Get Ready to Welcome...

...the next Sen... Boy! Yes, most people guessed it correctly. We are having a boy! We ended up going in a week early for the ultrasound (for reasons of convenience) and got to see the little fella. Not unlike his sister, he kept two arms in front of his face for most of the time, and so we couldn't really get any good 3-D pictures. Here's one that at least shows some facial features. Everything looked well - heart, brain, spinal cord. There's a VHS tape that we got of the whole procedure, and I will try to digitize it so everyone has a chance to see it.

The reason why we went in a week early was because I had taken a day off to go for my citizenship interview. Ok, so some people claim that I am more "American" than most Americans my age, but that still doesn't mean that I get to stand in the 'Citizens Only' line during customs inspection. My main reason for applying for citizenship is primarily ease of travel. With international travel at least once a year, it's a pain to get visas. Bypassing that in itself is worth the price of admission. My interview lasted all of 4.5 minutes. Since we found ourselves downtown with lots of time to spare, we called in to the doctor's office to see if they could take us in without an appointment. They said come on in.

In the waiting room there was another couple who had come for scan, and we struck up a conversation with them. Wow. What a story. This is their first child, and their fifth scan. She had gotten pregnant through IV fertilization. When you get pregnant like that, they monitor you very closely. Apparently, her hormone levels stopped rising in her third week. By the sixth week, they still hadn't risen to the expected levels. The doctor at the clinic started talking about getting a DNC (an abortion) because by now the child would have been severely under-developed. Plus, they couldn't find any sign of life. They said that the doctor pretty much insisted on a DNC because he said that in his entire career he didn't know of any case that had survived. This couple went through the entire grieving process of losing a child. Then a few days before the scheduled DNC they went in for a check, and the technician gave a little shriek. She had found a heartbeat! To make a long story short, this couple ditched that clinic and found their way to the doctor that we go to for our ultrasounds. He examined them in their eight week, and said that everything looked fine and normal, and he had no idea why a D&C was being recommended. Can you believe it? This is one amazing example of the craziness of an abortion-happy culture.

In other news, my Windows Vista DVD arrived. I pretty much hate it. It looks glitzy, for sure, but there are functionalities and features that were there in Windows XP that have been either stripped off, or are currently not available. It took four installs of the operating system to get a stable computer.

And finally, some pictures of the every lovable Priya...

Hanging out at the library

Rawr! I can bite your head off...