultrasound technician. However, we were given an educated guess from our professional ultrasound guy at 16 weeks that Isaac was an Isaac and not a Lauren or Jill or what have you. But then, as they must train them to do in prenatal ultrasound school, said technician is like, "but I'm not 100% sure." What does that mean? Are you just guessing? Or lying? Or placating some really insistent parents? In case you couldn't tell already, we are NOT the kind who prefer to be surprised by the gender of our baby. We must KNOW, and know NOW.

Poor Isaac was the recipient of a lot of green and yellow and orange baby clothes when he was in the womb. Little did I, an inexperienced mom, know how incredibly important it is to color-code one's baby. But we did finally find out about Isaac and his equipment. Three weeks prior to his world premiere, my OB whipped out the ultrasound just for fun. The very first image we got to see was of the most enormous testicles in the history of the world. And so here he is, our little Isaac, possessor of a quality set of frank and beans.

Obviously, though, before we knew he was an Isaac, he required a name. One can't simply refer to him as "baby" or "fetus" or some other cutesy over-used name such as "peanut". No, your fetus must have a memorable, catchy name, one which your spouse and you can toss around unfettered on instant messenger. Pre-Isaac was known as Starvin' Marvin, a fitting name for an entity that can rouse me on innumerable occasions from the dead of sleep at 3:00 in the morning and force me to have a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk. Dada thought of this name, as he is without a doubt the more creative one (yes, it is certainly true). And, true to form, I requested a new and glorious nickname for fetus #2 from Dada, and he came through like a champ.

Our fetus shall henceforth be known as Uterus Barnacle. We call him/her U.B. for short.