Once again, in honor of St. Patrick's Day...

I bring you this iconic photograph.

Update on my bro...

He leaves for Afghanistan sometime this week. Even though his job is more administrative than combat-related, it still scares the crap outta me that he is going to a war zone. Please keep him and all our troops in your thoughts.

We're having a boy!

Okay, I'll admit that I've known this for quite a while. In fact, we’ve known since the 13w check-up that we’re having a boy. Well, we’ve known since we first got pregnant that we’re having a boy, but the ultrasound tech confirmed it at 13w. And we actually kept the secret. Can you believe it?

Anyhow, we were in for our routine visit at 13w, the one where the tech checked for Down Syndrome by looking at the baby’s neck (the NT test). The tech (a guy) was chatting with us to put us at ease (I was quite worried about our risk factor). He asked if we were planning on finding out the baby’s sex. We told him that we were. He asked if we wanted to know now (then). My stomach jumped a little, and we told him that we did. He told us that it was a boy. I asked him how he could tell. He said — and this is almost a verbatim quote — “because of the giant penis”.

Well now… it seems that our baby has a giant penis! SM should be proud.

Anyway, we were still a little skeptical, giant penis aside, so we wanted to wait until another ultrasound when the baby was further along to really confirm it. Unfortunately Li’l Pea didn’t cooperate at 16 weeks, but we've had two more sonograms since -- and he is definitely a boy. One tech even said he was "a proud boy" (another comment on his giant penis?).

Maybe we’ll have to change his nickname. ”Li’l Pea” just doesn’t seem appropriate anymore somehow.