A Tiny Little Girl

I had my big you-are-halfway-through-your-pregnancy ultrasound today.  It was really fun to see the new little person who will join our family and to learn more about the baby.  We were feeling pretty accepting of either a boy or a girl, probably more honestly than we were last time.  With Grace we both kind of harbored a hope for a girl, despite saying, "Oh, either way will be just fine."  We said that this time, too, but I think it was more sincere.  We still had slight leanings, opposite ones this time; I wonder if there are parents who really truly honestly are so zen that they are perfectly equal in their preference for a son or a daughter.  I think finding out the sex of the baby is wonderful for this aspect of impending parenthood because all of a sudden you KNOW this aspect of who your child will be.  You are no longer discussing the abstract idea of a boy or a girl; you know that you have this specific child and (either immediately or over the coming months) feel excited about the baby being a him or a her.

And so, yes, we are having a girl!  It is exciting to think about raising her as a strong, smart, wholesome girl, about seeing what kind of little girl and eventually woman she will be, and about Grace and this new baby growing up as sisters.  It definitely feels so right to picture us with these two girls.

The ultrasound was wonderful and showed that all the important parts of our baby seem to be developing normally.  The heart has four little chambers that are pumping away furiously, her brain has the right ventricles, all the tiny organs in her abdomen are there and the right size and all that.  It still amazes me that they can see so much when she weighs a mere 13 ounces right now.  This little girl was moving around a lot during the ultrasound, more than I remember seeing Grace move.  We could see her rolling and waving her little clenched hand.

And now we know that we have most of a wardrobe ready but absolutely no clue on what to do for a name.  Grace's birthday is in February and this baby is due right around Christmas so if her growth is at about the same rate as Grace's, we will likely be able to use a lot of the same clothes, supplementing in those hot months.  Grace wore long sleeves in May the first year of her life, which is Not Going To Happen here.  A name, however-- whatever shall we do?  The conversation about what to name Grace was literally less than 2 minutes long and took place years before she was born; her first and middle names are family names from Rob's and my clans respectively and we both knew we wanted to use them for a daughter.  The name dilemma is thus very new to us. Everything we think of seems to have some problem.  We like Jane and Kate, but both are one-syllable names ending in "-e" with the long "a" sound in the middle; in other words, they are just like Grace's name.  We like Lizzie (short for Elizabeth, and yes, named for that Lizzie) and Lucy but want avoid rhyming with our last name, which ends in the "-ee" sound.  So here we are, at an impasse.  I'm going to go buy this book since I have been stalking the author's blog for a while.