Super Powers?

I'm beginning to think our baby may have super powers. At the very least I suspect the baby may have some sort of super strength or size, and there is a distinct possibility of super speed, or maybe even the power of time-travel or even control of the very fabric of space and time.

Some explanation is probably in order. Last Friday Elaine and I went in for her third sonogram, and something about it was very shocking to us and left us grasping for some sort of explanation. That night, my sister came over to see our new house with Lee and his daughter Mikalah. Since we don't have too many toys yet for Mikalah to play with, I popped in The Incredibles DVD and played a few of the shorts on it, including Jack-Jack Attack, which features a baby with a remarkable array of superpowers. That's when I realized that if our baby had super powers, I could make sense of the news from the sonogram earlier that day.

So what was the shocking news from the sonogram? Our baby's new due date is July 26th! Readers of this blog are probably well aware that our baby's original due date was August 16th, and after the second sonogram, the due date was moved up 10 days to August 6th. Now the due date is a full three weeks earlier than we originally thought!

A little note on how due dates are calculated might be helpful to fully understand my super powers hypothesis. The first due date you are given is calculated using Naegele's Rule, which works by subtracting three months from the first day of the mother's last menstrual period and then adding seven days to that date. The rule assumes that conception occurs two weeks after the first day of the mother's last menstrual period, so the pregnancy lasts approximately 40 weeks, with two of those weeks occurring before conception. For Elaine, we subtracted three months from November 9th, added seven days, and came up with our original due date of August 16th. After our second sonogram, the doctor gave us a new due date, August 6th, based on the observed development of the baby. We had been surprised by how quickly Elaine became pregnant when we first found out, and even more amazed how quickly we conceived after the due date was first moved up. This new due date is simply incredible in that it implies the baby was conceived before Elaine's last period and 10 days before we even started trying!

So how do we explain this turn of events? I haven't consulted the doctor doctor on this hypothesis, but as I stated at the beginning of this post, I believe the most likely explanation is some sort of super power. Super powers could allow the baby to travel through time or alter the fabric of space-time to dramatically move up the due date, or some sort of super strength or speed could explain the baby's incredibly rapid development. Of course Occam's razor may favor a more prosaic explanation, but however you slice it we're now less certain about when this baby will come than we ever were, and as for how big this baby will be, for Elaine's sake it's best not to think about it.

Chicago Shower

Elaine and I flew out to Chicago last weekend to visit Dave & Kara and Steve, Becky, Olivia, Maura and Sam. Elaine's parents flew up from Dallas, and a whole host of Gradys descended upon Steve & Becky's house for our first baby shower. We're now well stocked with crib sheets and onesies, and I learned another benefit of keeping the sex of the baby a surprise, we're guaranteed to be able to use all of our shower presents for any future children since all our presents were gender neutral. Thankfully, we only received one loud annoying toy, a baby cell phone that beeps a little tune whenever it is moved, doesn't have an off switch, and has 'non-replaceable batteries' which can't be removed. Of course we can't really be annoyed by the toy since Maura, our adorable two year old niece, picked it out. We probably deserve a few more toys of the loud and grating variety in retubution for the toy grill Elaine gave Olivia a few years back, which in addition to making all sorts of noise over its useful lifetime, decided to periodically announce its batteries were running out with a series of various beeps and grunts. All told we had a lovely time in Chicago, and it was great to be able to see that side of the family one more time before the baby arrives.

(Click here for all the pictures, or here for the slideshow)